Sufism is not a mixture of Hinduism and Islam, the closest thing to that is the Sikh faith in my opinion. Hinduism has many gods and is polytheism and Islam on the other hand is a radical monotheism, so there is a fundamental incompatibility here between Islam and Hinduism. However, this is not to say that the Hindu’s do not have some ideas beyond polytheism that are similar to the idea of deity in Islam, for instance there is the Nirguna Brahman, or the God Head that is somewhat similar to the idea of God in Islam. However, since SHIRK is the greatest wrong action in Islam, this philosophical similarity in some respects is dwarfed by the idea that there are other gods that are expressions of the Godhead in Hinduism, those beliefs are believed to be in fundamental error from the point of view of Islam, so there is no possibility of overt reconciliation between the two faiths. Islam is also iconoclastic in the extreme and this is another point on which there is a radical difference.

Also there is a fundamentally wrong premise in the question, that links Sufism with the mixture of Hinduism and Islam. Sufism against what its Salafi detractors might say is not in general engaged in either Shirk or Idol worship, or the asking for intercession through holy men within Islam. This also is a misconception fostered by the Wahabis. It is in fact the Salafis that are the heretical sect because they are Karaja, those who say it is alright to kill other Muslims. Sufi’s for the most part are Muslims that are interested in the meaning of the practices that they follow in Islam, and pursue them with more rigor than those who are doing these practices for outward reasons. Sufism is rooted in the three main tenets of Islam, Iman, and Ihsan. Sufism emphasizes Ihsan,  inverse witnessing, i.e. God withesses you even if you do not witness Him, which includes the idea that what ever you witness is part of His witnessing, even though there is no connection between you and Him. What ever you witness is infinitely overwhelmed by God’s witnessing. And it is from that witnessing by God of our actions that meaning is generated for the practices of Islam and belief, i.e. Iman, is generated by this reciprocal witnessing. That is to say that we witness that our witnessing is overwhelmed by the witnessing by God of us and our actions. We could call this witnessing epiphanies of the manifestation of God, which are called Tajalliat (sending down of inspiration from God through knowledge and insight into his Sifat, or Qualities by which He is recognized and which are referred to by His myriad names.)

OK. Now that we have clarified the confusions that are inherent in the background of the question. We can go on to answer the specifics of the question.

We have already said that Sufism is merely a name for an emphasis on Ihsan, which is one of the three tenets of Islam which take together with Islam and Iman constitute the whole of religion, according to the Angel Gabriel who appeared as intersubjectively witnessed by the Mohammedan community in the prophet’s lifetime.

So the crux of the question left for exposition is how one can be a Sufi. And the answer to that is to pay attention to Ihsan and the meanings of the practices of Islam, not just to the beliefs and outward practices themselves. If you do that then you are a sufi in every sense of the word that is worthy of mention. That is of course a matter of personal attitude toward practice, and has nothing to do with anyone else than one self, necessarily.

But the road to doing that is immensely helped by reading about and understanding the admonitions of the great sufis throughout history. And it may be helped by keeping company with others who are similarly inclined. But since so much of what passes as Sufism, especially in the West has so little to do with the core of the matter, which is meaning, and witnessing of witnessing within practice, there is always a danger of getting caught up in a cult, or some other group that considers themselves to be Sufis, but are actually not following either the practices or have the correct attitude that would call forth the proper approach toward those practices centered on Ihsan. But the best way to recognize genuine Sufic teaching is to practice the core of it oneself within the auspices of Islam and Ihsan, and then hopefully that will give one a means of discrimination of genuine Sufism when one encounters it which is rare.

Another key point about Sufism is that it is more closely allied with Nondual religions like Buddhism, and Taoism than it is with anything in Christianity and Judaism. And so knowing something about Buddhism, Taoism and Nondual approaches in general will help in the recognition of genuine Sufism in others. Islam in general is a nondual heresy of the Western worldview, just as Buddhism is a nondual heresy with respect to Hinduism, and Taoism is a nondual heresy with respect to Confucianism. So this is another reason not to not mix up Islam with Hinduism. That is because it is more like the nondual heresy of Hinduism which is Buddhism. There are forms of Advaita Hinduism which is itself nondual, but they were based on Buddhism as reabsorbed into Hinduism though the auspices of Shankara who interpreted the Upanishads in a nondual way inspired by Nagarjuna’s exposition of nonduality which is one of the purist sources of the understanding of nonduality in any religion. Being a Western Heresy, even the Muslims and many Sufis interpret Islam dualistically and thus do not understand very well their own religion, which is better appreciated in light of global examples of nondual philosophies and religions rather than in comparison with either Christian or Judaic religions which are mostly monistic or dualistic rather than nondual. Nondual means the rejection of both monism and dualism. The radical twist that Islam produces on Judaic Monotheism is to apply a nondual approach to it, based on many insights derived from Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad.

As noted by Jami in the Precious Pearl the viewpoint of sufism is very different from that of either Muslim philosophy or theology. And that is because of the intuitive recognition by Sufis of the nondual strain that runs throughout Islam for those with Iman who can recognize the meaning of Ihsan, and they are rare. But the Sufic friends of God (Wahlia) have a long and noble tradition of resisting dualism and monism as the only way to relate to Islam for those with Iman. So another definition of Sufism the group of people who intuit the nondual nature of Islam within the practices and tradition of Islam itself, without any external basis for interpretation, such as Greek Philosophy and Theology. Unfortunately, Buddhism and Taoism have not been well understood by the Muslims who had Sufic inclinations, so the comparison was probably not made except by individuals who were either involved in Buddhism or Taoism prior to their conversion. Since these religions were seen as polytheistic and not distinguished from polytheisms by Muslim scholars this internal coherence between the various nondual ways has not been previously recognized. It is really only apparent to someone who is steeped in Buddhism and Taoism prior to conversion who can see clearly these linkages between nondual approaches to spirituality, and people who have this kind of fore-knowledge are also rare. So it is not widely known that these strains of similarity between all genuine nondual ways exists and can be used to interpret Islam, Ihsan and Iman the three tenants of the Western nondual heresy building on the Abrahamic tradition but turning it inside out by approaching it on the basis of nondual ways of thinking and acting.

So this brings us to another way to be a Sufi, which is to make non-nihilistic distinctions and to act in a way that is in concert with those nondual distinctions that one makes intuitively. Living a life engulfed by the wonder and awesomeness of nonduality permeating everything is tantamount to Sufism if it occurs within the limits of the practices of Islam and through the adherence to Ihsan. In this way Sufism is really little different from either Mahayana Buddhism especially that of Hua Yen, or Tien Tai, or even DzogChen, as long as one recognizes that sufism is even more radical than these in its pursuit of nonduality. Sufism posits even deeper non-dualities than any of these other essentially similar ways of approaching spirituality. Now when I say similar I do not mean that the practices or beliefs have anything in common, nor is the goals of these various spritualities the same. But what is the same is the nondual approach to life and spiritual practices, and that came from a fundamental rejection of dualistic and monistic ways of approaching spirituality.

Now what is nonduality as an approach. It is very simple it says Not One! Not Two!  but something else beyond what can be approached via logic and though either concepts or experiences. The best example of this in the West is the teaching of Meister Eckhart. In Hinduism the nearest thing is Advita Vedanta founded by Shankara or the Buddhism of Nagarjuna. In China it is expressed in Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism. Basically the way to think about it, is to take the Tetralemma which originated with the Buddha, supposedly according to Pali scriptures which says that Emptiness is something other than A, non-A, both A and non-A, neither a nor non-A. In other words the for logical operators and, or, nand, nor are surpassed in some aconceptual, aperceptual (as in apperception), aexperiential way. The nondual is neither a monism nor a dualism, nor a polytheism. Any dualistic or threefold, or higher fold distinction that you can make nonduality is always pointing back to a state prior to the arising of those distinctions. Plato called this non-representable intelligibility. Plato understood it very well, and it is in fact behind his use of irony. And in fact we can claim that Plato is the source of this kind of understanding in our tradition if read from a nondual perspective. Once you realize that there is an absolute limit to what the mind can comprehend and one orients toward that which surpasses all understanding, such that one cannot make dualistic distinctions (A monistic distinction is one in which the other myriad distinctions have been suppressed in favor of one particular alternative.) So in the sense that YHWH is seen as the God of the Jews and is differentiated from other gods of polytheism, then this is a monism. But Allah claims to be prior to the arising of all other gods, and his oneness is not conditioned by the one and the many of things. Tawhid is not oneness in relation to other numbers of things, but rather primordial uniqueness where there is no other to be compared or contrasted to. Tawhid is like Kant’s idea of the Singular as being the dialectical synthesis of Unity and Totality. Allah is claiming to be Singular in a primordial sense, i.e. prior to the creation of all existent things, including other gods created by men that obscure the Haqq (Right/Debt/Truth). However, the difference between primordial uniqueness and singularity of something like spacetime is that Tawhid points back or indcates the primordial uniqueness prior to and after all things, beyond either what is in-timespace or eternal, and every other duality or more complex sets of distinctions. In this sense radical monotheism is one that rethinks the One God as the primordial ground out of which everything we know as existing comes and which sustains all things, and which is where they will return on dissolution, and in this sense it is like the idea of the Nirguna Brahman, or like the Godhead described by Meister Eckhart.

Thus it is possible to use Buddhism and Taoism to critique Sufism, and Sufism to understand more fully Buddhism and Taoism in terms of the differences between these nondual approaches sustained in their own traditions. Many Cristian heresies came into Islam and mixed into Sufism in the East. So there are many practices of people who consider themselves sufis which really were spawned out of dualistic heretical constructs that reacted to Catholic Dogmatism and were forced to flee into Islam by the Inquisition. So there is a perspective that recognizes the similarity of all nondual ways, which then can critique the dualistic anachronisms within those nondualistic traditions, where they fell back into dualism or monism and were not true to their own insights, because nondual approaches are hard to hang onto. Sufism as a tradition is synchronistic, as was Buddhism and Taoism once they became traditions in their own right. Thus we must carefully separate dualistic or monistic intrusions into these traditions. But if we have a strong grasp on the meaning of nonduality as the axiom Not One! Not Two! Not Many! but some other matter or ground prior to any distinctions arising which engulfs all distinctions, then we will be able to differentiate the true insights of these various nondual traditions as they have accreted historically. What is ironic is that the engulfing of conventional or ungrounded distinctions by nonduality, allows one to make non-nihilistic distinctions. This is because that ground prior to distinction is precisely the place that nihilism ultimately takes you if you are disillusioned enough with monisms (dogma or ideological totalitarianisms) or dualisms, or polymorphisms of any kind. To have a monism a dualism has to arise and then  one of the duals must be suppressed, but it can never be suppressed completely and it always haunts the monism.

So in a way the best way to practice Sufism is to know something about Buddhism and Taoism and to look for that which it has in common with these other nondual ways and then to pursue that with as much focus as one can muster. Knowing something about DzogChen, Hua Yen and Tien Tai Buddhism cannot hurt either because they point beyond Buddhism and Taoism to something deeper that Sufism is also pursuing. The nice thing is that these sources are pretty much independent historically, and thus the cross contamination is minimal except for early attempts of the Chinese to understand Buddhism via Taoism. Because these different approaches to nonduality are rooted in different traditions it is easy to see what is similar between them and thus be sure that this is the genuine aspect of nonduality which is not contaminated by the later introduction of anachronistic dualisms implicitly.

The main difference between Sufism and the other nondual traditions is that Sufism is based on revelation, while the others are not in any overt way. And this is also helpful because one can surmise how far purification of the self can go without dependence on revelation, and what is contributed by revelation to that nondual approach.

Now there is also something else implicit in the question that needs to be addressed. You say What IS Sufism. How can I BE a Sufi. Strictly speaking you cannot BE anything except in the projection of illusions. Being only exists in Indo-European languages. Buddhism is specifically a rejection of Being though the concept of Anatman. And Chinese and Arabic are non-indo-european languages. So Being is not only something you cannot be, but itself is merely an illusion and to the extent you ARE anything it is an illusion. Buddhism, Taoism and Sufism talk about Existence. In Arabic Existence is what is found without any A priori or later projections. I.e. there is not any reading back of our own projections out of phenomena, which is the nature of illusion. However, for us Whatness as essence or natural kind is caught up in Being which provides the substrata or substance for the attributes of a species. By primordial ground we do not mean this substance which is imagined as an illusory continuity though the idea of Being. To truly, really exist as the same as a Sufi, Buddhist or Taoist is the most you can hope for beyond the presence and absence of phenomena, i.e. the visible and invisible, and any other duality. Aspects Truth, Reality, Identity and Presence are shared by Being and Existence. However, these aspects are beyond being fused or separated in nondual manifestation which is beyond existence. So the most you can hope for from any nondual tradition is to exist within a nondual state for as long as you can sustain it. You cannot be, essentially, a Sufi, and Sufism has no whatness in the normal sense of an essence which constrains and connects attributes that pervade something particular based on the substrate of Being. We exist with other created things, but God manifests. And it is that manifestation that defines His witnessing that encompasses our witnessing. When we say that existence as Wajud is what is found, then we mean what is found by God, not our finding of other things. Prophets are the ones who are found by God and who have epiphanies of His manifestation (sifat), like Moses for instance.

