Nonduality & Phenomenology.

In this essay I aim to examine & compare the eastern spiritual/philosophical systems of nonduality, specifically Zen Buddhism & the Indian system of Advaita Vedanta (two of the strongest traditions of nonduality in the East), with some of the ideas of Merleau-Ponty, Husserl & Heidegger in particular. It is suggested that in general they are all seeking to overcome or resolve the subject & object duality in different ways. The later part of the essay will compare the nature and use of thought in both Heidegger & nondualism (Zen & Advaita), and it is proposed that both seek to go beyond the subject-object divide, approaching the nondual "openness" of Being. Finally it is suggested that in nondual consciousness, where thought is "claimed by Being", it becomes truly creative.

 

1: Nonduality

But first, what of nonduality? Nonduality is the central concept of much of Asian thought and can be looked at in three ways; the nonplurality of the world, the nondifference of the subject & object (mind & body), and the negation of dualistic thinking. Through the latter it is suggested that one can come to realise the reality of the first two. Then, it is said the universe appears as one complete whole, the ‘Svabhavikakaya’ of Buddhism, or ‘turiya’ of Advaita Vedanta, where there is a union of ‘Atman’ (the Self) & ‘Brahman’ (God or the universe, Lit; ‘eternal expansion,’). The nature of nondual consciousness is described as follows:

"That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which,

like the universal space around us, fills everything completely

from within and without, that Supreme nondual Brahman - that thou art." (Gupta. 1995)

 

With ‘honsho’, ‘original enlightenment’ (the fully embodied realisation of nonduality), objects, mental or physical, don’t disappear into one seamless boring blob, but they are seen to be part of one unified whole. Even this seeing, with me sitting in here, behind my eyes, watching the world, transforms. Instead described as one event, the seer, seeing & seen being one process, with no space or separation between. In that sense it is always said in the east that nobody can ‘get’ ‘moksha’- ‘liberation’, as it is liberation from a ‘separate subject’ and a ‘separate object’, thus in it there is no subject to get an object.

 

2: Two Approaches to Nonduality: Advaita Vedanta & Zen Buddhism.

David Loy, in his book ‘Nonduality’, proposes that this basic nondual ground can be examined, approached and discussed in two general ways; either by conceptually dissolving the object into the subject, or subject in the object, emphasising the reality of one side rather than the other. Loy suggests that Buddhism in general tends toward the latter, Advaita Vedanta towards the former. However in both systems it is always a provisional emphasis, neither system employing just one approach but using them alternatively, with the goal always being to negate the separate reality of either subject or object. (Loy. 1988)

 

In fact it could be said that the history of philosophy in general, especially western, has been a continual swing between these two poles of ‘truth’; subject-object, mind-body, culture-nature, individual-group. For much of the east these have never been such solid, separate opposites but rather a continuum (that’s why I took out the &’s and put in the dashes), arising simultaneously & mutually like a concave/convex line. (Wilber. 1979. Pg25)

 

Concave Convex

 

3: Phenomenology & Nonduality

It seems resolving these dualities is the challenge of the modern western mind, the push & pull placing the modern mind in an almost schizophrenic double bind, on one hand wonderful scientific progress, the other a profound sense of alienation. Nondual traditions say that it is in this unresolved duality that the problem lies:

"In that distance, the division between the seer and the thing seen,

in that division the whole conflict of man exists." - Krishnamurti. (Wilber. 1979. Pg68)

 

There have been many modern attempts at a syntheses of these dualitys, Goethe, Hegel, Jung, Gestalt psychology, Teilhard de Chardin & Ken Wilber, not to mention the scientific drive for a unified theory. (Tarnas. Pg378-387) Phenomenology can perhaps be positioned in here as part of the grand attempt to bring some sense of unity to not only the intellectual life, but the life of the heart & body. It is worthy to note though that on the whole many of the western attempts at a syntheses have failed, or in the case of the modern ones, haven’t caught on, but in the east there have been strong theories of nonduality for over 2000 years. Rather than be destroyed by following generations the core concepts have been retained, nourished and elaborated on continually. Perhaps then we can draw on some of the eastern concepts associated with nonduality to strengthen & enlighten the western attempts at a syntheses?

