It is generally the practice to seek or assume an Ultimate Unicity beyond every imaginable dualism. But that attempt can never succeed, for every term we choose has its opposite or complementary: even terms such as Tao and Principle of Consciousness can only exist for us in virtue of Non-Tao and Derivative of Consciousness, and 'X' in function of 'Non-X', just as the useful term 'Non-Dual Consciousness' is itself one half of a pair of opposites. 'Therefore beware of clinging to one half of a pair' Huang Po warned us.
The process of seeking such a term can never succeed, for it is a cat chasing its own tail or a man pursuing his shadow, the reason being that concepts themselves are dualistic, and therefore the word-symbols that express them.
Surely it is preferable for the cat to accept her tail, and the man his shadow, and for us to state the duality as such in its full formula as Reality-Non-Reality, Absolute-Relative, since the two faces of the coin represent the coin itself? Yet we mean something, that is, we have understood something, every time we seek to express the unicity beyond duality. In using a term such as the Absolute, Reality, Non-Duality, Tao, we wish to express that intuition even if we have to employ a term that only implies half of it.
But are we as stupid as we think we are? Why cannot we say 'the Absolute', meaning both Absolute as such and Absolute in its dualistic aspect as the complement of Relative? Words are our servants, not our masters. If I wish to indicate non-duality I use that word to that end, at the same time being perfectly well aware that the term 'duality' and that which it represents is inevitably implied in the term 'Non-Duality' itself. Yes, but 'Non-Duality' just is not what I am seeking to express, the Absolute is not absolute, for they have duality and the relative tied to their tails!
It cannot be said, for it cannot be thought: it is a will-o-the-wisp. Dualism is with us like a shadow, whichever way we turn, and we are deceiving ourselves when we imagine that there can be for us anything that transcends duality.
This discussion is not pointless. Does it not demonstrate that we are deceiving ourselves whenever we imagine that we are talking about non-duality? As far as we are concerned there just is no such thing. It is non-duality that DOES NOT EXIST for us.
Either we exist, and non-duality does not, or it exists, and we do not. Which is it? Where does the weight of evidence lie?
Materialism and positivistic science believe the former; metaphysics and esoteric religion the latter. If it is we who exist, then metaphysics and esoteric religion are just dream-structures; if non-duality (or what we wish to mean by that) exists, then it is we and all we stand for, see and know, that are a dream of the one mind.
It looks as though one can take one's choice. But if one chooses Non-Duality - then, for Heaven's sake, let us hear no more of ourselves and our ego-notions, or anything about us, as though any of that ever was, ever is, or ever will be anything but phantoms of disordered imagination.
'Finally, remember that from first to last not even the smallest grain of anything perceptible (graspable, attainable, tangible) has ever existed or ever will exist.' (Huang Po, Wan Ling Record, N. 52.)
Note: When the sages stated that we should not regard the Absolute etc. as either existing or not-existing, it might be thought that they implied that it could not exist for us, but that it existed for Itself. And when they added that neither should It be regarded as not not-existing they might have been referring to our intuition that something of the kind ought to exist, an intuition confirmed by the Awakened.
It is more probable, however, that they implied that the Absolute belongs to a further dimension, to which neither the concept of existing nor that of not-existing is applicable.
