ADVAYAVADA BUDDHISM INFOCENTER

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Advayavada Buddhism is a non-dual philosophy and way of life derived from Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka. Its most important tenet is that there is a fourth sign (or mark) of being implicit in the Buddha’s teaching, namely that, expressed in human terms, reality is sequential and dynamic in the sense of ever becoming better than before. What human beings experience as good, right or beneficial, indeed as progress (pratipada, patipada), is, in fact, that which takes place in the direction that overall existence flows in of its own accord.

To understand this tenet, one should first come to realize most deeply, for instance through meditation on the incontestable non-duality of the world, that not the human manifestation of life (i.e. the ongoing process of re-combination, mutation and division, and disintegration of the expended units of the human species, and its vicissitudes and perils, even possible extinction, self-inflicted or not) is the measure of things in space and time, but the whole of infinite reality itself, which, quite unaffected by the negligible impact of mankind's doings, will continue to become exactly as it, by definition, must.

It then becomes clear that the objective of the Middle Way, being the correct existential attitude expounded by the Buddha, is to reconcile us with overall existence, and that dynamically, i.e. in its Noble Eightfold Path form, the Middle Way must be seen as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time. Now, as we have proof that the Eightfold Path leads us towards ever better, we now know that (despite the failings of mankind) existence as a whole advances over time, in human terms, towards better and better. The purpose of Buddhism is obviously to return mankind to the fold of overall existence. Buddhism must be understood as a Way of Reconciliation with the whole of existence just right as it is, i.e. as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it.

Below you will find Advayavada Buddhism in a Nutshell and The Fourth Sign of Being - Questions & Answers. On a separate webpage there are relevant excerpts from well-known mainly Buddhist books. You can also go straight to the latest additions to the Questions & Answers section.

We would love to hear from you too.

Advayavadananda
(John Willemsens)

The Eightfold Path, according to Advayavada Buddhism, is that of our best (samyak, samma) comprehension followed by our best resolution, our best enunciation, our best disposition, our best implementation, our best exertion, our best observation, and our best reflection or meditation, which brings us to a yet better comprehension, and so forth. Adherence to the Five Precepts and a well-considered understanding of the Four Noble Truths suffice to start off on the Path at any time. Nirvana is the ultimate reconciliation with reality becoming, i.e. with Buddha-nature, achievable by man.

ADVAYAVADA BUDDHISM IN A NUTSHELL

Buddhism is a collective name for the diverse philosophical and religious beliefs that are derived from the way of liberation taught, in the 6th century B.C., by the North-Indian prince Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha, which means the Awakened or Enlightened One. Advayavada Buddhism, formally established in 1995 as a new Western branch of Mahayana Buddhism by the Dutch lay Buddhist author and translator Advayavadananda (John Willemsens, b.1934), is a non-dual philosophy and way of life derived in turn from Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka.

According to Advayavada Buddhism, it is indisputable that the Buddha did not believe in Brahman (God) or in the atman or atta (soul) and taught that man suffers because he does not realize that all things in life are instead utterly changeable and transitory. Man is prone to suffering quite simply because he strives after and tries to hold on to things and concepts which he believes to be permanent, but are not.

Man's mistaken view of things is produced by a thirst for life (called trishna in Sanskrit and tanha in Pali) that is in turn caused by his fundamental ignorance (avidya, avijja) of the true nature of reality. And this thirst for life can easily take on a more unwholesome form: already as desire, ill-will, laziness, impatience or distrust will it seriously hinder any efforts to better his circumstances.

His compliance, however, with the five precepts that apply to all followers of the Buddha will allow him to arrest his thirst for life and to commence removing the root cause of his suffering, i.e. his fundamental ignorance of the true nature of reality. The five Buddhist precepts are not to kill, not to steal, sexual restraint, not to lie, and abstinence from alcohol and drugs. Man's observance of these precepts in his daily life gives him the moral strength required to embark upon the Buddha's Middle Way that, avoiding first the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification, will in due course bring him to the blessed state of Nirvana.

Nirvana is the complete extinction (nirodha) of all suffering (duhkha, dukkha) as a result of our full reconciliation with reality as it truly is, with Buddha-nature. Nirvana and Samsara are not two different realities or two different conditions of reality. Nirvana is to experience the phenomenal world at the level of absolute, ultimate truth (paramartha-satya), i.e. divested of all our preconceptions, including even those expressed here. Samsara is to experience the same phenomenal world at the level of conventional everyday truth (samvriti-satya). It is as a result of the purification of our perception of the phenomenal world at the level of conventional truth by following the Buddha's Middle Way, that we shall come to understand the significance of ultimate truth.

The Middle Way devoid of extremes that we must follow is concretely the Noble Eightfold Path that the Buddha taught in his very first sermon in Sarnath, near Benares. The Eightfold Path, when interpreted dynamically as Advayavada Buddhism does, is that of our best (samyak, samma) comprehension followed by our best resolution, our best enunciation, our best disposition, our best implementation, our best exertion, our best observation, and our best reflection or meditation, which brings us to a yet better comprehension, and so forth. We thus regain our place in totality advancing over time towards better and better, breaking the fetters (samyojana) that tie us to Samsara as we advance along the Path.

Advayavada Buddhism indeed considers progress (pratipada, patipada) as the fourth sign of being, this next to the changeable and the transitory nature of all things and the universality of suffering, which are the three signs or marks of being traditionally taught in Buddhism. When the Path expounded by the Buddha as the correct existential attitude and way of life is viewed accordingly as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time, it follows that human beings experience as good, right or beneficial that which takes place in the direction that time-being as a whole flows in of its own accord. The teaching of the Buddha must be seen as a Way of Reconciliation with existence as a whole just right as it is, i.e. as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it. Nirvana is the ultimate reconciliation with reality becoming achievable by man.

Please address your remarks and questions to: Advayavada Buddhism Infocenter, P.O.Box 10502, 1001 EM Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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© 1997-2000. Contents subject to change.

THE FOURTH SIGN OF BEING

INTRODUCTION TO

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

The concept of a fourth sign of being remains a controversial one, though less so than some years ago. The conventional signs or marks of being in traditional Buddhism are three: impermanence, suffering and selflessness, usually listed in that particular order. The first one, impermanence (anitya in Sanskrit and anicca in Pali), refers to the transitoriness of all things. The second, suffering (duhkha, dukkha), is that of the sorrow that all non-liberated sentient beings are prone to. The third sign, selflessness (anatman, anatta), refers to the fact that nothing has an enduring self or independent substance.

So that the sign of suffering may coincide in our minds in every respect with the first of the four noble truths of Buddhism, the truth of suffering in the world, in Advayavada we prefer to place the three signs of being in a slightly different order: first impermanence, then selflessness and finally suffering. This seems to us more logical, because it is generally agreed that suffering occurs when the facts of impermanence and selflessness are not recognized and understood. The second of the four noble truths is indeed that suffering is brought about by the thirst for life (trishna, tanha), produced in turn by the fundamental ignorance of the true nature of reality (avidya, avijja) - in Buddhism, ignorance of the true nature of reality is seen as the root cause of all ill.

It is indeed obvious that all sorrow and conflict, be it at the level of the individual or of the group to which he or she belongs, stems from the non-recognition of the facts of impermanence and selflessness, from not understanding and accepting that everything changes and nothing lives on. Out of sheer ignorance personalities and ideas are accorded indefinite validity. Compromise, consensus and change are felt as an infringement upon our integrity. Religious, ethnic and nationalist convictions have no regard for the lessons of History. Could the zealots, the fanatics, the flag-wavers but hear the scorn of future generations!

It is already more than two and a half thousand years ago that the Buddha uncovered the reason for this sorry state of affairs and pined for a way to overcome it. His solution to the problem is in fact simple: people must follow a path that is in harmony with the true nature of reality, that is in harmony with Buddha-nature. This path created by the Buddha is like a wheel. It has no beginning and no end. When one has meditated well, new and better insight will arise in our minds and we must lead our lives accordingly to the best of our ability until we and the circumstances surrounding us have again changed and it is time to think things over again and to start afresh if necessary. Our contention is now that, if the Buddha's path means real progress at last and is in complete harmony with reality as a whole becoming, with Buddha-nature, then, expressed in human terms, reality as a whole progresses over time towards better and better as well. In other words, that progress (pratipada, patipada) is the fourth sign of being and all life's inner driving force.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

(edited)

question According to your theory all we have to do is just wait and we will naturally become better. I do not think this is correct.

answer By following the Eightfold Path you get in tune with overall existence and sorrow starts disappearing. Sorrow is a symptom. It is the indication that one is going against the grain of things. Bear in mind that it is not life that should be improved upon, but man's way of living life. What one must try to do is to come to terms with existence as it truly is, i.e. as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it. The way to follow to achieve this is the Buddha's Eightfold Path. And to be able to follow this Path one must adhere to the Five Precepts. The very first step is our acceptance of the Five Precepts.

question The defilements we have are rooted in our not understanding life or the realities of life as they are. The real cause of problems and sufferings are these defilements and unwholesome states of mind. The solution is to understand our life exactly as it is. By so doing we will understand more what is wholesome and thus we shall be more inclined to wholesomeness.

answer Our position is that the objective of the Buddha's Middle Way is to reconcile us with Buddha-nature, which is overall existence as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it. Dynamically, that is as the Eightfold Path, the Middle Way devoid of extremes is a reflexion at the level of our personal lives and in human terms of overall existence moving forwards over time in the right direction. Existence, Buddha-nature, not man, is the measure of things.

question Your findings seem to contradict traditional Eastern theories that this world system is deteriorating into the Kali-yuga or the eventual demise of the world system.

answer The yugas belong to Hindu mythology and we ought to leave the belief in such things as a Kali-yuga to the followers of Hinduism.

question Surely as a Buddhist one cannot say that life or the world automatically improves irrespective of the actions and mental states of the people who inhabit it.

question Unless some people make a determined effort to encourage non-violence, generosity, appreciation, truthful communication and awareness in society at large, then I fear Reality will be "sequential and dynamic in the sense of ever-becoming worse than before!".

answer Please realize that not mankind, human beings, the human manifestation of life, or, for that matter, the 'world', is the measure of things in space and time, but existence itself, the overall all-including flow of existence, Buddha-nature. Our position is that the objective of the Middle Way is to reconcile us with this existence that encompasses everything, and that dynamically, as the Eightfold Path, the Middle Way must be seen as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of existence as a whole moving forwards over time in the right direction.

question We are fascinated by your discovery of the fourth sign. Please tell us how you came to this discovery and how we can verify your findings.

answer The writer came to this discovery when he realized fully that not mankind, human beings, the human manifestation of life, was the measure of things in space and time, but existence itself, the overall all-including flow of existence, appropriately called Buddha-nature in a.o. Zen. This being the case, the objective of the Middle Way expounded by the Buddha as the correct existential attitude is obviously to reconcile us with overall existence. Dynamically, i.e. as the Eightfold Path, the Middle Way devoid of extremes is therefore a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence moving forward over time. And as we have experiential proof that the Eightfold Path leads us towards better, it follows that the direction in which overall existence becomes, flows or moves forward over time is, expressed in human terms, also towards better.

question The objective of the Middle Way is to understand our life as it is now. The realities which arise now can be directly experienced by seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, touching etc. However, they are not usually directly experienced with understanding. Understanding takes us forwards, ignorance takes us backwards. However, ignorance is not intellectual ignorance, but it is ignorance of the characteristics of realities by direct experience. For example we have the idea that we can touch a cup or a table or a person. But only hardness or softness or temperature or mind can be experienced through the body senses. There can be the studying with awareness of what is experienced through the body senses. Understanding will then understand that a cup, chair or person are not realities but concepts. The intellectual understanding of what is real and what is not real but a concept can condition the direct understanding of realities.

answer It is indeed important to try to grasp the true nature of things. The problem is that also now, the tip of 'time's arrow', can be said to be a concept without any substance, and as for understanding-ignorance and forwards-backwards in their ordinary sense, these are relative pairs of concepts void par excellence. Real in all of this is only their tendency to change over time or anitya, and this, as we maintain, as far as the whole of existence is concerned, towards better.