 

4: Merleau-Ponty & the Dharmadhatu.

Merleau-Ponty’s work is many ways very similar to some of the threads in nonduality. It is tempting to think of his "silent world of experience" or "Wild Being", a pre-reflective foundation of all experience, as synonymous with the pre-reflective nondual ground, also something that cannot be captured by conceptual descriptions.

 

In this world memory & past embodied knowledge is contained and brought to life in each new sensation, the invisible lining the visible. Merleau-Ponty describes an interdependent universe, like that "seamless coat of the universe" quantum physics describes. Here "An elementary particle is not an independently existing... entity," but a relationship containing the whole in a single point;

"the red dress holds with all its fibres onto the fabric of the visible, and thereby onto a fabric of invisible being. A punctuation in the field of red things, which includes the tiles of roof tops, the flags of gatekeepers and the revolution" - Merleau-Ponty

 

The buddhist doctrine of "Dharmadhatu","Field of Reality" or the "Net of Indra" that Lindy Lee so frequently seeks to paint, also describes a similar universe, where between "everything and event in the universe there is no boundary."

"In the infinite Dharmadhatu, each and everything simultaneously includes all other things in perfect completion... To see one object is, therefore, to see all objects, and vice versa."

The "Field of Reality" Zen speaks of is also described as ‘sunya’, ‘empty’, not because its a pure vacuum of nothingness , but because it is void, empty of all boundaries and thus:

"Considered in its concrete reality, the stuff of the universe cannot divide itself but,

as a kind of gigantic atom, it forms in its totality the only real indivisible" Teilhard de Chardin. (Wilber. 1979. Pg 37)

 

But, where science & Phenomenology differ from eastern nondual traditions is in the personal cultivation of nondual awareness; ‘shugo’, ‘enlightenment with this very body’. To cultivate the experience of nondual consciousness, to push it beyond being an intellectual description of the world, Advaita Vedanta tries to experientially dissolve the subject-object divide. In denying this divide it echoes Heidegger:

"Man is never first and foremost man on the hither side of the world, as a’ subject’, whether this is taken as ‘I’ or ‘We’. Nor is he ever simply a mere subject which always simultaneously is related to objects, so that his essence lies in the subject-object relation. Rather before all this, man in his essence is ek-sistent into the openness of Being, into

the open region that lights the ‘between’ within which a ‘relation’ of subject to object

can ‘be’" (Loy. 1988. Pg168)

 

5: Advaita Vedanta, Husserl & the Nature of the Subject & Object.

To come to the "openness of Being", Advaita follows a process of provisionally distinguishing pure consciousness from its content. In Advaita Vedanta pure, formless, non-intentional consciousness is often called the ‘Atman’ or ‘Self’, in the sense of a transcendent ‘Self’:

"the Light which is different from the body, the sense organs and the combination of their parts; it illumines the body and the organs like an external light such as the sun etc.,

and is itself not illumined by anything else." - Shankara. (Comans. 2000. Pg231)

In this process the ‘Atman’ is distinguished from cognition, body, mind & ego, similar to the Cartesian doubt, where we finally come to a transcendent ‘subject’, a pure ‘self’.

 

At this point the distinction Advaita Vedanta makes between pure consciousness & the intentional/ego consciousness is comparable to Husserl’s distinction of a "transcendental I" & "empirical I", or "the pure ego" & "the psychological ego". Husserl’s reductive process ends with; "I, the Transcendental, absolute I, as I am in my own life of transcendental consciousness"

and "only transcendental subjectivity has ontologically the meaning of Absolute Being."

(Chattopadhyaya. 1992. Pg146) Advaita’s method of negation is even fairly similar to the method of reduction or ‘bracketing’ Husserl uses. Even the aim of Husserl’s project; "discovery of the essence of pure consciousness" is similar to the aims of Advaita Vedanta to a point.

 

However two differences should be noted between Husserl’s distinction and Advaita Vedanta. Firstly; for Advaita Vedanta this is always a provisional duality, not a primary reality, but a step towards nonduality, while for Husserl the transcendent I is Absolute Being. Thus consciousness for Husserl is always consciousness of something, a sort of primal duality of experience. Advaita Vedanta suggests that beyond this and through all states there is nondual consciousness, not consciousness of something, but as Buddha said of nondual Nirvana in the Dirga Nikaya; "there is this consciousness, without a distinguishing mark, infinite & shining everywhere."

