Can Nothingness - Everything be also a Duality?

[decentralized]

If that so what does that mean for Leo's teachings? Just curious about the answers.

[James123]

Everything is actually non duality. So called attachment with thoughts makes something as duality. Fundamentally, anything you do is enlightenment / non duality . 

[Guest Bazooka Jesus]

"Nothing" and "everything" are relative concepts, and all relative concepts are part of the game of (apparent) duality. The only thing that isn't a concept and therefore exists outside of all dualities is that which cannot be put into words, aka. the infinite totality of reality itself.

[ivankiss]

Nothing by definition does not exist. But it's a cool pointer.

[Cireeric]

No, "everythingness" is not in duality with nothingness.

 

"Existence and nonexistence are incompatible.

The difficult and the easy are mutually opposed.

The long and the short, the high and the low,

the lod and soft, the before and the after-

are all opposites.

Each reveals the other."

from the Tao Te Ching

 

But in a sense everything is nothingness, but not in a dual relationship like long and short.

Edited April 16 by Cireeric

[Inliytened1]

When he speaks of in the Absolute sense of fhe nature of reality he isn't talking about nothing as it relates to a nothing in a conceptual nature - like nothing being an empty "space" or a void as you would think of it in science.  This is a nothing that can't be thought of.   Outside time and space, but it exists.  

Edited April 16 by Inliytened1

[Water by the River]

https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=Nothingness&author=Water by the River

Selling Nothing  by the River 

 

PS:

On 21.5.2023 at 1:40 PM, Water by the River said:

Andrew Halaw in "God is Nothingness":

"This book is about Nothingness, the great Void of the holy sages, not to be confused with the nothing of the ordinary person.

Silence. A blank page or space in a book. A shout. Slapping the table or thumping the floor. These are all expressions of the ineffable truth that is theuniversal nature of reality. Since there is no way to directly capture the highest truth with language, all we can do is point to it.

And “Nothingness” is the best verbal pointer that I have found."

In the beginning, there was only Nothing.
Now there is only Nothing.
In the end, there will be only Nothing.

There always was, is,
and only ever will be
Nothing.

God is Nothingness
Christ is Nothingness
Buddha is Nothingness
The Tao is Nothingness
Brahman is Nothingness
The Absolute is Nothingness

Nothingness is neither something nor the common nothing;
it is the Great Nothing, the eternal, magnificent, all-encompassing
Nothingness that transcends being,
yet is the ground from which existence itself arises.

In truth, there is only Nothingness,
for nothing else ever was.

Beings suffer because they do
not understand Nothing.
Intoxicated by their senses and minds,
they chase mirages,
construct temples,
conduct empty rituals,
pursue wealth and status,
believing that there is something
—meaning, purpose, salvation—
to attain.

Fools are slaves to their senses and thoughts,
caught in the snare of form and desire,
unaware that all things
arise from Nothingness,
abide as Nothingness,
and return to Nothingness.

For nothing has ever happened.

Existence and appearance are flashes of Nothingness
superimposed upon Nothingness.

There are no beings, no worlds,
no minds, no consciousness,
no souls, no events, no time,
no space, no Buddha, no Christ,
no Self, no God.

There is only the not-‘that’ That—
the Great, Magnificent Void,
the womb of all existence.

NOTHINGNESS.

Bound by neither space nor time,
Nothingness is dimension-less,
time-less, and form-less.

The Void is unborn, unoriginated, unconditioned, and deathless,
neither coming nor going, ‘creating’ nor destroying, rewarding nor punishing.
It has never set anything in motion nor caused anything to happen.

Ultimately, there is only Nothing,
which is the final and only truth.

Nothingness cannot be seen with eyes,
nor heard with ears,
tasted with the tongue,
smelt with the nose,
felt by the body,
or known by the mind.

Do not look for it with your senses or mind,
for the Void is beyond color, sound,
smell, taste, touch, form, and
thought.

Transcend them and realize that you are truly
Nothing, that in reality
there is only Nothing.

Then you are free to dance and play
on the waves of Nothingness.

"

and

"

Nothingness is not sheer blankness, yet neither is it being-ness the way that we ordinarily understand existence; it is the source and true nature of all beings. This is the “vast emptiness, nothing holy” of Bodhidharma, the legendary founder of Ch’an, Sǒn, and Zen Buddhism.

Consciousness is neither present nor absent in Nothingness, for Nothingness is actually the root of consciousness. In truth, there is no such thing as consciousness; there is only Nothingness.

Consciousness is instantiated Nothingness, as is all of existence.

Frightened dullards, clinging to notions of existence, call Nothingness “nihilism,” unaware that Nothing is the exact opposite of deathly sterility; Non-being is the great womb from which everything arises, abides, and eventually returns. From a Buddhist perspective, “Emptiness is not a negative idea, nor does it mean mere privation, but as it is not in the realm of names and forms, it is called emptiness, or nothingness, or the Void” (Suzuki 60).