One should really first try to realize fully, by meditating deeply on the true nature of reality, that not humanity, mankind, human beings, the human manifestation of life, is the measure of things in space and time, but overall all-encompassing existence, Buddha-nature, which quite oblivious to our exertions, progresses over time on and on in its own one right direction. The objective of the Middle Way devoid of extremes, propounded by the Buddha as the correct existential attitude, must be to reconcile us with existence as a whole. Dynamically, i.e. as the Eightfold Path, the Buddha's Middle Way is then a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time. And as the Eightfold Path leads us towards better, it follows, inductively if you will, that existence as a whole becomes over time towards better.

question I am afraid that your discovery has already been heralded by the Buddha himself, although he does not call it a fourth sign or mark. The fourth mark is sometimes rendered as ashubha, or ugliness. The Buddha identified two modes of conditionality, one which is well known and is illustrated by the Wheel of Becoming, is the 12 nidanas moving from ignorance to old age and death. The other, which is not as well known but is in the Nidana Vagga of the Samyutta Nikaya, is positive and progressive. It moves from suffering through faith, delight, joy, calmness, bliss, concentration, knowledge and vision of things as they really are, disgust, dispassion, liberation, knowledge of the destruction of the biases. The importance of this dynamic sequence is that life can be made to flow towards better. However, life does not flow towards better automatically. It has to be cultivated and worked for, which is why we have to practice the four right efforts.

answer Each school will naturally interpret in its own way the many, often conflicting sayings attributed to the Buddha in the scriptures. It would however be going too far to maintain that the Buddha ever implied that ugliness was the fourth mark or sign of being. The "disgust for things as they are" of sutta 23 of the Nidana Vagga should be understood strictly within the very limited context of one's own personal life. And our position is that not humanity, mankind, human beings, the human manifestation of life, let alone one's own personal life, is the measure of things in space and time, but the overall all-embracing flow of existence itself, which, quite oblivious to our exertions or, for that matter, our disgust, goes on and on in its own one right direction. We take it for granted, as explained, that the objective of the Buddha's Middle Way devoid of extremes was and is to reconcile us with existence as a whole as it is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it, i.e. to reconcile us with Buddha-nature.

question I would agree with you that the objective of the Middle Way is to reconcile us with existence. Or to be more precise, it helps to understand life as it is. This is a condition for being to go forwards. However we are influenced by many things like greed, hatred and ignorance. These can take us backwards. The way to go forwards then is to develop the Eightfold Path. Or rather the Eightfold Path develops when there are conditions for its development. These conditions are the intellectual understanding of the Eightfold Path.

answer You are asked to accept the preeminence of existence over mankind, and that existence cannot, by definition, be anything but just right as it is, and that the Eightfold Path, as taught by the Buddha, is a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of existence as a whole becoming over time. We must not see the Middle Way devoid of extremes as an attitude that will enable us to escape from the realities of life or to 'make it' somehow 'in spite' of things, but we must understand the Buddha's most fundamental teaching correctly as the means to reconcile us with overall existence as a whole. We must, in fact, accept that the way existence as a whole is, and not some idealized form of humanity, is the true Buddha-nature of things to be sought after by men, and that this also is why it is said that Nirvana is not different from Samsara.

question I am not familiar with the term Advayavada.

answer The writer has given the name Advayavada Buddhism to the radical non-dual standpoint of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism to which he specifically adheres. A sound explanation of the term 'advayavada' can be found in for instance professor T.R.V. Murti's The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: "The sole concern of the Madhyamaka advaya-vada is the purification of the faculty of knowing. The primordial error consists in the intellect being infected by the inveterate tendency to view Reality as identity or difference, permanent or momentary, one or many etc. These views falsify reality, and the dialectic (of the Madhyamaka) administers a cathartic corrective. With the purification of the intellect, Intuition emerges; the Real is known as it is, as Tathata (non-dual suchness) or bhutakoti (reality-limit). The emphasis is on the correct attitude of our knowing.." See further, if you wish, the 'miscellaneous excerpts' section of this site.

question What you say seems to me to be an essential teaching of the Mahayana in its complete form. The Unborn Infinite Reality can never be less than Perfect and Whole, and is the True Essence of all Beings, and is ever present. All that is needed is that, in perfect simplicity, we turn to That, and realize that the human manifestation of life is just an imperfect reflexion of That. Simple! but not easy. That is the problem. If we realize what we are, how do we remember to continue to realize it moment by moment, rather than seeking to hold on to the vision of the past?

answer Everything is, indeed, as right as it can be, and the Middle Way devoid of extremes is a perfect reflexion of it at the human level. As for your question, our answer would be that you must see that 'vision of the past' for what it really is: a highly selective subjective recollection in the present of things no longer there - please understand that life only happens in the present, and non-dually. To quote Alan Watts, this is It.

question Existence progresses towards better or worse only in a dualistic sense. Life goes towards better, towards worse, only when one has expectations. Current failings? Simply a state of mind brought on by expectations and judgements. That "infinite Reality" (what other reality is there?) will continue to "become" exactly as it must? No, it is , it is exactly as it is.

answer You and the writer obviously do not experience the passage of time, i.e. the duration, the sum duration of the successive phenomena, the being of Buddha-nature, in the same way. Your "reality is exactly as it is" as opposed to his "reality will continue to become exactly as it, by definition, must" makes this important point very clear. As a result of his prolonged and deep meditation on the true nature of reality, the writer has come to share fully and wholeheartedly the Buddhist view that existence is a constant flux of ever-changing events with no known beginning or necessary end. As a serious student of the Madhyamaka theories of existence, particularly of the concepts of emptiness, dependent origination and the two levels of truth, he has come to understand the Noble Eightfold Path as a reflexion at the level of his own life of existence as a whole becoming over time. By learning to follow the Eightfold Path successfully, he hopes to live himself every time more and more in tune with overall existence. For the Advayavadin, Nirvana is when we experience our own existence as being completely in harmony with existence as a whole becoming over time. In Buddhism there is no static being, only dynamic becoming: to live is to become. And in Advayavada Buddhism the Eightfold Path is moreover seen, not as a means to become something in the future, but as the way to become as something in the herenow. The Eightfold Path is seen as the way to become oneself herenow as existence, as overall existence becoming over time now in its right direction, to become now as Buddha-nature.

question In a qualified way, I concur with you that as time unfolds, in comparison with the past, things and events in the present seem better. But such comparisons, while uplifting, still must be set aside during the spirit's own work as it tries to recollect the fullness of its former self, having through desire, mixed unknowingly (avidya) with its phenomenal externalizations. Looking from within, we are still confronted by the enormous horizon of the not-self, having, I should add, fallen into the chemistry of dependent origination. In this wise, time also has to be viewed as the not-self, being akin to Samsara. In this consideration, we must still ascertain the pure self in the not-self, as Saint Asanga, in his Mahayana-sutralankara, points out. Adding to this, I would inject this idea and say, that while the spirit works over time, we should not think that the spirit is placed in time. Far from it. Fundamentally, the task of the spirit, in the bonds of Samsara, is to distinguish itself from time, thus dissolving its empathy with the temporal life, attaining subsequently Nirvana. By any measure, this is the task of Mahayana Buddhism which concerns itself with the transcendent Dharmadhatu, or the same, the "deathless element" that the young Buddha-to-be quested for, leaving the gates of his beloved city. Finally, only those who have transcended this temporal world can be worthy guides of humanity, because only they are detached from the natural passions which cycle the species around its genus. This is another positive mark of Buddhist science which makes men unaffected by the contagions of desire, and thus makes for sounder governments, because humanity is ruled by such persons.

answer We are sure that you will understand that the religious concepts of a human spirit and a transcendent Dharmadhatu are quite foreign to the Advayavada standpoint. Advayavada Buddhism is a radically non-dual philosophy and way of life. For the Advayavadin Samsara and Nirvana are not different objectively. As professor Murti explains in The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, the primordial error consists in the intellect being infected by the inveterate tendency to view Reality as identity or difference, permanent or momentary, one or many etc. These views falsify reality. With the purification of the intellect, which is "the sole concern of Madhyamaka advayavada", prajña (intuition) emerges and the Real is known as it is, as Tathata (non-dual suchness). May we assume that you yourself are a Yogacharin?

question At least for me, the advaya standpoint only refers to the coordinate unity between Mind and its manifestations. When it is declared in the sutras that "every phenomenon is but a manifestation of Mind" I take this to mean that Mind and its phenomena are coordinate. As for your understanding that Samsara and Nirvana are not different objectively, they are nevertheless different essentially. This is implied in the sutras which say that they are the same "when viewed from the ultimate nature of the Dharmakaya". I must naturally assume that other than from this vantage point, both are not the same. Next, when Murti speaks about 'reality' it is in a transcendent, non-phenomenal sense that he employs the term. The Tathagata, for example, cannot be conceived through the senses nor through sensory ideas. I get no 'phenomenal reading' in his use of the term 'reality'. One last word, I am simply not convinced that Buddhism is anti-essentialistic. Without an essentialistic standpoint, terms like Buddha-nature become meaningless. In fact we might ask, how do beings become free from the cave of individuality except by seeing and knowing their Buddha-nature?

answer The radically non-dual philosophy and way of life we call Advayavada Buddhism, to which we wholeheartedly adhere, is derived from Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka. For the Advayavadin Samsara and Nirvana are not different objectively and there is in Advayavada no talk of a mind separate from the body. Mind is merely to think and to think is a manifestation of being, as are to walk, to talk or to sleep. It is one of the many ways in which the one 'person' operates. To the Advayavadin to say that the mind has or does things, sounds like saying that not one but one's running does the sprinting. This is particularly true when they hear other Buddhists saying, for example, that not they but their consciousnesses will eventually enter Nirvana or be reborn or something. However important, consciousness is merely to know, the activity of knowing going on in our brains. Mind (to think) and consciousness (to know) are not things but functions, activities, events without any substance or corporeality. Also Buddha-nature, the essence of being, is insubstantial and not something different from Reality - it is but another name for the common denominator in Everything, its Emptiness. Nirvana for the Advayavadin is indeed to live in accordance with this empty essence.

