Hello,
I was looking through ATI and came across this very interesting short article by Bodhi. It's worth a read, it's quick and pretty thought provoking:
Dhamma and Non-dualityAs you can see, Bodhi is pretty unequivocating in his dismissal of "non-dual" practices, e.g. Mahayana Buddhist schools, as a) not being what the Buddha taught b) being completely incompatible with Theravada practices.
As someone who came to Buddhism through ATI and Theravada meditation techniques, but has been spending sometime exploring Zen and doing zazen, I was really struck by this because my general outlook, which I always felt was the general outlook of most serious Buddhists, was that all the different schools of thought/meditation practices - Mahayana and Nikaya both - were basically "skillful means" leading to, ultimately, exactly the same word-transcending realizations.
What I'd like to hear from other users here (besides general responses to that article, which are more than welcome) are responses to these questions of mine:
-For those practicing solely traditional theravada meditation (Samatha, Vipassana, Mahasi noting, whatever): Do you feel that Mahayana non-dual practices (I'm thinking of zazen here, it's about as non-dual as you can get) can't lead to Enlightenment? Does non-duality have any place in Enlightenment, or in meditation?
-MCTB talks about experiencing all phenomena as "vibrations", or something like that. For those of you who have experienced this clearly, did the conclusions you draw from that experience (that is, the conclusions you drew about the nature of reality) completely preclude a non-dual perception of reality?
-For those practicing Zazen, Vajrayana (?) or anything else not explicitly described in the Pali canon, do you feel that the understandings that Theravada Vipassana is supposed to lead to aren't "the full picture"?
-For anybody: Are these practices really as mutually opposed as Bodhi makes them about to be? Do they ultimately get at the same thing, or not?
-Has anybody ever had any experience such as, say, realizing non-duality through Vipassana practice?
-Is there anything to obtain? How do those operating in Theravada modes feel about Mahayana concepts like Buddha nature, or the Zen idea that simply to sit in the proper zazen posture and breathe correctly is to be Enlightened? How do Zen folk feel about MCTB, Progress of Insight, or other Theravada maps?
If all this has been done to death before just let me know and direct me to the relevant discussions.
It's so nice to be posting this on a place like DhO, where I know everyone is going to have a civil, friendly, compassionate debate and no flame wars! God bless DhO!
Jimi