The various forms of duality

Ken:

All that appears and exists,
All of samsara and nirvana,
Has one ground, two paths, and two results.
Everything is the expression of awareness and ignorance.

The Tantra that Teaches the Great Perfection as Samantabhadra’s Unobstructed Awakened Mind, Gongpa Zangthal Gyi Gyü

There is false duality, and there is a true duality. The false duality, or I should say the false dualities, take various forms. The most common form, and arguably the one that costs or causes the most suffering in the world, is the duality of good versus evil. It is a false duality. The only result of good versus evil, or the eventual result of good versus evil, is war. Always. It can be internal, it can be external, but it’s always war. That kind of polarization has never produced any good result in the course of history.

One of the roles that Buddhism has played politically within countries in Asia and, in the 20th century, to some extent, outside of Asia, through such personages as U Thant, who was the first Secretary General of the United Nations, Thich Nhat Hanh, and most notably perhaps, the Dalai Lama. Such people made a point of conducting conversations out of the public eye with various world leaders and influential people, moving them away from the view of good versus evil. Another false duality, one which is actually the cause of suffering itself, is what we discussed to some extent this morning, and that is I/other.

Another duality, which is in a certain sense both false and true, that’s a very Buddhist way of looking at it, is knowing versus not knowing. I’ll say a bit more about that this afternoon, right now. The true duality is appearance and emptiness. However, it is only an apparent duality, because we have from the Heart Sutra, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Other than emptiness, there is no form. Other than form, there is no emptiness.” So, even though appearance or form and emptiness appear different, they are one and the same. Yes. [laughs]

Student: This is something that I was thinking about within the earlier lecture, when you were saying that there’s nothing that doesn’t change, and I thought, well, emptiness is always emptiness. And now you’re saying, and of course I’ve heard this saying, “Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.” Is this what you’re talking about?

Ken: Let’s see how things unfold, [laughs] okay? And if they don’t unfold in the way that’s satisfactory, then you can take your question up again. Okay. So this, opening lines to this prayer, it’s kind of a strange opening to a prayer, isn’t it? “All that appears and exists, all of samsara and nirvana, has one ground, two paths, and two results. Everything is the expression of awareness and ignorance.”

Awareness and ignorance could also be translated as knowing and not knowing. So, what’s being said here is that all experience is the expression of knowing and not knowing. Those are the two paths, the path of knowing, and the path of not knowing. The path of knowing is freedom, nirvana, etc., etc., etc. The path of not knowing is fettering by reactivity, reactive emotions, samsara, the cycle of pattern based existence.

But you have this other phrase in there, “one ground”. The point of practice is to know that this is so, through one’s own direct experience. Then you know that the duality of good versus evil is false and problematic. You know that the duality of I and other is simply a misperception. You know that everything you experience is an expression of knowing or not knowing. In other words, you know how things are, and you know what you are.

A zen koan: the flag in the wind

Ken: Now, you might ask, what does this all have to do with impermanence and change, in the way that we were talking about it this morning and the way that you practiced. Well, when you think of change in the world that we experience as outside us, which is the world of sensory objects. We see all of the change taking place. What changes? This question is captured in a koan from the Zen tradition. Two monks observed a flag flapping in the wind. One monk was arguing that the flag moved. The other was arguing that it was the wind that moved. Who was right? What moves?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: No, they were standing there.

Student: Their awareness moved.

Ken: Their awareness moved. That’s interesting. Anybody else?

Student: Retinal images.

Ken: That just moves the problem into the area of chemistry and things like that, it doesn’t change. So you have changing patterns on the retina, so now you have, is it the cones that move, or is it the electrical signals that move, right?

Student: What’s the question?

Ken: Who is right? Is it the flag that moves or the wind moves?

Student: First, they experience the flag being in one place, then they experience the flag being in another place.

Ken: That’s true. Well, let’s go back. Remember I asked you, you know, when you looked at this, where is the seeing? Okay? Here they’re observing a flag that is flapping in the wind. Where is the seeing? It’s hard to say, right? But would you agree that the movement is in the seeing? It’s in the seeing itself. Now, where is that? Martha, I saw you shaking your head. It’s hard to say, isn’t it? Now, just hold the question. Where is the seeing? What happens when you do that? Anybody?

