The price we pay for our dualistic perception (vijñāna) is living in an infinite unreality (samsara), a life which never returns to the original one. In other words, observer and observed, subject and object never converge back into the original one. Also, this duality is never in harmony; there is always a tension between the two. Their difference from each other remains unresolved.
It is only the sages or the Buddhas who close the gap; who return to the original one and transcend the unreal. They realize that the phenomenal world which is duality based constantly emerges from the one and returns to the one. The becoming apparent (the created )and the return (the fleeting) are the stuff of duality. Yet, intrinsically, nothing fundamentally arises and nothing fundamentally terminates.
During the intuition of our true nature, this being kenshō, the so-called realizer and the realized disappear. You could even say that they've returned, suddenly, to the original one. This mystical intuition cannot be put into the framework of an object or a subject. In the sage’s return to the ordinary dual world for the purpose of teaching, nothing about true reality can be said without situating it in the dual which is inherent in all information conveying systems.
Going a little deeper, we could be looking at reality through our imagination (the sixth sense for Buddhism) which rests upon duality. This means that our reality is not entirely real but a figment of our collective imagination which we have concretized/reified and emotionally loaded. From this, philosophy and religion could be about how to live and survive in an imaginary world. On the other hand, true religion could be how to realize the absolute one that is not imaginary, thus freeing oneself.
Comments