How does non-duality show up in philosophy. We have to examine eastern and western philosophy for this to make sense. The peril in this exercise is that it’s easy to pick and choose to make a point.
Western Philosophy
- Heraclitus (500 BCE) and the unity of opposites
- Compresent (appearing together) unity of opposites. A climb has a descent. They are the same thing from different perspectives.
- Sextus Empiricus
- Reasoning is broken because the judge has a interpretation of the truth. Anything derived by reasoning is flawed.
- Metaphysical Deflationsim
- David Hume argued that all genuine knowledge involves mathematics or matters of fact. Metaphysics then is worthless. Reasoning about things that can’t be verified is just talking.
Nondualism and Nihilism
Nihilism is the denial of something. This is the recognition that it doesn’t exist in the first place. You can’t deny a mirage – it didn’t exist in the first place. Just appeared to exist.
Open Individualism
Pantheism, Panentheism, Pandeism, Panpsychism
Variations of the belief that all is one. God included or not.
Schopenhauer
The world as will and representation Will is the first-person experience – not consciousness. It’s what it feels like to be sad for eg. (qualia?). The representation are the physical properties as observable. Tears. etc.
Schopenhauer was influenced by eastern philosophies. He is supposed to have read the Upanishads nightly.
Chinese Philosophy
- Yin Yang
- dark/bright, negative/positive are actually related and interdependent and give rise to each other.
- Taoism
- Taoist metaphysics: Dichotomous judgements are perceptual. Not real. (Good/bad)
Non-duality vs Monism
- Monism
- Everything is one. All things return to the source that is distinct from them.
- Dialectical Monism
- The whole has to express itself in polarities (dualistically).
- But there is a key distinction from Buddhist non-duality. Monism posits the existence of something. Buddhism’s perspective is emptiness which is the non-existence of something.
- Non-dualism vs Monism
- At some level this could intellectual mind games. But monism implies there is a one. Non-duality says you can’t say there is a one. All you can say is that there aren’t two. Because saying there is a one implies there is a position from which you can say there is one. In nonduality: concepts and theories are subsumed by the whole
- Editors Note: I am not a philosopher and this is all greek to me. Need review.
Advaita vs Buddhism
Advaita posits that only the self exists. That when when the jiva (the individual animated by the Brahman. The Brahman is the only thing that exists.
This Self is never born, thus it can never die. When the body dies, the Self remains.
Bhagavad Gita
Buddhism takes a different tack. In Buddhism the only thing is the void or non-existence. So it’s not even quite right to say the only thing that there is the void. Because it’s a non-existence. The non-existence and existence co-arise.