How many of us live in a world of duality--sticking to concepts such as right & wrong, good and bad? How many of us even see that as a problem, or even give it a second thought? Those can be very convenient concepts in everyday life. When asked to explain how to transcend duality so that the whole picture is evident, Vimalakirti responded with silence. Was this response a dualistic choice between using words or silence? On one level, yes. That was his response to the question of "or." The totality of his response could be said to be dialectic rather than dualistic--non-dualism and dualism that comprise two parts of a whole, where silence and sound are not two, and not one. One is an aspect of the other, which is ineffable, indescribable, incomprehensible, and vice versa.
Duality is an aspect of non-duality, just as birth and death are an aspect of no-birth and no-death. The cells in my liver are different from the cells in my heart, but there is no agreement that while different, they are both aspects of the body as a whole. This body is and aspect of an ecosystem, the ecosystem part of the planet, the planet of a solar system, galaxy, and so on. Can any of them be separated out in a way that is all-encompassing?
In the vast open field we call "emptiness," there are aspects of void, and aspects of infinite possibilities where nothing is the same nothingness. To contend that dualism is wrong and non-dualism is better is just another example of dualistic thinking. But this dualism is merely and aspect of all the possibilities within reality. When we see both the voidness and openness of "emptiness," we see the whole picture, where the response is " ." But/and you already know this.
Robert Koho Epstein gave the Dharma talk at One Mind Zen on October 4, 2023.