The most fascinating concepts in Buddhist philosophy are, in our view, those of emptiness (shunyata) and the two truths, the conventional everyday relative or 'veiled' truth (samvriti-satya) and ultimate absolute truth (paramartha-satya). By conventional everyday truth is meant that all dharmas, i.e. things and events, or phenomena, which in fact have no self-nature because they are conditioned, seem to be as we perceive them only because of our idea of them or of their alleged opposite. By absolute truth is meant our awareness of the underlying field of experience where all dharmas stripped of the superimposed relative aspects happen. Work and play are true only in the relative sense, because they are experienced as such only because of our idea of them or their alleged opposite. The field of experience where the real event takes place is that of non-dual emptiness, shunyata, the realm of prajña, non-dual intuition. That which occurs at any moment in time (there are at this level no actors, no-thing that does or acts) is a herenow manifestation of being in the field of existence that encompasses the whole of totality (the so-called Dharmadhatu). All time-being (the nature of which is dharmata or tathata or buddhata or buddha-nature or suchness) is spontaneously brought about by (and obtains its form and function from) the interdependent and conditioned co-arising or dependent origination (pratitya-samutpada), which is its inherent dynamic principle. Buddha-nature, shunyata, dharmata or tathata etc, and pratitya-samutpada are essentially identical - each term simply refers to a different way of viewing reality. Due to ignorance we may, however, misinterpret reality and see the conventional relative truth of for example work and play as ultimate truth. When we are unaware of or choose to disregard the existence of the underlying field of experience, when we are blind or oblivious to its wonders, we become enmeshed in Samsara or, to use more familiar Western imagery, we become the carriers of original sin. But to experience existence at the level of absolute emptiness is nothing less than Nirvana - this is what the Advayavadin endeavours to achieve. Absolute emptiness and its inherent dynamic principle are very much similar to the ideas of Tao and Te respectively; Tao is Totality and Te is how Totality is.

question My understanding is that advayadharma, as the highest truth, means the undividedness of the conditioned and the unconditioned. Turning to the undivided relationship between Mind and body, this must be seen as a coordination between the absolute and its phenomena, like that between the source of a river and the river's body extending from this source. Next, Mind in Mahayana Buddhism, is not a "manifestation of being" that simply thinks. I think it is better to identify the Mind that thinks with manas and the Mind that knows with jñana. With respect to consciousness (vijñana), perhaps we should treat this as Mind in the mode of discrimination, which in the nidanas is the preincarnative consciousness that attaches to the embryo. As for your reference to pratitya-samutpada, it is usually understood in two modes. First it relates to receptacle-consciousness and secondly to sympathy with the twelve fetters or nidanas. In the first mode the arising of things is dependent on the receptacle-consciousness which is their essence. In the second mode the arising of good or evil destinies depends on whether or not Mind enters into empathetic union with its manifestations.

answer In Advayavada Buddhism there cannot be any talk of coordination between the absolute and phenomena, because they are considered to be exactly the same thing but observed subjectively from a different perspective. Advayavada is a truly radical non-dual philosophy and way of life. In Advayavada what you call Mind and we call the mind is not a thing but a function, which is an activity, an event. It is the activity carried out by our brain in conjunction with our nervous system. Manas, jñana and vijñana are old words that describe some of the different ways in which this important activity occurs in the human being, like the English words strolling, running, sprinting, etc. describe the different ways we move about on our legs. That it is called mind and not minding is a little like the fist being called fist although it is merely a clenching of the hand.

The idea of a preincarnative consciousness that attaches itself to an embryo, implying that it is not an activity without corporeality but a thing that moreover can carry out an activity by itself, is therefore absolutely foreign to Advayavada (there is in Advayavada no human rebirth other than the division of the mother after fertilization of her egg or eggs by the father). And you will understand that, for the same reason, also the Yogachara concept of an alaya-vijñana, a consciousness that can contain things of itself, cannot be shared with you. Yogachara (also called Vijñanavada) is a metaphysical idealism in which our consciousness supposedly creates its own objects and can also ideally exist quite by itself as pure consciousness. This indeed makes it an essentialist or substantialist doctrine, and you must realize that as such it clearly contravenes the Buddha's fundamental anatman doctrine that teaches that there is no permanent, eternal, integral or independent substance within an individual existent.

question Karma, literally deed, means the sum total of our actions throughout our life, including our speech and thoughts and other inner stirrings.. The karma accumulated in previous lives determines place and fate at the moment of rebirth: the 'soul', in Hindu terms the Self, fashions its own destiny. But different than in Hinduism, in Buddhism not the Self but karma is central. The Buddhist teachings reject the Self as hypothesis.. For the Buddhist it is karma that weaves the connecting thread throughout the human life cycle. Strictly speaking it is karma only that shall seek a new place for itself at the end of a life.. Because Pythagoras, for instance, probably believed in a soul substrate, his theory of metempsychosis points to something more concrete than what is suggested by the idea of rebirth in Buddhism. In Buddhism the idea proposes something very tenuous and, indeed because of this, undispersable. But the circular view of human existence remains a very important similarity between both theories, this in sharp contrast with the linear view of Christianity, according to which life happens to us only once and is subject to a divine plan for our deliverance.

A further similarity between the Pythagorian and the Buddhist views is the idea that man's existence on earth is not the highest and most ultimate that he can achieve in the whole of existence, but that he can climb to higher spheres through a process of purification and spiritualization.. Only our consciousness can yearn for deliverance and in the end reach Pure Being, Nirvana. To do this from our present existence in the realm of the senses, of conceit and desire, is extremely difficult. As is the case with Pythagoras, first what is inferior must be discarded. Also Buddhism speaks of a realm where only sight and hearing remain (the realm of beauty, it is said) and the lower wants are silent. And higher still is the realm where there are no more things but all existence is wholly spiritual. In the highest heaven of the Buddhist cosmological hierarchy, for example, the gods feast on bliss and emit rays of light of themselves: there is light without darkness, no sun and no moon, there are no opposites. But even this high heaven is not where the endless and undefinable consciousness freed of all earthly afflictions reigns.

answer The contention that only our consciousness can yearn for deliverance and in the end reach Pure Being, Nirvana, is the language of the pudgalavadin and amounts to a serious straying from the Buddha's teachings. Buddhism presupposes traditionally that the human being is composed of some five skandhas or clusters of which the rupa skandha disintegrates and dissolves and the non-physical skandhas cease to exist completely at death. What is 're-born' acording to Advayavada Buddhism are exclusively the results or consequences of one's deeds or karma. And karma is not a thing but an event. It is the working or operation of dependent origination at our human level. The genetic and social factors present at the beginning of a so-called new life are the result of that event.

question It seems obvious to me that the idea of deliverance can be formed only in the consciousness of the human being, even if a.o. feelings (the desire for deliverance) or a natural tendency are closely involved: there is indeed an incessant interaction between the khandhas. I do believe now that I might have better said that "only our consciousness can make it possible to enter (or to realize) Nirvana". That the personal consciousness is something very different than "endless and undefinable" consciousness, where "the world ends" and with the world the khandas, is something that I have often stressed.

answer We must as Buddhists be very careful not to start imagining consciousness as a thing instead of seeing it correctly as an event. When we say that consciousness can do something or become something, it is like saying that not I but my speach is going to say something, or that not I but my sprinting will reach the finishing line. Consciousness is not a thing, but an action, a deed, an event, as to speak and to run. Consciousness cannot in turn make something else enter or realize Nirvana. A consciousness that can make us do or not do something of its own accord is a pudgala or an atman. The formation of the idea of deliverance is not an activity in or of consciousness, but one of the many activities or functions that form part of this skandha or cluster that we collectively call consciousness. The desire for deliverance belongs formally not to the vedana but to the samskara cluster.

The writer finds it very difficult to come to terms with this frequently heard contention that the skandhas are in some way or another capable of carrying out things by themselves, such as initiating and maintaining an "incessant interaction" or making something else "enter or realize Nirvana". Because the skandhas in fact do nothing - they are the doing. The cluster of physical existence is the rupa skandha. This cluster also does nothing - it merely is physical existence in all its aspects. The traditional four non-physical skandhas are clusters of events - they denote how the rupa skandha is. The rupa skandha does not cause these events, it is them. Like when we say that a tree grows. The tree does not do the growing; it is the growing. This is how the tree is, how it exists in space and time. The growing of the tree is quite obviously an event, and not a thing, let alone a separate thing capable of in turn doing other things by itself. We owe the cohesion of the skandhas to the spontaneous dynamic principle of existence: the interdependent and conditioned co-arising or dependent origination or universal dynamic relativity of all phenomena, called pratitya-samutpada in Sanskrit. This spontaneous dynamic principle inherent in all existence, the being of existence so to say, corresponds almost exactly to the Chinese concept of Te, the 'virtuous power' of the Tao - the Tao is all-encompassing Totality and Te is how Totality is.

question You say that existence, in its movement over time, progresses towards ever better. Does not this progress imply evolution, and is not evolution dualistic? Good and bad and better (whatever that means) are in essence dualistic. I regard the human manifestation of life and, in fact, life in general, only as a passing phase in Evolution that can go in a positive or a negative direction. Permit me this metaphor. All life is like a school where students arrive, learn (or not), and leave. The difference is that in life we do not know where from and where to, and not knowing this, what we ought to be learning. Looking at it like this, though we may assume that the Middle Way is a method to reconcile us with existence, it is nevertheless impossible to ascertain where it takes us to. To Nirvana? Maybe. The 'school', as I see it, always stays the same and is not going to get any better. There is no progress in the moral or ethical aspects of mankind, as we know all too well from History; as for technological progress, modern technology adds very little to the spiritual development of individuals. But I do agree with you that the Eightfold Path must be the correct way of living.

answer There are three things we can say say about this: 1) that progress in the herenow is not relative or dualistic - it is here in fact only the direction of time-being, 2) that objectively the direction as such indeed seems neutral or indifferent, but that we do experience (at the human level and in human terms) as good, right or wholesome those events that agree with it, that are in tune with the direction of time-being, and 3) that there cannot be two sets of rules, one for totality and one for humanity, and that therefore what we know to be good (in human terms) must be universally good (in human terms); in fact, according to modern cosmology the same laws of physics apply throughout our universe and the many other universes, and life-forms as ours are merely a side-effect of the greater evolutionary processes.

