Nonduality Quotes

“Śūnyata is perhaps the most important term in Mahāyāna, but it is not easy to translate. It comes from the root śū, which means “to swell” in two senses: hollow or empty, and also full, like the womb of a pregnant woman. Both are implied in the Mahāyāna usage: the first denies any fixed self-nature to anything, the second implies that this is also fullness and limitless possibility, for lack of any fixed characteristics allows the infinite diversity of impermanent phenomena. It has been unfortunate for Anglo-American Buddhist studies that “emptiness” captures only the first sense, but I follow the tradition.67”
― David R. Loy, Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond

“there is nothing to attain, which is not to deny that this insight is something that must be realized clearly. The difference between attainment and such realization is that only now can I realize I am that which I seek. Since it is always now, the possibility is always there, but that possibility becomes real-ized only when causal, time-bound, goal-directed ways of thinking and acting evaporate, to expose what I have always been: a formless, qualityless mind that is immutable because it is nothing, that is free because it is not going anywhere, and that does not need to go anywhere because it does not lack anything.”
― David R. Loy, Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond

“To conclude this section, the first chapter of the Tao Tê Ching may be summarized as follows. Lines 1, 3, 5, and 7 describe the nameless Tao the source of heaven and earth, which is reality apprehended as a “spiritual” (miao) whole. Such Tao-experience can occur when one has no intentions, in which case there is no self in the usual sense and experience is nondual. Lines 2, 4, 6, and 8 refer to the dualistic everyday world, which is perceived as a collection of interacting but discrete things. We experience the world in this way due”
― David R. Loy, Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond

“action objectively. Then there is wu-wei: a quiet center that does not change although activity constantly occurs, as in Chuang Tzu’s tranquillity-in-disturbance. Just as in nondual hearing there is awareness of an unchanging silence as the ground from which all sounds arise, so in nondual action the act is experienced as grounded in that which is peaceful and does not act. In both these cases (and others to follow), to forget oneself and completely become something is also to realize its “emptiness” and thus to “transcend” it.”
― David R. Loy, Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond

“As with the wei-wu-wei, “in changing it is at rest” (Heraclitus, frag. 84a). In place of the apparently solid I that does them, there would be an empty and immutably serene quality to them. The experience would be not of a succession of events (winter does not turn into spring) but just-this-one-effortless-thing (tathatā) and then another just-this-one-thing.”
― David R. Loy, Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond

“Usually the mind is concentrated on the object of meditation through a symbol. In deep meditation [dhyāna] the mind becomes focused on the object and stays still without flickering like a steady flame of (candle) light in a windless cell. This culminates in samādhi, which closes the gap between the meditator and the object of meditation, his innermost self, and unites the two. In meditation there is the tripartite distinction of the meditator, the object of meditation, and the act of meditation; in other words, of the”
― David R. Loy, Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond

“The Yogācāra claim of cittamātra (mind-only), that only mind or consciousness exists, predictably gave rise to the misinterpretation (corrected in recent works) that Yogācāra is a form of subjective idealism. But subjectivism is not an aspect of any Buddhist school, nor, given the vital role of the anātman doctrine, could it be. As these two passages imply, for Yogācāra the apparently objective world is not a projection of my ego-consciousness. Rather, the delusive bifurcation between subject and object arises within nondual Mind. So in the pariniṣpanna-svabhāva (absolutely accomplished nature), which is the highest state of existence, experience is without subject–object duality.”
― David R. Loy, Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond