What Is Nonduality?

And what is duality?

Nonduality is a perspective that has been around for centuries in many different traditions including Buddhism, Taoism, early Chan, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, the mystical wings of the Abrahamic traditions, as well as in Western philosophy. And of course, there are many subdivisions within each of those groups. More recently, there are many people expressing nonduality who are unaffiliated with any tradition—some who have no traditional background, and some who have backgrounds in multiple traditions (the latter group includes me of course!).

Over the course of my life, Eastern spiritual traditions have been growing here in the West. And over the last few decades, as more of these perspectives have entered Western culture and as social media and the internet have given us access to more and more of them, there has been a veritable explosion of people writing books, holding workshops, giving talks and posting videos on YouTube, all offering various versions of nonduality. Sometimes there are even (dualistic?) pissing contests over which version of nonduality is the most nondual. And that’s really nothing new—such contentious debates have existed for centuries between different schools and traditions.

There are differences and similarities between the many versions of nondualism. But it basically means “not two.” There is diversity in appearance, but no actual separation. Everything is one whole. We are at once no-thing and everything.

One way of seeing it is that our most fundamental reality, what we are—the one constant, the water in every wave, that which we cannot doubt—is this boundless awareness or presence that is seamless and whole, without division or separation. What appears is infinitely varied and ever-changing, yet it never departs from the immediacy of this ever-present Here-Now and can never actually be divided up or pulled apart. Our deepest nature is unconditional love, which is the nature of awareness—it accepts everything, clings to nothing, and finds nothing outside of or other than itself.

Dualism, on the other hand, is where you think you are a separate person encapsulated inside a separate body looking out at a separate and fractured world. This belief gives rise to conflict and feelings of being incomplete and threatened. From this perspective, you imagine that up can exist without down, and that the goal of life is for up to defeat down.

Nonduality sees polarities such as up and down as inseparable aspects of one whole, polarities that only exist relative to each other and are therefore empty of any fixed position or inherent reality—e.g., the ceiling is up in relation to the floor and down in relation to the sky. Instead of opposites being at war, nonduality sees that everything goes together, and that we can never find any exact place where up turns into down—it’s a seamless unicity.

If we watch a movie, we see a multitude of characters, objects, landscapes, events, storylines and dramas, with close-ups and wide-angle shots. Things seem to be moving in time and space. But actually, we are always looking at the immovable, ever-present screen (Here-Now) and what appears is one whole seamless moving picture. Life is very much like this. It never departs from this one bottomless moment Here-Now, but it appears as many different things moving in time and space.

What follows are two articles of mine on the subject of nonduality taken from the Outpourings page of my website. They offer my perspective on what nonduality means. And then, after that, there’s a book recommendation.

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Introduction to Non-Duality

If we put aside everything that can be doubted right now, what remains? The knowingness of being here and the bare actuality of present experiencing are impossible to doubt. What can be doubted and argued about are all the ideas, interpretations, formulations and explanations of this living reality—the abstract maps drawn by conceptual thought—the stories and beliefs about it.

When we believe that we are a separate fragment encapsulated inside a body, navigating our way in a fractured universe, we inevitably feel anxious, deficient, incomplete, insecure. We think we are someone who needs to get somewhere and accomplish something, that we are the author of our thoughts and the maker of our choices, that we (and everyone else) should be better than we are. We seek relief from our uneasiness and dissatisfaction through possessions, knowledge, power, money, sex, intoxicants, spiritual experiences, etc., all of which ultimately leave us unsatisfied and disappointed.

But if we turn our attention to direct experience instead of learned ideas, can we find an actual boundary where "inside of me" turns into "outside of me," or is the boundary a mental image like the line on a map between two countries? If we open to the bare sensations of our discontent without thinking about it, do we find anything substantial, or simply ever-changing vibrations, appearing and disappearing? What if we look for the thinker of our thoughts or the maker of our choices? Doesn’t every breath, heartbeat, thought, interest, impulse, action and choice emerge from an unfindable source? And what about the awareness beholding this whole movie of waking life, the awareness that sees thoughts as thoughts? Is that perceivable? Does that have a shape, a size, an age, a gender, a nationality, a life situation, a place where it begins or ends? And is there any actual boundary between awareness and the content of awareness, between subject and object?