Student: [Unclear] … sounds like what you’ve described as your own self sense is where the sense of self is.

Ken: Okay. There’s a shift of some kind. Anybody else?

Student: Seems like the answer is not in the mind. The mind can’t hold the answer, so …

Ken: Mm-hmm. What if you stop before you get to that?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: No, that’s what you’re teetering into. When the mind can’t hold the answer, but what if you just rest in the experience of the question. What happens there?

Student: Everything changes.

Ken: What changes? Everything. Describe the change as best you can.

Student: There’s a gap between the question and the experience.

Ken: Yes. Describe the gap.

Student: It’s fluttering in the wind.

Ken: [Laughs] Describe the gap.

Student: It’s just different from where you just were.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. Again, there’s a shift, right? Now, that shift, it’s just a little one, but it’s a movement out of subject/object framework. It’s a shift, it can be described in a lot of different ways, into just being. As you say, everything changes, but when you tried to put your finger on it, it’s very hard to say what changed, right? Is that fair? So, when you consider the question of change in the world around you, all of the changes, flag fluttering in the wind, leaves falling to the ground, sun rising, whatever, and you go into the actual experience of change, your experiences shift.

What about the body? Does the body change? Groans, of yes. If there’s a bunch of teenagers, there wouldn’t be groans, they would say, “Yes!'” [Laughter] But at this point it’s usually more groans. Now, where did those changes take place? It’s the same question as about the flag and the wind, isn’t it? For all the changes taking place in the body are being caused by various things, just as the flag in the wind, but really they’re change is in our experience. Where is that?

The change in our experience: where is that?

Student: What is that?

Ken: Where. Where is it?

Student: But what is that? Our experience?

Ken: Yes. Now, when you ask that question with respect to your body, what happens? Jessica?

Jessica: Just had a brief moment of the body disappearing.

Ken: Mm-hmm, and what was there?

Jessica: I want to say nothing, but it wasn’t nothing. It was just … I don’t know what word to use.

Ken: And did your relationship or view of the body change?

Jessica: Yeah, for like a nanosecond.

Ken: And how did it change?

Jessica: There was no viewing the body as other, except … I was having an experience of whatever that moment was, was nothing to do with the body really, all of a sudden.

Ken: Yeah. So you stopped viewing the body as other. There was just experience. Yeah. Anybody else?

Student: I was reflecting on this today when we were doing the meditation, and it feels most times to me like the body is a container. But when you have that little shift, it becomes a permeable thing as opposed to a rigid enclosing thing.

Ken: That’s right. It does, doesn’t it? It loses its substantiality.

Student: What was the question you posed? About that? [Unclear]

Ken: When you consider the experience of change with respect to your body and ask the question, “Where is that experience?” there’s a shift. Now, the hidden world. Thoughts, feelings, values, beliefs, perspectives, things which you know do change, but we generally feel don’t change, very consistent, you know. Where are they? What happens when you ask that question? Tom?

Tom: Well, I just had a [unclear] sensation of falling.

Ken: Mm-hmm. Anybody else? Peggy.

Peggy: They don’t have meaning any more, I mean in a substantial sense.

Ken: They don’t have meaning. They aren’t as solid as they were. Yes. How does that feel?

Peggy: For me, scary, but freeing.

Ken: Scary but freeing, yes. So, when we consider where the experience of each of these worlds, the outer world, the inner world of the body, the outer world of sensory objects, the inner world of the body, and the hidden world of values, beliefs and so forth, where the experience of each of those worlds is, we experience a shift. And in each case, that shift is out of subject/object. It is out of corporality. It’s out of solidity or fixation. Is that fair? Now, this is a little more difficult, what is the shift into?

Student: I know the answer, but I don’t know why. I think the answer is direct experience, but I can’t tell you why I’m saying that.

Ken: Maybe it’s not necessary for you to tell me why. That’s your answer.