So hopefully this will help you orient toward Sufism. Don’t become a Sufi, or Buddhist, or Taoist, or one of their dualistic counterparts, but become a Nondualist recognizing the truth of the axiom Not One! Not Two! Not Many! and you are most of the way there, then it is must a matter of learning more about the tradition of nonduality that you are included towards. Acceptance of Music, Arts, and the emphasis on the exclusiveness of the Love of God are just outward manifestations of a much deeper reality and truth. Sufis are not swayed by outward differentiations of things, but only the inward non-nihilistic distinctions he can make based on the recognition of the most fundamental and radical (root) nonduality.

In Islam this axiom appears as the Shahada which states that: There is no god but Allah. And the Prophet is His messenger. In order to try to prove the case that I have been making lets think about this axiom as it appears in Islam. The gods of polytheism, or even monism of monotheism as separate things do not exist but only Allah manifests. In other words there is an indication of a Primal Ground of all things beyond existence, and that is given a specific and unique name, as well as other names that is a specific signature which make clear the sifat of Allah, i.e. the ways in which He manifests. He indicates the “essence” of Allah that holds together yet separate His “attributes”. However, these are Greek philosophical ideas that differentiate Essence and Attributes, and thus are suspect, so it is better to stick to the Arabic terminology. The so called Essence of God, i.e. the Godhead is called the Dhat in Sufism. Yet to the extent that we think there is a distinction or duality between Sifat and Dhat that is a cognitive mistake.

There is no god, only Allah.

Notice that god is singular, but implicitly suggests the many gods of polytheism that can be different and represented by idols. The commandment is that you shall have no other god before me. The operative word here is BEFORE. In other words any god that you can name or represent is after the primordial ground has been split by the first distinction. God as Ground of everything in manifestation prior to and exclusive of existence really cannot be associated with anything else, because in the that pristine pre-creation state which “exists as it did exist” there were no distinctions between things Other than Allah the unique and singular root of all things to which they return. So the first part of the Shahada can be linked to a statement of nonduality, because Allah manifests continually prior to, during, and after the existence that we perceive. And any god that we might conceive did not exist in that primal ground of all things to which all things return. This is essentially the idea of the Godhead of Meister Eckhart and Nirguna Brahman of the Hindus. Major place where this view is expressed is the Isa Upanishad.

Now the other part of the Shahada I left as Prophet because we can generalize and talk about any Prophet in their time as the one who is mentioned in the second part of the statement. The Prophet being the messenger of the Haqq to mankind, essentially is brining our attention to that nondual ground prior to all existence and after all existence not to mention both in-time and endless time. The primal ground is out-of-timespace. There is no pantheism, because from the point of view of the Absolute, the illusion of Being and the existence of created things never really happened. All that really and truly happened in Haqq was manifestation that engulfed and overwhelmed actual existence and the illusions of Being. What manifests is recognized to have necessary existence but that is just a side effect of manifestation with respect to existing things.

So the idea that we can get messages from the Primal Ground as it manifests as Absolute Spirit (Angel Gabriel) via other human beings that are part of our community is a fundamental recognition that human beings can be enveloped, overwhelmed, engulfed, awe struck, and immersed in that Primal Ground themselves without any mixture of transcendence and finitude (i.e. the normal duals we attribute to God probably wrongly). So what ever prophet’s name as a unique human being you want to plug into the Shahada, it is a fundamental recognition that this type of communication directly from the Ground of the Haqq is possible, and actually occurred in history. In other words there is historical grounds for what Hegel calls the advent of Pure Spirit and both the advent of Jesus as penultimate Prophet and Muhammad as last Prophet are just two examples of this kind of intrusion into history, not of the transcendent into finitude, but of the deepest possible nondual into the heart of unique human beings that come as messengers occasionally throughout human history. Thus if we apply the Hegelian idea of the intrusion of Absolute into history via human beings, as what makes us human together, then we get an amazing reading of the history of the nondual heresy of Islam with respect to the dualistic Western worldview which it challenges even within the historical interpretations of Islam by Greek trained intellectuals that resulted in dualistic philosophies and theologies.

So ultimately in some sense not only can you not BE as Sufi but all the nondual ways call into question your ultimate existence as a self, not to mention an ego, transcendental or otherwise. So from a nondual position you cannot be anything because you do not exist, necessarily but only accidentally as an aggregate of Tattvas or Dharmas in the sense of Heraclitian flux. You exist as a non-unified and non-total aggregate from that perspective. However, you are singular to the extent you are embedded in the singular timespace though your embodiment which is finite. However, you are whole which is the nondual between unity and totality as extremes to the extent you are a negentropic organism that is viable. And also strangely enough you belong to a worldview which is radically dualistic but cannot avoid having a nondual kernel beyond its nihilistic core, where the core is taken to be Logic which constrains rational logos, and the nihilism is that all sorts of nonsensical statements can be rendered logical in symbolic logic. But there are discontinuities between the logical operators and, or, nand, nor, and though this discontinuity logic is fragmented, and points toward the nondual of emptiness inwardly at the core of awareness. Non-dual emptiness is the antidote to nihilism, and once this homeopathic antidote is taken then the miasma of nihilism is cured, and we are able to make non-nihilistic distinctions even in this most nihilistic of all worldviews. So much so that it is willing to destroy the entire worth just to spite itself. The only way to allay that almost certain destruction of our earth by our  now dominant worldview is though nondual transformation of ourselves via nondual ways of approaching our human existence which is now threatening the existence of not just other species but also itself.

http://www.quora.com/Religion/What-is-Sufism-How-can-I-be-a-Sufi

There is something strange here that I would like to point out. Plato made the Divided Line the center of the Republic over 2000 years ago. Not enough thought has gone into this diagram which describes the core of the Western worldview. If we think about it a little more than an intellectual curiosity from antiquity then we realize that there are two kinds of lines that cross the divided line, there are those three through the middle and the two at the ends. Now the ends are called Limits, because there is nothing beyond them. The ones through the middle describe the ratio and they are intersecting lines, but not limits. Now if we look at the Divided Line its two main phases are Ratio and Doxa. If we ask what the limits of these two phases of the divided line might be then we can answer that the Ratio is limited by the Supra-Rational and the Doxa is limited by Paradox. Now here is the strange thing. Supra-rationality is a lot like super-position, and Paradox is a lot like entanglement. So why is it that in Quantum Mechanics which takes over at the limits of what we can know about the universe in terms of smallness of things, that we see phenomena like the limits of the Divided Line. That suggests that the phenomena we are seeing in QM is actually a projection. It is also interesting that the Divided Line is an interval and can be seen to have a relativistic phase structure with its central and two in phase points of reversibility. It turns out that Relativity and Quantum Mechanics apply to the physus (phusis) at the same time, i.e. supra-rationally. But on the other hand if we apply them both to the Planck scale we generate a bunch of paradoxes that are incomprehensible. Thus it seems that the two dual approaches to physics also reflect the structure of the Divided line, so that from the point of view of Plato’s understanding of our worldview Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics are merely reflections of the relation between the limits of our worldview, and not something physical, per se, but rather the way that a priori synthetic projections appear back to us through our intuition. In effect our intuitions concerning the physus are non-intuitive. It is not just a Divided Line in Euclidean Geometry as Plato thought, but a relativistic interval, with limits that are duals of each other, and these limits apply to the relation of the interval to its limits. I think this is an argument for the Athropomorphic Principle starting from the structure of the Worldview, and Experience in general as posited by Plato, and accepted by Kant and elaborated by Husserl, and exhausted by Heidegger.

http://kp0.me/GQbL3G

http://www.quora.com/Why-is-quantum-physics-not-deterministic

This is a difficult problem, because I don’t know of any, except perhaps Plato. My own opinion is that all philosophers are sophists, including yours truly. The Western tradition, despite Plato’s warning is basically Sophistry, and we do not see much self-realization in this lot. They were trying to describe everyday mundane experience, and particularly the role of science. They were not going beyond that into self-realization or any type of spirituality for the most part. The closest thing we have to a purely nondual spiritual master is Meister Eckhart. Mostly those who advocated nondual perspectives were killed off by the Inquisition if they arose. Meister Eckhart was careful to say that if you had a vision, or some other conceptual or experiential psychic phenomenon that you have not really begun the way to god that must go though the emptiness of God’s essence, in order to arrive at self-realization. If you want self-realization then you best bet is Buddhism, Taoism or Sufism, i.e. some non-Western nondual tradition. But Ironically this does not mean that the Western worldview does not have a nondual kernel. The core of the worldview generates nihilism, but due to the fact that the core is fragmented showing signs of discontinuities, like the lines in the divided line of Plato, means that ultimately in the kernel there is nonduality there. That is why it could spawn Buddhism and Islam as nondual heresies. And ultimately to these nondual heresies that are rejected by the Western worldview must return home, i.e. realize themselves in their source and origin which is in the kernel of the worldview.

Thus in a sense, in spite of the fact that all the Western philosophers are Sophists, whose only goal is to portray the essence of mundane consciousness or being-in-the-lifeworld, in fact they all together are pointing toward nonduality of the kernel of the worldview. And this was made possible because if read in terms of nondual understanding, Plato set the stage for this possibility. This is because in Plato’s dialogues, we really have a hard time to distinguish Socrates from the Sophists, yet all the various characters in the dialogues together point toward the nondual kernel of the worldview as the inherited wisdom of Egypt. So just as the distinction between the wise man and the fools cannot ultimately be made, all of the characters (who were actual people) in the Dialogues together point toward wisdom via irony.

The Western dualistic tradition was very effective at stomping out nondual heresies. So much so that it is hard to name anyone who made a fundamental indication of nonduality in the tradition. Now most heresies in the West were extreme nihilistic reactions to the nihilism of the worldview like Gnosticism for instance. An excellent exposition of this is in Morris Berman’s Coming to Our Senses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Berman
http://morrisberman.blogspot.com/

http://www.quora.com/Who-are-Western-philosophers-of-self-realization

Having described what a Koan might “be”, now we can consider what Koan’s perhaps “do”. Now we did not mention in the answer to the prior question, that IS is an Indo-European linguistic anomaly and does not exist in non-Indo-European languages. So in a sense, there is no IS related to Koans. Rather the whole tradition of Chan/Zen is an attempt to come to terms with the Indo-European heresy of Buddhism within a context of non-Being that was natural to China as a non-Indo-European culture. China had its own nondual tradition called Taoism which talked about it in terms of Wu Wei, non-action (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei).

Wu Wei Non Action

Wu ji means Void. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuji_(philosophy))

“Wuji (literally “without ridgepole”) originally meant “ultimateless; boundless; infinite” in Warring States Period (476-221 BCE) Daoistclassics, but came to mean the “primordial universe” prior to the Taiji 太極 “Supreme Ultimate” in Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) Neo-Confucianist cosmology.”Wu Ji Without Ridge Pole = Ultimate Void

“The word Wuji Chinese wuji  “limitless; infinite” is a compound of wu  “without; no; not have; there is not; nothing, nothingness” and ji  “ridgepole; roof ridge; highest/utmost point; extreme; earth’s pole; reach the end; attain; exhaust”. In analogy with the figurative meanings of English pole, Chinese ji  “ridgepole” can mean “geographical pole; direction” (e.g., siji  “four corners of the earth; world’s end”), “magnetic pole” (Beiji “North Pole” or yinji  “negative pole; anode”), or “celestial pole” (baji  “farthest points of the universe; remotest place”).

Common English translations of the cosmological Wuji are “Ultimateless” (Fung and Bodde 1953, Robinet 2008) or “Limitless” (Zhang and Ryden 2002), but other versions are “the ultimate of Nothingness” (Chang 1963), “that which has no Pole” (Needham and Ronan 1978), or “Non-Polar” (Adler 1999).”

I.e. Non-Dual.

The ridgepole allows the two opposite ends to be connected yet kept separate and creates a continuity that allows intermediate degrees between the two extremes.

Without the Ridgepole the tent collapses, What is Void is what is there when the structure of opposites collapses. Note Monism is the tent as a whole, and dualism is the separation and holding together of the two ends of the structure, and so the Non-Dual is neither monism, or dualism, but the collapse of both together.

It took a long time for the Chinese to understand the difference between the Emptiness of Buddhism and the Void (WU) of Taoism.

There is a difference between the “nothing there, blankness, non-duality” inside and outside the circle, even though they are ultimately the same, which is what the gap in the line signifies.

Zhou’s Taijitu diagram

The Void is pimordial, it is essentially empty spacetime. Then the first distinction is made, i.e. the Big Bang occurs from some single point, from an anomaly, a singularity. From that the the structure is created where All Things are seen as opposites which are structurally linked, i.e. held apart, held together, producing continuity between the opposites. From that we get the Yin (Visible effects) and Yang (Invisible Affects) out of which arise the five hsing, or five transformations, which is the minimal solid in the fourth dimension called a pentachora, which acts as a hypercycle that transfers causality from the invisible four dimensional realm into the visible three dimensional world with the symmetry breaking of time as a separate dimension which embraces all things.

Note that the Hyper-Cycle of the five hsing exists within the virtual control space of the Autopoietic Symbiotic Special System which we see in Acupuncture Theory.