We shall try to use a metaphor as well! Imagine a train going Somewhere. Objectively and in the herenow the only thing you can say about it is that it is going Somewhere - this is the direction the train is going in and this direction as such is not good nor bad, but obviously quite neutral. You now have to board this train. It seems the thing to do and there is no other train than this one. If you accept to go where the train is heading to, you will feel all right, sit back and probably enjoy the trip. If, however, you insist on going Nowhere, you will feel very upset and even think of getting off Anywhere! Our contention, now, is that if you moreover want to go Somewhere, then this particular train you feel comfortable in must surely be taking you there - that it is in fact only then that we may in any way say that it is the right train going in the right direction. In other words, if you really want to live Life, and your life feels good by following the Buddhist way of life, which is, do not forget, a reflexion (a side-effect!) of Totality, it is then and only then that you shall know that Life as a whole exists over time towards better. It is only by willing to live one's own life well and to the full, that we shall know that existence as a whole progresses over time towards ever better! The proof of the pudding is in the eating with gusto!

question In your answer to my "school" metaphor, you say that direction in the herenow is not dualistic. In my opinion direction is always dualistic, because it implies movement from a to b.

answer There is no movement in direction in the absolute herenow much in the same way that there is no movement in the compass needle pointing North. In fact, there is no movement at all in the absolute herenow. As Vicente Fatone rhetorically asks his readers in The Philosophy of Nagarjuna: "..in the distance already covered, i.e. in the past, is there movement in the moving body? No. In the distance not yet covered, i.e. in the future, is there movement in the moving body? Certainly not! Therefore the movement can only be present movement. But the present movement is contradictory because it does not imply the moments which the movement implies. Movement can be conceived of only in the present, but in the present the movement is incomprehensible because it is contradictory." The origin, duration and death of things, affirmed by superficial knowledge (samvriti-satya), he sums up later on, prove to be illusory in the light of transcendental knowledge (paramartha-satya). Very interesting, of course, what Fatone says, but might we please add that in the present context of the Buddhist teaching in everyday life, this assessment of the fundamental un-reality of time does not, however, invalidate the direction of time-being as we experience it in the herenow? We know when we are facing the sun.

question When a baby is born its mind is like a tabula rasa, an empty white blank, with nothing on it. And then we start writing things on it, "I am".. and so on. In the first six or seven years of our lives we develop a sense of ourselves. A lot is just implied through the attitudes of parents, relatives, teachers, religious people, the class, the ethnic identity. That's the way everyone thinks, and assumes is just normal and right. So how do we get behind the conditioning we acquired before we learned to read and write, behind our cultural conditioning, behind our personality? How do we get back to the tabula rasa, the empty mind? Through mindfulness. Mindfulness is being able to stay open to the way things are in reality. In the satipatthana meditation practice, the four foundations of mindfulness - the body, the feelings, the mind, and the way things are, are all objects that we are observing. The relationship is subject to object, mental objects, objects of the mind. Consciousness is a function. We're conscious when we're born out of our mother's womb. We start life as a separate conscious entity. So consciousness isn't culturally conditioned. It is a function; it's a natural function. Through practice we begin to recognize this conscious awareness, awareness through consciousness. Consciousness is like this. It's like waiting, listening. Now, the foundation for this kind of practice is, of course, based on moral responsibility. We learn to be responsible, to do what is good and to refrain from doing what isn't. It's not just being passive, just watching everything arise and cease in a passive way. That would mean that we somehow can't participate in life at all. But this practice allows us to participate in life in a way that is skilful, and we can learn from the experiences of our lives.

answer Your contribution contains in our opinion a threefold contradiction: that new life is a tabula rasa, but nevertheless at the same time a separate conscious entity at birth eventually able as such to practice satipatthana meditation, and that somehow moral responsibility has been acquired previously by the practitioner along the way since birth. The very fact that a new life unit possesses at birth such a highly developed function as consciousness, proves that it cannot be a tabula rasa. Karma indeed does not work that way. Buddhism presupposes that the human being is composed of some five skandhas or clusters of which the rupa skandha disintegrates and dissolves and the arupa skandhas cease to exist completely at death. What lives on are the consequences of one's part in karma. In human life, according to Advayavada Buddhism, there is no rebirth other than the division of the mother after fertilization of her egg or eggs by the father. The new life unit is again, or yet, formally composed of five or so skandhas or clusters. Karma is the working or operation of dependent origination at our human level, and the genetic and social factors present at the beginning of a so-called new life, and which should be equally stressed, are exclusively the result of that event. In the case of human beings, it is the result of their sexual reproduction (re-combination, mutation and division) - we are convinced that there is no other factor at play. As for moral responsibility, all human beings possess it at birth to different degrees. Morality has become an integral part of our samskara cluster as a result of the pressures of evolution. It may have become temporarily obscured in some individuals, but it is there. It shall continue to develop during the life period of the new unit provided it is not tampered with, and can indeed come to full bloom and become altruism as a result of a good life. Increased moral responsibility is not a requirement for the practice of mindfulness, but comes about as a result of among other things this practice.

question The Buddha taught that pleasure and pain are causally conditioned by one's own actions, together with other supporting factors such as the environment - both physical and social - and the physical state of the body. This concept of kamma seems to have been revolutionary at that time.. In the Majjhima Nikaya it is clearly stated that the Buddha stressed that it is the volition preceding an action which makes it either wholesome or unwholesome: "It is cetana (volition or will) which I call kamma. Through cetana one performs kamma by means of body, speech and mind". Every volitional action has consequences; these may be acts of thought, word or deed. Purely mechanical actions, like switching on a light have no kammic consequences. The experience of sensations and the process of perception are not volitional actions and so do not produce kamma. The Buddha's teachings are primarily concerned with the purity of the mind.. All unwholesome actions are rooted in greed, hatred and delusion - all wholesome actions are rooted in generosity, love and wisdom.. In the Buddhist sense, very simply the word kamma means action. It is the law of cause and effect but does not mean the results of that law for which we should use the term vipaka. It is important to understand the relationship between kamma and vipaka: wholesome actions or kamma produce wholesome results or vipaka, unwholesome actions or kamma produce unwholesome results or vipaka. This is a natural law. We can regard it as a perfect system of natural justice.

answer Buddhism presupposes that the human being is composed of some five skandhas of which the rupa skandha disintegrates and dissolves and the arupa skandhas cease to exist completely at death. According to Advayavada Buddhism there is no human rebirth other than by sexual reproduction and the so-called new life that is produced in this manner is again, or yet, formally composed of some five skandhas. Sexual reproduction is by definition a karmic activity. Karma is how dependent origination operates in sentient beings. It is neither the cause nor the effect, but the event as such. In Buddhism the connecting thread is not a thing like in Hinduism, but an event. In the case of human rebirth, Advayavada Buddhism holds, the only cause is the division of the mother after fertilization of her egg or eggs by the father, which of course involves karmic activity of its own. The effect is the birth of the so-called new human being. And karma is the event of reproduction, the wondrous event of physical love. The genetic and social factors transmitted to and inherited by the so-called new human being are all fully reflected at birth with minor changes or variations in its own set of skandhas. There are no seeds in the vijñana cluster that will ripen as yet in this or a future life, as is implied in the Yogachara vipaka theory. There is no evidence at all of an alaya-vijñana or store-house consciousness that might contain and carry such seeds forward into the future. Everything is already there in the skandhas or clusters, geared and ready to grow into an adult human being. Modern scientific investigation in the field of genetics must yet supply many answers. The skandhas theory is but a very rudimentary presupposition of the actual process of heredity and mutation. Biophysics must in fact yet uncover how a living organism, indeed any biological system, can generate, copy and eventually transmit its data.

But we can safely state that from the moment of conception onwards everything that happens in the whole of existence, including though not primarily what this so-called new human being does or does not do by itself, will affect it accordingly in its further life. This includes the mechanical action of switching on or off of a light. If somebody trips over a chair in the dark and breaks his or her neck, this is most certainly the result of how dependent origination operates at the human level, the result of karma. This event will at the very least modify to a considerable extent the structure and relative arrangement of this particular set of skandhas. Also his or her cetana (will or volition), which formally forms part of the human being's samskara (forces) cluster, will no doubt be affected by the challenge in accordance with its intensity and the endurance the person can muster. Karma, we must stress, is pratitya-samutpada or dependent origination at our human level - it is the universal dynamic principle of existence as it operates within the human being, in its relations with other sentient beings and in its interaction with its environment. Wholesome human activities are those that are in agreement with the overall pattern and direction of existence. It is for this reason that they are experienced by us as such. You will no doubt agree that there cannot be two sets of rules at play, one for totality and one as devised by humanity itself for its own affairs only.

question Your contention that "the absolute and phenomena" are "exactly the same thing" but "observed subjectively from a different perspective" is reminiscent of Japanese Tendai's hongaku thought, the chief characteristic of which is world-affirmation (genjitsu kotei). The major problematic of this doctrine, as you are aware, is that identity (advaya) amounts to the equivocation of phenomena with enlightenment - a quasi-pantheism. On the other hand, some Buddhists argue that identity takes place at the level of final enlightenment, sub specie aeternitatis. After a careful reading of your letters, I must assume that the so-called advayic identity of "absolute and phenomena" takes place at a phenomenal level for you, which I take is your position. By analogy, you are postulating that grasses and trees realize Buddhahood because of the identity (advaya) of subject and its environment. Yet it is easy to see that "grasses and trees" remain such as the environment remains such, neither losing its separate identity. How therefore is this identity, seems puzzling? In what way are even the grasses and trees identical? How is the sky identical with the trees and so on? I apologize if I am not making myself very clear. I enjoy our correspondence. We are like two old fools playing chess in the park!

answer Your closing remark, which made us laugh very much over here, is very zenny and almost like a haiku. Two old fools playing chess in the park, indeed! We are very grateful for your pleasant and forthcoming attitude. The writer is also enjoying our correspondence very much.

Tendai Buddhism, you will agree, became in the end no more than a well-meant ontological fantasy as a result of the exaggerated syncretistic zeal of its followers. The radically non-dual philosophy and way of life that we call Advayavada is on the other hand purely an epistemological standpoint. In accordance with the doctrine of shunyata all distinctions are understood to be fundamentally illusory and artificial - dualisms as Nirvana and Samsara, or absolute and phenomena, are revealed as figments of our imagination. The term advaya in Advayavada means not-two in the sense of knowing that objectively there are not two realities or two conditions or aspects of reality. When we say that Samsara and Nirvana are the same thing, we do not mean that they are identical in the sense of being two-but-the-same, as is meant by the Hindu term advaita, but that they are simply not two, that they are very literally one-and-the-same thing: rather simply put, Samsara is the name we give to reality as experienced conventionally and Nirvana is the name we give to the same one reality but as experienced by the fully enlightened mind. The tendency to view reality as two is a result of our fundamental ignorance of the true nature of reality, as professor Murti writes in The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. The Spinozean expression sub specie aeternitatis is frequently used by Buddhists to indicate that we would see for ourselves that there are not two realities if we were able to view existence from the completely non-conceptual standpoint of eternity. But we can however ascertain rightnow, as indeed Madhyamaka proves, that there is no basis whatsoever to suppose that besides phenomena there is a second, transcendent and, moreover, superior reality. The specific purpose of Advayavada, which literally means not-two-ism, is to actively propound the conclusions of Madhyamaka philosophy in this respect. Your grasses and trees are indeed two of the many different manifestations of vegetable life. Advayavada does not maintain that they are identical phenomena; Advayavada maintains that there is no reason at all to believe that there is a further second reality, invisible to the eye, parallel to these life forms or any other phenomena.

