David Hall's Non-Duality Blog
My name's David Hall. I'm the creator of this web site and its content. I live in Wales in the UK.
I developed the Celtic design software KnotWorker, I create electronic music as Goldcup7, and I've written books on spirituality and non duality.
Hope you enjoy this Non Duality blog. New blogs are added on Fridays.
Please use the Contact page if you have any questions or would like me to discuss a topic.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: Spirituality
What is Non Attachment? Why is Non Attachment important? The simple answer is that it is our nature to not be attached. But let's explore and understand that better.
Non Attachment, or Detachment, is an important element of Buddhism. The aim is to bring about peace by letting go of attachments to objects, people, thoughts, and feelings. There is good reason for this. The Buddhist tradition focuses on how suffering is experienced due to these attachments. The Buddha became free from suffering and free from attachments, or rather the Buddha realised the true nature which is not attached and is without suffering.
When you recognise that reality is a Singularity it explains this. There is nothing other than the Singularity. So who or what is there to be attached to? That is the realisation of enlightenment, that there is no other. Non Attachment is the way to live in harmony with the true nature of being.
When we live by false concepts of separation, we consider ourself to be separate, and suffering ensues. By feeling attached to people, objects, thoughts or emotions, we strengthen the sense of being separate from them. We seem to get caught in the push and pull of the world.
Our true nature is without limits. There is not truly a border where we end and something else begins. Let go of these attachments and just be. It is the pure nature of our being just to be.
How do we practise this Non Attachment? By letting go. Let go of the importance of objects. Let go of depending on people for happiness. It does not mean that we should reject people and objects. On the contrary, by dropping attachment and boundaries we become more at one. Our interactions with objects, people, feelings and emotions become less selfish. When we let go we loosen the ties that bind. We realise our freedom. The clash between me and others fades. There is only an infinite oneness. It wipes out all boundaries of separation and attachment.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: Non-duality
The human sense of being a separate limited self comes from the perception of distance and limits. The mind feels that it is at the centre of perception. The sense of distance spans outward from 'itself'. Through sight it perceives distance. Through sound it perceives distance, and also to a certain extent through touch. Even with our eyes closed we can perceive where our hands and feet are, and they are perceived as being a distance outwards from our centre of awareness.
This 'centre' or heart of awareness is not strictly accurate. It may be a conceptual point where all perceptions are known and where dimensions seem to be perceived from, but it is a relative centre dependent on the apparent outer shell. The mind has a sense that it is in the head, where the eyes see from and the ears hear from. But this is an assumption. Truly, if you reach out with the mind you will not find any limits.
Similarly, the mind can assume identity with the body and can feel that it is within the body. This is based on the faulty assumption that the body's limits are firm and impervious. But we know that the body or indeed any physical matter is not impervious. Matter gives an appearance of solidity, but we know that radiation can travel through matter that seems to be solid. For example, x-rays are used to examine bones within the body, and ground penetrating radar is used to analyse buried structures beneath the soil.
Back to the human being. There is a sense of being within, because we perceive these apparent limits, the outer shell of the head and body, and the distance away from us that things appear. As I've mentioned elsewhere in these blogs and in my books, our perception of distance is always right here. We may recognise that, but there is still the sense of 'here' being within the human form.
Truly, this point 'here' is not enclosed. It is a spaceless space, within which the sense of inside and outside is experienced. We experience this sense of being within the apparently limiting human form from a field of open awareness. We perceive the imaginary limits of the heart and the whole from here, from nowhere.
So, although the spiritual seeker learns to look within to 'know thyself', it is found that there is no within. The heart of being is not a centre, because there are no limits to define it. But in seeking this heart of being we realise that there is no inside or outside, and that there is no divide that separates the heart and the whole. It is in realisation of the Infinite One that the sense of being a separate limited self falls away.
