Every Thing and No Thing
Nonduality is everything. Hopefully, people will do a lot of arguing on this video, because my very last video I posted was “Nonduality is Nothing.” You are contradicting yourself? Ah, words in themselves constantly contradict themselves.
So yeah, but this is also a really good way to look at the idea of nonduality. And remember, we’re trying to get beyond the idea of nonduality into the actual state of being yourself—of being a completely integrated, alive human being.
So, everything—nonduality is everything—because we’re uniting with everything, and this is a beautiful way to look at it. When we look at the idea that the nondual state, enlightenment, is a state of nothingness, we can very easily turn that into kind of like a mystical, magical, floating-away-into-the-ether sort of idea.
But when we look at nonduality as if nonduality is everything, now we can be a full human being sitting here on the earth, and we can start understanding things. Like, why do native and indigenous teachings always talk about Mother Earth? Well, why don’t we? We have this mother that we’re living on… we should be talking about it. And Father Sky—the atmosphere itself… constant praise should go there. And what about the relationship between the two things?
Mother Earth without Father Sky is a dead place. The Moon has Mother Earth but no atmosphere, no sky. Mars has Earth but no sky. Father Sky brings the rain and the sun and brings life, and Earth grows life up into the sky.
As a matter of fact, when you think about the current crisis that we’re having right now—the global warming crisis—it isn’t a crisis that’s destroying Mother Earth; it’s destroying Father Sky. It’s the atmosphere that’s having the problems—the nurturing nature of the atmosphere. We’ve turned it toxic with all of our pollution, right?
So, the interaction between these two things—Father Sky and Mother Earth—shows us how, when we’re thinking nonduality, our true nature is truly this unity with everything. Then, we start seeing how we interface with these things. Knowing who we are and how we interface with everything is where the solution to all the problems lies, because, as human beings, we are fully capable of interacting with our environment in a blended, healthy way.
So… nonduality is everything. This opens up the whole study of nonduality. Nonduality is everything, so everything matters.
This is one of the big problems with many Buddhist studies and nonduality studies: people are trying to set themselves back from reality, thinking nothing matters. “I have to be objective about everything,” and I mean, that’s science too, right? Trying to take the human being out of the study of the earth and even out of the study of human beings.
When we acknowledge that everything is intricately blended together in ways that we can never completely define then our minds become fluid.
And people! We are blended with all other human beings too. It’s the collective nature of humans that has caused problems. That’s something we can cure. It’s the collective nature and wisdom of humans that can come up with the ideas to fix any problem we have created.
When you start seeing how nonduality itself—enlightenment itself—is everything… then we can start liking human beings again. When you like human beings again… then you can start liking yourself again. And when you like yourself, you are going to be more apt to look inside and see who you truly are.
The realization of unity: I’m me interacting with everything, and everything matters.