 

The second difference between the two is that in general Husserl scholars agree the phenomenological reduction is merely methodological and does not involve real personal transformation. While the phenomenological method which Advaita Vedanta (along with other nondual traditions) pursues, results in a theory of levels of reality - what is phenomenally real, what is empirically real and what is absolutely real. For Advaita these levels bring with them changes in both perception, cognition & one’s sense of self. However Husserl did leave the door open for personal transformation, suggesting:

"Perhaps it will even become apparent that the total phenomenological attitude and the corresponding epoche is called upon to bring about a complete personal transformation which may be compared to religious conversion, but which even beyond it has the significance of the greatest existential conversion that is expected of mankind"

(Chattopadhyaya. 1992. Pg70-91)

 

6: Formless Consciousness ?

The existence of a pre-reflective, transcendental subject, formless consciousness, is ofcourse one of those continual questions that haunt western thought, let alone how it could bring "personal transformation". Advaita Vedanta puts it forward as the one of the most basic structures (the most basic, being the nondual ground) of the human mind and suggests that it can be experienced with the assistance of meditative disciplines.

 

Current scientific studies into meditation seem to support the "dual mystical state" & the "unitive mystical state" beyond it (as Robert Forman describes them. Wilber. 2004) as ‘real’, verifiable & experiential structures of the mind. Psychologist’s Brown & Engler (Brown, 1986: Pg 219) also present substantial evidence to suggest that; "the stages of meditation are in fact ‘real’ - that is, they seem to represent demonstratable cognitive, perceptual, and affective changes that follow a developmental-stage model... [and] that the stages of meditation are in fact of cross-cultural and universal."

There have been many more studies into meditation, since Robert Keith Wallace’s 1968 PhD "The Physiological Effects of Transcendental meditation: A Proposed fourth State of Consciousness." Dr. Tomio Hirai of the University of Tokyo’s Medical School (1975) showed that meditators could retain the relaxed calm of Theta & Delta brain waves, normally associated with sleep and deep sleep, while being awake and alert. (Cacioppe. 2000. Pg36) James Austin’s ‘Zen and the brain’ (1998) also examines the different levels of Zen ‘satori’ from a neuroscientists perspective.

 

If these fundamental structures of the mind exist, as much research suggests, it wouldn’t be surprising then that they should express themselves throughout different cultures, German or Japanese and in different ways. Suppose they do, how can it be of use to us, how can it be ‘tasted’ so too speak? Here we get to the last of the three distinctions in discussing nonduality; the negation of dualistic thought & the possibility of thought arising from nondual consciousness.

 

7: Heidegger & Nondual thinking

In relation to this we shall examine the work of Heidegger, who’s conclusions bear some similarity to the nondualist traditions. Heidegger as a philosopher had no fixed system of thought, but was more concerned with the act of thinking, the nature of thought itself. For him thinking was not so much a means to gain knowledge but the path and destination at once:

"I have left an earlier standpoint, not in order to exchange it for another one, but because even the former standpoint was merely a way-station along a way.

The lasting element in thinking is the way."

Naturally, loving the depth & movement of continual questioning he praised Socrates as the purest thinker of the west:

"All through his life and right into his death, Socrates did nothing else than place himself into this draft of thinking, this current and maintain himself in it... That is why he wrote nothing. For anyone who begins to write out of thoughtfulness must inevitably be like those people who run to seek refugee from any draft too strong for them." (Loy. Pg164)

 

So what of the openness, the draft of thinking? Why is it different from, (assuming it is) our normal sense of thinking? I would suggest that alot of our thinking or ‘thoughtfulness’ is based upon duality, if not all. We think of something, and use thought to grasp or get something ‘other’. Heidegger definitely thought there was a different type of thinking;

"this thinking... seems quite difficult to the re-presentational thought that has been transmitted as philosophy. But the difficulty is not a matter of indulging in a special sort of profundity and of building complicated concepts; rather, it is concealed in the step back that lets thinking enter into a questioning that experiences- and lets the traditional opinoning of philosophy fall away." (Loy. 1988. Pg167)

This thinking that questions itself, this ‘step back’, is a thinking that; "lets itself be claimed by Being so that it can say the truth of Being"

 

8: Heidegger’s ‘Turning’.