There are not two realities, but there are, Madhyamaka teaches, two ways of seeing, of experiencing the one reality: there are two truths, the conventional everyday truth (samvriti-satya) and absolute, ultimate truth (paramartha-satya). In our everyday application of conventional truth, though we are aware of the intrinsic emptiness of all dharmas or phenomena since we know that all concepts are conditioned and exist as such only by virtue of our idea of them or of their alleged opposite, we nevertheless do take into account and make use of the relative aspects of phenomena in our commonplace interaction with other sentient beings and with our environment. As a matter of fact, the Noble Eightfold Path operates throughout exclusively at the level of conventional truth. As we advance along the Buddha's Middle Way responding to his promise of Nirvana by ridding ourselves of the so-called ten fetters (dasha-, dasasamyojana) that bind us to Samsara, the fallacies in our perception of Samsara are progressively transformed, purified first into conventional truth, and it is through conventional truth that we shall eventually come to understand the non-conceptual import of ultimate truth. The dialectic of Madhyamaka, with its exhaustive analysis of the nature of reality, indeed takes place at the level of conventional truth. By absolute, ultimate truth is meant our awareness of the underlying field of experience where all phenomena stripped of their relative aspects are known to happen: it is our insight into the void beyond all concepts. This field of experience where the real events are known to take place is that of non-dual emptiness, shunyata, the realm of prajña, non-dual, contentless intuition. To experience existence at this level, which we can truly say lies between the notions of being and non-being, is nothing less than Nirvana.

question I think I understand the basic principle of the Buddha's Middle Way. The Eightfold Path is similar to the Christian Ten Commandments and is an example of how best to develop your life. But am I right in believing that the Middle Way is also an acceptance of destiny, whilst trying to live life as it is now as best as you can?

answer The Noble Eightfold Path is indeed frequently seen in the West as a sort of Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments. In popular Buddhism, however, people generally become Buddhist by reciting publicly, not the Eightfold Path, with which they are often not very familiar, but the Three Refuges (in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha) and the Five Precepts (not to kill, steal, misbehave sexually, lie or become intoxicated). In Advayavada Buddhism, on the other hand, the Eightfold Path is, as explained, interpreted dynamically as a reflexion of overall Totality at the human level: the Eightfold Path allows us "to do as Totality does", or "to fall into step with Totality", Totality, that is, as it is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it.

question In one of your talks in Dutch, you describe Advayavada as an 'enkelvoudigheidsleer', which simply means 'nonduality teaching' in English.

answer A well-known saying in Zen goes something like this: "The land where it is never hot or cold, is where in the summer I sweat and in the winter I shiver". What it means is that it is hot anywhere only if you compare it with the thought of cold in our minds, and vice-versa. We are comparing a temperature with our recollection or idea of another. We are in fact comparing something real with something unreal. It is this dualism of what is and is not, of what is so and is not so, that we, as in Zen, seek to transcend first in Advayavada. It is important to understand how our mind works in this respect. This is what professor Murti means by the intellect being infected by an "inveterate tendency to view Reality as identity or difference, permanent or momentary, one or many etc." This is where it all starts. We are constantly creating images in our mind of what is not there in order to determine what is. We must become very aware of this mechanism of our mind if we are to proceed at all effectively along the Middle Way. You have not got very far yet when you still see as true the image of a wicked world that you yourself have conjured up to contrast your own so-called achievements with, when you still require an evil world to feel good, an enemy to feel strong.

question Was it not Kierkegaard who said that one must be content to be a human being? Is this what Advayavada strives after, to be pleased with being alive?

answer Yes, you might indeed put it that way. The Advayavadin is a happy Buddhist. He is happy to be alive and he makes no bones about it. B.C. Law already tells us in his 1937 Concepts of Buddhism that duhkha or suffering is nowhere postulated in the Buddhist scriptures as a "permanent feature of reality" and is only "admitted and entertained as a possible contingency in life as it is generally lived". He explains duhkha or suffering thus: "The problem of dukkha is essentially rooted in the feeling of discord or disparity. Birth, decay or death is not in itself dukkha. These are only a few contingencies in human experience which upset the expectations of men. From the point of view of mind, dukkha is just a vedana or feeling which is felt by the mind either in respect of the body or in respect of itself, and as a feeling, it is conditioned by certain circumstances. In the absence of these circumstances there is no possibility of its occurrence. Whether a person is affected by dukkha or not depends on the view he or she takes of things. If the course of common reality is that being once in life, one cannot escape either decay or death, and if the process of decay sets in or death actually takes place, there is no reason why that person should be subject to dukkha by trying to undo what cannot be undone. Thus dukkha is based upon misconstruction of the dhammata or law of things or their way of happening in life." We do not agree, however, that duhkha is a feeling felt by a mind separate from the body. Duhkha (unhappiness) and mind (to think) are both events: formally duhkha belongs to the vedana (sensations or feelings) cluster and mind (to think) groups a number of events of the samskara (mental formational forces) cluster.

question How do we know about the world? Via the body, perception, sense consciousness and so on, all dependent on this embodied state. But how seldom our awareness rests within this body; how seldom the body and mind are at ease with themselves. We seldom think about our bodies; they are something given. When they work well and provide us with pleasure and happiness, we are satisfied with them and then ignore them. Only when they stop working properly, do we attend to them, and then only as a teacher to an errant pupil; we are angry and disappointed that they have failed us. We have a strangely ambivalent attitude to something so vital to us. It's not like our relationship with a car; we can't go out and hire or buy another one when it breaks down; yet we often treat our cars with more care and consideration.

We are born into this body, and when it dies, we die. But does one choose this body or decide its dimensions? Is one even able fully to control it? Can one choose when one wakes, goes to sleep, is ill, is healthy? No, most of what occurs with respect to the body is involuntary. We know, for example, that the body has various repair mechanisms, but it is very rare that we can set these in motion ourselves. Is this what we are, these arms, these legs, this head, eyes, teeth? With modern techniques, an awful lot of it can be made prosthetically. And so what are we? The bit that remains? The brain, two ears and so on? Or is this perhaps not how it is at all, not what we are at all? If the body were simply us, we would have a great deal more to say in the matter!

answer The lion's share of our body's activities is fortunately under the control of our peripheral nervous system, which includes the autonomic nervous system. The sensory nerve fibres of the peripheral system carry impulses from e.g. the ear or the skin to the brain, and its motor nerve fibres carry impulses from the brain to e.g. our skeletal muscles. The autonomic nervous system comprises a sympathetic and a parasympathetic system which counterbalance each other. Together they run, for example, our heart rate and the flow of blood through our blood vessels, the contractions of our digestive tract, the ever-changing size of the pupil of the eye, the dilation and constriction of our bronchii, etc. I do not think that you would want to have a conscious say in these matters.

You will agree that these nervous systems carry out very complicated and, above all, indispensable and irreplaceable functions. But the relevant fact in the present context is that the systems are things (that belong to the rupa skandha) and what they carry out are not things but activities, processes (that belong to the arupa skandhas). A thing and what that thing does are not two things; they are a thing and an, its, activity or function, and an activity is an event, not a thing. In the same way, Advayavada Buddhism stresses again and again that the mind is not a separate thing but one more function of the body; the mind is to think (and consciousness is to know) and to think is not a thing but an activity, a process, which is an event, not a thing. A mind that is in any way a thing separate from the body, and moreover carries out activities on its own and by itself, is an atman or pudgala, or a soul. To propound that such a thing exists, as you seem to do, contravenes the Buddha's most basic anatman teaching.

Bearing in mind that the skandhas theory is but a very rudimentary presupposition of the actual physiological processes, earlier on we had this to say about the skandhas in this respect: The skandhas in fact do nothing - they are the doing. The cluster of physical existence is the rupa skandha. Also this cluster does nothing - it is physical existence in all its aspects. The four or so non-physical skandhas are clusters of events - they denote how the rupa skandha is. The rupa skandha does not cause these events, it is them. Like when we say that a tree grows. The tree does not do the growing; it is the growing. This is how the tree is, how it exists in space and time. The growing of the tree is quite obviously an event, and not a thing, let alone a separate thing capable of in turn doing other things by itself. We owe the cohesion of the skandhas to the spontaneous dynamic principle of existence: the interdependent and conditioned co-arising or dependent origination or universal dynamic relativity of all phenomena, called pratitya-samutpada in Sanskrit, and which is the same as Buddha-nature and the same as Emptiness.

important note Advayavada supports the view that consciousness (to know) is a biological phenomenon. All living beings - plants, animals and humans - experience the world in their own ways. Each organism engages in a creative relationship with the external world, bringing forth a myriad of different ways of knowing, whereby the physiology of the organism changes accordingly (inherently) in the process.

question Diana St. Ruth writes the following in Tricycle: When one follows what is right according to one's heart and good sense, when wisdom and compassion become real, not contrived, the way of heaven manifests beneath one's feet. That is the way of liberation from suffering and the realization of genuine happiness.

answer Yes, that's right. This is what in Advayavada Buddhism we call 'reconciliation with Buddha-nature'. In Buddhism to follow 'what is right' means to follow the Noble Eightfold Path. It is necessary to follow the Path to realize what Buddha-nature is, for the way of heaven to manifest, as St. Ruth says; the Path is a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time - time is the being of Buddha-nature. In Advayavada the Path is moreover seen, not as a means to become something in the future, but as the way to become as something rightaway in the herenow. The Eightfold Path is seen as the way to become oneself herenow as existence becoming over time now in its overall right direction; it is by becoming herenow as the whole of existence as it is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it, that we free ourselves from suffering and realize genuine happiness. Nirvana is when we experience our own existence as being completely in harmony with existence as a whole becoming over time - Nirvana is the ultimate reconciliation with Buddha-nature achievable by man.

question How do you know that existence becomes over time 'in the right direction', as you say?

answer Firstly, we must agree that overall existence cannot, by definition, be anything but just right as it is and, secondly, that the objective of the Middle Way devoid of extremes propounded by the Buddha as the correct existential attitude must be to reconcile us with existence as a whole (we can safely assume that there are not two sets of rules at play, one for existence and one for its 'by-product' people). Dynamically, i.e. in its Eightfold Path form, the Buddha's Middle Way is therefore a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time. As the Eightfold Path leads us towards better and better, it follows, inductively if you will, that, in human terms, existence as a whole becomes over time towards better and better as well. Inversely, we experience as good, right or wholesome those events that are in agreement with the overall pattern and direction of existence - it is for this reason that they are experienced as such.

question Do I count three realms of experience in your description of the dvaya satya doctrine: Samsara, conventional truth, and ultimate truth or Nirvana?

answer Nagarjuna's dvaya satya teaching is very much a two-truths doctrine, as its Sanskrit name indicates. Samsara is to experience the phenomenal world at the level of conventional everyday truth (samvriti-satya). Our initial perception of the phenomenal world normally contains many fallacies and the conversion of these fallacies into conventional truth, by following the Noble Eightfold Path, occurs entirely within the realm of Samsara. At the same time the fetters that bind us to Samsara are broken one by one. Ideally, Samsara becomes in the end pure conventional truth, whilst all ten of the restraining fetters have been shattered along the way. Now, it is as a result of this purification of our perception of the phenomenal world, at the level of conventional truth, that we shall come to understand the significance of ultimate truth. Ultimate truth (paramartha-satya) is truth divested of all our preconceptions, including eventually those expressed here. Nirvana is to experience the phenomenal world at this level of absolute, ultimate truth - to experience the phenomenal world thus, brings about the complete extinction (nirodha) of all suffering (duhkha, dukkha) as a direct result of our full reconciliation with reality as it truly is. The fully liberated person disposes, then, of two truths: the everyday conventional truth of the phenomenal world and the ultimate truth of its pure, unblemished becoming, its Emptiness, also called Buddha-nature.

question We also have meditated and taught on many of these subjects but use different terminology. As an example you use the term 'ever better' and we use the term 'more beautiful'. We do this because each person has an innate sense of what is 'more beautiful'. You do not think about beauty, it simply is known. 'Better' is a term that requires the intellectual body to analyze two things based on a reference standard. For what purpose or state of being is it better? What makes the time of the plague in Europe ever better than classical Greek civilization?

answer To understand Advayavada it is necessary to accept in the first place the preeminence of overall existence over mankind and that existence cannot, by definition, be anything but just right as it is. Secondly, that the objective of the Middle Way, being the correct existential attitude expounded by the Buddha, is to reconcile us with overall existence - that in its Eightfold Path form, the Middle Way is a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time. Now, as the Eightfold Path leads us towards better and better, it follows, inductively if you will, that, in human terms, existence as a whole becomes over time towards better and better as well. Inversely, we experience as good, right or wholesome those events that are in agreement with the overall pattern and direction of existence - it is for this reason that they are experienced as such. The reference standard, you see, is overall existence. It is not mankind, with its civilizations and plagues, let alone, however well intentioned, our subjective sense of relative beauty.

