Overcoming duality

Nondualism may be viewed as the understanding or belief that dualism or dichotomy are illusory phenomena. Examples of dualisms include self/other, mind/body, male/female, good/evil, active/passive, dualism/nondualism and many others. It is accessible as a belief, theory, condition, as part of a tradition, as a practice, or as the quality of union with reality. 1


HINDUISM

[Hindus believe that] Maya is the limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled. Maya is held to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self — the Cosmic Spirit also known as Brahman.
Each person, each physical object, from the perspective of eternity is like a brief, disturbed drop of water from an unbounded ocean. The goal of enlightenment is to understand this — more precisely, to experience this: to see intuitively that the distinction between the self and the Universe is a false dichotomy. The distinction between consciousness and physical matter, between mind and body, is the result of an unenlightened perspective. 2


ZOROASTRIANISM

About 10-11 BC the Iranian prophet Zarathushtra saw in his revelation the universe as the cosmic struggle between aša “truth” and druj “lie.” The purpose of humankind, like that of all other creation, is to sustain aša. For humankind, this occurs through active participation in life and the exercise of good thoughts, words and deeds. 3


BUDDHISM

Buddhism teaches the middle way, a non-attached state of neither craving for pleasure nor avoiding pain.

“'Everything exists': That is one extreme.
'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme.
Avoiding these two extremes,
the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle.…”

- from the Kaccayanagotta Sutta

TAOISM

Taoists seek a perfect harmony with the “way” - Tao, praising the wu-wei- the doing of non-doing.

“The great tao flows everywhere,
to the left and to the right,
It loves and nourishes all things,
but does not lord it over them.”

"The scholar learns something every day,
the man of tao unlearns something every day,
until he gets back to non-doing."

“The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.”

-Lao Tze

Duality and the battle between the yin and the yang is all around us. The materialists vs the spiritual, science vs religion, consumerism vs ecology, the "bad guys" vs the "good guys". My question is- does there have to be a vs? For me the only way of overcoming duality is by seeing straight through it. Everything is inter-dependent, therefore it is impossible to take sides.

The underlying unity and the source from where everything arises is eternal, therefore there is no right or wrong way to come to the place where we already are.
You can be a balanced person who will find peace and understanding in the Buddhists "Middle Way". Or you can be like myself- born to dance the dance of extremes, and find exactly the same thing. The lesson from extremes has for me been a powerful tool of understanding. How clearly one extreme turns into its opposite! Utter hopelessness turning in an instant to overwhelming optimism. Despair taking a minuscule step and reaching the state of bliss. The extremes form a circle and in between lies nothing but the timeless/infinite space of the Void. We are trained to look at the opposites as a linear line, that is the veil that is hiding the truth.

Nobody can explain the intrinsic truth behind the yin and the yang better than Alan Watts





"[The non-dual traditions] are more interested in pointing out the Nondual state of Suchness, which is not a discrete state of awareness but the ground or empty condition of all states... [They] have an enormous number of these 'pointing out instructions', where they simply point out what is already happening in your awareness, anyway. Every experience you have is already nondual, whether you realize it or not. So it is not necessary for you to change your state of consciousness in order to discover this nonduality. Any state of consciousness you have will do just fine, because nonduality is fully present in each state... recognition is the point. Recognition of what always already is the case. Change of state is useless, a distraction... subject and object are actually one and you simply need to recognize this... you already have everything in consciousness that is required. You are looking right at the answer... but you don't recognize [it]. Someone comes along and points [it] out, and you slap your head and say, Yes I was looking right at it..."

-Ken Wilber “Brief history of everything”