Via The Tricycle Community \\ Three Teachings: The Dharma Door of Nonduality

Support Tricycle with a donation »

June 20, 2024 ‘Everything is Buddha Himself’   Good and bad. Right and wrong. Love and hate. Success and failure. Nirvana and samsara.  We experience the world through the lens of duality. The mind divides everything it perceives into good and bad, like and dislike—generating attachments to what we like and aversion towards what we dislike. These attachments and aversions become the source of our suffering.  The Buddhist teachings remind us that opposites can’t exist without each other. Rather than being diametric polarities, they exist on a spectrum. One only has meaning in the context of the other.  In Buddhism, we practice cultivating a nondual awareness that sees beyond apparent opposites to the essential unity that lies beneath. Beyond the confines of the thinking mind, dualities collapse into a state of oneness—the true nature of ourselves and all of life. Or as Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi writes, “Everything is Buddha himself.”  “When you become one with Buddha, one with everything that exists, you find the true meaning of being,” writes Suzuki Roshi. “When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship.” This week’s Three Teachings explore nonduality as a gateway to the true nature of reality. The Dharma Door of Nonduality By Tricycle In the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra, one of the classic texts of Mahayana Buddhism, Vimalakirti, considered to be an enlightened layman, debates with the Buddha’s disciples about the nature of nonduality—and the entrance into a state of non-dual consciousness. Read more » The Nonduality of Good and Evil By David Loy As much as we might like to, we can’t separate good from evil. Each of us has both qualities within ourselves. Dharma teacher David Loy explores our cultural story of “good versus evil” and takes a Buddhist perspective on the interdependence of this basic opposition. Read more » Bowing By Shunryu Suzuki Roshi For Zen master Suzuki Roshi, bowing is an act of giving up ourselves—and giving up our dualistic ideas. Read more »