question I am unsure how you are using the term time-being. Are you saying that time and being are the same? In meditation periodically we enter into a state where time is no longer a factor. You enter and then you leave. You have no recollection of any time passage nor events. If time and being are the same, where is time a part of this experience?

answer Time is the being of Buddha-nature. During your form of meditation time does not seem to you to be a factor only because you are unaware of, and afterwards have no recollection of, the innumerable events that continue to go on all around you during its duration.

question How do unmanifest potentials fit in with your view of the 'whole of infinite Reality'? Is the 'whole of infinite Reality' only contained in the phenomenal world?

answer There is no other reality than the phenomenal world and the phenomenal world exists only in the present. It is spontaneously brought about in the present by the interdependent and conditioned co-arising or dependent origination or universal dynamic relativity of all phenomena, called pratitya-samutpada in Sanskrit, which is its inherent dynamic principle. This means that the ingredients of what you call 'unmanifest potentials' must be sought amongst present phenomena and that your idea of them is merely a herenow mental deduction. A pre-cognition of unmanifest potentials would imply that they already exist in the future, which is an impossibility.

question You have mentioned Tendai; how does your form of Buddhism explain the tenets of Shingon Buddhism?

answer Shingon is a Buddhist religion rich in esoteric symbols and ritual. Advayavada Buddhism is a radical non-dual philosophy and way of life of the 'what you see is what you get' kind. In Advayavada Buddhism the individual person is considered, albeit a very small one, an integral part of the whole - in Advayavada there is no other duality than that of the part and the whole, than that of the numerator and the denominator so to say. In Shingon Buddhism you have the individual and you have Vairochana; these are obviously experienced in Shingon as two, but it is not clear to us whether this is to the point that Shingon must be considered an 'other power' religion like the several Amidisms.

question One of the key Nagarjunian insights is the transcendence from 'emptiness versus interdependence' to 'emptiness inseparable from interdependence'. My own big project is to somehow bring this insight, and the rich fruits it yields, to the so-called Science Wars and indeed to the global crisis. I view general sentient experience as the foundation for human experience, and human and scientific experience as building on that. I do not see the basic scientific facts of life as being the foundation for human life. At the level of philosophy of science these two differing points of view manifest as the 'Science Wars' - either scientific facts correspond to the actual objects and relations existing in the world, or they are just arbitrarily made up and enforced by back-room politics. But the point is that scientific facts are inseparably enmeshed in the causal structure of our way of life - indeed, the verifiability of our scientific theories does not prove their absolute universal validity, it proves their interdependence with the verification procedures! Clearly, the emptiness of scientific facts is inseparable from their interdependence! It is the understanding of this inseparability of emptiness and interdependence that brings liberation - can our poor suffering species somehow wake up to claim what is already ours?

answer According to Advayavada Buddhism the objective of Buddhism is indeed to reconcile the individual with the whole of existence 'as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it', which we believe is essentially the same as the reconciliation you seek of 'human' and 'general sentient' experience.

question In what you say in your web pages there is a flavor of some sort of an underlying absolute reality. In some sense, of course, that must be true. As we investigate reality, we might imagine ourselves digging deeper and deeper into its fundamental reality. Absolute reality would be like the center of the earth - maybe it is beyond the capacity of human language to express, but there it is all the same. The contrasting view I prefer is more like probing out into space. The more we investigate, the vaster the universe appears. Eventually maybe we realize that space is boundless and that our investigations will be limited only by how far we push them.

answer The results of that digging or probing, however sophisticated, still belong to conventional truth. They are only so many more conventional ontological facts, about phenomena, that one has been able to collect. They do not belong to an underlying reality nor do they have an underlying reality themselves. There is in Advayavada no underlying reality, separate from phenomena, to be investigated. What we are after is ultimate truth. It is as a result of the purification of our perception of the phenomenal world, indeed at the level of conventional truth, that we shall come to understand the significance of ultimate truth. Nirvana is to experience the phenomenal world at this level of absolute, ultimate truth - to experience the phenomenal world thus, brings about the complete extinction of all suffering as a direct result of our full reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

question Nagarjuna says something like this: "However confused people are who take ordinary appearances as substantially existent, even more confused are those who take emptiness as substantially existent." So how can we be after something that is not a thing at all? I think of absolute truth, of emptiness, as something like the inevitable ungraspability of things. And it isn't just ordinary things that are ungraspable. Also Buddhahood and emptiness are ultimately ungraspable. Emptiness simply already is, it's the nature of everything already, completely and thoroughly. But I nevertheless have the bad habit of grasping at things as if they were ultimately graspable, and I suffer and create suffering for others because of the incompatibility of my actions with the way things actually are. I need to bring myself into harmony with the nature of things, with their ungraspability, which is inseparable from their mutual interdependence.

answer To realize what in Advayavada Buddhism we call 'reconciliation with Buddha-nature' one must follow the Eightfold Path. In Advayavada the Path is interpreted dynamically and, let us clarify further here, as strictly non-dual, this in the sense that it bears no reference at all to anything predetermined by others or oneself. It is moreover seen, not as a means to become something in the future, but as the way to become as something rightaway in the herenow. It is seen as the way to become oneself herenow as existence becoming over time now in its overall right direction; it is by becoming herenow as the whole of existence as it is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it, that we free ourselves from suffering. Nirvana is when we experience our own existence as being completely in harmony with existence as a whole becoming over time - Nirvana is the ultimate reconciliation with Buddha-nature achievable by man.

question There are something like 84.000 different ways to work toward liberation. Oftentimes a way will include some sort of idea about itself. For example, one might reflect "This way has been blessed by the Buddhas, has been passed down an unbroken chain of realized Masters from Shakyamuni to the present day. This is a reliable way to practise that will lead me to enlightenment." And a spiritual path can have a relatively stable identity maintained by various social communication practises. One way this has been done in Buddhism over the millenia is by debate. Rituals reinforce boundaries and names for various schools also support identities.

Problems arise, however, when we get carried away by these distinct identities. Things are actually quite fluid. We try to achieve security by grasping at things, but they are not so solid as we make them out to be, and when they crumble we get upset and grasp even harder, setting off all sort of vicious cycles.

Yet, it can be very practical to work in a sort of relaxed way with notions of identity, provided one accepts the limited conventional nature of such identity. It is quite handy in a loose way to think about, for example, Buddhism and Christianity as distinct paths. One could say that Buddhism is atheistic and Christianity theistic. On the other hand, there seems to be some useful mileage to be gotten by reflecting on parallels such as that of the Mahayana Trikaya with the Christian Trinity.

I wonder how one can effectively work with the distinct identities of spiritual paths without creating suffering for ourselves by grasping at such distinctions as if they were ultimately valid.

answer Advayavada is, if you wish, one of those 84.000 ways to liberation you speak of. Its aim is to provide a solid framework for the pursuit of truth. We also say: Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. But we do believe that when the goal is, not merely academic, but one's own liberation, we must at some time pick a suitable route and try to adhere to it faithfully afterwards. To follow the Advayavada path you are asked, yes, to accept a) the preeminence of overall existence over mankind, and b) that the objective of the Buddha's teaching is to reconcile us with overall existence. The validity and the enormous implications of these two basic tenets are, indeed, the main discussion matter on these pages. Please understand, however, that for us as followers of this particular path, their conventional validity is no longer the principal issue, but, on the other hand, for the same reason, the more so their implications.

question What is the position of Advayavada Buddhism in the Dorje Shugden controversy?

answer There are people who say that it is an evil spirit and there are people who say that it is a beneficial spirit. We try to tell people, as many others do, that there are no spirits.

question What is the difference between Advayavada Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta?

answer Without going into too much detail, according to the Advaita Vedanta religion we each of us have a surviving soul and this soul forms part of an unchanging overall godhead called Brahman. Advayavada Buddhism is a radically non-dual philosophy and way of life that adheres faithfully to the fundamental anatman or no-soul doctrine of Buddhism - Advayavada simply sees life as one manifestation of existence and existence itself as a constant flux of ever-changing events with no known beginning or necessary end. As for human life specifically, yes, the planet earth is, among other things, to loosely quote Alan Watts, 'peopling' most wondrously at this time.

question You say that in Advayavada Buddhism the Buddha's Eightfold Path is "dynamic and strictly non-dual"; what exactly do you mean?

answer In most other forms of Buddhism the Eightfold Path is made up of eight largely unrelated and prescriptive factors, often of very differing content. For Advayavada Buddhism, however, it is clear that the objective of the Middle Way, being the correct existential attitude expounded by the Buddha, is to reconcile us with existence as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it - dynamically, i.e. as the Noble Eightfold Path, the Middle Way is therefore seen as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of existence as a whole becoming over time. It is for this reason that the eight steps of the Noble Eightfold Path as advocated by Advayavada Buddhism do depend sequentially on each other, and are free of any criteria set beforehand that one is supposed to conform to and fully 'actual' in the sense that they are not done for a further purpose or motive which is not in the step itself.

question As our awareness gets sharper, the momentariness of all phenomena becomes more and more clear to us. We begin to see that all phenomena are made up of tiny little segments, just like watching a row of ants. We begin to see that thoughts, feelings, images, and all the sensations are momentary. They are arising and vanishing, arising and vanishing. This insight should uproot and remove all conceit in us. How can we think "I am this" or "I am that", "I have attained this" or "I have done that" when each of these thoughts is but a bubble in the mind, simply arising and vanishing in an instant, with no ground and no power?

answer One problem with such an extreme 'momentariness view', is, for example, how memories (including knowledge) and the effects of past karma might then be carried forward over time - in the Vijñanavada this difficulty led to the atman-like idea of a 'storehouse consciousness'. To begin with, all phenomena, or dharmas, must not be placed on equal footing. Things and events are not the same thing. Things have corporeality and building blocks. Events, as thoughts and feelings, however, occur but do not exist, and it is wrong to reify them. So, as far as the impermanence of the so-called skandhas is concerned, there is, in fact, only the rupa skandha to worry about - the arupa skandhas are merely clusters of events. Maybe we can state that a rupa skandha survives for as long as its building blocks are all there and in good working order. We owe the cohesion of the skandhas to the spontaneous dynamic principle of existence: the interdependent and conditioned co-arising or dependent origination or universal dynamic relativity of all phenomena, called pratitya-samutpada in Sanskrit, and which is the same as Buddha-nature and the same as Emptiness; modern science must still disclose how exactly things come to self-organize and cooperate. Karma, according to Advayavada Buddhism, is dependent origination at the level of us human beings.

question Joe Ordinary Smith, the real recipient of the Buddha's teachings, especially in this day and age of depravity, could never and will never embrace your teachings. They are too highly theoretical and Buddhism is profound in its simplicity. You have missed the mark. As Nichiren said: It is better to be a leper who chants 'namu myoho renge-kyo' than the high priest of the Tientai sect.

answer You will find it very difficult to study a non-dual philosophy and way of life like Advayavada Buddhism objectively, being, as you seem to be, so uncompromisingly committed to a religious teaching.

