Behind the illusory duality
Water and wave are simultaneous like a piece of rope in the shape of a coil, or clay in the shape of a pot. Even though water and wave are simultaneous, the wave seems to carry with it a real difference in much the same way there seems to be a difference between a clay pot and clay cup with a handle. But this difference is an illusionit is empty of self-nature, in other words.
The presence of waves, however, makes for an illusory duality. With such an illusory duality we are deceived into believing the waves are really something in their own right apart from the element of water. But fundamentally, there is only water.
Carrying this over into everyday life, the world we behold, including our psychophysical bodies, is wave like, hence, illusory. Nevertheless we are sufficiently deceived into believing they are, in some inexplicable way, real. Add to this a sense of self (the pure water), suddenly we have the illusion of duality . For those who are strongly attached to the world and their psychophysical body the self is their psychophysical body. What emerges from this is a second order duality like two waves next to each other, in this case, the world and the psychophysical body or the same, subject and object.
In truth, what is real is that from which illusion is composed. It is the self which is the self that is lord of the self (cp. Dhammapada, 160). It is also Mind which, in the canon, is more and more used in place of Buddhas self, that is, the self that is lord (ntha/lord is another name for the Buddha).
Whatever we may wish to call that from which illusion is composed, and there are many names for it, it is not until it is amplified that the bewitching power of illusion can come to an end much like the water dominating its waves until there is only still water.
The amplification of that, technically known as bodhi-citta-utpada, which means the issuing forth of! the min d that is bodhi, is a major step in Mahayana Buddhism. One beholds, for the first time, the incredible power of Mind which is no-thing; which has nothing in common with our illusory all-too-human existence; which in the words of Zen master Huang-po:
is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before youbegin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured.
Short of pure Minds amplification we can read Huang-pos words a thousand times. We are still caught up in the great illusory duality from which escape is almost impossible.
