The One in All ; The All in One Part II
K.S.Chow
Interdependent Living
The hidden secret is that unity or non-duality in any dimension of life or endeavour contains the absolute essence of eternal Truth commonly worshipped as Brahman, Tao, Buddha, God, or Allah. It is sheer insanity or folly that human beings have been discriminating one another through politics, economy, education, religion and cultures even though they actually worship the same Truth – Unity of Being metaphorically compared to the ‘Ocean of Unity’. The Unity of Being or Existence is the eternal Truth of Unity or Non-duality preached esoterically by all religions. Mundanely put, it refers to the universality of brotherhood of humanity. All human beings are brothers and sisters. Furthermore, all human beings dwell in unity with all other living and non-living beings in the universe. All beings or things, living or non-living are interdependent and interrelated. They are never separate. They are conditioning and are being conditioned in the entire realm of the universe. The universe is an infinite organism in which all myriad things or beings are interwoven. No single thing or being is solitary. All are interconnected. Such wisdom obliterates one’s self-centric ego. With wisdom, compassion towards others are natural and spontaneous because the seer sees oneself in others and others in oneself. Love ensues from interrelation. We love our parents and children because we are related. Religion unveils the Truth that we are all related in a single human family.
Signlessness is Unity
Unity is expounded as signlessness, marklessness, or characteristiclessness in Mahāyāna Buddhist worldview. The unity is synonymous the doctrine of Emptiness (śūnyatā). In Theravāda tradition, it is expounded that are things or phenomena are insubstantial. Insubstantaility connotes emptiness of self, ego, self-nature, or sign. Perception of signlessness is non-grasping or detachment from objects of likes and dislikes. Objects of likes arouse greed; objects of dislikes evoke hatred. However, Buddhism does not reject likes and dislikes but only abandon the harmful emotions of greed and hatred aroused by likes and dislikes respectively. Religion trains us so that the wholesome objects of likes are accepted without greed. In other words, what are righteously or ethically gained without corruptions are encouraged. Conversely, what are corruptedly gained are motivated by greed. Such greedy gains ought to be rejected to avoid future karmic retribution. When unwholesome objects of dislikes, such as the unjust criticisms of an intimate friend or even an enemy assail a person, the victim ought to exercise moral restrain or right mindfulness to prevent the arising of anger or hatred. With calmness, and peace, the victim ought to confront the problem, deal and solve it patiently and harmoniously.
The perception of signlessness is not the rejection of the objects of likes and dislikes. Its purpose is to prevent the arising of self-centric ego in reaction to the external objects. Non-attachment to likes and non-aversion towards dislikes annihilate the self-centric ego. Non-attachment or non-aversion is the power of equanimity. The power of equanimity is manifested from the power of executing the four foundations of mindfulness (Satipațțhāna) or the wisdom of Chan or Zen.
Unity and Non-grasping
When one perceives signlessnes, one does not perceive any individual entity. The individual signs are lost when the unity or oneness of the world is intuitively perceived. Perception of signlessness does not connote that all individual objects perceived vanish when the religious wisdom of perceiving Unity has arisen. The wisdom of signlessness is the non-discriminative wisdom in which the Unity of the world is intuitively perceived. What is wisely penetrated by the Wise is that all objects do not exist as separate independent objects in the ultimate Reality. However, they are still perceived as separate individuations or individualities in the conventional reality of the mundane world. The ultimate Reality of interdependence of all objects perceived prevents self-grasping. This is the non-discriminative perception of the many in the One. Conventional reality is the perception of the One in the many. The One is perceived non-dualistically to prevent self-grasping. The many is perceived dualistically so that discriminations in the mundane world facilitate human intercommunication and interactions. The combination of the supramundane wisdom of non-duality and the mundane wisdom of duality function interpenetratively. In this manner, the secular life and the spiritual life are interpenetrative and harmonized. This is the perfect wisdom of the middle path of spiritualizing the mundane wisdom with the supramundane wisdom.
This middle path wisdom is generally described as ‘The One in the All; the All in the many. This corresponds with the Heart Sūtra’s doctrine of Perfection of Wisdom of ‘Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is Form’. Heart Sūtra further expounds that the Perfection of Wisdom of ‘The One in the All; the All in the One’ can be applied to Feelings, Perceptions, Volitions and Consciousness, that is, to everything either physical and mental phenomena.
The religion of God expressed in terms of ‘One in the many and many in the One’ is compatible to the religion of the Buddha in terms of Dependent Co-arising. A Unity view of the world is consistent with Dependent Co-arising. Therefore, we can conclude that the religion of God of Monotheism and that of the Buddha of Buddhism points to the same eternal Truth of Unity or Non-duality sustained by the Principle of Dependent Co-arising. When the Buddha maintains, “ Truth is indeed one; there is no second.” (ekaṃ hi saccaṃ na dutīyam atthi, Sn.884), the Exalted refers to the reality that dependently arisen phenomenon (paratītyasamutpanna dharma) is the only Truth. Dependent Co-arising is synonymous with Emptiness (śūnyatā). Emptinesss is the Ultimate Reality of the World. The Buddha or God is Emptinesss in terms of the Truth of Ultimacy – the highest knowledge (jñāna) discerned by the Discerners or Gnostics. The highest Truth is the Buddha or God.
Harmony and Divinity
The concept of a global village is the notion of Unity in which the individual signs of different nations or countries vanish and are dissolved into the unity of a single borderless global village. Modern concept of economic liberalization and globalization is consistent with religious wisdom of Unity or Non-duality. In other words, the economists and multinational corporate leaders return to the knowledge of the Unity of God (Buddha or Tao) which creates win-win situations for Man to succeed in interdependent co-existence.
Whoever truly perceives that the world is a global village comprehends that we are actually brothers and sisters intrinsically. We can not be separate to reap the highest good. The adept business men conducting international business or trades are now adept to discern the significance of collaborative unity of the world instead of separation of nations. Global collaboration is a smart way of expanding the economic cake for a global village. The international economic cake is expanded and shared by all participating economies.
It is ignorance and perversion to adopt path of separation or the confrontation of the cold war in modern commercial or trading civilizations. Collaborative Unity in international commerce and trade is needed everywhere. Unity is the essence of God (Buddha or Tao). Thus, we perceive that politically, economically, educationally, socially, and so forth, modern nations move towards the path of smart partnership of global unity to create win-win situations.
In this sense, United Nations Organization is the Chief or Great backyard Bodhisattva (Mahāsattva) that collaborates to create micro-unities throughout the world. What the world is actively promoting is none other than the Unity of
God (Buddha or Tao) to raise the standard of living for their citizens. We can clearly perceive that in countries where unity has been shattered, the governments become weakened and their people become impoverished. These countries depend on international humanitarian aids to combat diseases and shortage of food annually.
Conclusion
‘The One in many; the many in One’ is the communal message of Truth of Unity expounded by all major world religions today. It conveys the non-discriminative message of Unity or Non-duality. Unity is equal to God, Tao, Brahman, Buddha, Jesus and Allah. Regretably, this message of Unity has not been communicated effectively to the people of our modern diverge civilizations through inter-faith dialogues. This is actually the root-cause of clashes of civilizations in currently imperilled world. Unity is seriously required to confront the future challenges of mankind. We have learnt rightly from the bitter lesson of tsunami and other epic catastrophes that a massive natural disaster can not be combated by the victims’ country alone. The unity of global efforts and international collaborations is a must. God (the essence of Unity) supported by human hearts is incessantly required to preserve the world. |