question According to Shingon esoterism, matter and spirit are one, and therefore a sixth element, consciousness, has been added to the traditional five elements. On the front face of a stupa you will find the seed syllables for earth, water, fire, air and ether, which form the mantra of Vairochana, and on the back face there is the syllable Bam, for consciousness. By extension the human body is comparable to a stupa. The main metaphysical sutras studied in Shingon are the Prajñaparamita, the Saddharmapundarika and the Avatamsaka sutras, and the main tantric scriptures are the Mahavairochana, the Sambhodi and the Vajra sutras. The practice of Shingon devotion together with the study of these sutras gives one the ability to realize buddhahood in this life.

answer In Advayavada thought, consciousness (to know) is seen as a function, a biological process, which is an event, and not as a thing, whilst in Shingon esoterism, as you kindly explain, consciousness is considered an element, as earth, water, fire, etc, i.e. a thing, which implies that it has corporeality, a proposition we cannot share.

question In one of your previous answers you say the following: "Due to ignorance we may, however, misinterpret reality and see the conventional relative truth of for example work and play as ultimate truth. When we are unaware of or choose to disregard the existence of the underlying field of experience, when we are blind or oblivious to its wonders, we become enmeshed in Samsara or, to use more familiar Western imagery, we become the carriers of original sin. But to experience existence at the level of absolute emptiness is nothing less than Nirvana - this is what the Advayavadin endeavours to achieve". What is, may I ask, your interpretation of 'original sin'?

answer According to Genesis, God forbade man to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and also, when man had disobeyed, from the tree of everlasting life. It transpires at this point that God's reason for the initial ban was that man would otherwise "become as one of us" and start viewing life, but without having the qualifications to do so, in terms of right and wrong. Earlier on in Genesis it says quite clearly that God had seen that everything that he had made "was very good", and it is indeed because of man's reluctant acceptance of God's creation, his picking and choosing caused by eating the forbidden fruit, symbolized further by his being ashamed of his natural nakedness, why he is banished from the Garden.

question Lately I came across the term Brilliant Sanity, also called Basic Wisdom. It is described in Core Process Psychotherapy as "the presence of that which is already free, ubiquitous, limitless and inherent"; it "arises in the moment, creates the bigger picture of it all and holds meaning"; it is "also known as Buddha Nature or Tathagatagarbha, and who we truly are", and as "intrinsic health, characterized by spaciousness, clarity and warmth, inherent in us, existing in all beings, and unconditional"; it is further "our inherent wakefulness that can be pointed to, recognized and encouraged through psychological work", and "because the goal is a way of being in the present, and the impulse towards that goal is the goal itself, Brilliant Sanity is the impulse towards Brilliant Sanity". The concept immediately reminded me of your Fourth Sign of Being.

answer We are not conversant with Core Process Psychotherapy, but Brilliant Sanity or Basic Wisdom, as described, certainly seems to be the same force inherent in the whole of existence that we call the Fourth Sign of Being, when entertained psychologically at the sentient level. The concept of Brilliant Sanity points to a deep trust in the way things truly are beyond our often distorted personal view of them. In Advayavada Buddhism, the Buddha is understood to have been first and foremost a healer, a healer of existential suffering, of duhkha - the teaching of the Buddha is understood in Advayavada as a Way of Reconciliation with existence as a whole just right as it is, i.e. as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it. It would seem that Core Process Psychotherapy seeks to assist us in achieving this same reconciliation, when our conventional efforts to do so are found wanting.

question What is the difference between Theravada and Advayavada?

answer Basically using the same tools, Theravada is 'a Way of Liberation from the sorrows of human existence' and Advayavada is 'a Way of Reconciliation with the wonders of overall existence'.

question Zen Master Dogen said that as soon as we become conscious that we have hit the mark, we have already viewed it from our personal point of view as a yardstick, and that letting go and throwing down our personal point of view as a yardstick is actualized only beyond our consciousness.

answer When you understand that there is no self and that your idea of having a self is caused by your fixed relation to the objects of the mind, then it is only a matter of making the way you look at things flexible and fluid, for instance by following the Eightfold Path dynamically as Advayavada teaches, to start to see things as they really are.

question I'm curious to know how dependent origination, pratitya-samutpada, fits in with your idea of progress as the fourth sign of being.

answer Dependent origination is how overall existence becomes over time, in the same way that Te is how the Tao becomes. "Dependent origination is the explicability and coherence of the universe. Its emptiness is the fact that there is no more to it than that" (Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, New York 1995). Now karma, as we see it, is our share of dependent origination at our human level - karma is, so to say, our stake in pratitya-samutpada, and we experience as good, right, wholesome, and beneficial, indeed as progress, that which agrees with the overall direction of existence becoming over time. The Taoist sage follows the Tao by imitating Nature - the Advayavadin sees the Eightfold Path as nothing less than a reflexion at the human level of the whole of existence becoming over time: the Advayavadin sees the Buddha as the prophet of existence as it truly is, as it truly is beyond our own commonly limited and biased personal experience of it.

question In your answers you often refer to the Tao and its force Te - what are the main differences between Taoism and Advayavada?

answer Clearly not doing any justice at all to the profundity of Lao-Chiang thought, we might nevertheless say that whilst the Taoist seeks to follow the Tao particularly by balancing the yin and yang aspects of Nature in his own life, the Advayavadin, like the Zen practitioner, does not stop here, but goes on to transcend this polarity in his thinking and way of life - the Advayavadin achieves all this by following the Eightfold Path.

question Are Advayavadins vegetarians?

answer That is for everyone to decide individually. We personally seek to live life as it is as wisely and compassionately as possible and very strongly disapprove of any form of factory farming and the transportation of live animals over long distances under inhuman conditions.

question The school of Buddhism that leads to true and indestructible happiness is that of Nichiren Buddhism. By chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which means 'Veneration to the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law', you shall be able to tap the Buddhahood that exists at the most fundamental level of all life and attain Buddhahood yourself. When you chant to the Gohonzon, the mandala that represents Nichiren Daishonin's enlightened life, which is no different from the enlightened potential within all ordinary people when tapped through the power of each person's faith and practice, you shall be able to become one with the Good Law and to draw from it inexhaustible strength, wisdom, joy and hope. Chanting also helps you to summon courage, strength and confidence to overcome whatever difficulties may arise.

answer Thank you for your very elucidating description of Nichiren Buddhism. In Advayavada Buddhism the teaching of the Buddha is similarly understood as a way of reconciliation with overall existence as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased experience of it, with Buddha-nature. As explained before, in Advayavada the Noble Eightfold Path is considered as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of existence as a whole moving forwards over time in the right direction - Nirvana is seen as the ultimate reconciliation with reality becoming achievable by man.

question The late Ayya Khema writes the following in one of her books: 'To get an inkling of voidness liberation, we can deliberately empty the mind of all it contains, realizing that it has no absolute significance. The less we carry in the mind, the less tired the mind becomes. Usually our minds are full to the brim, which is a great burden for us. Voidness liberation means that there is an absence of all formations (thoughts and reactions). When, for a moment, we have let them go, we can notice how relieved we feel, and we get a taste of voidness liberation. Then we let thoughts and reactions return and realize the difference. Immediately irritation arises, which usually escapes our awareness because we are used to a mind full of formations. We experience the heavy, debilitating, burdensome nature of thoughts only when we are able to compare our usual mind states with momentary emptiness. This may be the first time we notice the constant sense bombardment we commonly experience. The most insidious irritations arise through thinking. Thought is a constant process with which we identify and then we act upon. [But] we cannot act upon everything we see or hear. If we see a beautiful sunset or hear some great music, there is nothing to do about it, except to like it. No need for a reaction, which may easily result in new problems. Even the most innocuous situations can cause friction if we identify with our thinking process. Once we express our views, hopes, and beliefs, the argument starts, and tears start flowing.' What do you think?

answer With all due respect, this is not at all the position of Advayavada Buddhism. Our understanding is that the Buddha's teaching exhorts us, on the contrary, to continually improve the quality of our thoughts by conscientiously following the Noble Eightfold Path. According to our view the objective of the Middle Way, being the correct existential attitude expounded by the Buddha, is to reconcile us with existence, not to turn our backs on it. Buddhism must be understood as a Way of Reconciliation with the whole of existence just right as it is, i.e. as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it.

question Is Advayavada a religious Buddhism?

answer The word 'religion' (possibly from religare to restrain or tie back) has different connotations, none of which we believe is readily applicable to Advayavada Buddhism. Advayavada Buddhism is a non-dual philosophy and way of life that essentially proclaims that there is 'no cloth apart from the threads, no threads apart from the cloth'. What perhaps strikes some people as an unsubstantiated article of faith is our assertion that progress is inherent in existence, but what Advayavada in fact teaches in this respect is simply that we humans experience as progress (pratipada, patipada) that which follows the direction in which overall existence advances over time. There is no doubt a parallel with religion here: the religious person will probably say that what he or she experiences as progress is that which is in agreement with God's wishes and inner plan.

question Prior to the level of assumptions and presuppositions that we gain through experience, there are levels of instincts and basic temperament that come through our genes. In raising my children I have seen all too clearly how the basic temperament leads to the basic assumptions which in turn become the foundation upon which we build our world view. I think it was Santayana who pointed out that most people have established their fundamental philosophy at the age of eighteen and then spend the rest of their lives selectively accumulating evidence that this philosophy is correct, or, to put it in other terms, overcoming cognitive dissonance.

We can learn to challenge our assumptions and we can broaden our point of view, but to the extent that we think, our thinking will always grow from the foundation that begins in our genes. But we can also transcend thought. This is the whole meaning of original mind. Yes, the mental activities leading up to and away from this are based on assumptions, but the actual state of being during samadhi/nirvana/satori is free of all categories, all thoughts, all imaginings, all emotions. This is why it is truly called liberation, because it is momentary freedom from a chain of cause and effect that runs from the beginning of time. I know many believe this is impossible, but I say to them be more diligent in your practice. The result is worth the effort.

answer We have little to add to this.

question We normally wander around sensing that phenomena are imbued with their own self-possessed selfness that marks them to be what they are, independent of anything else. We innately and intellectually perceive them to exist from their own side alone, self-established and intrinsically identifiable. They may be related or interact with other phenomena, but we generally see them to contain their own distinguishing identity. Doctrinally and experientially this is the selfness that is refuted in Buddhism. Emptiness (shunyata) is the non-affirming negation of such inherent selfness. Emptiness is a negation that only negates without affirming some other possibility. It is not someplace occupied by mystics and seers. It is not a state of mind where no thoughts echo. It is not something we can detect by staring at things hard enough. In no way is anything else asserted. Also emptiness is empty. Teachings and meditators hold that emptiness can be perceived directly, but nowhere do they assert that emptiness becomes a something. Emptiness is the absence of what seemed to be obviously manifest.

answer Well said. The fully liberated person disposes of two truths: the conventional everyday relative or 'veiled' truth (samvriti-satya) of the phenomenal world and the ultimate truth (paramartha-satya) of its pure, unblemished becoming, its Emptiness, also called Buddha-nature. We say that it is as a result of the purification of our perception of the phenomenal world, at the level of conventional truth, that we shall come to understand the significance of ultimate truth. Nirvana is to experience the phenomenal world at this level of absolute, ultimate truth - to experience the phenomenal world thus, brings about the complete extinction (nirodha) of all suffering (duhkha, dukkha) as a direct result of our full reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

question Does your Fourth Sign of Being relate in any way to the important Buddhist notion of mahakaruna?

answer They are, in our view, very similar if not identical. David Brazier says in his Zen Therapy that the virtue of great compassion, symbolized for example by the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, implies something universal. He says that compassion is to tune in to the way of the individual who is in front of us now, and that great compassion, mahakaruna, is to flow with the mysterious but omnipresent Tao, the great way of the universe. This is also the position of Advayavada Buddhism. We believe that the objective of the Middle Way expounded by the Buddha is to reconcile us with overall existence - we understand the Noble Eightfold Path as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence moving forward over time. Our position also implies a deep trust in the goodness of existence as it is beyond our limited personal experience.

question Does Advayavada Buddhism propound a system of tenets, i.e. a way of asserting objects, selflessness and so forth? At times I hear Prasangika-like differentiations, but not clearly enough to hold them apart. For beginners like myself struggling to progress from provisional, accessible, views to more 'final' ones, such distinctions are most helpful. I ask this not to engage in debate, but merely to place what I am reading about Advayavada in the framework of prior studies.

answer On the one hand we have the conventional truth of empirical reality as perceived by our senses and, on the other, the unreality of things from the standpoint of ultimate truth because we know them to be produced by causes and conditions. I suppose this places us roughly, as far as this is concerned, in the Chandrakirti camp of Prasangika Madhyamaka, would you not agree? See also 'Madhyamaka is advayavada' from Prof. David R. Loy's Nonduality, A Study in Comparative Philosophy in our excerpts section.

