TEACHERS OF ONE

According to the non-dual teaching, the fantastic world all around us, so filled to the brim with an infinity of bewitching forms, so alluring in dazzling colors, sexy shapes and sumptuous tastes, is all one great illusion .

Reality is one, magically appearing as infinitely many.

“Sameness is the absolute ground of reality,” the Buddha says. 

“In things spiritual, there is no partition, no number, no individuals,” says Rumi, the Sufi teacher, more poetically. “We are one. Everything in the universe is within you. How sweet is the oneness! Unearth the treasure of unity!” 

“I and my father are one,” says Jesus, teaching the non-dual gem. In the mystical Gospel of Thomas, Jesus speaks as the quintessence of pure being at the heart of all apparently solid things: “I am the All. Split a piece of wood and I am there. Lift up a stone and you will find me there.” 

Although popularly regarded as esoteric and abstract, the non-dual teaching is anything but. In reality it’s rooted in ordinary human experience—so ordinary it’s usually missed, as a fish might miss the fact of the ocean it swims in.

For example, at any moment of life, if one pays attention, one may be aware of many sights, sounds, thoughts, feelings and physical sensations. Walking down the street, one may feel sensations in the feet and legs, see the broad expanse of sky, see a sidewalk lined with trees, feel a touch of breeze on the cheek, and notice thoughts and feelings coming and going in the mind. 

While the objects themselves are many, and are always coming and going, appearing and disappearing in awareness, one aspect alone of experience never changes, is never absent, and most importantly is never upset or perturbed in the slightest by all the of these “objects” constantly appearing and disappearing in awareness. 

This one steady and unchanging aspect of experience is awareness itself which is always bright, clear, wide open, and ready to notice whatever arises next within it, before it quickly disappears.

This completely common experience is the experience of non-duality, or oneness. This is because behind the multiplicity of objects—thoughts, sensations and perceptions—is the one unchanging reality of awareness, which is the one common and unifying element of all apparently different experiences, always. 

By simply shifting one’s perspective to awareness itself, one also notices that the distinction between “self” and “other” disappears, because awareness never sees itself “here” with objects—including those walking and talking bodies we call “others”—“over there.” 

Instead, awareness always sees all experience as happening within itself. And because any object that arises within awareness must be made of awareness, awareness also sees all the objects that arises within itself, as itself. In this way, a person we may be speaking with, once we take the perspective of awareness, isn’t seen as an “other” person of any kind, but rather is seen by awareness as an appearance within itself, that is within my true self, as my true self. 

By shifting our perspective away from objects to awareness, the whole world, and all the people and objects within it, thus suddenly becomes as intimate to us as our own bodies, breath, and thoughts. 

This shift in perspective has enormous implications for a person’s happiness, and indeed for the peace and happiness of the world, should enough people succeed in simply shifting their perspective away from the objects that usually hold their attention captive, and towards awareness, more and more. Seeing others not as others but as oneself, means that speech and actions will automatically and naturally improve and become more positive, as all the feelings of competition, fear and contempt towards the “other” dissolve, and we start to treat all beings and the planet itself, as our own true self.  

The shift of perspective towards awareness isn’t only a matter of perception but of feeling. Most people have already noticed the nature of reality as non-dual, through feeling, in this way. 

Everyone, in their heart of hearts, has for example felt the urge to completely dissolve their tight sense of self, and thus to merge as one, into an absorbing activity like singing or dancing or a sport; or by taking a sip of wine; or dissolving in joyful laughter; or a beautiful mountain sunrise; or melting into a lover in ecstatic encounter. 

This natural desire to dissolve the thinking mind and the ego that it creates and projects, is the same primal drive to dissolve one’s limited self back into the all from which it came, thus becoming one again with the cosmos. 

The great sages of non-duality describe this merger of oneself with the All as a simple, obvious, literal reality. We only miss it because our minds are usually overactive with thoughts that project a torrent of words and images that, unless calmed and tamed, keep us bound to our limited sense of our selves, blinding us to the ever-peaceful and literally infinite reality of now.

When a seeker once asked the Buddha if the end of the universe could be reached in a spaceship, the Buddha replied, absolutely not. But the end of the cosmos could be reached, he then added almost nonchalantly, by traveling in the opposite direction, that is inward, with awareness, into the human body. 

“Within this ordinary human body, with its thoughts and perceptions, one discovers the cosmos, the beginning of the cosmos, the end of the cosmos, and the path leading to the end of the cosmos,” the Buddha said. 

The mind naturally boggles at such a statement, beset by doubts and denials as one tries to imagine discovering a blazing sun inside one’s stomach, or the solar system whirling inside one’s skull, or galaxies floating in one’s chest. 

How could the infinite universe fit into the finite body? 

At such a point, confidence in the non-dual understanding tends to collapse, despite all the behavioral evidence in its favor. Once piece of evidence, as mentioned, are those moments of wishing to merge into others and one’s surroundings, even if it’s drugs or sex or alcohol that gets you there. 

That so few people have absorbed the utterly simple concepts and practices of non-duality—and they are simple, as simple as the undeniable fact of our being—points to flaws in how non-duality has historically been taught.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and activist, calls oneness “interbeing.” He forged the practice as a young monk struggling to discover a spiritual practice as powerful as tanks and guns during the Vietnam War. 

“‘To be’ is to ‘inter-be,’” Thich Nhat Hanh writes. “You cannot be by yourself alone. A sheet of paper is, because everything else is. Without non-paper elements like mind, logger, sunshine, and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as a sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.”