Heidegger’s intention with ‘Being & Time’, his first work was to reawaken the question of Being, which he thought western philosophy had neglected in its preoccupation with beings. He began by analysing the Being of a being, and then began to look at the nature of Being itself. Having grasped Being in this way he was intending to look back down to beings. However in the 1930’s his thinking underwent a controversial shift, a ‘turning’ or reversal, bringing a radical change in his views notably his attitude to the process of thinking itself.

 

Where previously he felt he was dualistically using thoughts "to grasp Being in the network of concepts", the thinking that was to come could no longer "set aside the name ‘love of wisdom’ and must become wisdom itself in the form of absolute knowledge... In this way language is the language of being, as clouds are the clouds of the sky." (Loy. 1988. Pg 68.) After this ‘turning’ the previous thinking was replaced by thinking that was "claimed by Being", & serves Being: "Before he speaks man must first let himself be claimed again by Being"

 

9: Two Types of Thought - Prajna & Vijnana.

Heidegger distinguishes such thinking, ur-sprung-liches denken (li; ‘primal-sprining-up’ & ‘thinking’), which; "has no result. It has no effect... for it lets Being-be.", from vorstellendes denken, translated as "before-placing" or "re-presentational" thinking. (Loy. 1988. Pg166) This distinction is not new in western thought and can be paralleled in Kants and Jokob Boehme’s verstand & vernunft , Plotinus’s nous & logismos, or Atistotle’s intellectus & ratio. Meister Eckhart even speaks of the nondual knowledge gained from the intellectus which as; "the eternal process is a self-revealing of God in pure knowledge where the knower is that which is known."

And Boehme, of Vernunft, which; "must be broken: it must be a living movement of the will which breaks through Vernunft and which strives against Vernunft." (Loy. 1988. Pg162)

 

In both Advaita Vedanta & Zen there is a similar distinction in thought: Prajna (li; Pra-being born or springing up & Jna-to know) and Vijnana (vi-seperation or differentiation & Jnana-to know). The Zen scholar D.T Suzuki describes ‘Prajna’ as nondual knowledge:

"Prajna goes beyond vijnana. We make use of vijnana in our world of the senses and intellect, which is characterised by dualism in the sense that there is the one who sees and there is other that is seen - the two standing in opposition. In prajna this differentiation does not take place: what is seen and the one who sees are identical; the seer is the seen and the seen is the seer." (Loy. 1988. Pg135)

 

Prajna is said to be without a thinker or ‘unsupported’. Unsupported by what? By the ego, by a subject on one hand & the object on the other; "a thought which is nowhere supported, which is not supported by forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, or objects of mind". Lichtenburg seems to be summing up the nature of Prajna when he speaks;

"of certain representations which do not depend on us; others depend on us, or atleast so we believe; where is the boundary? One should say, it thinks, just as one says, it rains."

Prajna is thought that does not have the ego supporting it, doesn’t depend on us, it thinks freely, just as it rains. It may be about a form, object or taste, but it arises spontaneously, and within nondual consciousness, thus it cannot be said to be of something:

"We never come to thoughts. They come to us." Heidegger. (Loy. 1988. Pg161)

 

The self as thinker is one of the undoubted ‘facts’ of the western tradition. Modern philosophy is born with Descartes ‘cogito ergo sum’, "I think therefore I am". (Russell. 1946.Pg546) However the key to Prajna is the negation of this self as thinker, the negation of the ego, the negation of any dualistic thought, this is one of the core concepts of Buddhism ‘anatman’, ‘no self’. In this way, objects of perception and objects of mind are both treated as objects, as Dogen says; "mind is no other than mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars." Percepts then seem to be as much "me" as thoughts (which is the side Advaita Vedanta leans on) or inversely neither are seen to be me at all (the side Buddhism leans on).