The interaction of Yang (Celestial Invisible Affects) and Yin (Terrestrial Visible Effects) produces a binary unfolding heuristic to appear which allows one to pick the most basic opposite operating in a situation, and then the next most basic, and the least significant, and to assign Qualitative Value to each permutation of those three sets of opposites which is called the Trigrams, which is the building block of the Hexagrams in the I Ching. These complementary opposites that are manifest in nature is the spontaneous expression of the void within the realm of the ten thousand things. That is because visiblities and invisiblities are brought together in a supra-rational way without mixture, and so that the individual realizes that the opposites are all complementary to each other and that they include the person who picked the most relevant, significant and meaningful opposites to him, yet he is not separate from those opposites because he is part of spacetime too, and thus the opposites play across him as well as everything else. Thus our basic reality is the same as everything else, and everything is suffused with the original void in the discontinuities between the opposites which is the state prior to the setting up of the ridgepole, i.e. what allows us to see opposites.

Bob Seal Nondual Cartoons: http://advaitatoons.blogspot.com/

The basic duals in Chinese Society are those set up by Confucianism. Father-Son, Husband-Wife, Older Son-Younger Son.

The Court Taoists were ousted from the court, and Taoism became something one did after one retired from office. And thus an accommodation was struck between the Dualistic Confucianist doctrine, and the Nondual Taoist Doctrine and the myth was forged that Confucious and Laotze once met.

So into this milieu came Buddhism, which denied the existence of the Physical Universe accepted by Taoism, yet believed in the underlying nonduality of consciousness and so was inherently solipsistic striving for personal Nirvana. But at the same time came the Mahayana concept of all things being empty, which sounded a lot like the Tao. So initially the Chinese translated Buddhist concepts of emptiness with the same words used by the Taoists. But eventually the Chinese discovered that Emptiness and Void were in fact different. And so they developed other translations for Buddhist concepts that were different from those of Taoism. Once they realized the difference between these two types of nonduality, they went on to set up a ridgepole between them, and thus there was a kind of dualism between the inward and outward forms of nonduality represented by Emptiness and Void respectively.

Ultimately StoneHouse the hermit poet could write lines of poetry that went back and forth between these two types of nonduality in the same poem. But the question was then asked what is the nature of the nondual below the level of this duality between the inward and outward nonduals.

Ultimately the reply to this came from Hua Yen Buddhism and made most explicit by Fa Tsang (http://www.iep.utm.edu/fazang/). In this form of Buddhism Emptiness was interpreted as Interpenetration. In other words the inward expression of nonduality was connected to all things via their interpenetration. Hua Yen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huayan_school) developed in opposition to the Mind-Only Yogacara school that was introduced in to China and called Faxiang by Xuanzang http://www.iep.utm.edu/xuanzang/. This school made the inward outward distinction between Emptiness and Void clear by creating a Mind-Only version of Buddhism which was an extreme, i.e. a departure from the middleway take to even further extreme by the Lankavatra Sutra.

It is interesting that the first Patriarch of Zen particularly pointed at the Lankavatra Sutra as a basis of practice which became known as Chan/Zen. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma) By pushing Mind-only doctrine to its limit the specific difference between Buddhist Emptiness and Taoist Void is radicalized.

But from a theoretical point of view Hua Yen and Tien Tai Buddhism went beyond the limits of Buddhism per se by identifying a state beyond what was the limit of Emptiness in Buddhism. In Tien Tai it was a state that was the middle between Nirvana and Mundane Consciousness. For Hua Yen it was reinterpreting emptiness and interpenetration, and thus unifying Emptiness and Void.

We note that Fa Tsang and Hui Neng the Sixth Patriarch of Zen were contemporaries coming after the time of Bodhidharma and the introduction of mind only school into China. Chih I of Tien Tai was a little after the BodhiDharma but in the same general time frame prior to Fa Tsang. From the Timeline we can then see that First the Mind-Only school entered China, but very soon after than Chih I established a nondual between and beyond Emptiness and the Mundane Truth to reestablish the middle way beyond the two truths based on the interpretation of a single statement by Nagarjuna from a translation not from the original Sanskrit. So we can see there are divergent movement happening about the same time where the radical mind only transmission beyond the sutras enters China while at the same time the Chinese are exploring ways to return to the middle way beyond Buddhist dualities.

The fact that Hui Neng and Fa Tsang are contemporaries shows that these divergent ways are coming together in as much as Hui Neng redresses the radical dualistic nature of the Chan/Zen movement, while on the other hand Fa Tsang inteprprets emptiness as interpenetration thus bringing together theoretically Void and Emptiness and explaining their difference and sameness at the same time.

So the powerful return to the middle way by Hui Neng in the Chan/Zen Buddhist tradition, coincides with an interpretation that can give us the link between Emptiness the foreign nondual state and Void the indigenous nondual state. Hui Neng is seen as an ignorant wood cutter who none the less gets the transmission of enlightenment beyond the words of the sutras. Fa Tsang was a sophisticated intellectual who interacted with the Chinese Court explaining the nature of enlightenment as a hall of mirrors. Hui Neng’s rival said that there was a mirror in the mind and you had to keep polishing it to reach enlightenment. Hui-neng said there was no mirror and no polishing, showing the superiority of his insight. In other words there was some state like Wu Ji before the distinction between the two truths that generated the karma of polishing and the substance of the mirror. Fa Tsang on the other hand said that there was many mirrors that reflected each other like the Jeweled Net of Indra. And this interpenetration is the state which connects in inward emptiness to the outward void, since the one who is realized is reflected and reflects all things. And both of these pictures are attempts to be more specific about the nature of the third middle way between the two truths (emptiness and mundane reality) discussed by Chih I. The point is that perhaps in a Mind-only realm one can achieve enlightenment by stopping the mind through this continual polishing. But this idealism of emptiness in Yogacara only emphasizes more the difference between foreign Emptiness and indigenous Void. Yet this was enough to get those who followed the Bodhidharma out of studying sutras and into attempting to achieve enlightenment themselves in their own lifetimes. But this practice only made more stark the difference between the two nonduals, and it was about this time that Chih I formulated a way to return to the middle way beyond the two truths. And these two strands came together in the realization that this Third way between the extremes of the two truths could be thought of as interpenetration, while on the other hand the Mind Only School could be returned to a middle course though the realization of a state much like Wu Ji beyond the state of enlightenment possible through the mind only school. Eventually monks like Stonehouse could draw freely from the two nondual traditions and juxtapose these two different forms of nonduality in the same poem, distinguishing them clearly.

Now we have sufficient background to frame the question: What does a Koan DO. The first answer to this question is obvious. They don’t DO anything. The Koan is a direct pointing to the reality of existence as nondual through supra-rationality by the teacher to the student. The Koan is an existential singularity expressed in language as a means of transmission of enlightenment from one human being to another. Koans are like statements of impossibility that contrasts supra-rationality to paradox and absurdity which is the natural degenerate state toward which the mind tends as it is caught up in the nihilistic chatter of the world. If the student can be directly introduced to the nature of their own awareness, much like Garab Dorje introduced Manjushrimitra to the nature of his awareness developed by paradoxical Tantric practices beyond Buddhism, then a similar, if opposite, thing can be done by a Zen Master who points to the Mind-only nature of emptiness to a student in the transmission line of Zen. Both of these practices are rebounding from the limits of the Divided line toward the center. They are moving from extremes back toward the middle way and discovering there not just emptiness or void but rather a deeper nondual we might call ‘manifestation’. Manifestation is nonduality not adulterated by any duality, thus a deeper nondual than Emptiness and Void which were discovered not only to be different but also opposite in the way the one emphasizes the inward and the other emphasizes the outward.

Now a Koan as Logos must be placed in a context of Physus (phusis, which is Indo-european *bheu), and the nondual between these is Nomos (order) in the Greek Tradition. This is the fundamental distinction in the Western Worldview. Language is the emergent nature of consciousness that brings us communication between individuals and allows us to have culture and intersubjective dialogue and dialectic as well as providing the basis for our own conscious experience which is mediated by inward language. In the Koan there is an intersection between the nihilistic collapsing together of nihilistic opposites, the annihilation in physus, and the cancellation of nomos where we cancel on each side of the equation. The equivalent of annihilation in physus and cancellation in mathematics (the nomos) has no one word that is specific to it, but we might consider: abolition, abrogation, annulment, dissolution, retraction, revocation, undoing, invalidation, nullification, obliteration, or perhaps rescission (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission) rescind, with later spelling recission. Here we will use ‘rescission’ as a technical term for the annihilation or cancellation in the realm of logos. All three together each in their separate realms we will call Annulment. In Logos whose physus-like core is logic, we get contradiction as the fundamental stopping of the logical progression of the syllogism, when this is intensified there is paradox, and when taken to a radical extreme there is absurdity. But all this is on the side of Doxa not Ratio. On the side of Ratio there is both representable and non-representable intelligibles which are the invisibility of concepts. We see cancellation of concepts in failed proofs, like the trisection of an angle, or the doubling of a cube, things that cannot be proved in Euclidian Geometry for instance because they result in contradictions. But in pure logic itself these contradictions are such that once one has been encountered then anything can be proven. Thus logic which embraces contradiction and thus motion immediately flips over into the nihilistic situation in which truth cannot be found of the type that can be verified, and so we need a higher truth, and that comes in dialectics which embraces change and motion in thought and discussion, and were we get something like Skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, as the state of contentment as long as the dialogue or dialectic keeps going. If it keeps going you continue to learn, and thus continue to accrue knowledge, but if it ever stops then you are left with Dogma or the complete negation of everything by the Academics, or so called Sophists. Academics like Nagarjuna negate everything. Skeptics on the other hand affirm too much, and thus you do not know where they stand. Dogmatists claim they know about the invisibles and make positive statements about them that cannot be proved. And so it went until Kant and his Critique that looked into the necessary conditions for the possibility of any experience what so ever and established transcendental idealism. Once Kant explained that the Rationalists and Empiricists were basically the same and sought a middle ground, then we saw that Pure Reason always resulted in antimonies and those basically annulled each others arguments. Antimonies start from the opposite assumptions and disprove the other argument. So once that occurs on both sides in the realm of pure reason there is no way to make a distinction between arguments. Pure Reason or logos under the auspices of logic engaged in a dialectic produces a rescission, a drawing back or withdraw from the abyss of meaninglessness when it runs into the antimonies. There is then an abrogation of the dual premises of the argument and we are left with a situation in which reason is unfounded or ungrounded, and we are thrown back into opinion. We cannot prove either side of the argument and so we do not know what to do so there is a retraction of our statements, there is a revocation of the acceptance of our arguments for the positions we took at first. We see this acted out in the Platonic Dialogues where both interlocutors of Socrates with opposite positions are both forced to renounce their starting assumptions and statements because they are both shown to be absurd. Those conceptual positions are invalidated by the questioning of Socrates. The hubris of the person taking a dogmatic stance is obliterated. And their reasons for taking that dogmatic stance are nullified. This is a process of self-nullification where through the argument of the dialogue they discover that their own position is unsupportable.

So if we admit that there exists a state of annihilation in the physus (particles and anti-particles for instance) and cancellation in mathematics (the nomos, order which is nondual between these duals), and a rescission of the arguments that undergo dialectical exploration in philosophical discourse and under questioning within the logos as constrained by logic, and that internal contradictions can be brought out which causes dogmas to self-annihilate or cancel themselves out. And this process can be seen as nihilistic in the sense that the extreme and artificial oppositions of stated positions lose their meaning in the process of being explored dialectically. And so nihilistic rescission of opposites are brought about by the application of pure reason to any set of concepts about invisibles.

Now annihilation (physus) , cancellation (nomos) and rescission (logos) are a fundamental reality in our own nature as we are embedded in nature. We call all three together at the same time Annulment.

When we negate something there are two types of negation. One creates the anti-X (directly canceling, annihilating, or rescissioning element) and the other creates the non-X (Other). So when we talk about emptiness or void as nonduals though negation it creates a dissonance. We could mean either of these kinds of negation.

Other emptiness
anti-emptiness

Other void
anti-Void

Now each of these are nonduals in their own right, but one is related to nature and the outward and the other is related to awareness and the inward. And we can imagine that they produce a Yin-Yang sort of standing wave that has a black spot in the white side and a white dot in the black side of the circle of opposites turning into each other.

So we can image that Other emptiness = Void and Other Void = emptiness.
In other words emptiness is Non-Void, and Void is Non-Emptiness.

And so even though these are nonduals in their own realm, they are duals with each other across the “domain wall” (two dimensional singularity)  that separates them.

Negation sets up for annihilation, cancellation and rescission, i.e. annulment. But these very real operations of logos, physus, and nomos which cause anti-x and x to vanish via mutual destruction is a different state than the state in which the negations of each other are still standing prior to their vanishing.

Emptiness and Void can only vanish if there is another deeper nondual state which has no duality, even the duality of nonduals within it.

Now what I would like to suggest for consideration, is that the Koan as a linguistic, and physical, and ordering singularity in speech, in a specific situation, in a specific conceptual ordering is a ‘matter’ that simultaneously performs this cancellation, annihilation and rescission, i.e. annulment. It does this by bringing the two limits of the Divided Line Supra-rationality and Paradox together yet holding them apart at the meta-level where the ridgepole is the line that is being divided itself. The ridgepole of the divided line can collapse, and when it does that in all three realms together though the real action of Annulment then there is a fundamental Anagogic Swerve by which our perspective on everything is changed and we call that profound change enlightenment. By creating this situation in which annihilation, cancellation, and rescission occur simultaneously as Annulment without interfering with each other then we are taken back to the primordial ground of our experience where the divided line itself has collapsed by its ridgepole vanishing.

