Siddhārtha Gautama teachings revolved around the idea that everything is in flux or a state of impermanence.
He said:
All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence
of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone;
everything is in relation to everything else.
It’s another way of saying that everything is connected and ultimately one. Everything is constantly changing, coming into being, and ceasing to be: and since nothing lasts, attachment to anything will only lead to suffering. His idea was to eradicate desire in order to abolish suffering, but in order to achieve this, the individual has to be able to see things as they truly are. He also said:
He who experiences the unity of life sees his own self in all beings,
and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.
Once we become enlightened (experiencing the unity of life) and realize the truth (seeing our own self in all beings), our life will forever be affected by this change in how we think and judge. Our mind will no longer be partial because we will have glimpsed the bigger picture. But no matter how unified things become, it is the idea of unity that gives rise to duality, for he said:
Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.
One became two and from the two, everything came into existence. One is not one if it is only one; only if there are two things can there be one thing, and of the two each are one; without the other each is none. One is a relative concept just like motion needs a frame of reference in order to be calculated. By itself the One is incomprehensible, timeless, and boundless; all that
the One is incomprehensible, timeless, and boundless; all that can be known about it is through what has been made. In this sense, those things that are said to be eternal and therefore beyond knowledge, like God and spirit, can be said to neither exist or exist because exist is merely a created concept that we use to understand things in certain ways. If anything is eternal, it is beyond existence; in essence, it is not something we can fully comprehend, it is only something that can be felt—hence the birth of prayer and meditation.
Everything in nature seems to be two-sided; even our body through which we experience nature is two-sided. Crucial to understanding unity is realizing duality.
So far as pertaining to the unity of all things, it has been called mind, consciousness, the self, and Being.
Unity requires duality:
all things came from two things and the two are one.
He said:
All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence
of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone;
everything is in relation to everything else.
It’s another way of saying that everything is connected and ultimately one. Everything is constantly changing, coming into being, and ceasing to be: and since nothing lasts, attachment to anything will only lead to suffering. His idea was to eradicate desire in order to abolish suffering, but in order to achieve this, the individual has to be able to see things as they truly are. He also said:
He who experiences the unity of life sees his own self in all beings,
and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.
Once we become enlightened (experiencing the unity of life) and realize the truth (seeing our own self in all beings), our life will forever be affected by this change in how we think and judge. Our mind will no longer be partial because we will have glimpsed the bigger picture. But no matter how unified things become, it is the idea of unity that gives rise to duality, for he said:
Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.
One became two and from the two, everything came into existence. One is not one if it is only one; only if there are two things can there be one thing, and of the two each are one; without the other each is none. One is a relative concept just like motion needs a frame of reference in order to be calculated. By itself the One is incomprehensible, timeless, and boundless; all that
the One is incomprehensible, timeless, and boundless; all that can be known about it is through what has been made. In this sense, those things that are said to be eternal and therefore beyond knowledge, like God and spirit, can be said to neither exist or exist because exist is merely a created concept that we use to understand things in certain ways. If anything is eternal, it is beyond existence; in essence, it is not something we can fully comprehend, it is only something that can be felt—hence the birth of prayer and meditation.
Everything in nature seems to be two-sided; even our body through which we experience nature is two-sided. Crucial to understanding unity is realizing duality.
So far as pertaining to the unity of all things, it has been called mind, consciousness, the self, and Being.
Unity requires duality:
all things came from two things and the two are one.