Every wave in the ocean is inseparable from the ocean. Waving is something the ocean does, a constantly changing movement that never holds to any particular form. There is no actual boundary between one wave and another, and every wave is equally water. No individual wave can decide to go off in a direction other than the one in which the ocean as a whole is moving. Is it possible that everything, including what seem to be “my” independent decisions, are movements of a seamless unicity? We can call it mind or matter, consciousness or quarks or spirit or intelligence-energy, but the truth is, we don't know what this is. Even to wonder what this "is" seems predicated on the dualistic notion that this can be somehow formulated, grasped, pinned down and re-presented – that this must be some-thing in particular that can be singled out, seen, experienced (as a particular experience) or possessed as knowledge. But unicity cannot be grasped anymore than the hand can grasp itself. There is no actual division between subject and object, awareness and content, form and emptiness, self and not-self, figure and ground, relative and absolute. The apparent divisions are conceptual. And nothing that shows up is a solid, persisting, inherently real, observer-independent form. It may seem so, but the more closely we look, either with science or meditation, we find that nothing holds still or stays the same, that everything is mostly empty space, that nothing exists independently of everything it supposedly is not, and that we never experience anything outside of consciousness. Each of us is seeing a unique movie of waking life created by our unique conditioning, but is it possible that the seeing (the awaring) beholding all the different movies is unconditioned, undivided, un-encapsulated, boundless and free? Don't pick that up as a belief, but explore it in your own direct experiencing Here-Now.

The search for freedom is rooted in the belief that we are bound, that we are separate from the whole, that we are this "me" at the center of our life story. But what if this “me” is an ever-changing, intermittent appearance with no independent existence? Could it be that, prior to all our accumulated ideas about who or what we are, what everyone refers to as “I” is actually the same limitless, undivided here-now (intelligence-energy, seamless unicity, the Tao, wholeness, Totality, boundlessness, whatever we call it)? As we wake up to the utter simplicity of what is, right here, right now, we may find that all our insecurities and fears of death fall away, for they were based on a false idea of reality, like the fear people once had of sailing off the edge of the supposedly flat earth.

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What Is Nonduality?

If you were to ask any number of writers, teachers, or speakers who use the term to describe their own perspective what they each mean by “nonduality,” you’d undoubtedly get a bunch of very different definitions, some of which would probably be quite contradictory. So, as with all words, and especially words like “nonduality” that have no clear and obvious referent, it’s important to understand what a particular person means when they use this word.

To me, as I use it, nonduality means that everything is an unbroken whole in which eveything belongs. It is important to clarify that wholeness is not uniformity. Right now, in present experience, there are infinitely varied, ever-changing qualities of experience—different colors, shapes, textures, sounds, aromas, tactile and somatic sensations, tastes—and there are apparently separate and distinct forms (me and you, dogs and cats, tables and chairs, hearts and brains, planets and stars), each vividly and uniquely itself, and we don’t confuse them with each other or mix them up. There are also different dimensions of experience, from the relative world of personal relationships and everyday practical life to the subtlest realms encountered in meditation or yoga. But all of this infinite diversity and variation is appearing as one whole picture, one whole movie, a holographic fractal field of seamless experience, one whole undivided happening. And the closer we look, the more we discover that the boundaries between apparently separate forms don’t actually exist, and the forms themselves are never really solid or persisting. None of them can be pulled out of the whole. In our actual experience, THIS is an infinitely varied seamless whole that never departs from Here-Now. Impermanence is so thorough-going that no-thing ever actually forms to even be impermanent.

Nonduality points to the ungraspable and inconceivable nature of reality. Whatever words or concepts we use to describe it, they are never quite right, because no word or formulation can capture the living reality. Life itself simply can’t be pinned down. Nothing we say or think is the truth.

This living reality is nondual in the sense that it includes everything, and also in the sense that the apparently opposite polarities go together and only exist relative to each other—they are not separate or opposing forces in which one can or should defeat the other. Nonduality thus includes (and transcends) apparent duality. It doesn’t get stuck on one side of any conceptual divide, such as oneness or multiplicity, individuality or unicity, mind or matter, self or no-self, free will or determinism, powerlessness or responsibility, practice or no practice, it is or it isn’t. Nonduality doesn’t land anywhere. It might be described as “not one, not two,” or in the words of Zen Master Dogen, “leaping clear of the many and the one.” It might be called groundlessness.