Now, how this Annulment where multiple real vanishing operations occur simultaneously in different realms (physus, logos, nomos) is what we would call a very rare anomaly. In other words, we do not expect it to come about very often, but if there is a transmission from one person to another of the state then it might occur on its own if the recipient is highly primed to accept that transformation in their awareness. We note that this transmission effect is a dissipative ordering which is negatively entropic. And it is between two organisms the teacher and student and it is a reflexive social situation of mentoring and teaching. So annulment is a situation in which all the anomalous special systems can be brought into conjunction to produce the ultra-efficacy of the transmission process.

It should be noted that Dissipative Ordering Special Systems which embody negative entropy occur on the level of ordering, and in the dissipation of order there is a transformation of one order, that of the environment into the order of the expanding negatively entropic system. So there is an affinity between negative entropy and ordering or nomos. On the other hand, the Autopoietic Symbiotic Special System is at the level of living organisms that have two dissipative ordering systems in conjunction within them in a symbiotic relation. And so this balancing can be seen to have an affinity with physus (phusis) of the existential living viable organism. And finally the Logos occurs in the reflexive social situation between individuals in which the transmission is occurring. In their minds and between them they are exchanging representations in language. Those representations have meaning in the sentence as a whole. Those representations give us our sentience which is implicit in the Autopoietic system but is made explicit in the interaction through language. Language is something external in the world of nature as modulations of air by sounds, or in writing as marks on some material media. But words in language ordered by grammar indicate concepts which are invisible cognitions within the Autopoietic systems of the existential and viable organisms engaged in communication. The rational grammar is the nomos at the level of language. The sounds made in the physical world and their flow and unfolding over time is the physus. And the logos is the way we can mutually comprehend what is said to each other through the mutual constraints of logic that inheres within the stream of conversation giving rise to mutual understanding and intelligibility.

But the transmission itself is a dissipative ordering that is negentropic in as much as it transforms the order of the awareness of one person though contact with the other person which results in a transmutation of their state. We call what is transmitted in Buddhism the Dharma, but it is also a reflexive state of awareness of ones own awareness that comes from a signal of one human being to the other. Thus it is a semiotic affair, where one person is indicating the reality of existence, i.e. its utter nonduality to another. So what is being transmitted is a sign in all cases, and indication that is only comprehensible in a specific situation and context.

At the level of the sign, which Peirce says is threefold, i.e. composed of the sign itself, its object, and its interpretation. The interpretation is based on understanding its nomos, the sign is based on the logos, and the object is something in the physus. So the structure of the sign, is one with the three realms of experience that underlie the divided line. In other words DOXA is both opinion and appearance, and thus it shares its roots in physus and logos. The ratio is related to the nomos. Reason is the ordering of the logos (opinions) in relation to the physus (appearances). So as we go up the divided line we are going deeper into the nomos or the nondual (interspace or barrier) between physus and logos.

Now, how do we get annihilation, cancellation, and rescission to occur simultaneously in all three realms as annulment so the ridgepole of the divided line collapses and the positive and negative elements it defines and gives a place to vanish by mutual destruction which is natural in their own realms. Now we have to look at something mentioned elsewhere which is that the three realms are represented in terms of three intervals:

information/entropy = Logos = Emptiness (inward reality) Virtual reality of culture and society and consciousness existing in viable living beings. Reflexive Level

energy/matter = Physus = Physical Reality of what is existing in spacetime. Autopoietic Viable Living Level

space/time = Nomos = Void (outward reality) Dissipative Ordering Level (All orders occur in spacetime, and empty space has its own internal ordering that relates to mathematics.)

Note as I have shown elsewhere there are both anti-x and non-x forms of each of the two higher realms, and so the same thing is probably true of spacetime, there is anti-space or anti-time, and non-space or non-time. We call anti-time eternity, immortality, and we call non-time the Out-of-time which is pure discontinuity and what was there before the difference between in-time, and endlesstime.

On the other hand anti-space is what exists in other universes, and non-space is what exists in the multiverse. But on a more human level as seen by Plato talks about the Chora or Receptacle in two senses, as local space that receives matter, or an impression, but also as global space within which all things exist. Thus anti-space and non-space can be seen as the articulation of these two meanings of the Chora-receptacle/seat. And it is the ambiguity, vagueness, and amorphousness of the distinction between these two concepts that makes this an example of the third kind of Being, i.e. Hyper Being or Differance. At the level of the particular thing there is the space that it takes up which constitutes its interior, and then there is the relation between that interior space (which can be interpreted as empty), and the exterior global unoccupied space (i.e. Void) and then there is the surface separating inside and outside, and there is the locale within which the thing rests or moves as it travels along its worldline. So anti-space could be seen as the niche within which the thing with positive space resides, and non-space could be seen as the global container for everything which goes out infinitely beyond our finite horizon. In other words, you occupy a certain space and thus make it inward in a sense, but you dwell in a space to the extent that you can live there in a niche with what allows you to maintain your viability, and finally you swim in a sea of space that seems to have no shore. But of course the real inward is not the space you occupy, that is really outward too if you were to cut into it, but rather it is our awareness and consciousness that is our actual inward. On a similar note there is as Heidegger says between contact and touch. Thus there is the objective space of objects that may have contact by being adjacent with their surfaces meeting, but touching something is completely different for living things, and the ecstasy by which we project the world beyond ourselves is again something completely different. So another way of thinking of anti-space is the A Priori projection of the Space that we intuit back from things in the world that we experience. On the other hand the noumena would be seen as inheriting a non-space, something beyond our projections that we cannot access. Other scenarios can be imagined where we could give other meanings to anti-space and non-space. For instance, dream might be non-space but imagination might be anti-space. In Tantra for example we imagine something that is not there to the extent it takes on a life of its own. Then we see that imagined thing as empty. That imagined thing is really appearing hypnogogicly in an anti-space, while our dream appears in a non-space where other spaces arise and vanish again.

It may appear that we have gone far afield. But I think we can come straight back from the brink of irrelevance by saying that at the level of Logos there is entropy and neg-entropy and information and neg-information. Any communication of significance contains surprise and thus is negatively entropic. But we are not accustomed to thinking about negative information. Yet we are always worrying about conspiricies, lies, fraud, secrets, etc. At the level of the Logos it is information and anti-information, or knowledge and anti-knowledge that manifests  rescission in the Koan. Enlightenment when transmitted is probably the greatest possible surprise. So at the level of logos what is undergoing rescission is either information or knowledge. By reasoning about information we produce knowledge. When negative and positive givens, data, information, knowledge, wisdom, insight and realization canel then there is rescission within the logos. This is essentially the same as an Anagogoc Swerve within a nihilistic set of artificial extreme duals that are realized to be the Same, i.e. belong together, i.e. share the same ridgepole. Zizek calls this the Parallax View.

At the physical level of energy and matter, both there anti-X and non-X are rare phenomena. But in any situation there is potential energy, which is really stored up information about the situation in which something is in. And in the situation of student and teacher there is physical embodiment that places them completely enveloped in an energy/matter context as autopoietic viable living systems. Autopoietic systems are closed and are nondual combinations of cognition and living energy/matter transformations in exchange with the immediate environment. The closure of the Autopoietic system means that its surface is a domain wall, i.e. a two dimensional singularity. And what we know about these singularities such as with information on the surface of a Black Hole, there is a projection of the information on the surface into the interior or exterior spaces. Information is what crosses that surface of the Autopoietic system as perturbations. Thus there is not only the information passing through to be developed by the cognition of the system into knowledge, but there is also the information on the two sides of the singular surface. Now in terms of physical actuality of the communication between people the opposite of the sound of the voice is silence, and the opposite of the marks of the writing is the blank page where our behavior has left no traces. Thus from a behavioral point of view Wu Ji appears as Wu Wei which is non-action, which means going with the flow of the Tao, so that no traces are left. Non-action does not mean keeping silent or not writing, but rather it means not perturbing the stream of the flow of things with your own imperfections. If this can be done then there are fewer pertubations that threaten the autopoietic existential cognitive/living special system. It is acting as in Judo where one uses the energy of the opponent against him. That means in behavior canceling out the self/other distinction and thus harmonizing completely with one’s situation in which one is dwelling. So on the physical level we see this annihilation as complete fitting into ones environment such that karmic traces are not created and seeded for future frutification, like in the next instant, and thus embodying the Way and the Virtue that comes from immersion in the Way where Wu Ji permeates everything and manifests as Wu Wei. So we actually see the annihilation on the level of behavior which is synchronistic, psychoidal or in Flow and thus exhibiting a following of the Way and exhibiting primal virtues like humility.

At the level of nomos there is cancellation when one schema interacts with its anti-schema. The schema can be thought of as the logos of the physus. That is because it is a projection on the physus that is a priori that we read back in our experience. The Schematization permeates our experience. We project spacetime in terms of templates of understanding. And this schematization starts with the various implicate orders of spacetime at various scopes, and goes on to embody all our expectations about what will happen in our world with it implicate order and tacit knowledge. See Umberto Eco Kant and the Platypus. We expect all these schematizations to be satisfied and if they are not we are surprised. So at the foundational level of the nomos we would expect the koan to be a breaking of the norm, and even perhaps a departure from grammar, or at least a special use of grammar or rhetorical tropes in the service of expressing of indications nonduality, i.e. the order beyond order made up of one and many, or unity and totality. In fact it expresses the nondual between unity and totality which is wholeness. And that wholeness is expressed in spacetime as a synthesis that is projected a priori and then intuited by us in our experience. We unconsciously project these syntheses as the means of stabilizing what we know about our environment and ourselves. There is an inherent order in empty space, and there is an inherent order in conscious awareness even if nothing else is present. The anti-schema is a  canceling order, while the non-schema is what is not schematized, for instance what falls beyond the ten dimensions of our schematization of things in the world. The schema is a template of understanding, and so the anti-schema is a different and opposite template of understanding that can undergo emergence, so for instance they may be facticities, theories, paradigms, epistemes, ontoi, existences, absolutes.

So think of a situation in which the teacher and student are dwelling together, and a specific set of circumstances arise in which cancellation, annihilation, and rescission can occur simultaneously without interfering with each other. The teacher of deep nonudality indicates the presence of the special situation to the student though the words of the Koan or by some gesture or action. It is that kind of nondual teaching situation which is the perfect instance of what a Koan does via its own non-action of indication. In other words a Koan ideally or maybe better archetypally, causes positive and negative information, or knowledge produced by reason to become rescinded. At the same time at the physical level in the embodied situation a nondual flow of ultra-efficacy is attained in which the Way and our virtue manifests. And finally there is a cancellation of schemas usually implicate or tacit, and thus a transformation of our schematization of our world. When these happen together as annulment it is a transmogrification of our embodied awareness and we call that enlightenment as transmitted within Hui Neng’s middle way Chan/Zen dharma on the basis of emptiness being interpreted as interpenetration and thus belonging together with the Void as the Same.

The sign is the koan in speech, gesture or action. The object is the dialectical absolute reason acting itself out in the situation in which the ultra-efficient flow occurs which is the Way that brings out our virtue. And the interpretation for that is interpenetration that links Void and Emptiness together though a special kind of ridgepole related to that of the divided line.

What is strange about this is that it occurs though no effort, it is effortless, un-fabricated, non-elaborated, method-less, flowing like water into the optimal energy minima naturally like the surfaces of gigantic bubbles floating in the air. At each moment these thin films that separate inside from outside dynamically calculate the least energy and thus optimal surface automatically and naturally. And at each moment there is the potential for poping in whichthe difference between inside and outside collapses.

The photograph, taken by Richard Heeks, of Exeter, shows a soap bubble with one half still perfectly formed while the other shatters in a distinctive pattern of streaks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5813506/Photographer-captures-moment-a-bubble-bursts.html
http://prints.barcroftmedia.com/bursting_soap_bubble/print/1893913.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1199149/Su

This is basically the relaxation of the Emergent Meta-System as it goes through its phases from creation to annihilation. So the Koan has as its basic structure the Emergent Meta-system. We see the annihilation but what occurs on the other side of that is creation of a new order within awareness after it is cleared by the simultaneous rescission, annihilation, and cancellation in all three regions of the worldview. With that the ridgepole of the Divided Line in the tent of ones world collapses, and instead of projecting Being one finds existence suddenly as empty and void as always already he same belonging together as always from the very beginning.

The monads in a swarm arise through the creation operator, but then they interact through mutual action operator to form  newperspectives which are new on the world and which give insight into the nature of things. These new viewpoints form constellations that then are ecstatic and reschematize the world forming new candidate possibilities for further annihilation.