 

It would be wrong however to make the mistake that nondual traditions consider Prajna as separate from vijnana, rather Prajna is the ground of vijnana, which "cannot work without having prajna behind it." As Lichtenburg asks, "where is the boundary?", Zen answers that there is none. Rather it is a matter of constantly realising that all thought, all action is spontaneous, and unsupported by a sense of individual self. As Heidegger said of ‘Being’, Prajna is also the; "farthest & yet the nearest":

"Prajna is indeed the most fundamental experience. On it all other experiences are based, but we ought not regard it as something separate from the latter which can be picked out and pointed to as a specifically qualifiable experience. It is pure experience beyond differentiation." - Suzuki (Loy. 1988. Pg136)

 

For nondual traditions all knowledge is Prajna, nondual, pre-reflective knowledge at its basis, and all thought ‘unsupported’ thought, and in that way resembles Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of embodied knowledge. Where it differs is in how far it takes the conception & practice of nonduality, for nondual traditions attempt to unify the seer & seen, in experience, through actively negating dualistic thought.

 

10: Heidegger - Being & the Void.

Returning to Heidegger we can trace a parallel conception of thought. Certainly the two fold nature of thought he describes is very similar, with its "openness", spontaneity, & nondualist approach. Thought "standing in the lighting of Being" instead of grasping ‘Being’.

 

But what of Being itself? Is it similar to the nondual ground of Advaita & Zen? As a pre-reflective basis for experience, he hesitatingly describes it in many ways, an ‘openness’, a ‘withdrawing’, a ‘clearing’, carefully trying to avoid speaking of it as an ‘it’ that could be grasped, that could be named. Rather something prior to any movement we could make; "the realm of Being itself which we can no longer explain and judge from any other standpoint." Something that "cannot be mediated cognitively... but must be experienced." He also describes it as something that bridges the supposed gap between subject & object:

"Being itself is the relation to the extent that It, as the location of the truth of being and beings, gathers itself and embraces ek-sistence in its existential, that is, ecstatic essence." (Kolb. 1986. Pg170-171)

 

Certainly this is hauntingly close to ‘sunya’,the nondual ‘void’ of the Buddhist Nagarjuna, "Manifest yet formless, empty yet void, constant throughout all time" Perhaps then there is some truth in the story that Heidegger was quite impressed with the writings on Zen by D.T. Suzuki, remarking; "If I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings." (Kolb. 1986. Pg243)

 

So is Heidegger’s Being the same as the nondual ‘sunya’ of the Buddhist mystics, is it the same as the ‘advaita’ (not-two) of the Indian sages? Is this what Heidegger is speaking of? Maybe, maybe not, maybe it is not something that can be ‘answered’, but perhaps, "if the answer could be given it would consist in a transformation of thinking, not in a propositional statement about a matter at stake." (Loy. 1988. Pg177)

Then the question becomes an open question, not something that is fixed, but a participation, an embodiment of Heidegger’s question, and;

"The day will come when we will not shun the question whether the opening, the free open, may not be that within which alone pure space and ecstatic time and everything present and absent in them have the place which gathers and protects everything."

(Kolb. 1986. Pg170)

 

11: Conclusion - Nondual Thinking & Creativity.

Perhaps to not answer, to question, is the only conclusion we can draw when examining the work of Heidegger & nonduality. To question, to stand in the ‘draft of thinking’, with no division between subject & object, mind & body. To revolt within ourselves, against ourselves for the sake of a greater wholeness, perhaps this is the real question:

"Revolution, this psychological, creative revolution in which the ‘me’ is not, comes only when the thinker and thought are one, when there is no duality such as the thinker controlling thought; and I suggest it is this experience alone that releases the creative energy which in turn brings about a fundamental revolution, the breaking up of the psychological ‘me’." Krishnamurti.

 

It is said then, that in this creative release, the going beyond of subject & object, life is seen to be play -‘lyla’, ‘Brahman’s’- the infinite’s, eternal dance. In this we all participate, we all play, and artists, of all people, love to ‘play’; "just play: the highest and the most profound play. But the ‘just’ is everything, the one, the only." (Kolb. 1986. Pg164)

 

Jonah Cacioppe

October 2004.

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