What is dualism and nirvana?

Summary

This talk, delivered at Upper Hamlet during a winter retreat on December 6, 2012, presents a sustained teaching on nonduality as the key to understanding Buddhism, Christianity, and the relationship between science and spirituality. The speaker argues that modern Western culture tends to emphasize science, technology, sociology, democracy, and human rights, while Eastern traditions have historically emphasized spirituality. Rather than treating these as opposing domains, the talk insists that science and spirituality can and should meet in the present century, producing deeper insight into suffering and liberation. A central theme is the critique of dualistic thinking. The speaker describes dualism as the habit of separating creator and creature, holy and profane, sinner and savior, body and mind, matter and spirit, self and other, and even birth and death. In this view, human beings imagine themselves as isolated, permanent selves, while God, Buddha, or holiness are placed on the other side of a wall. The talk repeatedly challenges this separation by emphasizing interbeing: the idea that each thing contains the other. The speaker uses many examples, including the sun and the father, the grain of corn, dust, the Earth as a living being, and the lotus growing from mud. These images are used to show that nothing exists independently or in isolation. Christianity is discussed as an originally Eastern spirituality that has often been interpreted in a more dualistic Western way. The speaker argues that Christianity can be “purified” or revitalized by recovering its nondual dimensions, especially the teaching that Jesus Christ is both Son of God and Son of Man. Similarly, Buddhism is presented as a tradition that clearly teaches nonduality: Buddha and living being are not two, and the holy is not separate from the ordinary. The talk also references Buddhist sutras and concepts such as the Heart Sutra, the Prajnaparamita teachings, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the twelve links of dependent origination, emptiness, and the five aggregates. These teachings are interpreted through the lens of non-self and interbeing rather than as descriptions of a separate soul moving through a chain of existence. The speaker strongly rejects the idea that nirvana is an eternal death or an escape from life after bodily extinction. Instead, nirvana is described as a present-moment reality: cooling, freshness, freedom from afflictions, and the absence of craving, anger, fear, despair, jealousy, and ignorance. The talk repeatedly states that nirvana is available here and now, not only after death. The practitioner can touch nirvana by releasing wrong perceptions, especially the belief in a separate self. The speaker explains that when one is less caught by anger, fear, or fixed views, one is already closer to nirvana. This is framed as a practical and experiential teaching rather than a metaphysical doctrine. The talk also addresses misunderstandings within Buddhist scholarship and doctrine. It criticizes interpretations of the twelve links, nirvana, and the five aggregates that reduce Buddhism to nihilism or to the destruction of the body. The speaker insists that the Buddha did not teach annihilation, but rather a deeper vision in which birth and death, action and non-action, becoming and non-becoming are seen as two aspects of reality. The historical dimension and the ultimate dimension are distinguished: in the historical dimension, distinctions and causal processes are real and useful; in the ultimate dimension, those distinctions are transcended. The Heart Sutra is presented as a teaching of the ultimate dimension, where there is no birth, no death, no suffering, and no path in the conventional sense. The talk concludes by bringing the teaching back to daily life and practice. Mindfulness is not to be used merely as a tool for business success or personal achievement; it is a way of seeing that dissolves the illusion of separateness. The speaker emphasizes that one should be happy while breathing, walking, arranging flowers, or even being in prison, because freedom is available in the present moment. The final message is that if the mind is free, one is already in nirvana. The overall teaching is a call to live with deep insight, humility, and nondual awareness, recognizing that liberation is not elsewhere but embedded in ordinary life.