Basically enlightenment is a string of annullments, i.e., rescissions, annihilations, and cancellations, which go on and continue and in the midst of which one stands as a sentient living creature. One goes on through and in-spite of these rescissions, annihilations, and cancellations each being unique to the situation and to the dismantling of the self that continue as long as one is within the enlightened state. To the one who is experiencing it there seems to be a continuing disaster, but at the same time all the nihilism falls away and meaning gushes forth from out of the EmptyVoid, or the VoidEmptiness, i.e. the deeper nondual of Manifestation. Eventually one comes to exist within those manifestations of annihilation, cancellation and rescission on an ongoing basis so that the ongoing of the annihilation, cancellation, and rescission or taken together the Annulment process itself goes on as a series of anomalous singularities each unique to the situation one encounters inside and outside oneself. There are meta-levels of annulment.  There is annulment, and then when the annullment changes there is annulment of annulment. But there is also going on in annulment that captures the various annihilations as if they were jewels on a string. But finally there is the going on of the going on of annulment, which is the meta-continuity in which the emptyvoid or the voidemptiness is filled again with meaning after all the extreme and artificial nihilistic opposites in all realms collapse.

What the Koan as rammified in the various realms simultaneiously does is transmogrify us. And we are never the same after that aconceptual and aexperiental happening within our lives and our lifeworld.

Now what we have described is ideally what Koans do, and we know that since nothing is perfect there are many degenerate cases and conditions that does not live up to this ideal model, but without the ideal model in mind it is difficult to know what is happening as it goes though variations to various different people and the same person over time. As Stafford Beer says Humans are Variety producers even in the esoteric realm of enlightenment.

The goal is to go beyond the supra-rational and paradoxical limits of the divided line and back to its primordial origin. But that comes from the annulment of the supra-rational and the paradoxical.

The Key point is that a Koan is not just a linguistic phenomena as a riddle or a puzzle to be solved. The action of the Koan is deep and exists on in all three realms of Physus, Logos and Nomos. The preservation of just the words does not do it justice. But like a homeopathic tincture, studying the anomalous ordering of the words and the described situation in which they are uttered allows us some insight into the total phenomena of transformation that the Koan as a sign indicates.

http://books.google.com/books?id=T4sJ5fK6_vYC&dq
The recorded sayings of Zen Master JoshuZhaozhou (Shi), James Green

So lets take an example Koan and see if we can make sense of it in the terms I have outlined above.  Definitely the nondual notion of the Way is here, by the fact that the Way is like the sky, wide open vast emptiness to which you cannot say yes or no to. So we are definitely talking about Wu Ji or Void here. However, the inward comes into play when it is said that to seek it is to deviate from it and that it is Ordinary Mind, no more, no less. This is in fact much like what DzogChen would say. Existence is the Primal Ground of Awareness that is nondual beyond the two truths of Buddhism. It is a version of Emptiness is Form and Form is emptiness, but it is grounded in the Void and not just the internal emptiness of the mind itself. Thus the relation between the concept of form is empty and emptiness is form appears in the fact that you cannot seek the way without missing it, (the name that can be named is not the real name of the nameless Tao) because we are always slipsliding away. The Way does not belong to knowing or not-knowing, it is nondual between these oppositions.

From the point of view of Logos the oppositions cited are Yes/No and Knowing/NotKnowing and Way/Deviation, Knowledge/Ignorance. These are the distinctions made within speech but they have no anchor, and the various interpretations of them cancel each other out causing rescission.
From the point of view of Physus or embodied becoming there is the difference in Joshu prior to and after this conversation in which he becomes enlightened. The words were actually spoken and they had deep transformative affects because of their meaning, they were not just words, but the were not silence either, rather they were conceptualizations pointing at the nonconceptual, the non-representable which is the nondual.

From the point of view of Nomos there is the ordering of direct showing that leads to enlightenment of Joshu at the hands of his master, during this conversation, in which he is introduced to the idea that the Way is like the sky, and that the seeking of it, or saying yes or no to it does not matter, or knowledge or ignorance do not matter with respect to the Tao. the Tao encompasses and overwhelms and works through ordinary mind. It is much like Hegel’s idea of absolute reason, every detail of the chatter and nihilism of everyday mundane mind works according to the Tao. So realization of the nature of the Tao is just a matter of being who you already are, but more genuinely and more profoundly.

The best way to see all this in action is to read the Koan backwards.

Last Joshu is enlightened in this conversation with his teacher, and thus he becomes a teacher himself and enunciates all the other Koans in the book. Joshu was famous for the startling nature of his koans. When he became enlightened his mind became like the Moon which is in the sky, reflects the light of the Sun, and is something you can only point at but cannot touch. It gives light, but the light waxes and wanes.

The very last thing that his master said to him before his enlightenment is to ask a question: “How can you say Yes or No to it?” It is a vast emptiness like the sky, or space. Knowing is having a concept, ignorance is not knowing. The Way is beyond knowing and non-knowing.

Kant points out that spacetime (as we understand it now) is a singular which is different from either unity or totality. There is only one spacetime. What Plato calls Chora which is both receptacle globally and seat locally. Everything we know is in it. And most of it is vacant. Even the things that appear to be solid are mostly vacant. This great vast vacancy is the Void, Wu Ji. What ever distinction you make in it is nothing because it does not support any writing on this medium. It is worse than trying to write on water or air. There is literally nothing there to write on that will hold a mark of distinction, as G. Spencer-Brown calls it. Spacetime is physical, even if there was nothing else in it but someone spinning they could still orient in it. Seventy percent of the energy that exists is in Spacetime itself. There is the virtual particles that are constantly created and annihilating. So at a level space itself is only creation and annihilation below the level of the conservation of energy. Negative energy is when two plates are placed in space close to each other and they are pushed together by the force of space itself and its intense energy expended in the creation and destruction of particles out of nothing and back to nothing. So we know now that at the most basic level Space has a fabric of annihilation that makes it up balanced by creation of the virtual particles that exist only momentarily only to annihilate each other again and again producing the seething flux of energy that is spacetime.

That which has no substance, is not even ether, cannot hold a mark or distinction, and therefore cannot hold information or knowledge is beyond all binary oppositions, and thus is nondual in itself. “How can you say Yes and No to it?” How can you produce distinctions between binary opposites and try to impose them on that nonduality. Let it just be non-dual, and realize that it is you, and you are just as nondual as it is because you are nothing but a perturbation of spacetime. How can you say yes and no to the nondual that overwhelms you and any distinctions you might make. It does not hold your distinctions in its medium, but rather holds the medium you choose to make your distinctions in as well as yourself.

Reading backwards and anachronistically we can see that with our current knowledge that spacetime, is energymatter at the level of virtual particles within the time limit for conserved particles. Creation and Annihilation are the opposites, and the particles created are opposites. And these produce the pressure that creates the negative energy. And it is particles and anti-particles that are created and destroyed. So negative matter and negative energy are implicit within spacetime as a non-dual singularity without substance. So we can see that the levels of spacetime and energy matter is all contained within the vacant singularity of space as Chora which is  receptacle globally and place or seat locally. And it is intrinsically nondual, pervading everything. This physical and spacetime picture we have today of virtual particles as a seething ocean below the cut off for conservation of energy has been augmented by the realization that even in the universe as a whole energy some energy is not conserved, and is in fact dark energy, because the universe as a whole is accelerating in its expansion. So both anti-energy and non-energy come into play in our conceptualization of the nature of the fabric of spacetime at the Planck level. It basically makes the nonduality incomprehensible, especially if you take into account that also at that level Quantum Mechanics and Relativity intersect to produce paradoxes and even absurdities. And when you also take into account the fact that spacetime is four dimensional, and the fourth dimension is the only one which does not have a set topology then it becomes clear that the real nature of four dimensional reality is truly incomprehensible. In order to understand anything at all we must keep Quantum Mechanics and Relativity apart. So they are like the antimonies and lead to rescission. Thus all in one we can see that our view today though physical science, the nondual nature of spacetime incorporates the three levels into a single conundrum that is impossible to comprehend, i.e. is beyond knowledge and non-knowledge. Our attempts at understanding the nature of the world is running up against severe limitations especially if we do not find the Higgs particle, and supersymmetries, and neutrinos really do go faster than light. We will have to go back to the drawing board to find a new model if the Standard Model collapses under the pressure of negative experimental results. So I think we can say that not only are all the three levels of Annulment covered but they are bound together as simultaneously satisfied by what we know of the physical world today. Physical Theory as has been said before by others is itself a Koan when we relate the theories to the bound intervals between spacetime and energymatter. It might also be that there is not even a complete separation between bosons and fermions, and that there are anyons, that fill in the spectrum between this fundamental distinction between particles that are moved by forces and particles that carry forces.

But the interesting part is if we go back further from the precipice of enlightenment and we see what Joshu’s master says before that about the mind and his search for knowledge and wisdom.

Joshu asks What is the way and gets the answer that ordinary mind is the way. Ordinary mind is that mindless chattering and nihilistic common enumerator of humanity. So this is the argument that we are all enlightened if we only knew. But Joshu asks if he can direct himself toward it, but he finds from his teacher that to approach or seek it is to deviate from it. It is only if one does nothing to try to capture it, that it can be grasped. It is basically like a Cat. To be around it you have to leave it alone. Joshu asks “If I do not seek it how can I know the Way.” And the answer is basically that you cannot know it, so stop trying. It is beyond both knowing and not knowing. Thus there is a blank wall one hits that is impassible. This impassable blank wall in ones self is emptiness. There is a contradiction that the only way to enlightenment is to give it up. And this is where we say that Buddhist enlightenment is a ruse that uses nihilism against itself. It gives a vague, amorphous, ambiguous goal of enlightenment for the Self to invest in. The Self invests in it, but eventually it realizes that there is no enlightenment, and that is what the comparison of enlightenment to ordinary mind means. It calls the bluff of the person who has invested everything in the goal of becoming enlightened, and when that goal is seen to be ephemeral as everything else in existence, then one’s self sinks below the waves as the wrecked ship sinks, taking all the attached vestiges of the ego with it leaving the self to create a new way of relating to the world. It is the nihilism of the artificial extreme opposites of seeing all live as Dukkha on the one hand and seeing enlightenment as a freedom from samsara on the other that collapse and then you must go beyond Buddhism. But what is beyond Buddhism is merely the other outward nondual of the singular of spacetime that implicitly is energymatter which is implicitly conceptpercept which are all caught up in Annulment, and so there is no foundation for experience in the outward either. The self is the one who wants to know what the Tao is, wants to direct itself toward knowing the Tao, wants to seek and find. These are all projections of the self and a bit of hubris that believes that one is good enough to become enlightened. So one gets caught up in the spiritual path, one sinks ones time and energy in it, leaves home, joins the Sanga, learns the Dharma, and seeks to be a Bodhisattva and asks questions like this of the master one has found. But all this seeking, is in vain and empty, because what one seeks cannot be found by seeking and cannot not be found by not seeking, but only by neither seeking nor not seeking, or both seeking and not seeking. Thus the tetrallema exhausts the logical possibilities and points toward the presence, identity, reality and truth of existence as emptyvoid and voidempty.

So reading this arbitrary first Koan in the book of Joshu which is the point of Joshu’s own enlightenment, one sees that the theory produced above does hold true for this particular koan. Annulment occurs in all the realms simultaneously, and emptiness is negated internally, but the Tao outwardly is seen to be impossible to comprehend, and it is accepting these inward and outward limits that leads to enlightenment when the ridgepole collapses.

So the theory I proposed can be said to apply to at least one Koan. Whether it applies to others or must be modified based on the failure to apply to some is yet to be seen.

It could be that this Annulment in three realms at once is the ideal, and that it may occur in one realm at a time instead. So there may be classes of Koans that record annihilations, cancellations or rescissions separately. It could be that other Koans merely indicate some nondual aspect of existence without portraying cancellations, annihilations or rescissions per se. In other, words we are describing the most radical case which is ideal in order to produce the outcome of perfect enlightenment. But there are many possible degerate cases that form a field. However, if we understand the epitome of the Koanic action based in Annulment then we should be able to understand the rest of the field based on that archetype.

—————————————————————————————-
Interesting related references:

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh%C3%B4ra

See F. Cook Hua Yen: Jeweled Net of Indra

See Fa Tsang’s commentary on the Awakening of Faith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fazang

The Rafter is the Whole Building, in Fa-tsang (Cook) http://advayavada.blogspot.com/2009/11/rafter-is-whole-building-in-fa-tsang.html
The Taoist Influence on Hua-yen Buddhism: A Case of the Scinicization of Buddhism in China Kang-nam Oh, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Regina  Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal, No. 13, (2000) Taipei: The Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/HistoricalZen/Taoist_Influence_on_Hua-Yen_Buddhism.html

See A STUDY OF CHINESE HUA-YEN BUDDHISM WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE DHARMDHATU (FA-CHIEH) DOCTRINE Kang Nam Oh, McMaster University  http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/2232/

Tian-tai Metaphysics vs. Hua-yan Metaphysics http://faculty.fullerton.edu/jeelooliu/Tian-tai%20vs.%20Hua-yan.pdf

Dharmadhatu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmadhatu

The “Lankavatara” and “Platform Sutras” : contraries apart and polarities together http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/ER/detail/hkul/3846406

http://kp0.me/H2eZR2

The answer is so far in a theory called Cooper Pairs. These pairs of electrons avoid obstacles and resistances by working together and aligning with lattice phonons that represent the vibration of the lattice they are traversing. Super-conductivity is an example of ultra-efficacy and is the image in nature of the Autopoietic Symbiotic Special System. That special system shows how the symbiosis between the two electrons and their environment of the lattice of the conducting material can work together to produce zero resistance. This is an anomaly in nature. It was discovered by accident and it took 20 years for them to come up with a theory how it might work.

