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1.1b1 Nondualism Brings Enlightenment

1.1b1 Nondualism Brings Enlightenment

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Nondualism is the school of thought that asserts that all apparent separations and distinctions are ultimately illusory. In many schools of Buddhism, shifting our understanding and point of view to a nondualistic state represents enlightenment. Zen, specifically, encourages reaching this understanding through direct experience.1 The mind no longer clings to the attachment of a separate self, and recognizes the reality that we are all one.

Nonduality is reinforced in nature, in as far as it’s impossible to analyze an individual species without an understanding of the ecological system which it is a part of.2 A leading theory posits that mitochondria are simply bacterium that have evolved to be a part of our human cellular structure.3 Duality represents the world as we experience, interpret, and classify it, whereas nonduality eliminates this subject-object distinction that we build up through our interpretive sensory experience.

Alan Watts explained nonduality in several ways, whether through the analogy of sound making no sense without silence, and matter having no boundary without space. Sound and silence and matter and space are two sides of the same coin.

Footnotes

  1. [[HL-Understanding-Mahayana-Buddhism-The-Path-Of-The-Bodhisattva#^rw803859413]] ↩︎

  2. [[HL-Alan-Watts-Philosophy-Lecture#^rw785918500]] [[HL-Alan-Watts-Random-Lectures-for-the-Hardcore-Fans#^rw761967515]] ↩︎

  3. [[HL-The-Origin-of-Mitochondria#^rw803864830]] ↩︎

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