Student: But I don’t fully understand it.

Ken: Perhaps you do. But you don’t understand it with your intellect. Which may or may not be necessary, but there is some understanding there, otherwise you wouldn’t have got there, right? Direct experience, it’s the shift into direct experience. Anybody else?

Student: For me, it’s like 360-degree view. This openness. We need it to move forward and backward.

Ken: Freedom from restraints, yes. Anybody else? Julia?

Julia: It’s like an experience of almost stepping out of one’s body.

Ken: Mm-hmm. That’s out of, what are you stepping into? Pardon?

Student: An unconfined space.

Ken: Okay.

Student: Awareness of non-dual, non-duality.

Ken: Is that what you actually experience? You experience an awareness of non-duality?

Student: What I experience is not feeling that, let’s say, in hidden, that the idea is out there.

Ken: Yeah. That’s right. One experiences non-duality. It just moves there. Now, you’ve described it in different ways. Helene describes it as totality, basically. Dave describes it as direct experience. Peggy describes it as non-duality. You’ve all heard these terms many, many times. And we generally regard them as a very big deal. Well, they are, and they aren’t. Part of the purpose here is to show you that these are not remote distant concepts or experiences, but you have to journey far and wide, internally or externally. They’re actually right here right now, if you know what kind of effort to make. Now, this is again a little more difficult question, where does that experience of non-duality, totality, directness, whatever you want to call it, where does it come from?

Student: Being fully present.

Ken: That’s how it comes, but where does it come from? [Unclear] Pardon? That’s how it comes, again. Where does it come from?

Robert: It arises from emptiness.

Ken: Now you’re in trouble, Robert. You’ve introduced this term. Where is emptiness? So, this direct experience comes from nowhere? Okay. Where is it right now?

Student: Everywhere. [Laughter]

Ken: Is it there?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Right, that little blot in the carpet. Is it?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: And you know it?

Student: Absolutely.

Ken: How can you know that it’s there?

Student: Because it is there, and I know it.

Ken: But there’s no connection.

Student: With what?

Ken: This is here. You can’t even see it now. [Laughter] How can you know it if it is here?

Student: I guess it’s understanding that …

Ken: It’s an interior knowing, is it? So, it’s in you?

Student: No, it’s not in me, it’s innate in life.

Ken: Yeah. This is a concept. Okay? And we like concepts. They give us the illusion that we know what we’re talking about. [Laughter]

Student: That’s a good thing. [Laughter]

Ken: Yes, it’s a bit like the honey on a razor blade. Tastes very sweet. Yes. You get the point? Okay. Where is the experience, that direct experience? Where is that non-duality, etc., where is it? Can you say where it is? No, you can’t. Where does it go?

Student: [Unclear] [Laughter]

Ken: Ah, see, she only licked that blade once. [Laughter] Okay. Does it change? Does that experience of totality, directness, non-duality, change?

Student: Well, for the observer …

Ken: She does want to go back to those razor blades, doesn’t she? [Laughter]

Student: You see her point. If it’s total, how can something total change? It does come and go.

Student: It’s always there, whether we perceive it or not.

Ken: So, what everybody says is true, it comes and goes in our experience. But that is more like the sun disappearing behind clouds. The sun doesn’t actually go away, light’s blocked. It doesn’t go anywhere, because there isn’t anywhere for it to go, remember?

A Zen story

Ken: There is a story about this, which I probably shouldn’t tell, but I will anyway. A Zen priest was hungry, wandering around the streets of New York. So he thought he’d have a hot dog, and he went to one of the hot dog vendors, said, “I’d like a hot dog”, and the vendor said, “How would you like that?”

And he said, “Make me one with everything.”

So the vendor took out a hot dog and put on onions and relish, and the mustard and chili and cheese. The Zen priest gave him 20 bucks. The vendor took it, and after a few minutes, the Zen priest said, “What about the change?”

And the vendor looked at him and said, “When you’re one with everything, there’s no change.”

[Laughter] I knew I shouldn’t have told it. [Laughter] Now, what I want you to do in your … Pardon?