Sunyata, as Nothingness can be called in Buddhism, or Tao in Taoism, sustains everything, including consciousness. It is the vast, empty void of Non-existence that the Buddha calls Nirvana, meaning “extinction” of all ‘being.’ It is what Nisargadatta Maharaj points to when he speaks of ‘Universal Consciousness’ or what Huang Po calls ‘Mind.’

Nothingness is prior to consciousness, as it is is with all phenomena. This is why Huang Po says, “Mind in itself is not mind” (Blofeld 34), meaning that the mind is truly understood only when its own emptiness is realized. For mind is Nothingness occurring as consciousness. When this is properly realized, mind become Mind with a capital “M,” not in the sense that some latent quality has been discovered that it is somehow beyond all conditioning, like some eternal super Consciousness or Witness at the base of our mind; but in the sense that when we realize our own universality as Nothingness, we awaken to our own unlimited nature. This is what sages mean when they talk about “primordial consciousness”; it is the realization that our minds transcend beingness alone, by extending into the core nor Non-being, into Nothingness itself. The mind, in effect, is simultaneously limitless (transcendent) and viscerally present (immanent). Hence, Nisargadatta calls it “Universal Consciousness” to express the insight into the universal Nothingness of our minds.

Nothingness creates, supports, animates, and eventually recalls everything, yet is not bound to any single thing. It is the stars, but not limited to them. It is the earth and all of its inhabitants, but is not confined to them.

Nothingness is the true nature of all existence. The Buddha, the Awakened One, is also called Tathata, meaning, “One who has arrived at suchness,”
suchness being another term for the ineffable, mysterious reality of Nonbeing, sunyata, or Nothingness.

We have risen from Nothingness, and to Nothingness we shall return. Therefore, ultimately there is no movement or nothing that ever happens, for everything is in fact Nothingness. “That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete” (37). And yet the world continues to change and transform; the seasons come and go; people are born, grow old and die.

Nothing changes and yet everything happens.

Divinity expresses itself as an acorn, a mustard seed, a lump of coal. Humans, including their toils and vices, are all manifestations of the wondrous Nothingness. “Nothing[ness] is the inexhaustible, suprasensible power underlying all finite beings,” “the emptiness from which all beings are forged” (Chen 90, 92).

Nothingness sings as birds, sighs as the wind, breathes as humans, and knows as mind. Once this is realized, there is nothing to worry about, for everything is an expression of Nothing. As the seminal Buddhist scripture, the Heart Sutra, says, “Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is Form.”

Your truest nature is Nothingness. Mind and consciousness are in fact Nothingness. This is why Ch’an Master Linji called the Enlightened being a “person of no rank,” someone who can come and go freely. “No rank” means no fixed limitation, free and vast as the sky, bound by neither ‘being’ nor even Non-being.

This is the infinite Nothingness of the sages.

"

and, maybe most important, Appendex I: Nothingness (Infinite Consciousness) has the potential for sentience/awareness, to have awareness arise if an "object"-arising happens. Or perceptions perceiving themselves, with our without separate-self arisings. So it is not Nothing, like in nothing at all. But infinite potential + potential for sentience of "that". See also Benthinos Water-Pistol emerging/manifested in an infinite empty vastness.

"

Appendix I
Some readers may be wondering why I say that awareness is not the Absolute, despite the fact that so many ancient scriptures and eminent teachers say that they are identical. For instance, Nisargadatta taught that consciousness is rooted in (and therefore limited to) the physical human form, while awareness transcended the individual body and was actually the Absolute—that everything is Universal Consciousness.

This is more of an instructive approach than a philosophical commitment. If pressed as to whether the Absolute is awareness or not, I would say, like Huang Po did, that, “Mind is not mind, yet neither is it no-mind.”

In Nothingness, there is some degree of awareness present—it is not how most people imagine brain death—albeit unconditioned, object- and subjectless. The Consciousness (for lack of a better word) of Non-being is so subtle that the moment we try to reflect upon it to check if we are conscious, we are jarred back into ‘being’ and into our ordinary dualistic consciousness. I hesitate even to call this experience “pure subjectivity,” for that invites a metaphysical position that I am not willing to support.

In the end, to paraphrase Socrates, all that I know is Nothing.

This Consciousness has shed all of the characteristics that people normally identify with awareness, such as perspective, spatial and temporal contexts, objects, ownership, etc. Yet, if there were no awareness, then it would be impossible to differentiate the numinous Nothingness from how people conventionally conceive of blankness or being comatose.

Personally, I think that differentiating between Nothingness and consciousness is helpful, and that is my ultimate goal—to help people realize Non-being or Absolute Consciousness. At that point, I can care less whether people call it Nothingness, God, Brahman, Buddha Nature, One Mind, Universal Consciousness, or a kangaroo.

