                          DHAMMA & NON-DUALITY
                               (Part I)*

                                   by
                             Bhikkhu Bodhi


           BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #27 (2nd Mailing 1994)

              Copyright 1994 Buddhist Publication Society

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                         DharmaNet Edition 1994

        This electronic edition is offered for free distribution
            via DharmaNet by arrangement with the publisher.

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  One of the most challenging issues facing Theravada Buddhism in recent 
  years has been the encounter between classical Theravada vipassana 
  meditation and the "non-dualistic" contemplative traditions best 
  represented by Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism. Responses to 
  this encounter have spanned the extremes, ranging from vehement 
  confrontation all the way to attempts at synthesis and hybridization. 
  While the present essay cannot pretend to illuminate all the intricate 
  and subtle problems involved in this sometimes volatile dialogue, I 
  hope it may contribute a few sparks of light from a canonically 
  oriented Theravada perspective.
  
  My first preliminary remark would be to insist that a system of 
  meditative practice does not constitute a self-contained discipline. 
  Any authentic system of spiritual practice is always found embedded 
  within a conceptual matrix that defines the problems the practice is 
  intended to solve and the goal towards which it is directed. Hence the 
  merging of techniques grounded in incompatible conceptual frameworks 
  is fraught with risk. Although such mergers may appease a predilection 
  for experimentation or eclecticism, it seems likely that their 
  long-term effect will be to create a certain "cognitive dissonance" 
  that will reverberate through the deeper levels of the psyche and stir 
  up even greater confusion.
  
  My second remark would be to point out simply that non-dualistic 
  spiritual traditions are far from consistent with each other, but 
  comprise, rather, a wide variety of views profoundly different and 
  inevitably colored by the broader conceptual contours of the 
  philosophies which encompass them.
  
  For the Vedanta, non-duality (//advaita//) means the absence of an 
  ultimate distinction between the Atman, the innermost self, and 
  Brahman, the divine reality, the underlying ground of the world. From 
  the standpoint of the highest realization, only one ultimate reality 
  exists -- which is simultaneously Atman and Brahman -- and the aim of 
  the spiritual quest is to know that one's own true self, the Atman, is 
  the timeless reality which is Being, Awareness, Bliss. Since all 
  schools of Buddhism reject the idea of the Atman, none can accept the 
  non-dualism of Vedanta. From the perspective of the Theravada 
  tradition, any quest for the discovery of selfhood, whether as a 
  permanent individual self or as an absolute universal self, would have 
  to be dismissed as a delusion, a metaphysical blunder born from a 
  failure to properly comprehend the nature of concrete experience. 
  According to the Pali Suttas, the individual being is merely a complex 
  unity of the five aggregates, which are all stamped with the three 
  marks of impermanence, suffering, and selflessness. Any postulation of 
  selfhood in regard to this compound of transient, conditioned 
  phenomena is an instance of "personality view" (//sakkayaditthi//), 
  the most basic fetter that binds beings to the round of rebirths. The 
  attainment of liberation, for Buddhism, does not come to pass by the 
  realization of a true self or absolute "1," but through the 
  dissolution of even the subtlest sense of selfhood in relation to the 
  five aggregates, "the abolition of all I-making, mine-making, and
  underlying tendencies to conceit."
  
  The Mahayana schools, despite their great differences, concur in 
  upholding a thesis that, from the Theravada point of view, borders on 
  the outrageous. This is the claim that there is no ultimate difference 
  between samsara and Nirvana, defilement and purity, ignorance and 
  enlightenment. For the Mahayana, the enlightenment which the Buddhist 
  path is designed to awaken consists precisely in the realization of 
  this non-dualistic perspective. The validity of conventional dualities 
  is denied because the ultimate nature of all phenomena is emptiness, 
  the lack of any substantial or intrinsic reality, and hence in their 
  emptiness all the diverse, apparently opposed phenomena posited by 
  mainstream Buddhist doctrine finally coincide: "All dharmas have one 
  nature, which is no-nature."
  
  The teaching of the Buddha as found in the Pali Canon does not endorse 
  a philosophy of non-dualism of any variety, nor, I would add, can a 
  non-dualistic perspective be found lying implicit within the Buddha's 
  discourses. At the same time, however, I would not maintain that the 
  Pali Suttas propose dual//ism//, the positing of duality as a 
  metaphysical hypothesis aimed at intellectual assent. I would 
  characterize the Buddha's intent in the Canon as primarily pragmatic 
  rather than speculative, though I would also qualify this by saying 
  that this pragmatism does not operate in a philosophical void but 
  finds its grounding in the nature of actuality as the Buddha 
  penetrated it in his enlightenment. In contrast to the non-dualistic 
  systems, the Buddha's approach does not aim at the discovery of a 
  unifying principle behind or beneath our experience of the world. 
  Instead it takes the concrete fact of living experience, with all its 
  buzzing confusion of contrasts and tensions, as its starting point and 
  framework, within which it attempts to diagnose the central problem at 
  the core of human existence and to offer a way to its solution. Hence 
  the polestar of the Buddhist path is not a final unity but the 
  extinction of suffering, which brings the resolution of the 
  existential dilemma at its most fundamental level.
  