Harry: We paid for this? [Laughter]

Open to the totality of change in all three worlds

Ken: No, you haven’t begun to pay yet, Harry. [Laughter] Now, in your practice, I want you to work at opening to the totality of change in all three worlds. When you open to the totality of change, you may experience a shift. A shift into just experiencing. Because when you open to that totality, you have the field of sensory experience, you have the field of the body, you have the field of all of the values, beliefs, emotions, etc. Everything changes. Everything in that is changing.

But the fact that it is changing, and when you are open to it, it brings out an awareness. An awareness which is your human heritage, which is always there, always present in all experience, but most of the time we are unaware of it. It’s for some people disorienting and uncomfortable. Why? Because there’s no sense of I associated with it. So there’s no sense of identity, of being something. For other people, that’s like coming home, going “Oh, where have I been?” Like waking up from a bad dream. When we wake up from the dream, the dream doesn’t stop.

It’d be more accurate to say, we wake into the dream. The dream continues, but now we know it’s a dream. And here you open to the totality of your experience, all that change, and you move into just experiencing. And now you know something about everything that you experience, which we are usually too caught up to know or let in, that everything, everything that we experience, is just an experience. None of it is good or bad—false duality: good or evil. I and other are misperceptions through which we try to organize our experience in a certain way, but that’s organized around an identity which we see has no basis in experience.

Practice instructions

Ken: So, what I want you to work on in your practice this evening is using the meditation on change. Everything changes, nothing stays the same: sensory experience, body, values, beliefs, worldviews, etc., everything changes. To move into just experiencing.

Now you know that whatever arises in your life, it is just experience, which is to say—what is life? Life is what you experience, what you experience is your life. That’s it. Everything else, everything else, is a construction and an abstraction from that. And when we take those constructions and those abstractions to be real or have meaning in and of themselves, that’s when suffering begins. That’s how suffering arises.

One of the things I do is work with a number of Buddhist teachers in a quasi-mentoring role. And a couple of weeks ago, I happened to, just happened that I ended up having conversations with three teachers all in the same week about difficulties they were encountering in their teaching, or questions anyway. And it was interesting. Even though the questions and the difficulties that each of them was encountering were very different, the cause of the question and the problem in all three cases was exactly the same. They were concerned with their identity. And because they were concerned with their identity, which is an abstraction—it’s a construct from our experience—they moved out of presence. They moved out of just being there, and that was creating the problems for them in their teaching.

Now, it just happened to fall all in one week, so it kind of stuck in my mind. But that’s actually what causes most of the problems in the world. People are attached. If you view it in terms of good and evil, you will act out of anger. If you open to the experience, and experience it directly, action arises, which doesn’t arise from anger. What that action will be for each individual, I can’t say. But if you recall the tapes from the 9/11 plane that went down in Pennsylvania, the way those conversations come across, the passengers who decided to take on the hijackers, they weren’t coming out of anger. They said, “This is what needs to happen,” and they just did it. That’s very different. Janneke, you had a question?

Janneke: [Unclear]

Ken: That’s very difficult, and you raised a very challenging situation, but yes, this is not about inaction. This is about actually being there, and being totally present doesn’t mean that one’s passive or inactive in a situation. It does mean that what moves action comes out of awareness, not out of reaction.

Dave: And when Gandhi was assassinated, I think he was saying something of forgiveness to his assassin.

Ken: To his assassin, yes. Gandhi understood this kind of thing very deeply. After the riots in Calcutta, a Hindu man came to Gandhi and said, “My child was killed by Muslims in the riot. I hate them. What do I do? I’ve lost my son.”

And Gandhi said, “Go through the streets, and find a child whose parents have been killed, there are lots of them, and raise him as your own son.”

And the Hindu man brightened up at this prospect. And then Gandhi said, “But make sure that he is a Muslim child and raise him as a Muslim.”

Non-duality. That’s how the cycle of hatred and good and evil and us, them, etc., that’s how it is brought to an end. Gandhi understood this very deeply, and that’s a very practical application. Okay, other questions. Michelle.