The explanation given in the question, is not correct. It is the interaction of the paired perhaps entangled electrons and the phonon vibrations in the lattice that produces the effect which is to avoid any imperfections in the lattice that might provide a source of resistance.  Also we are talking about electron flow from atom to atom, which is more like a wave in water, than an actual movement of electrons. It is charge that is moving not the electrons themselves. And this is supported by the atoms in the lattice but does not really involve the nucleus as such as far as I have read.

There are three special systems in Reflexive Autopoietic Dissipative Special System Theory and cooper pairs is the one analogous to Superconductivity, which is an anomalous natural phenomena that demonstrates the existence of ultra efficacy (hyper-efficiency and hyper-efficacy). The other special systems are analogous to Solitons and Bose-Einstein Condensates. These are the Dissipation Ordering Special System and the Reflexive Social Special System respectively. These special systems appear both in mathematics as anomalies and in nature as anomalies. See http://works.bepress.com/kent_palmer for more details on Special Systems Theory, also http://about.me/emergentdesign

http://kp0.me/GOBKq6
http://www.quora.com/What-is-electrical-resistance-in-terms-of-superconductors

According to Karl Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery all you can do with a theory is prove it wrong. And that has been widely accepted now, so that is why scientists are so happy when their theories are proved wrong because that is itself something that can be known and it thus limits the possibilities of how nature works and how it was “designed”. It is not so much by Intelligent Design, but by Design Intelligence that we come to know the way nature actually works as opposed to how some people would like it to work, i.e. simplistically. Nature is complicated and even complex. Right now we are on the verge of a disproof of a high magnitude, if the Higgs particle is not found soon, and if there is no super-symmetry, and neutrinos really do go faster than the speed of light. We are not there yet, but this would be some big disproofs of well accepted parts of the standard model. And we will have to go back to the drawing board, no matter how elegant those theories are. If they are not true of nature, then we will start from scratch and try to find something better. And we will feel good about it because our theory was disproved, and so that takes us at least one step closer to knowing something more useful about the structure of nature.

http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-when-you-realize-that-a-scientific-theory-you-had-complete-faith-in-is-proved-wrong

Continental philosophy

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zOI0Em-DyicxlokPz-2UjGxfzPviNpOzvZHH2v3Kicc/edit?hl=en_US

Amanifest? What does it mean?

You ask a deep question. A rare delight. Thank you so much for your question, and your curiosity about the utter depths of existence.

I would just like to say I owe a lot of these insights to Dr. Scott Anderson with whom I have been discussing these issues many years. And if not for his probing questions I would have little to say on this subject.

I began reading DzogChen because of my general interest in Buddhism. I have an undergraduate major in East Asian Studies and was taught Buddhist Philosophy by a great teacher Alfonso Verdu at the University of Kansas. He also taught me Heidegger and Husserl and set me on an intellectual journey by linking these two great philosophical traditions in my mind. I have always thought Fa Tsang’s Hua Yen Buddhism was the deepest thought that anyone had ever had about existence. And I have always been partial to the Awakening of Faith which Verdu taught me. But I went on to study Western Philosophy rather than going to the Orient to study Buddhism as I had expected. And this was because I encountered a cultural mirror when I was taking Japanese in Summer School I had a teacher who when I told him that I was studying Japanese to study Zen Buddhism in Japan he said that Zen was the most conservative part of his culture, and much evil had been done in the name of Zen by the conservatives of his country, and that he had come to America for the very reason of escaping what I wished to study. This moment changed my life because I realized I did not know my own tradition and I needed to understand it before I tried to go elsewhere or I would make the mistakes of the Orientalists and just interpret everything I found in the orient by occidental standards without knowing my own prejudices and how they were affecting my sight.

So I studied Western Philosophy, but never lost my interest in Buddhism and Taosim and so I read sutras on a regular basis, and the new Tibetan translation opens up a new world to us of a tradition that never stopped from the Buddha down to today. A living tradition is always so much more interesting. And with Tibetan Buddhism you get the Spiritual equivalent of CIRQUE DU SOLEIL to boot. So I started reading all the original texts that had been translated from that tradition about DzogChen that I could find. But I was very disappointed because what I found was not up to the standard I usually found in Buddhist Sutras. The clarity just was not there. But eventually I focused on Manjushrimirtra and Mipham. Mipham is the soul of Clarity. One of the most brilliant commentators. I trusted him. So if you only have two points you can trust in a tradition, that is not good. But then I found the Bon Book and that confirmed for me my interpretation based on reading Manjushrimitra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%C3%B1ju%C5%9Br%C4%ABmitra) based on the Beacon of Certainty. So if you take Manjushrimitra seriously then you can see that what he is doing is destroying Buddhism by using the very logic of Nagarjuna against it. It sees the two truths as a dualism, and the only way to get out of that fundamental dualism is to go outside Buddhism. I think it is quite possible that Garab Dorje (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garab_Dorje )was not Buddhist or at least was saying heretical things. And that is why Manjushrimitra went to challenge him for what he was saying, traveling from the school where Manjushrimitra taught to challenge him to a debate, on the Cemetery grounds. As in so many of such stories the teacher has three statements that summarize his teaching. In this case it was:

• One is introduced directly to one’s true nature or “Direct introduction.” (Tibetan: ngo rang thog tu sPrad)[4]
• One attains certainty about this natural state or “Remaining without doubt.” (Tibetan: thag gCig thog dug Cad)[4]
• One continues with confidence in liberation or “Continuing in the non-dual state.” (Tibetan: gDengs grol thog du ’cha’)[4]

I interpret these verses in relation to the Special Systems. Each statement indicates a Special System.

• One is introduced directly to one’s true nature or “Direct introduction.” (Tibetan: ngo rang thog tu sPrad)

The first special system is the Dissipative Ordering of Prigogine that manifests negative entropy. Direct introduction is transmission, and that introduction is the spread of a dissipative ordering of the anti-Dharma, the Dharma that destroys the Dharma. This is a heresy spreading in Buddhist lands that is essentially destroying the duality of the the two truths. Which is odd because one truth is dualistic and the other nondualistic, and so this destruction must point to a higher nonduality between dualism and non-dualism as indicated by Majushrimitra. This is the first jewel the Dharma, but it is really an Anti-Dharma that is spreading in Buddhist lands rather than a Buddhist heresy spreading in non-Buddhist lands.

• One attains certainty about this natural state or “Remaining without doubt.” (Tibetan: thag gCig thog dug Cad)

Dharma and Aniti-Dharma in an autopoietic symbiotic dance. The autopoietic system is stable, and thus remains. It is an anomalous natural state. This is a closed state in which mind and body are one symbiotic whole. It represents the stability of the transmission between Garbe Dorge and Manjushimitra in their conversation, and dispute and dialogue. Like the meeting of Rumi and Shamsa Tabriz, the one was disseminating heresy and the other orthodoxy and these two speeches because stable and indicated the second Jewel which is the Body of the Buddha, but in this case it is two speeches that cancel each other out. It does to Buddhism what Buddhism had already done to everything else, show its emptiness. It shows the emptiness of the distinction between the two truths.

• One continues with confidence in liberation or “Continuing in the non-dual state.” (Tibetan: gDengs grol thog du ’cha’)

Two Autopoietic Systems of Dharma and Anti-dharma, or four Dissipative Ordering Special Systems point toward the reflexive special system. There are therefore two dharmas and two anti-Dharmas circulating around each other. So lets think about Buddhism and Bon. There is the Dharma of Buddhism, and the Heresy of Dzogchen. There is what ever is the equivalent of Bon teachings (prior to their adulteration by Buddhism, we assume something like Shinto and Taoism) and the DzogChen heritage that collapses what ever their equivalent to the Void might have been. Buddhism and Taoism circle around each other in China. If you understand each well enough you can skip from void line to empty line and back again as Stonehouse does. The poetry of Stonehouse shows us the reflexive circling of Emptiness and Void around each other.

I am assuming that the secret of Gareb Dorje three statements are the perfect statement of nonduality by pointing at the Special System. If the Autopoietic Special System is stable then the Reflexive Special System is meta-stable. It is the third jewel the Sanga.

I call this the fourth turning. It is Buddhism turning on itself going beyond itself, having Najarjuna’s logic applied to its own structural dualisms. But since one of those duals is the nondual itself, then we have to go to a deeper level of nonduality. If void and emptiness are dual nonduals, then there must be ‘manifestation’ beyond them which is completely nondual with no structural dualisms to base itself on. It thus encompasses the three jewels Dharma, Buddha, and Sangha. Dharma meets Anti-Dharma in the application of the Nagarjuna’s logic to the Dharma itself. Buddha meets Taoist Sage. Sanga meets Taoist recluses. For instance in StoneHouse and his criticism of monks who beg, and his praise for the life of the hermit that supports himself. StoneHouse was was ordered to come out of his hermitage to become the head of a Monastery. And when he was released from that obligation he returned to his hermitage. How many people are there that can stand both in the shoes of the Zen Monk and the Taoist Sage? From that vantage point he turns either toward Void or Emptiness and differentiates them. But I have searched in vain for a hint of an understanding of manifestation that goes beyond emptiness and void in his poetry. He remains both a Zen Monk and a Taoist Hermit, but he does not step over the line into pure manifestation where even that duality between Emptiness and Void is effaced.

What helps us is the fact that we can understand these turnings of Buddhism as meta-levels related to Being of the Indo-European tradition, which is the source from which Buddhism came and the place to which it must return. And it is returning with the interest in Nonduality among Spiritual practitioners and through the refuge immigration of a population of monks from Tibet who represent a non-reified living tradition of Buddhism. In essence the Dali Lama has become the Good Pope. We  can relate to religions with Popes (or their equivalent), i.e. heads of the church. One thing that we can relate to in Tibetan Buddhism that it is organized. And it also satisfies the wish to have Shamanic as well as Religious experiences. We can more or less find out Don Juan and our Zen Master at the same time in the same person. And this is to be expected because Taoism, Shintoism, Bon are shamanic essentially based on extraordinary people with extraordinary experiences, and Buddhism is a religion based on beliefs and with meditation, non-experiences and non-conceptuality of the embodiment of emptiness. So Tibetan Buddhism just happens to be a way we can have our pristine religious spirituality of the cake, and eat the shamanic icing too.

However, it is really DzogChen which is considered the pinnacle of Tibetan Buddhisms nine ways that is of interest because it is Buddhism going beyond Buddhism which legitimates the combination with Shamanism that Tantraism tends toward anyway. And it is interesting because it opens up the possibility of the fourth turning of Buddhism which has now come to the West and captured the interest of Western Intellectuals which has been in the process of trying to find nondual ways in order to escape the nihilism of the West and its inherent dualism. It is intellectually deep and also experientially fascinating, and of course the refugees that have brought it are colorful characters, many of whom like the Dali Lama clearly embody wisdom.

So to understand the future of Buddhism we must understand what will happen when Tibetan Buddhism which has been living in isolation in Tibet for hundreds of years unaffected by the world until the Chinese invasion, comes into contract with the Western worldview which has cherished its Duality for so long and rejected, and even killed anyone who had a nondual perspective. Many of those who had a nondual perspective became Muslim Sufis in the past when civilization was being safeguarded by the Greeco-Islamo-Roman empire that preceded Colonialization of the Middle East (which is really just the heartland of the Western Worldview).

So it is necessary to go further and to look at the points that are made about the fourth turning. One way to do that is to look at my commentary on Manjushrimitra’s sutra [LINK]. But another way to do that is to look at the eleven Adamantine points of Longchenpa. (See Germano, David Francis (1992). “Poetic thought, the intelligent Universe, and the mystery of self: The Tantric synthesis ofrDzogs Chen in fourteenth century Tibet.” The University of Wisconsin, Madison. Doctoral thesis. http://vajrayana.faithweb.com/Poetic%20thought%20-%20The%20Tantric%20synthesis%20of%20Dzogs%20Chen.pdf) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longchenpa) (http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Longchenpa)

1. the Ground and basis of reality (Tib. གཞི་, Wyl. gzhi), how that ground dynamically manifests itself (Tib. གཞི་སྣང་, Wyl. gzhi snang);
2. how sentient beings stray from the Ground;
3. how all beings have the essence of Enlightened energy;
4. how primordial wisdom (Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་, Wyl. ye shes) abides within us;
5. the pathways, and
6. the gateways, and
7. domain for primordial wisdom;
8. how primordial wisdom is experientially accessed;
9. signs of realization,
10. signs in the dying and bardo transition; and
11. ultimate fruition as the manifest realization of the kayas.

DzogChen would not be the fourth turning of the wheel of Dharma, i.e. the Anti-Dharma, if it did not reveal a deeper level of enlightenment, that was hither to revealed. The fact that this deeper level is also approximated in different ways by Hau Yen and Tien Tai Buddhism in China also tells us that this is not just an isolated phenomena, but a very profound shift in understanding of the nature of enlightenment. And what is revealed is the basis of reality or what is called the Ground above. Because of its Western Connotations we prefer not to use the term ground, and so I will use the term manifestation following M. Henry’s use of Meister Eckhart’s nomenclature in The Essence of Manifestation. There is from this point of view three standings beyond existence with are manifestation, the Unmanifest Essence, and the Amanifest which is the nondual root of the Manifest and Unmanifest Essence. But to understand what these phase transitions of standings beyond existence might be we must take them one at a time and do a careful dialectical thought process in order to make sure that each is really different from the last. What we are concentrating here is upon the Four Turning so we can build a basis on which to explore what the Fifth Turning of the Wheel of Dharma might be which I call the Homeward Path, because it is the point where the heresy of Buddhism, and other nondual ways that differentiated from the Western Tradition come home, and this is what is beginning to happen in our time, so we ought to try to understand it.