Names at that point, after the Absolute has been realized, are insignificant.

[abrakamowse]

2 hours ago, decentralized said:

If that so what does that mean for Leo's teachings? Just curious about the answers.

 

For my those are concepts. We create the duality. If there was no duality we wouldn't be talking about nothing and everything. We can know there's nothing because we know everything. But the reality is oneness... everything has nothing included.

I know, words suck to explain Lol...

[Razard86]

2 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

When he speaks of in the Absolute sense of fhe nature of reality he isn't talking about nothing as it relates to a nothing in a conceptual nature - like nothing being an empty "space" or a void as you would think of it in science.  This is a nothing that can't be thought of.   Outside time and space, but it exists.  

Everyone makes it so complicated. Nothingness is a blank. Right now look all around you, notice that everything you see is within a blank. A blank cannot be detected by the senses, it cannot be perceived. When you go in deep sleep, it's a blank. So BEING, is so nothing, it doesn't exist as an appearance. 

Then there is knowledge, what we call appearance. To know a thing is to observe a thing. So creation is the birth of knowledge. So existence, is knowledge itself. But what is knowledge comprised of? Knowledge is made of being, an existence that is prior to appearance. So the biggest mind fuck of all is you can exist as nothing in particular. But if you do not exist as something in particular....you have no knowledge. 

So the embrace of non appearance as existence is to realize that appearance is literally made up of NON-APPEARANCE. This means you cannot die because you were never an appearance anyway. And death is just the expansion into a greater appearance, the unlimited unknowing self, with the unlimited all knowing self. This is Absolute Truth in its totality where everything is known as being. So it has complete self knowledge and complete awareness of its being at the same time. It has absolute control and it realizes why it gave that control to expression and knowledge of love with the full force of its intelligence.

[Javfly33]

2 hours ago, ivankiss said:

Nothing by definition does not exist. But it's a cool pointer.

Is the only thing that exists actually 🤣

[ivankiss]

23 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

Is the only thing that exists actually 🤣

No. If we are talking what actually exists, it is existence itself. Being, consciousness.

Saying it's 'nothing' is just a fancy, spiritual way of pointing towards the infinite. 

[Javfly33]

1 hour ago, ivankiss said:

No. If we are talking what actually exists, it is existence itself. Being, consciousness.

Saying it's 'nothing' is just a fancy, spiritual way of pointing towards the infinite. 

Yes, but what IS being?

What is consciousness?

You have to grasp what really is.

Grasping Directly what is the phenomena of consciousness/being, is Enlightment.

[ivankiss]

8 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

Yes, but what IS being?

What is consciousness?

You have to grasp what really is.

Grasping Directly what is the phenomena of consciousness/being, is Enlightment.

It is not a 'what'. Anything you put on it and call it that would be a label, a limitation. It would imply certain characteristics/qualities. It would mean it is this, but not that. Which it isn't. It just is.

Edited April 16 by ivankiss

[gettoefl]

anything that begins and ends is nothing, you imagined it out of thin air

and that's everything and that includes the person typing this and the person reading this

in addition to that there's a lot one's mind can't perceive or even conceive

when you get weary of your imaginings reality's oneness will burst forth luminously

no hurry though

Edited April 16 by gettoefl

[Javfly33]

 

37 minutes ago, ivankiss said:

It is not a 'what'. Anything you put on it and call it that would be a label, a limitation. It would imply certain characteristics/qualities. It would mean it is this, but not that. Which it isn't. It just is.

Correct, with 'what' I don´t mean a label or word. 

[Razard86]

Another way to look at it is.... 0=1. But 0 is infinity, and 1 is infinity. 

Edited April 16 by Razard86

[SSSanity]

On 16/4/2024 at 1:22 PM, Cireeric said:

No, "everythingness" is not in duality with nothingness.

 

"Existence and nonexistence are incompatible.

The difficult and the easy are mutually opposed.

The long and the short, the high and the low,

the lod and soft, the before and the after-

are all opposites.

Each reveals the other."

from the Tao Te Ching

 

But in a sense everything is nothingness, but not in a dual relationship like long and short.

Bro where did you get that horrible translation it’s giving me an aneurysm.

Not only does it mistranslate but it also says the opposite. Ironically, the actual text disproves your point and agrees with the idea that existence and nonexistence are in duality.

有無相生

有-having/existence 無-not having (emptiness)/nonexistence 相-together 生-born

A better translation is that existence and nonexistence are born of eachother. In fact every line you gave in the actual text has 相 in to show how these concepts mutually produce/contrast/follow each-other.

Before I take a breather and cool down for the sake of my blood pressure, the Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English translation is a lot more literal translation. Looser translations are good for non-chinese speaking audiences but it’s better if they actually say the same thing.