Michelle: If there is no absolute good and evil at any level, how does one maintain a sense of ethics?

Ken: June 26th. It’s all about that, exactly that question. It’s more than I want to go into here, but very simply, do the practice as I’ve suggested. And if you’re able to come to a place of just being, just experiencing, then think of a situation, an ethical situation, an ethical dilemma, which I imagine you’ve encountered one or two in your life, and go into it from there. See what happens. See for yourself. This is not a theoretical question that is answered well in theory, because it’s very much about direct experience, and the direct experiences, you know, you know. Peggy?

Peggy: What David said, and about the plane going down, remind me that I’ve heard a lot of stories that are, for example, in the news called “heroism”—where people act in just that way. In a situation, whether there’s a judgment somewhere along the way, it seems to drop away, and then there’s just the action that is lifesaving, what we label as heroic. And it strikes me that in that moment it’s what you have called “dying to something.” I’m just curious if it’s the same thing.

Ken: I can’t speak for those individuals, but in many cases it does involve a kind of dying. Dying to what other people expect of you, dying sometimes to what you expect of yourself or what you’ve considered right, because one just sees. I think compassion plays a very, very important role here. I engaged in some conversations a while ago about the question why in Japan for instance, there were a lot of Zen priests, quite highly placed Zen teachers, who supported the Japanese war effort very unambiguously. There was a book by a guy called Brian Victoria called Zen at War which examines this, and it’s quite disturbing reading, because you have Zen teachers expressing attitudes which are very similar to Christian bishops and the crusades: “Kill the infidels.” “We are the instruments of God.” “we are the instruments of karma,” etc., etc. It was kind of nonsense.

So, one of the questions I was mulling over: what is the quality that enables a person who is raised within a culture to question the cultural assumptions in which they were raised? And I came to the conclusion that it’s not insight, it’s compassion. Because compassion puts you directly in touch with the suffering that is present in the inequities that the culture itself creates. So one just says—this is wrong. That’s a direct knowing that comes through compassion. It’s not, or it doesn’t really come through insight. It’s because of the connection with suffering. Okay?

One more question, then we’ll break for dinner. Oh no, we should stop now. Are you clear about practice for this evening? We’re going to be rolling through practices quite quickly during this retreat. So that’s your practice—to open to the totality of change, and be in that experience.

Student: Do you have any hints on how to go from mindfulness into that?

Ken: Yes. To go from mindfulness into that, start with the meditations, just as they are, just as we discussed this morning. So, you have change in the world around you, and this is more about opening to all of the change. So you can go through all the different categories, you know, galaxies and microorganisms and trees and rocks and everything, buildings, fashions, cities, the whole bit, and you just open and let yourself open to all of that change. Now, there’s going to be emotional stuff that arises when you do that, like—”Nah, I can’t handle all of this,” but that’s an emotional reaction to it. And you just sit with that emotional reaction until you can be in that experience. And I think you’ll find there’s a shift that takes place when you do that, and then you rest in that shift. And if you lose it, then you come back, go through the same process. And then you do the same thing with the body. Then you do the same thing with all the internal stuff. And then you do it with all three. That help? Any questions? That didn’t help, but you have no questions? Okay. Rami?

Rami: I just wanted to be clear. You said use meditation of changes. Is that what we did exactly this morning or was there something … you referred to … or no?

Ken: No, just, just the stuff, yeah.

Rami: But you said, “Everything changes, nothing stays the same.” Use that as the opening?

Ken: Yeah, just keep opening that everything in experience changes, and you just keep opening and opening and opening to all of that change.

Rami: And [unclear] whatever?

Ken: Yeah. But you open to all of it, not one piece here, one piece here, one piece here. All of it. So you have to include everything to do with that. Peri?

Peri: I want another word besides open.

Ken: Which word would you like?

Peri: I don’t know, is it soften, or is it … I don’t know, I want just some more words.

Ken: Oh, okay.

Student: Release … allow … relax … let go … surrender… [Unclear]

Ken: Are they working for you? Don’t flinch.

Peri: I like that.

Ken: Okay. Jolly good.