Tao Te Ching
Duality and Non-duality
Though thoughts and the thinking process create distinctions and dichotomies, the reality of our experience has a unified wholeness. This separating and defining gives advantage in many practical and important ways but also chains us to extremely limited views. Harmonizing these two qualities may present both the most difficult and most rewarding challenge in our lives.
Quotes (116)
“Susceptible to the venom of dualistic thought, intellectual minds are poisoned by analysis.”
“There was never a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed and nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist.”
“The town may be changed but the well cannot be changed. It neither decreases nor increases… Thus the well is the symbol of that social structure which is independent of all political forms… Life is also inexhaustible. It grows neither less nor more; it exists for one and for all.”
“Transcending all the categories constructed by mind and seeing into the state of Suchness is the awakened inner consciousness.”
“Existence arises from nonexistence, and the Full emerges from the Empty. . . . The Way is the oneness from which all beings arise.”
“People have lost sight of the truth by coming to believe in two forms: one with the fire of heaven and light, one the opposite as a dark, heavy night. But in truth, everything at the same time is full of both light and dark, both equal.”
“God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savor of each.”
“Mind began to revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and will extend over a larger still... this revolution caused a separating—the warm from the cold, the light from the dark, the dry from the moist...”
“The most truthful and capable of giving full realization to their human nature can form a trinity, a union of heaven, earth, and man.”
“now here, now there, the vital forces conquer and, in turn, are conquered; with the funeral dirge mingles the wail that babies raise when they reach the shores of light.”
“the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty.”
“If you say that the abode of the Gods is in the sky, the birds will arrive there before you. If you say it is in the sea, the fish will arrive there before you. Know that the heavenly realm is both inside you and outside you, and you will know that which is outside by that which is inside.”
“When the outer has become as the inner, and the lower as the upper, then will this world find peace.”
“Education and study confer no greater benefit than learn to avoid the wildness of extremes.”
“Ignorance and wisdom are identical, not different.”
“My father is the intrinsic awareness, my mother the ultimate sphere of reality; I belong to the caste of non-duality.”
“Realizing the unreality of opposites and the non-existence of relatives like good/bad, love/hate, happy/sad brings deliverance and the wisdom of knowing what to accept and what to reject.”
“Like a clear light, skillful means and wisdom unite in a spontaneous, all-embracing perfection.”
“The Mind is no other than the Buddha, and Buddha is no other than sentient being. When Mind assumes the form of sentient being, it has suffered no decrease; when it has become a Buddha, it has added nothing to itself.”
“If you separate compassion and wisdom, you will only be running away from life.”
“We have destroyed all distinctions between samsara and nirvana. We know no separation between self and others.”
“The non duality of all phenomena cannot be found by seeking.”
“Going from one to two is the origin of all delusion.”
“Treating all events the same, accustom yourself to non-duality.”
“Discover the source of all duality; nondual space is without substance.”
“Supreme view is beyond all duality of subject and object…
Supreme view is free from reference point.”
“a radical, refined nondualism that does not grasp at any of the highly subtle distinctions to which our familiar mental workings are prone and which estranges us from our experience.”
“Follow the buddha’s teachings, the dharma’s flowering, and restore reality by cutting off all duality.”
“In the morning, greet the energy of the sun; at night, inhale the vitality of the moon.”
“It is only belief in oneself as an island that creates the delusion of others apart and this split is the cause of anxiety.”
“The yang we embrace is one. The yin we turn away from is two. Where yin and yang meet and merge is three.”
“Clear good and bad are obvious to all but only the wise distinguish them when mixed.”
“Moon and clouds are the same; mountain and valley are different. All are blessed; all are blessed. Is this one? Is this two?”
“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.”
“All existence involves contrasting pairs. When one is present, both are present. When one is absent, both are absent.”
“Everything being encompassed within a supreme state of equalness without bias constitutes the expanse of infinte evenness, which entails no dualistic perception.”
“Monarchies quickly becomes Tyrannies, Aristocracies Oligarchies, Democracies degenerate into Anarchy… no precaution can prevent them from sliding into their opposites because of how closely the virtue resembles the vice.”
“Always choose the lesser evil never imagining that you can decide on a perfectly safe course. You can never avoid one trouble without running into another one.”
“Valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin. From disorder, order springs; from order, valor (virtue).”
“All sciences are only the ordinances and opinions of men, as injurious as profitable, as pestilent as wholesome, as ill as good, in no part perfect, but doubtful and full of error and contention.”
“There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.”
“To know what truly endures is to know that Heaven and Earth share the same root, that the ten thousand things share one body, and that there is no difference between self and others.”
“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues”
“Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God”
“We have neither the true nor the good but in part, and mixed with the false and the evil.”
“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
“Each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe and this interconnection of all created things to each other brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others.”
“Arrogance means that one knows how to press forward but not how to draw back… knows something about winning but nothing about losing.”
“the science of fulfilling nature and comprehending life is the great work of appropriating yin and yang, taking over evolution, reversing the process of life and death”
“Practice contemplation in action by combining flexibility with firmness, solidity with openness, and returning the nonexistent to existence.”
“Nurturing firmness with flexibility, solidity with openness, from striving enter into nonstriving, from effort into spontaneity and practice introspection in action letting true yin and true yang naturally unite.”
“Spirit and matter, soul and body, thought and extension are necessary twin ingredients of the universe, and will be forever with equal rights. Those who do not grasp this and rise to the vision might as well waste away their days with the world's idle gossip.”