Now there are many terms used for the translation of Ground, or as I prefer Manifestation, because it is relatively unpolluted by Western Philosophical meanings. However the term is གཞི། (Wyl. gzhi) n. Pron.: shyi = substratum, basis. The problem with using Ground as a translation is that Western philosophy is all about First Philosophy and Grounding, and has recently discovered the impossibility of grounding, and thus we get anti-foundationalism that denies there can be grounds, and it goes on and on. Manifestation is not burdened with all these extrinsic meanings. But the actual terminology does not matter as long as the concept is clear. And the concept is that what you see when emptiness and Void evaporate as being different from each other is a deeper nondual of Manifestation. Just to be clear, the equivalent term in Islamic Sufi nondual tradition is Sifat, which is usually denoted as the attributes of Allah. But the idea that Allah has “attributes” is a Greek theological idea, and misses the essential point. But we are not interpreting DzogChen based on Islamic ideas. Merely pointing out that other nondual traditions have similar standings to Manifestation that is revealed in the Fourth Turning of the wheel of the Dharma in Buddhism. Many of the ultimate concepts in various nondual traditions are the same. It helps to be aware of these parallels.

Here what gzhi means is a very different kind of ground than one might expect. It is what manifests when the difference between nondual emptiness and nondual void collapses. There is a domain wall between these two kinds of nondual existence (Striated and Unstriated) which as we have said elsewhere is Ultra Being, i.e. the part of being that is extant, i.e. illusion seen externally. When that collapse happens we cannot have Buddhists who do not believe in the External Physical world anymore, nor Taoists (Bonvivants) who reduce everything to nature. Both have to accept the other’s position and the nihilistic opposition between them collapses. And thus these nonduals cease to be duals of each other. When the duality between nondual interpretations of existence collapse, basically what is collapsing is the distinction between inside consciousness and outside in the physical world. Nonduality at its depths does not accept this distinction and the fact that both Taoism (Bon) and Buddhism have these limits means that their interpretation of Existence is flawed to some extent. Existence is what is found (Wajud). There is what is found inwardly and what is found outwardly, and Buddhists are clinging to one and denying the other and the Taoists have the opposite position. When there is no difference based on position looking outward from the inward or inward from the outward, then we enter into the nonduality of the nondual completely without reservation. If Existence is what is found, then we are talking always about local things found. But what is the global source of all that finding, that is what manifestation is. Things are manifest in order to be found. Manifestation as the root of nonduality is the spontaneous, non-fabricated coming into manifestation which supports existence. In this sense that manifestation supports existence then it is gzhi.

We hear terms like primordial, pure, direct experience etc as well as others. But the one phrase from DzogChen that sums it up best is ‘Mind is like Space’. Literally when the domain wall between Emptiness and Void collapses then mind is like space and space is like mind, and there is no difference that can be pointed to which is a nihilistic distinction between them, even though they are in fact already nonduals. Buddhism and Taoism can be seen as Monisms that have suppressed their opposite non-duality, just like dualities suppress their opposites to try to become Monisms. These are nondual monisms and to me that is not nonduality because Nonduality means to me Not One! Not Two~ Not Many! Not None! Something else than all the logical possibilities. That is the key from the point of the Tetralemma. And it also cannot be distinguished by the difference between inward and outward which is probably one of the most fundamental distinctions. It is utterly distinctionless in the sense of having limits. It is what appears how it appears in each moment without any fabrication, any elaboration, and any distinctions of a theoretical type projected on it, especially not inward/outward, or number of any kind. Badiou calls this the ‘Multiple’. The heterogeneity prior to the arising of the Ultra One. But Badiou believes that this is Being. We are talking about a standing beyond the Meta-levels of Being, beyond existence, and which by itself can be called manifestation meaning by that what is meant by gzhi.

One thing we can say is that this is not the ‘Ground of Being’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_of_Being_(Dzogchen)) See “Caveat lector” of the semantic field of the sanskrit term “ashraya” (आश्रय; Etymology: आ- √श्रि. ) the best terms seem to be source or origin, but the other nuances are also interesting and should be kept in mind. It is really the semantic field as a whole that should be considered, because the whole field is what has arisen naturally, spontaneously, in language and that is what we value in manifestation.

“Process-oriented rdzogs-chen has as its pivot the notion of gzhi which means both ground (the static, sort of steady-state) and reason (the dynamic, the intensity with which the unfolding of the initial pure potential occurs). As such pure potential (gzhi ka-dag chen-po) it is discussed in terms of a triune dynamics, referred to as facticity (ngo-bo), actuality (rang-bzhin), and resonance (thugs-rje). “  in Goodman, Steven D. & Davidson, Ronald M. (1992). Tibetan Buddhism: reason and revelation. SUNY series in Buddhist studies. SUNY Press. ISBN 0791407853, 9780791407851.

“Dzogchen-as-process where the praxis albeit ‘natural’ (Wylie: lhan skyes; IAST: sahaja)[6] and ‘effortless’ (Wylie: lhun grub; IAST: anābhoga)[7] has the sense of ‘spontaneity’.[8][9]”

“The Ultimate Nature (rang bzhin) is said to be unaltered (ma bcos pa), because the Basis is spontaneously accomplished (lhun grub) in terms of its innate potential (rtsal) for manifestation (rol pa). The non-duality between the Ultimate Nature (i.e., the unaltered appearance of all phenomena) and the Condition (i.e., the Basis of all) is called the Identity (bdag nyid).“[28]

Sentient Beings stray from this gzhi or ashraya or the standing of manifestation which is non-fabricated, non-elaborated, pure appearing of what appears as it appears without distinction between inward and outward, quality and quantity or other categorical distinctions. We might call this primordial upwelling phenomena. In one of my books I called it Primal Archetypal Wholeness. (See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96sel_(yoga) concerning rig pa translated as reflexive apperception). Straying must be explained if we are to recognize that all there is ultimately is manifestation which is nondually nonudal in every sense, not just outward globally unstriated void or inward local striated emptiness.

Probably the most interesting of the meanings attributed to manifestation is spontaneous accomplishment. A good example of this is the fact that nature calculates the optimal surface area of bubbles so they are minimal in each moment, and it does this spontaneously and instantaneously and effortlessly. There is no need for calculation to determine that structure, the bubble surface just snaps to that minimal configuration which is the lowest energy formation “Naturally”. In DzogChen everything does that production of the optimal effortlessly. That is what Manifestation is the spontaneous, un-fabricated, un-elaborated, natural, production of optima in appearance where appearance is no different from reality, identity, presence, or truth as one merged aspect that cannot be differentiated into separate aspects. Existence of things found still has separate aspects like Being. Existence unlike Being is unstriated, yet it still has the differentiated aspects. Manifestation loses that differentiation of the aspects as it like the Multiple of Badiou, loses the ability to differentiate quantity at all, either one or many, and as it loses the ability to differentiate quality and quantity or any other synthetic a priori categorization.

When humans stray from Manifestation the first things that appear are the differentiation of the Pleroma. These are the striated and unstriated opposites such as in our worldview: emptiness/Void; Being/Beyng; Forgetfulness/Oblivion’ Clearing/Open; etc. Emptiness/Void is merely the center of the cyclone of the worldview. But all of these striated and unstriated oppositions evaporate at the level of the standing of Manifestation.

So with this background in mind we can begin to think about the Fifth Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma, one that to my knowledge has not happened yet and is announced here first (or rather in my various working papers on the subject). It has to be an even deeper nondual that manifestation. It is unclear how deep the levels of nonduality go. We are having a hard time just thinking the fifth meta-level of Being. We noted that the the Fourth Turning responded to the fourth meta-level of Being as illusion. So we are suggesting that the fifth turning has somehow to do with Ultra Being. But Ultra Being as we have seen previously is what separates the dual nonduals into emptiness and void, at it is exactly the getting rid of it that reveals manifestation. There is in fact a strange turning here.

At this point I would like to mention just for the sake of comparison that this deeper nondual than manifestation is called Dhat in Arabic and is seen as the core of the attributes of Allah. It is sometimes called the essence, but of course this is merely more Greek theology and has nothing to do with the Dhat, which by the way is often noted to be a linguistic mistake due to the feminine nature of this word.

So the fact that there is an equivalent to this even deeper nondual in another spiritual tradition, i.e. Sufism within Islam, gives us hope of discovering the nature of the fifth tuning of the Dharma. I have also equated this final turning with the Homeward path. That is the path to the nondual core of the Western worldview itself. Something so extremely dualistic as the Western worldview cannot help but turn into its opposite, and so that opposite is the nonduality that is made accessible though its fragmentation into the meta-levels of illusion, or Being. Each meta-level of Being is a more intense form of Maya/Mara, Dunya, Dukkha. Each needs its own homeopathic treatment. Existence is unstriated but it responds to the various meta-levels of illusion differently based  on its ultimately skillful means. But Existence as a standing transforms into Manifestation, and then the Amanifest as we enter the higher standings beyond Being which are in fact deeper nondualities. Perhaps there are even deeper dualities than these but we will be doing well if we can understand these. In order to approach the fifth turning we have gone back and taken up the fundamentals of DzogChen which are part of the fourth turning. It is the Turning that informs us about what is Beyond Buddhism, which we also see in Hua Yen and Tien Tai Buddhism.

To go back to Special Systems theory for a moment we can know that there is a difference between a system and a meta-system (what Bataille calls the Restricted and General Economy). We discussed how the three statements of Garab Dorje can be seen to correspond to the Special Systems. We can see that any given religion like Buddhism or Taoism even though they are nondual have their self-imposed limitations which make them a restricted economy. Then we saw that Garab Dorje opened the door of heresy and opened up ways to both Bon (Taoism, Shintoism) and Buddhism to go beyond themselves to discover the ultimate and perfect path. What we neglected to mention is that Systems and Meta-systems are duals. System (restricted economy) is a whole greater than the sum of its parts, while the Meta-system (general economy) is a whole less that the sum of its parts, i.e. a whole full of holes like a sponge. The Special Systems are the interstices between the meta-levels of Being, and so we see that Ultra Being is on either limit beyond the system and the Meta-system. Special Systems are wholes exactly equal to the sum of their parts, and there are three of these like the perfect, amicable and sociable aliquot numbers. Thus we can see that what is beyond the three statements of Garab Dorge that frees us from limited religions that are systems or restricted economies, is the Meta-system (also known as OpenScape). Thus the fifth turning must have something to do with the Meta-system that lies beyond the Special Systems that come between the System and the Meta-system. Ultra Being appears on either side as the limit beyond both the System and the Meta-system.

Now we have a framework for appreciating more fully what Garab Dorje taught Manjushrimitra. Garab Dorje manifested the rainbow body at his death. And he called back down the three precepts to his disciple when the disciple pleaded for more guidance. But this guidance abounded in the celestial realm before it was absorbed into any human form. Garab Dorje discovered how to break out of Buddhism or Bon or any religion without leaving it, and without permeating its boundary. Thus this is a heresy that never quite throws you out of the religion you are pursuing, but then once you adopt this viewpoint then you are never really in it completely again. And this can only be done because of the connection to the Special Systems which are ultra-efficacious (hyper-efficient and hyper-effective). What is beyond Garab Dorge’s three statements that point at the special systems is the meta-system to the system of religion, i.e. the system of thought and belief which strives for communal coherence.

So this suggest that the Homeward Path is into the Wilderness of belief and thought that is the meta-system beyond any given restricted economy of belief or thought, or for that matter experience. Actually when you think about it the three jewels as Dharma, Buddha, and Sangha are basically the same as these special systems as well. But there is a difference because there is Dharma and Anti-Dharma (Najarjuna’s nondual logic applied to Buddhism itself). There is buddha and anti-Buddha (Garab Dorje). And there is Sanga and Anti-Sanga the monks of Bon, the ulterior Buddhism. So the three jewels in conjunction with their anti-jewels give rise to the Meta-system which is a set of endless complementaries. (See Complementarity by Arkady Plotnitsky). The deeper ground beyond the Basis Source, Origin revealed by the Fourth Turning is revealed. The Basis, Source, Origin are a figure on this Ground.

Did I mention that the Western worldview is a meta-worldview, it is not merely a world like other worlds, which are destroyed continually along with their languages by colonization, global economic war and globalization. The Western worldview gobbles up other worlds and destroys them extremely efficiency and that is because we are actually living in a meta-worldview. That meta-worldview has its roots in  settled Egypt, Sumeria, nomadic Semitic and Indo-European worlds. At the traditional center of western civilization, i.e. the Middle East there was a blending of the various worlds that abided there where humans met Nanderthals and interbred. We have only recently became aware of what the writings of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians contained which were recently retrieved from Oblivion. So now we know quite a bit more abut the deeper roots of the Western worldview. And if we say that it is a meta-worldview we are also saying it is a meta-system or OpenScape as well. Therefore, as the Fifth turning deals with meta-systems beyond the Special Systems, so to it can deal with the world dominant meta-system called the Western worldview.