This is what is called enlightenment, self realisation, or nirvana, where the illusory separate self is "snuffed out". Maya, or the illusion of separation, is rooted out at the source and reality is perceived clearly as it is. The limits that seemed to define the separate self disappear, and it is revealed that there is no identity. Pure formless aware being.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: Non-duality
Where do I begin? Where do I end? I know that the body has no clear limits. It is always changing. If I look closely at its supposed limits I find there are none. The body is like a flowing quality of the planet. It comes from the planet, interacts with the planet, and returns to the planet, all the while remaining as a quality of the planet. Its apparent limits are not true.
I see this body without limits. I also perceive the mind. I perceive thought in the form of words, sounds and images, like internal perceptions of the mind. These also have no limits. They appear in the mind and disappear in the mind. Yet they are not inside me. I perceive them.
I also perceive the sense of identity. I perceive the mind talking to itself, thinking about me, my and mine. But that's not me. Sometimes it feels that it's me. Sometimes I observe it, so it cannot be me. If I can see a supposed identity of me, then who am I witnessing this?
Is it the same me that observes the mind thinking about me? I ascertain that I do not perceive a me thinking about me. I perceive the workings of the mind, thoughts that think they are me, thinking that identifies as a limited separate being. I perceive this.
Where and who am I, if not this false identity that is perceived? I perceive the changing mind, body and world. I am not that. I perceive the windmills of the mind. I am like the still point around which the windmill turns. I am here. There is nowhere that I can perceive that I am except here. Wherever it seems I go, I am here. I perceive the change of time. I am now.
I am the point of here and now around which the windmill of the mind and world turns. Yet I am not a point. I am no space, no time. I am formless perceiving form. I am.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: Non-duality
The world appears as an interplay of opposites. We've all experienced opposites: near and far, hot and cold, light and dark, clarity and confusion, freedom and constraint, love and hate. The Non Dual teaching recognises this interplay of opposites in the world, but we do not accept it as true. There is not two. There is only one, but it's not even one, it's an infinite one. One without limits.
In light of this reality of oneness, we can understand this appearance of opposites more clearly. It is not that there truly is a separation, where the world split from one into many. It is rather that the world appears as if this has happened, whilst remaining as one. This brings us to understand opposites as a continuum, where they are not truly separated, but range from beginning to end within infinity. So we can say that hate is at the far end of the Continuum of Love, being far removed from it, but of the same nature.
We can understand distance as a Continuum of Separation. Although humanity may cleverly create divisions of distance, so that we can measure and communicate distances with an agreed scale, distance is not truly divided. What I mean is that we have a shared understanding of what 10cm is and what 1cm is, but there is no real divide of distance into centimetres. It is a human tool. There is more like an undivided span of distance that humanity labels with its measurements.
The Continuum of Separation takes us past understanding the world in fixed limited terms, to the closer understanding of an undivided range. We can say the Continuum ranges from oneness (or no distance) to near, to fairly near, to far, to very far. Again, we are using labels to describe it. But hopefully you get the idea of the unbroken range from oneness to separation, whilst remaining one.
It seems a paradox to say that separation is an undivided range. This is because there really isn't a separation. It is only an appearance of separation, because separation is impossible. It is more like a seeming stretching of oneness from itself to far from itself, whilst remaining as itself.
Maybe you see the implication here. The Singularity appears to have split into a world of many, whilst remaining timelessly a Singularity. We see ourself and the world, but it is the Singularity stretching itself into 'me' and 'others' whilst remaining one. The closest we can know is the heart of being, that point where all is experienced. It's the point where we feel 'I am', and if we look out from there we see objects or people that are close to us, and objects or people that are further away from us. But it is only the appearance of Oneness stretching.
The Continuum of Separation gives the appearance of distance between beginning and end, as it stretches from oneness and remains in oneness. The initial point of the Continuum is oneness, and as the stretching appears we reach the opposite or reflection of the prime quality of oneness. In this way we experience here and there, now and then, clarity and confusion, love and hate, peace and war, one and many. Within the spaceless, timeless Singularity appears the stretching out of space and time, without division, without beginning or end. It is an interplay of opposites within the infinite singularity of oneness.