Prof. Loy quotes from Chandrakirti's Prasannapada as follows: "Nagarjuna holds that dependent origination is nothing else but the coming to rest of the manifold of named things (prapañcopashama). When the everyday mind and its contents are no longer active, the subject and object of everyday transactions having faded out because the turmoil of origination, decay, and death has been left behind completely, that is final beatitude."

It is important to bear in mind, however, that it is as a result of the purification of our perception of the phenomenal world, at the level of conventional truth, that we shall come to understand the full significance of ultimate truth. The Noble Eightfold Path indeed operates throughout exclusively at the level of conventional truth. As we advance along the Buddha's Middle Way responding to his promise of Nirvana by ridding ourselves of the so-called ten fetters that bind us to Samsara, the fallacies in our perception of Samsara are progressively transformed, purified first into conventional truth, and it is through conventional truth that we shall eventually come to understand the paramount non-conceptual import of ultimate truth. To experience the phenomenal world at this level of absolute, ultimate truth is nothing less than Nirvana - to experience the phenomenal world thus, brings about the complete extinction (nirodha) of all suffering (duhkha, dukkha) as a direct result of our full reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

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question My first reaction to your proposed revision of Buddhist phenomenology was to regard it as more Hegelian than Buddhist. Hegel of course shared with Buddha a non-dual, holistic concept of Reality. But Hegel's universe evolves. Through advancing human understanding, the universe is becoming conscious of itself. This notion of reality unfolding in history is quite alien to the Indic world-view that produced the Buddha. But this of course does not mean it is wrong, or that it is necessarily not a view held by Buddha or at least implied by his teaching. I also suspect that you are attempting to graft the Western idea of progress onto Buddhism. This would certainly be one way of resolving the difficulty of finding a satisfactory foundation for a Buddhist ethics in the West, but perhaps at the cost of blunting Buddhism's ability to provide a persuasive critique of the excesses of the Western faith in technology and progress. This again does not necessarily mean that you are wrong.

answer We believe that not the human manifestation of life, let alone any particular aspect of it such as the advance of human understanding, is the measure of things in space and time, but that the whole of infinite existence is. We are convinced that the objective of the Middle Way expounded by the Buddha as the correct existential attitude is to reconcile us with overall existence and that the Middle Way in its Noble Eightfold Path form must be seen as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time now. In Advayavada to follow the Eightfold Path is therefore not seen as a means to become something in the future, but indeed as the way to become in the herenow as overall existence becoming over time now; it is this process that we experience in human terms as progress and which makes us conclude by induction that overall existence, always in human terms, progresses as well. Nirvana is when we experience our own existence in the present moment as being completely in tune with existence as a whole becoming over time now. To experience our own existence thus causes the total extinction of all suffering as a direct result of our full reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

question Reality (Buddha-nature, Nirvana) is according to Hsi Yun "nothing which can be apprehended. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peacefulness, and that is all which can be said.. That which is before you is It in all its entirety and with nothing whatsoever lacking". Reality is simply what is, the totality. It cannot be subject to any change; it can get neither better or worse because it contains at every instant all that is and all that can be. Tao Sheng said that "the basis of Existence is unchanging,unruffled, like the surface of a pond". As Nagarjuna argued, "Nirvana is not a kind of being. It would then have decay and death". From the point of view of the Totality, there is "no origination, no annihilation". If we regard all phenomenal entities as capable of definition onlythrough their relations as parts of a whole, then the whole itself is empty in the sense that "if entities [comprising the whole] are relative, they have no real existence. The [formula] 'this being, that appears' then loses all meaning". How then can the whole have a history? How can it be said to evolve? What would constitute its becoming better? Tao Sheng again: "The Real is what existed before this began to exist". 

On the other hand, what is the meaning of the Bodhisattva ideal if nothing is capable of getting better? If the Bodhisattvas seek the liberation of all things, await the liberation of all things, is there not implied an evolution of all things toward enlightenment? How can this evolution be something that is outside time and causation? How can it be other than a property of the whole? True, the liberating work occurs in the phenomenal world. But Nagarjuna also said "there is nodifference at all between Nirvana and Samsara.. what makes the limit of Nirvana is also then the limit of Samsara.." Is not, then, the progressive enlightenment sought by the Bodhisattvas a perfection of the Totality? If all beings of the phenomenal world achieve enlightenment, does this not remove the last vestige of duality, the duality in our conception of the world that leads us to believe in the separate existence of things? Tao Sheng proclaimed that Existence is unchanging, but observed that "illumination, however, implies change.. error has ruffled the surface [of the pond of Reality] and we have lost mastery over our fate". If illumination implies change, and thegoal of the Bodhisattva ideal is illumination of all things, is not Reality itself transformed when universal illumination is achieved? Is it not then, and only then, unruffled?

I can resolve this through reason only by treating the Bodhisattva ideal as metaphor. Enlightenment is discovery of anatta, recognition that I have no separate existence from the whole, and thus that (1) I must have compassion for all things because they are me, and (2) that Liberation does not mean escape for the I because there is no I; it means simply recognition that I am part of the Totality. Thus it is only in a metaphorical sense that the Bodhisattva 'awaits' liberation of all things, and his/her work for liberation is merely a reflex of compassion, not a program that works itself out over time to some historical climax. But if this is so, does not the Mahayana collapse into the Hinayana once again? Is not liberation then something achieved only by the finite individual, which is itself illusion? This cannot be a satisfactory resolution. Or is this something that cannot be resolved by reason. Can reason take us only to the view that the realnature of things is unknowable? Nagarjuna seems to echo Kant: "[insoluble are the contrasting] views regarding what exists beyond Nirvana, regarding what the end of the world is, regarding its beginning". Buddhism rightly eschews metaphysics, but where does metaphysics begin? 

answer The following is a very attractive definition of Nirvana by the late Dutch Theravada monk Dhammapala: "Nibbana is not a state of being of an entity, but a moment of experiencing. In that moment there is no memory and no desire, no past and no future. And that moment cannot be remembered, cannot be called back, cannot be retained. Then, how could it be described? It is the moment when thought ceases, thought as conditioned by the past, by memory and tradition, thought as conditioned by the future, by anticipation and desire. In that moment there is no thought, no thinking which is reflection, but just the experiencing of being unconditioned, of being free, of not being. In that moment there is no recognition, no recording, no comparing. Thought has ceased: thoughts which claim 'I am', and thoughts which find security in the past, thoughts which seek continuity in the future, and thought which says 'I am now'." The term 'moment of experiencing' indicates clearly that also for Dhammapala the realization of Nibbana is not a static but a dynamic condition.

Possibly because of its simpliciy the writer's favourite definition of this same experience is that by Shree Rajneesh: "I talk about the truth as joy in the heart; it has nothing to do with logic, nothing to do with philosophy; it has something to do with a transformation of your innermost core, when your very being starts throbbing, pulsating, in tune with existence, when there is no discord between you and the whole, when you are so synchronized with the whole that you are no more but only the whole is." It is indeed this feeling of oneness with overall all-encompassing existence, of being a true part of the whole, that the Advayavadin seeks to achieve by following the Noble Eightfold Path. We are convinced that the objective of the Middle Way expounded by the Buddha as the correct existential attitude is to reconcile us with overall existence and that the Middle Way in its Noble Eightfold Path form must be seen as a reflexion at the level of our personal lives of overall existence becoming over time now. Nirvana, as stated above, is when we experience our own existence in the present moment as being completely in tune with existence as a whole becoming over time now - to experience our own existence thus causes the total extinction of all suffering as a direct result of our full reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

question What is your position on re-birth?

answer Our considered view is that human life is a wondrous process of concatenate multiplication, not differing from other species in this respect. As for the recollection of so-called past lives, it is difficult to see why a person should inherit the shape of the nose or the ring of the voice of a forebear, and not in some way the recollection of an experience.

question What are the similarities between Advayavada Buddhism and Advaitayana Buddhism?

answer There are no similarities whatsoever between them. We came across the following explanation of Advaitayana 'Buddhism' on the internet: The other schools of Buddhism [sic] make no presumption about a Divine Being and focus on the elimination of desire through effort. Advaitayana is based on presumption of a Divine Being (the "Self" of Advaita Vedanta) who can be located through the Grace of a Spiritual Master. Desire is transcended not by self-effort, but Gracefully, by being distracted by Communing with the Divine Person.

question You say that 'man's observance of the five precepts in his daily life gives him the moral strength required to embark upon the Buddha's Middle Way...' I think you've missed the point of the precepts. These are artificial, man-made rules. In actuality, humans can never fully abide by those rules. I personally think that's why the Buddha enjoined his disciples to follow them. To vow to follow those precepts is to become a living koan. The symbol of the path to enlightenment is a flower, not a ledger of morality. Just ask Mahakashyapa. What is the morality of a flower?

answer Buddhism is a highly ethical teaching and way of life for human beings that is man-made in its entirety like any other. Traditionally, to become a lay Buddhist one voluntarily takes refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, and undertakes to comply with the first five of the Buddhist precepts. The exact interpretation of these precepts aside, it is universally agreed that people that wantonly kill, steal, e.g. molest children, cheat and deceive, or enjoy getting drunk, need not do the effort to embark on the Buddha's Middle Way until they have cleaned up their act. The Five Precepts are the minimum moral obligations a lay Buddhist freely takes upon him or herself. As for their exact interpretation, they comprise 'not only minimal morality, but basic morality capable of many degrees of fulfillment' (Winston L. King). Whether, for instance, the first precept also forbids meat-eating, or whether the fifth precept forbids all alcoholic beverages and drugs or just the getting intoxicated as some maintain, this is therefore also up to each of us. One must only not lose sight of the underlying reason for these fundamental precepts, which is to become moral individuals able as such to follow the Noble Eightfold Path to eliminate suffering from our lives.

Please address your remarks and questions to: Advayavada Buddhism Infocenter, P.O.Box 10502, 1001 EM Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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