Jul 24

Kalu Rinpoche | Creation and Completion (Session 3) | Duality and Non-duality

Q: Please explain the meaning of duality, thank you.

A: The meaning of duality is, in this level of life is, means anything that is with an opinion. Anything that comes with opinion. With opinion, you have a desire that you want to add something, and you have a fear that you are going to lose something, you have opinion that you want to add something more, in terms of visualization. So it is not really that harmful, but it’s one of the things that we have to overcome.

Because if you want to recognize the nature of the mind, then you have to recognize what is duality and what is non-duality.

Like an example, when you are being in this clear state of mind, and then when you are in the clear state of mind with a sense of clarity, you are absent from opinion, right? You are absent from opinion, therefore it is called non-duality. Because you don’t have, not even a subtle desire that you want to add something in that moment. You don’t even have a subtle fear that you are going to lose that. You don’t have an expectation that you want to get something more from that. You’re still, mind is simply clear and calm, and transparency, and radiating from its very existence, from the state of the emptiness. It’s not a dull, it is not a dull emptiness.

Like Sukhasiddhi said [Tibetan], pointing finger in the sky, “Our mind is like the space, like the sky, but the sky has no sense of knowing, it’s just empty. We have a sense of knowing.” And then we meditate, we recognize the nature of the mind, and then that becomes the state of non-duality. Up to that point, everything is duality. Not necessarily negative.

 

Kalu Rinpoche – Jamgon Kongtrul’s Creation and Completion
Zoom – July 11, 2021