Nonduality is edgeless, and by that, I mean there is no place where you end and a separate something or ‘other’ begins. Simply saying, there’s no separation at all, and we can look at this easily just through physical stuff like skin, right? I might think that here’s the end of me right here at my skin skin. But look closer, and you’ll see that skin is actually very, very porous.
Outside elements can easily come in by getting cut, for sure, but your skin itself is actually very porous in its normal state. It’s constantly absorbing the outside environment. And it goes the other way around as well. You’re constantly shedding out pieces of your physical inner being into the world through your skin. Sweat comes out and evaporates.
And not just skin. What about breath? When I breathe in something completely separate from me comes in. Now that it is inside me—is that me now? What does the breath become?
And then when it goes out. Is it completely gone from me now? Or are there now little pieces of me floating around? Where are the edges?
When we look at it this way it’s obvious that there’s no separation.
Our senses are super good at knowing that there’s no separation. Our hearing, particularly brings the outside word inside. All those little vibrations that happen out in the air come into our ears and turn into perceptions so that we can know what’s moving around us. Very cool.
There’s no separation between me and all these little sound vibrations that are happening.
And our sight does this as well. Light is reflecting into my eyes, and I’m able to piece it together into what seems like objects out in front of me. So I’m physically interconnected with everything around me at all times.
There is no part of me that is a separate thing Every bit of my body is something that I ate at some time, right? Keeping myself replenished, plenty of hydration… all the stuff we do for ourselves these days creates my body. Physically we are completely edgeless.
Your thoughts are even more edgeless than your body. You may think of your thoughts as my thoughts, but they’re not. Notice that your actual thoughts, the narrative that goes on in your mind, are happening in a language—more than likely English if you’re just a single-language speaker like I am.
Every thought I have is English. Well, where did English come from? It’s not an “always-been-there” thing.
English is an evolution of sounds and meanings that have come together to be this thing we think of as a fixed language. English has got grammar; it’s got spelling. It’s got spell check now.
Every thought is simply a combination of words that are in a dictionary. You could take a dictionary and scramble it all up and have it be thoughts.
Have you ever seen those poetry magnets that you can put on your refrigerator? They’re so very cool. It’s simply words on magnets. You can pick them out and randomly put them up on your refrigerator, and it turns into beautiful poems.
Thoughts are very fluid that way. All of your thoughts have been given to you from someone and someplace else. You may think you’re putting them together in a unique way, but exactly how unique can that be?
Your emotions are very edgeless as well. When an emotion comes out of you—where does it go? There’s really no edge to it.
And the thing that we call spirit—what is that? The thing that we call soul—where are the edges to it? And this is one of the things that nonduality is really good at because it helps us answer the question, “What happens to me when I die?”
Me, this me thing that we are afraid is going to die—where’s the edge of that?
So nonduality is edgeless. The nondual state is knowing this edgelessness. Nonduality is a super good tool because it’s good to look at things with negative terms. Erasing our ideas work because there are no edges.
Edgeless. How can I see what’s edgeless? The easiest way to do it is with a simple nonduality trick: try to find an edge.
You can’t do it.