  When we investigate our experience exactly as it presents itself, we 
  find that it is permeated by a number of critically important 
  dualities with profound implications for the spiritual quest. The 
  Buddha's teaching, as recorded in the Pali Suttas, fixes our attention 
  unflinchingly upon these dualities and treats their acknowledgment as 
  the indispensable basis for any honest search for liberating wisdom. 
  It is precisely these antitheses -- of good and evil, suffering and 
  happiness, wisdom and ignorance -- that make the quest for 
  enlightenment and deliverance such a vitally crucial concern.
  
  At the peak of the pairs of opposites stands the duality of the 
  conditioned and the Unconditioned: samsara as the round of repeated 
  birth and death wherein all is impermanent, subject to change, and 
  liable to suffering, and Nibbana as the state of final deliverance, 
  the unborn, ageless, and deathless. Although Nibbana, even in the 
  early texts, is definitely cast as an ultimate reality and not merely 
  as an ethical or psychological state, there is not the least 
  insinuation that this reality is metaphysically indistinguishable at 
  some profound level from its manifest opposite, samsara. To the 
  contrary, the Buddha's repeated lesson is that samsara is the realm of 
  suffering governed by greed, hatred, and delusion, wherein we have 
  shed tears greater than the waters of the ocean, while Nibbana is 
  irreversible release from samsara, to be attained by demolishing 
  greed, hatred, and delusion, and by relinquishing all conditioned 
  existence.
  
  Thus the Theravada makes the antithesis of samsara and Nibbana the 
  starting point of the entire quest for deliverance. Even more, it 
  treats this antithesis as determinative of the final goal, which is 
  precisely the transcendence of samsara and the attainment of 
  liberation in Nibbana. Where Theravada differs significantly from the 
  Mahayana schools, which also start with the duality of samsara and 
  Nirvana, is in its refusal to regard this polarity as a mere 
  preparatory lesson tailored for those with blunt faculties, to be 
  eventually superseded by some higher realization of non-duality. From 
  the standpoint of the Pali Suttas, even for the Buddha and the 
  Arahants suffering and its cessation, samsara and Nibbana, remain 
  distinct.
  
  Spiritual seekers still exploring the different contemplative 
  traditions commonly assume that the highest spiritual teaching must be 
  one which posits a metaphysical unity as the philosophical foundation 
  and final goal of the quest for enlightenment. Taking this assumption 
  to be axiomatic, they may then conclude that the Pali Buddhist 
  teaching, with its insistence on the sober assessment of dualities, is 
  deficient or provisional, requiring fulfillment by a nondualistic 
  realization. For those of such a bent, the dissolution of dualities in 
  a final unity will always appear more profound and complete.
  
  However, it is just this assumption that I would challenge. I would 
  assert, by reference to the Buddha's own original teaching, that 
  profundity and completeness need not be bought at the price of 
  distinctions, that they can be achieved at the highest level while 
  preserving intact the dualities and diversity so strikingly evident to 
  mature reflection on the world. I would add, moreover, that the 
  teaching which insists on recognizing real dualities as they are is 
  finally more satisfactory. The reason it is more satisfactory, despite 
  its denial of the mind's yearning for a comprehensive unity, is 
  because it takes account of another factor which overrides in 
  importance the quest for unity. This "something else" is the need to 
  remain grounded in actuality.
  
  Where I think the teaching of the Buddha, as preserved in the 
  Theravada tradition, surpasses all other attempts to resolve the 
  spiritual dilemmas of humanity is in its persistent refusal to 
  sacrifice actuality for unity. The Buddha's Dhamma does not point us 
  towards an all-embracing absolute in which the tensions of daily 
  existence dissolve in metaphysical oneness or inscrutable emptiness. 
  It points us, rather, towards actuality as the final sphere of 
  comprehension, towards things as they really are (//yathabhuta//). 
  Above all, it points us towards the Four Noble Truths of suffering, 
  its origin, its cessation, and the way to its cessation as the 
  liberating proclamation of things as they really are. These four 
  truths, the Buddha declares, are //noble// truths, and what makes them 
  noble truths is precisely that they are actual, undeviating, 
  invariable (//tatha//, //avitatha//, //anannatha//). It is the failure 
  to face the actuality of these truths that has caused us to wander for 
  so long through the long course of samsara. It is by penetrating these 
  truths exactly as they are that one can reach the true consummation of 
  the spiritual quest: making an end to suffering.
  
        * Part II of this essay will appear in the next BPS Newsletter.

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 TITLE OF WORK: Dhamma & Non-duality -- Part I (BPS Newsletter Cover
                Essay, No. 27, 2nd Mailing 1994)
 FILENAME: ESSAY_27.ZIP
 AUTHOR: Bhikkhu Bodhi
 AUTHOR'S ADDRESS:  Buddhist Publication Society
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