M. Henry in his book The Essence of Manifestation, argues against Heidegger that there is a part of Manifestation that does not ever reveal itself, never becomes manifest, but is therefore implicitly manifest within manifestation itself by its very holding itself away from manifestation. He equates this with the Godhead of Meister Eckhart. He says that Heidegger’s fundamental assumption is Ontological Monism, or Badiou criticizes Deleuze for saying that Being is Univocal, where he is following Aristotle. Badiou wants to introduce a true heterogeneity prior to any numericallity called the Multiple. Henry only wants to introduce what amounts to the ontological unconscious which he calls the Essence of Manifestation. This Essence which is the opposite of manifestation itself cannot be utterly nondual, so we specify that there is something deeper than either of these called the Amanifest, which neither shows itself nor does not show itself, yet both shows itself and hides. In other words the Amanifest is the tetralemma applied to manifestation. This idea has resonances with The aconceptual mind: Heideggerian themes in holistic naturalism By Pauli Pylkkö. Except here we are trying to avoid all dualisms, even the dual to Manifestation which would be the Unmanifest, or the equivalent to the unconscious of manifestation. Of course, we could construct a Greimas Square and contrast Anti-Manifest to Non-Manifest and produce the Chasm of Non-Anti-manifest and Anti-Non-Manifest but this is unnecessary since I don’t think we can go beyond this finite level because our ability to conceptualize fails us. And also it is unnecessary to go any further because we have reached the Meta-system, and what is on the other side of the meta-system, only the singularity of Ultra Being (ultra-one for Badiou) which by the way is also prior to the System, and is the limit of the entire series of Systems that are interlaced with the Meta-levels of Being. So this is why it is Ultra Being that appears at the level of the fifth turning, i.e. it is the generation of the singularity of illusion, for instance the iron ball that gives rise to the hundred cousins of the Pandavas. These are as the Greeks are called autocathonic. They stand opposite the Trojans who are the Pandvas the children of the Gods married to the same woman (Helen had five lovers we are told my myth) which the Avatar Krishna helps.

It is from the advent of Ultra Being, existing illusion and delusion, that causes the straying from Manifestation into the morass quicksand known as Maya/Mara, Dukka, Dunya which is straying into the meta-system or OpenScape beyond the belief and thought systems that strive to make life coherent which are the religions.

Dzogchen believes that primordial wisdom (Skt. jñāna) abides in us all just as we are without taking on anything, which is a very Chan/Zen like position to take. In DzogChen there is no distinction of meditation from any other activities, just like in Chan/Zen. In effect one could argue that DzogChen is the Zen of Tibet developed out of Tantra. The Tibetans early rejected Chinese Buddhism, and so they would have to produce their own version if the were to reach that level of spiritual development. Of course, there are many differences between Chan/Zen and DzogChen but the fundamental similarity at a deep level is striking. This is a story similar to Buddha nature being in everyone, but with the twist that it does not have to be Buddha nature as we know it, but something beyond Buddha nature that means you don’t have to be a Buddhist to partake in it.

We are just at the beginning of understanding the nature of the fifth turning of Buddhism but I believe that it is a Homecoming in the sense that Buddhism sprung as a heresy from one branch of the Indo-European worldview, and now it is returning to a different branch, that of the Western Meta-Worldview. Since the Western Worldview itself does not understand that it has a nondual core due to the fragmentation of Being, and the fact that the Special Systems separate the meta-levels of Being from each other. But the Western worldview has become a meta-worldview and thus a meta-system, and the only place to go for the fifth turning is to the level of the meta-system, and so I predict that Buddhism will yet again transform and have a flouring in the west as it and other nondual faiths exploit the nonduality in the heart of the Western worldview. Embody the nonduality of nonduality in nonduality and stand in the core of the Western worldview and it will transform around you because duality is like the desert of the godhead of Meister Eckhart, and the boliing of the godhead is like the production of nihilism, and the appearance of the nondual avatar is like the appearance of Christ or Krishna. As Jung says Christ is the nature of the Self in the Western worldview, and we all have to deal with it. He also said that we have to deal with the archetypes of our own tradition and it is impossible to substitute other archetypes from other traditions for our own night monsters and goblins. Nietzsche wrote that the fundamental duality in Greek Culture, and thus our culture was between Apollo and Dionysus. But, we think of Apollo as the good of Reason forgetting that he was the wolf god of initiations. Thus both Apollo and Dionysus are not exactly the most savory characters. But in the Hindu Tradition they are Brahma and Shiva. And the primal scene of that tradition has Vishnu, like Blake’s Albion, sleeping. He is asleep on an ocean floating on the back of a serpent with many heads, i.e. the dragon of existence. Vishnu is the nondual manifestation of the Godhead beyond the duality of Brahma and Shiva or Apollo and Dionysus. Below Existence is the ocean upon which Vishnu sleeps, i.e. manifestation. And there are unmanifest depths to that ocean. But the surface of the ocean which is a mirror from both sides is the Amanifest. In Hua Yen this is known as images in the depths of the ocean. The analogy here is the Birds and the Fishes. When it is calm the fish look up and see reflections of themselves and the blur of the  flock of birds above the surface mingling with their own reflections. When it is calm the birds look up and see reflections of themselves and the blur of schools of fish below the surface mingling with their own reflections. The two sets of reflections and dark vague shapes mingle in the surface of the sea. There is only that surface. I call it the cliff edge of existence from which you see the surface of the sea of manifestation. There is the manifestation of the entire sea, but its depths are unmanifest. However the surface with all its reflections and ominous darknesses is Amanifest because the two sets of reflections and shadows cancel out.

Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas.

“3. Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the (Father’s) kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father’s) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.”

“8. And he said, “The person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!””

“20. The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what Heaven’s kingdom is like.”
He said to them, “It’s like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.””

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html Marvin Meyer Translation

I would like to say that nonduality supports and is a resource for morality. Immoral behavior always sets up a duality perpetuator/victim for example. Therefore, the scandals in the Zen community, like all other communities in pursuit of nonduality merely shows us who is and who is not a genuine teacher in terms of the most basic level were we are dealing with human desires. Immoral  behavior is all to human, and should be expected, but not accepted. The idea that we have here in the US that Zen is anti-institutional (which is of course an illusion if we look at its history in the East) should not blind us to abuses within (zen, or any other) cults which are all to prevalent in our society, and should not be tolerated as it casts doubt on the nondual way and causes disparagement of the Dharma.

http://bit.ly/yenWm5

Technically speaking DzogChen does not believe that there is any difference between meditation and non-meditation, in this way it is like Zen. It does not believe that there is any difference between the two truths, i.e. mundane reality and emptiness as ultimate reality of existence. DzogChen says that there is a deeper ground, called the basis, or primordial awareness which in which the nonduals emptiness and void are the same. Just like in Zen it is said that this state can be transmitted from practitioner to student directly.

Now of course in Tibetan Buddhism there is a lot of meditation that goes on prior to this, and tantric practices of the imagination as well. And this type of Buddhism is considered the highest type, after you have mastered and learned all the other practices and theories. It is the highest because in DzogChen you step beyond Buddhism, because it is an approach to things that can be practiced either by Bon adherents or Buddhists. But there is not that much difference between these two religions, at this pont. Bon has been assimilated into Bon. The difference is not like that between Buddhism and Taoism in China.

In Dzogchen there is a key saying that Mind is like Space, which is to say that the emptiness of mind is like the Void of Space. This is the formula that captures the idea that emptiness and void are ultimately the same. When you realize two duals are ultimately the same that is nihilism. But when you recognize nonduals as the alternative to the extreme artificial opposites of Buddhism and Taoism for instance which pursue different nondual goals, then instead of alienation, anomie, you get unfolding of meaning instead. Nihilism saps meaning from the world, but Nonduals when recognize become the fount of meanings flowing into the lifeworld.

In DzogChen they speak of non-fabrication, non-elaboration, self-removal of impediments to the recognition of the primordial awareness beyond the difference between emptiness and void. I call that Manifestation, following M. Henry in The Essence of Manifestation who is in turn following Meister Eckhart.

Meister Eckhart talks about the Godhead. We can think of this as the fourth point of a tetrahedron that has the trinity as its base. In Hinduism it is called the Nirguna Brahman. Nirguna means without characteristics. Where the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have characteristics, the Godhead does not. This is more in line with the ideas of pseudo-Dionysus than with the Western Catholic church. So the Inquisition, you know the one who the current Pope was head of before he was elected Pope, almost got Meister Eckhart, and he is still an outcast from the Catholic Church. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart) Like so many Christian Heretics, he was so much more wise than his persecutors who were in fact evil. To my mind he is the wisest of those who called for the recognition of nonduality in the Western tradition. He drew quite a bit on the Sufis of his day, as did the Franciscans, but he was a Dominican. Now if the Trinity is really a tetrahedron, i.e. the minimal solid at the next higher dimension, i.e. in three dimensions, and the godhead is the fourth point, then precisely like the argument concerning logic by Nagarjuna, what is at the center of that triangle or tetrahedron is emptiness. In Logic it is and, or, nor, and nand that are the logical operators that form a tetrahedron, the discontinuities between which shows that emptiness is at the center of what ever is differentiated. Being is differentiated and thus is empty at its core, thus nondual in its kernel. Same is true for the trinity with or without the Godhead. The Godhead is not unity, not completeness, but the undifferentiated ground that the three persons of the trinity arise from. Eckhart characterizes that manifestation as a boiling of the desert of non-characterized non-attributed Thatness of Existence. The emptiness is in the center of the triangle, or the tetrahedron and is there because of the discontinuities between the elements of the trinity, or the quadrinity, or what ever we imagine about God in our theological fantasies. The Godhead is like Badiou’s idea of the Multiple. It is what is there before there is a ONE arises to claim unites the three persons of the trinity. But emptiness is not in any of these elements, but rather appears as the interstice between the elements as they are differentiated from each other. So Being is fragmented and thus empty and thus nondual at its kernel, and the same goes for the Supreme Being and his avatar, the Christ worshiped by the Paulists. This is an Indo-European notion, as we can see with Odin who hung on his horse the WorldTree Yaddrasil for nine days and nights as a sacrifice from himself to himself in order to gain the secret of the Runes. It just so happened that the Paulist legend concerning Christ which combined Messianic Judaism and Mithrism struck a chord in the Indo-European psyche.

So recognition of the Godhead, Nirguna Brahman, implies emptiness as Eckhart saw and discussed in his works. If you are having a mystical experience or some ideas about God that get fulfilled somehow, that is in fact illusion, because emptiness stands between us and the Godhead, and that is aconceptual and aexperiential. So no experience or concept can reach him including trinity, oneness, goodness, and transcendental characteristics we assume that God has as the Supreme Being of our Ontotheological Metaphysics (as Heidegger calls it).

So what does this have to do with DzogChen? All this is fabrications, elaborations of primordial awareness of manifestation. As M. Henry says following Eckhart, there is a part of manifestation, it’s essence that never manifests. And that is what is called the Nirguna Brahman, or the Godhead. It never manifests and there is an uncrossable sea of emptiness between the Persons of the Trinity and the unconscious of the trinity prior to its personhood and differentiation. Affirming the unity and oneness of God is just a way of trying to reclaim that prior undifferentiatedness. But this whole structure, is an elaboration or a fabrication about something we by definition cannot know anything about if God is the Absolute. All we can know is what is the opposite of the absolute which is contingency and limitation exists for everything else besides the Absolute. DzogChen says that such contraptions of the mind naturally are set free, and obliterate themselves. Of course, not without a struggle. It is equivalent to saying that there is entropy and all structures of experience and concept will fall prey to entropy eventually, because that is the lowest energy state and things tend toward that optima. It is just like the surface of a Bubble. It naturally goes to the optimal surface area which is the lowest energy state. In a similar fashion all delusions, illusions, projections, all naturally unfold themselves and unknot themselves and evaporate. DzogChen embodies that free and natural flow of unbinding, relaxation of distortions and un-knotting. All this is natural to the fourth dimension for instance, and so DzogChen is like a viewpoint on things seeing them unbinding and turning inside out in the fourth dimension. In fact, I realized the other day that turning inside out to reveal all that is hidden is the rotation of time in the fourth dimension, which can be seen as orthogonal to time as a line or circle in Metaphysics. Of course this is what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel of Thomas which is pre-Q. And it is what Nietzsche has Zarathustra see when he descends to the Sea, and looks at its Oblivion, and what is hidden there which will be revealed.

Hopefully bringing in these other religious motifs help clarify rather than rendering the subject more obscure. But the whole thing is pretty obscure to begin with especially if you read Buddhist DzogChen texts, that seem to me completely impossible to understand. I base my understanding on the first book of DzogChen by Manjushrimitra, and Mipham, and a modern Bon practitioner, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzin_Wangyal_Rinpoche

I have only read his book, and it made sense to me, more than the Buddhist DzogChen books. So this is no endorsement, since I have no idea what he is like in person.
http://bit.ly/A6YaP2
http://www.quora.com/How-does-one-practice-Dzogchen-meditation