“The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.”
“There are always two parties the party of the Past and the party of the Future; the Establishment and the Movement... a war between intellect and affection.”
“In the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.”
“Nothing exists in itself… there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.”
“No man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting—be it ever so little—the whole body of which he is an integral part.”
“There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to renovate... Our education is a ceaseless compromise between the conservative and the progressive”
“The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.”
“There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else.”
“Dreams show a special tendency to reduce two opposites to a unity or to represent them as one thing.”
“Man, too, is an animal with an unmistakable bisexual disposition... the characteristics of what is male and female can only be demonstrated in anatomy, and not in psychology.”
“Peace will come to the hearts of men when they realize their oneness with the universe. It is every where.”
“The distinction between words and what they designate is one which it is difficult always to remember... [the confused believe that ] Sentences have subjects and predicates, therefore the world consists of substances with attributes.”
“If you go to thinking take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love.”
“We are so greatly tempted to turn everything into purpose and method that I deliberately express myself in very abstract terms in order to avoid causing a prejudice in one direction or another.”
“Too much of the animal distorts the civilized man, too much civilization makes sick animals... instincts in their original strength can render social adaption almost impossible.”
“The union of opposites is not a rational affair, nor is it a matter of will, but a psychic process of development which expresses itself in symbols.”
“in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress.”
“If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well.”
“The unification of the teacher and disciple affirms the essence of all aspects of evolution.”
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.”
“In the particular is contained the universal.”
“My struggle to make a synthesis of these two antagonistic impulses has lent purpose and unity to my life... the visible world round about fell into order and my inner and outer lives made peace with each other.”
“Dualism... Without it there can hardly be good literature. With it, there most certainly can be no good life.”
“The ultimate way of Being lies beyond all contradictory pairs of opposites with which our two dimensional thinking mind operates. As soon as we are successful in silencing the restless activity of the thinking mind and give a chance to intuition, the pure all embracing spirit in us will manifest effortlessly.”
“By admitting the conception of goodness, you are simultaneously creating a conception of badness.”
“What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...’”
“As long as you are concerned about what you do, this is dualistic… If you are not concerned about what you do… When you sit, you will sit. When you eat, you will eat. That is all… your mind pervades your whole body.”
“A constant image is the conflict of the eagle and serpent. The serpent bound to earth, the eagle in spiritual flight… when the two amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings.”
“Relative mind is the mind which sets itself in relation to other things, thus limiting itself. It is this small mind which creates gaining ideas and leaves traces of itself.”
“When looking at the external world as a mirror, we may exclaim with amazement, 'Why, that's me!'”
“What is implied here is nothing less than the healing of the split between the two hemispheres of our brain which have become separated, alienated and at war with each other during the past few thousand years... This verse welcomes the disappearance of all boundaries among art, science, and religion as the walls and premises of every discipline dissolve into a higher consciousness”
“Know that Good and Evil are irrelevant, I and Thou irrelevant, Inside and Outside irrelevant as are Life and Death… Thou art thyself the Tao. Be thou, now, a rock against which the waves of life rush in vain.”
“Catholic Dualism is behind the error of Western Civilization with its war of machines”
“The Life I am trying to grasp is the me that is trying to grasp it.”
“The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology but to break down the barrier of dualistic thought and understand technology for what it is—a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.”
“The Tao is that which first lets the light, then the dark; occasions the interplay of the two primal forces so that there is always renewal.”
“Giving up dualistic mind is not like throwing away garbage, or as easy as just saying it... dualistic mind has existed for countless lives, beings obviously have not had any power to give it up. That is why grasping mind exists, which continuously causes suffering.”
“By confronting us with radical unlikeness, nature becomes the source of metaphor... the joining of like to unlike such that one can never become the other.”
“Being in a hospital and sharing a room with others, I found out that each person there became part of me, and there was no imaginable way to isolate myself. There's no way you can close yourself off... because other people are you.”
“Spiritual practice is stepping out of the duality of me-ness and my-ness as opposed to otherness, of who is me and who is not me.”
“We are not saying that the feminine principle belongs to women and the masculine principle belongs to men. Realization does not belong to either sex. Wherever there is a perceiver, that is the masculine principle; wherever there is a perception, that is the feminine principle.”
“He feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour, simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once.”
“The nonexistence of a dualistic barrier does not quite mean that we are one, but that we are zero.”
“Whenever we cling to a particular side of reality, it’s we who are the monkeys, losing ourselves in outrage or partial delight… when the mind is clear, each is an occasion for rejoicing.”
“We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity.”
“The balance of male and female became a guiding principle in Genghis Khan’s political strategy and tactics, as well as in his spiritual worldview.”
“The first writer to use the term 'laws of Nature' consistently was René Descartes [who] became the foremost exponent of the new mechanical philosophy... the scientific consequence of his radical dualism”
“Like trees grown together: our roots joined in the dark, our sap intermingled. In this condition, self and other blended like the paints on my palette, their borers ever more indistinct.”
“Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow…”
“..don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience...”
“Separateness is an illusion, what we do to another, we do to ourselves.”
“There is something watching and something being watched—the experience of awareness recognizing itself. When this duality is eliminated, we drop into what we call pure—or non-dual—awareness... minds that are increasingly liberated from habitual reactivity and preconceptions about how things are supposed to be.”
“Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.”
“We should learn everything and then choose which path to follow. Education is neither Eastern nor Western, it is human.”
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