Why do you teach dualistic approaches to nondual awakening? What are you philosophically?

Q.  Hi Gary - thanks very much for your response...am very impressed that you take the time to respond to so many people seeking your guidance. 

... I wanted to offer a topic / question that I think has great relevance for the blog and may clear up some things for readers like me who are fairly new to non-dual practice and teaching.  

...I am confused by your use of..."non-dual."...The view you articulate in your blog... sounds quite strictly dual..saying that on the one hand there is...a..."false self" aka "the ego" aka "the I" that creates and inhabits a fundamentally problematic and deluded world, and on the other hand there is the real selfless world, and it is the goal of the practitioner to...see-through...the "false-self"...to inhabit the world of oneness...it sounds very dualistic..."Non-dual" to me would imply that the relative and thinking self and the world of right and wrong is never separate or different from the world of oneness.  

...you seem to be positing some kind of subtle self that can somehow stand apart from samsara and have some kind of pure experience.  My neophyte understanding of Buddhism is that there is no self that can stand apart - I thought that was the insight that set Buddhism apart from the other practices and religions of "the Buddha's" day.

thanks so much Gary

Matthew

G.  Thanks for the question, Matthew.  It is confusing for many folk.

Bodhidharma
Indian Buddhist Monk
Founder of Zen

First, some background on nonduality.  Some folk believe that nonduality emerged from or after Buddha's teaching.  Sometimes this is attributed to the rise of Zen Buddhism in the 6th century (650 years after Buddha) when Buddhism diffused into China and encountered D(T)aoism.  Bodhidharma, an Indian Buddhist monk, is broadly credited w/developing this "nondualistic" and experiential form of Buddhism focused on "transmission outside scriptures" which "did not stand upon words."   

i was drawn to Zen, particularly the inquiry/Rinzai school for its koans and focus on enlightenment.  Zen is often regarded as "anti-intellectual", but its early Chinese Zen masters were well schooled in Mahaayaana Buddhist sutras.  we chanted the Heart Sutra daily, and the Diamond Sutra was also often taught.  

Adi Shankara
Consolidator of Advaita Vedanta

Other folk mistakenly believe that nonduality, or advaita Vedaanta, originated in 8th century India w/Adi Shankara, a brilliant consolidator of the teaching.   However, a-dvaita, ("a" a negation in sanskrit, and "dvaita" or "duality"), and Veda-anta, ("Vedas" and "anta" meaning "the goal of" the Vedas), reach back in history.  The principal texts of advaita are the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutras.  The principal Upanishads are dated by scholars from 1200 BCE to 600 BCE - before Buddha.          

A recent tome, "Back to The Truth: 5000 Years of Advaita" by Dennis Waite, discusses the many types of nonduality, including a) traditional advaita, b) neo-vedanta, c) direct path (which i followed - see post "What is the Direct Path to Nondual Awakening?"), d) neo-advaita, and e) pseudo-advaita.   

re Buddha's approach on advaita, there are stories of his learning from and debating two renowned Brahmanic advaitic teachers, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta.  There is much controversy over these stories, how important they were to Buddha's understanding and teaching, and why he chose the approach he did.   

w/Jim Owen
@ Shanvitanam Ashram 

i did not find "philosophy" useful on my path, except for iconoclasm through the teachings of J. Krishnamurti; i was an empirically-trained scientist and took that to my spiritual quest.  Often philosophy is something "seekers" get lost in, some interminably; the arguments over meaningless parsing of the finest points, often unknowable, have gone on for centuries.  IME, there are "enough" philosophies that whatever your inclinations, you can find one to fit.  IMHO, some movement to Kashmir Shaivism from advaita Vedanta, particularly on the US's "coasts", is just such an "accommodation".   i was in India in 2010 w/Jim Owen, a leading Kashmir Shaivite teacher in the Hamptons; the differences seem "much ado about nothing".    

As to why duality is used to teach nonduality, well, it is just too difficult to directly grasp the nondual teachings.  If folk could grasp "everything is One", which many have experienced, or immediately understand "People are in bondage because they have not yet removed the idea of the ego" or "There is no separate ego-soul...who believes the ego is a distinct being has no correct conception", as the Buddha reportedly said, it would be easy.  But it doesn't work that way.  

Ramana Maharshi

If you read the works of major "teachers" of nonduality, like my main teacher, Ramana Maharshi in "Talks With Ramana Maharshi" (complete 704 pg .pdf) chronicling his day-to-day discussions with many different folk over four years, you will see different answers and practices for different folk. There is no "doctrinal consistency" - only the giving of the most useful advice. This is no different than a university professor giving a talk on the same subject to high-school, undergraduate, and graduate students and to his peers; they would hopefully be different talks.     

There is a simpler explanation for what "i" say.  IME, after the page turned, there was a deep Stillness beyond thought, and everything was directly realized as all being the same "thing", all One.  There was "no free will" or "control" as there was, quite simply, no one to have it.  i did not teach for several years - as everyone was "One", what was the point in "teaching" anyone, as they clearly already knew and were manifesting the same Truth?  i was also then drawn to advaita Vedanta, which i really knew next to nothing about philosophically, as Buddhism was just not able to describe what was being experienced.  i did not find advaita Vedanta to be useful in awakening, only in putting it into a coherent philosophical context.  Many advaita Vedanta swamis/teachers are actively anti-practice, so are not really useful for awakening, IME.

Douglas Harding
After being "beheaded"

When sharing w/others manifested, at folks' request, it "automatically" varied depending on "where they were".  i do not have a "protocol" for any "such and such" type of folk, even those i work w/a lot.  The work is whatever manifests out of the "silence and stillness", amazingly appropriate at that time and far more insightful and useful than whatever "i" could have "thought up".  i assume Ramana did that as well.  The late Douglas Harding, a wonderful teacher to so many of us, spoke often of letting the teaching arise "naturally" from "emptiness", in his case w/o any head.  

If one is really "empty" then what happens is that the deeper Truth in the questioner seems to speak through this "empty vessel" to tell them what they already know and are "ready" to receive.   To use our cognitive neuroscientifically-derived metaphor from the blogpost "Elephant or rider? intuition or reasoning?  reaching the "other side" w/o argument", it is like an elephant getting another rider to tell his/her own rider what (s)he already knows, but can't get his/her own rider to understand.  It feels much like Rumi's famous "reed" metaphor is his Masnavi; it's just the wind blowing through an empty reed.