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#4072 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - Editor: Jerry Katz
 
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights    

Nonduality and Religion

by Colin Drake

At the Science and Nonduality Conference: Jerry Katz wrote, "The popularity of nonduality continues to grow. Adyashanti confirmed or suggested such when he said we are witnessing the breaking away of spirituality from religion and that it is breaking down rapidly." However, nonduality is the core of the world’s major religions, and to suggest that they are irrelevant to the popularity/pursuit of nonduality is an oversimplification. Below is a selection of nondual ideas from the world’s five major religions.  

The ‘Dual’ in the Nondual

Vedanta 

Dvaita and Advaita,

The Born in the Unborn,

Maya and Brahman,

The Unreal in the Real,

Judaism/Christianity

The Created and Jehovah,

Existence in ‘The Ground’ (of existence),

The Sefirot and the Ein-Sof,

The Manifest in the Unmanifest,

The Son and the Father,

The ‘Known’ in the Unknown,

The Caused and the ‘First Cause’,

The Moved and the ‘Prime Mover’,

Islam

The Muslim and Allah,

The Witnessed and the Witness,

The Sufi and Fana,

The ‘Self’ in the Non-Self,

Hinduism

Sakti and Siva,

Consciousness in Motion and at Rest,

Kali and Om,

That which Appears/Exists/Disappears in Pure Awareness,

The Lila and the Nitya,

The Seen in the Unseen,

Buddhism

Samsara and Nirvana,

The Ephemeral in the Eternal,

The Plenum and Sunyata (the void),

The Perceived in the Imperceptible,

Nirmanakaya and Dharmakaya,

The Limited in the Unlimited. 

Glossary

Advaita: non-dual.                                         

Brahman: the all-pervading transcendental Absolute Reality.

Dharmakaya: The Absolute Unmanifest Reality that is ‘Aware Nothingness’.

Dvaita: dualist school of Vedantic philosophy proposed by Madhva.

Ein sof (or En-Sof): the infinite nothingness, the source and final resting place of all things.

Fana: absorption into the Absolute, which al-Junaid of Baghdad interpreted as ‘dying to self’.

Kali: the Divine Mother, creator, preserver and destroyer. Sakti, cosmic energy, consciousness in motion.

Lila: the divine play or manifestation, consciousness in motion.

Maya: The power of Brahman, which supports the cosmic illusion of the One appearing as the many.

Nirmanakaya: the dimension of ceaseless manifestation, or the compassionate energy of Rigpa.

Nirvana: Buddhist word for moksa, enlightenment, awakening.

Nitya: the Ultimate Reality, the eternal Absolute.

Om: Brahman ‘The Impersonal Absolute’; but is also the Logos, The Word, in the ‘Ground of Being’, in which all manifestation arises, exists and subsides.

Plenum: A space filled with matter, or the whole of space so regarded (OED).

Rigpa: pure awareness which is ‘the nature of everything’.

Sakti: cosmic energy, consciousness in motion.

Samsara: the wheel of birth, life, death and rebirth.

Sefirot: the stages of divine being and aspects of divine personality.

Siva: universal consciousness when it is at rest, aware of every movement occurring in it, which is ‘pure awareness’.

Sunyata: The void, formless awareness, aware nothingness

Colin Drake is the author of Beyond the Separate Self: The End of Anxiety and Mental Suffering

http://nonduality.com/colindrake.htm

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