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Posted by Butcho
on 7/19/2009, 7:18 pm, in reply to "Re: an essential feature of Dao"
75.88.45.X
--Previous Message--
:
:
: ren ying,
:
: The subtlest thing, the Tao, does not
: change. It is the obvious that changes.
:
: Butcho
:
: Butch...
: you are practising Vipassana...
: what have you experienced as dhamma?
: ---
: do you think that it is possible to equal
: dhamma - dao?
: -
: yi yin yi yang zhi wei dao...
: --
: dhamma: ???
:
ren ying,
I am not certain I understand your question, but will give it a try.
Is the Buddha's Dharma the same as Lao Tzu's Tao?
If that is your question I would say that they are both pointing at the same moon in their own way.
As for me the key is to look for that which underlies or unites seeming opposites. From the Tao.... comes the One and the Many. The Tao is the underlying unity of the One and the Many. Of Yin and Yang, of yin/yang.
When we focus on the One at the expense of the Many, or on the Many at the expense of the One, we are guilty of dualistic thinking. The thinking that one pole of a polarity is separate from its opposite pole. That it is yin and yang, when it is actually yin/yang. Opposite non-opposites.
So I do not look to the One, rather, I look to the oneness, the underlying unity of existence. This is where I believe one comes directly into contact with the nondual, call it the Tao, or Dharma, or even.. dare I say it... God. Just different words for the same underlying unity of existence, imo. Our tendency, dualistic thinking, is to make a religion of such words and in the process fail to see the moon for our concepts of the moon. We are lost in our thoughts.
"From the Tao comes the One and the Many". "From the first totality is a unitive one". Hui-neng. "The Father and I are a unitive one". Jesus. Same thing. Each Master is pointing to the underlying unity of existence as the fundamental ground that existence stands or abides in. The Axis of the wheel. That part of the wheel that does not move moves everything that does move. The subtle moves the obvious. The obvious only moves the obvious.
The Cartesian paradigm, "I think, therefore I am", has been found wanting. In truth all it amounts to is "I think, therefore I think I am". To vacillation between extremes. From doubt to certainty and back again and again and so on and so forth. Dualistic thinking is circular. Nondualistic thinking is more like a spiral.
"The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be nondualistic, thy 'whole' body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be dualistic, thy whole body shall be full of darkness". Jesus.
As long as we see through dualistic eyes it is as if we see through a glass darkly. The knowledge of good and evil spoken of in the Bible is the thinking that good can exist without evil. That any concept, no matter how noble, can exist without its opposite. If or no other reason than contrast. The life of the conditioned mind, of the egoistic mind, the mind of this and that rather than the awareness of this/that tends to be either bitter or sweet when in fact life is bitter/sweet.
So the sagely points to the /. Each in his or her own way.
"/".
Butcho
176
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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