Nonduality recognizes that nothing ever actually resolves into a persisting form, and that the apparent self at the center of our experience, the apparent “me” who is seemingly authoring “my” thoughts, making “my” decisions, and performing “my” actions, is nothing more than a mirage with no actual substance. It is a phantom created by a mix of ever-changing thoughts, sensations, feelings, stories, mental images, and beliefs. Everything is happening by itself. There is no actual boundary between inner and outer. The inner weather is as impersonal as the outer weather. None of it is personal, none of it means anything about the imaginary "me."

Even any idea we might have of a larger self, a Big Self—like Consciousness or Awareness—is actually unfindable. There can even be a compelling intuitive or felt sense of this unseen seeing or Ultimate Subject, this Eye (or True I) that cannot see itself, but even the subtlest sense of this open aware space is itself another appearance in present experiencing that cannot actually be separated out or pinned down. All we have is just THIS—present experiencing, from the most apparently solid to the most subtle and transcendental. This unfindable aliveness or no-thing-ness never actually forms into some-thing substantial that can be separated out from the wholeness of just this. Any ideas of meaning or meaninglessness, purpose or purposelessness, are thought-created add-ons with no actual reality.

“Nonduality” is, of course, a word, a conceptual idea, but it points to the nature of reality itself. It points to something that cannot actually be conceptualized! It points to THIS, right here, right now, just as it is!

The thoughts and ideas about this living actuality are always dualistic, but THIS is nondual. In other words, the conceptual maps of this living actuality are always in some way dualistic, but the territory itself is nondual. Of course, mapping is something the territory is doing, and this living reality includes thoughts and ideas and maps—but from a nondual perspective, they are recognized as simply appearances or waves of energy, without mistaking the content of them for the actuality they claim to describe or re-present. They are useful within everyday relative reality, but they are never really true.

Getting lost in philosophy and metaphysics and trying to think our way to liberation is not, in my experience, what liberates us from our imaginary bondage. What liberates us is the falling away (or seeing through) of the imaginary problem, which never actually exists in the first place!

By giving open attention to the bare actuality of what is, prior to all the words and explanations about it, by relaxing into the simplicity of just this, it might be noticed that no problem and no self remains. There is simply hearing, seeing, thinking, sensing, etc. And when the thought-created confusion pops up, it can be seen for the illusion that it is, and in the seeing, it dissolves again quite naturally. And nothing is ever really a problem. Everything is included—even the apparent confusion, contraction, suffering, and identification as a separate, encapsulated self is simply another wave-like movement of this indivisible shoreless ocean. Conditioned thought may label what shows up “confusion” or “ego” or “awareness” or “unicity,” or any other word-label-idea. But the actuality never resolves into any persisting form, and nothing can ever really be pulled out of the whole. No one is doing any of it, and nothing is ever what we think it is.

These words are only pointers or maps. The juice is in the aliveness itself, and that cannot be captured by any words or concepts. Words can only suggest, point out, or invite the recognition of nondual actuality. But here’s a big clue: it’s always already the case. Nothing needs to be different from exactly how it is. How it appears to be never holds still, yet it never departs from Here-Now. The living actuality is NOW, right here, utterly simple, obvious and immediate. It is never absent or hidden in any way. It’s not something in particular (this, but not that). And it’s not nothing. It’s this inexplicable aliveness—the astonishing presence and marvelously freeing no-thing-ness of everything.

Nonduality is not a philosophy. It’s the sounds of traffic and the taste of tea, the fragrance of blossoms and the smell of garbage, colors and shapes and movement—breathing, heart-beating, sensing awaring thinking feeling being – ever-present, ever-changing – not one, not two – just this.

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A book about Nonduality

My approach to all of this always emphasizes direct experience—exploring it directly for yourself, not by thinking about it, but by looking and listening and tuning in to present moment experiencing. However, if you do want to approach the topic intellectually and philosophically, there’s an excellent book by David Loy called Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy that I highly recommend. David Loy is a Zen teacher and a professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy, and the book compares and contrasts the Advaita notion of Self (Immutable Reality) with the Buddhist understanding of no self (impermanence, thorough-going flux, no-thing-ness). It explores concepts such as time and space, substance, causality, freedom, and spiritual path from a nondual perspective, drawing not only on Advaita and Buddhism, but also on Taoism and Western philosophy. I also very highly recommend The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts.

And of course, there are many other books that express nonduality and encourage direct exploration and realization. You can find many of those books and teachers described on the annotated recommended books page of my website.

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Love to all…