What Is Buddhism, and What Is Non-Dualism?

And What Are They Not?

Open letter to Russell Brand, regarding a video (linked below) titled,

Dualism vs Monism EXPLAINED!

Russell, who the hell are you interviewing?! The guy is clearly talking out of his ass. (Sorry for my directness and occasional bluntness. I was heavily influenced by Chomsky, Trungpa and Thoreau, and can’t seem to help it.) He says, “I’m a firm dualist….That’s a very Buddhist view.” No, sorry, flatly 180 degrees wrong.

In Buddhist philosophy or spirituality, the aspect of our own true nature, which is also the true nature of being, which is Wisdom Mind, or Universal Mind, or infinite wisdom, is depicted in visual form as Manjushri. Manjushri is shown seated on a lotus flower, holding a flaming sword in his right hand – which never harms any living being, but is used only to cut through illusions – and holds in his left hand a sacred text. That text is the Prajnaparamita Sutra, also known as the Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom. That tells us everything we need to know about the heart of Buddhist teachings. And the teaching is expressly, non-dualist.

Buddhism is expressly and explicitly non-dualist, as is expressed in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom, and as is expressed in the Hriydaya Sutra, the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, commonly known as the Heart Sutra – which is recited daily in Zen monasteries across the world – which states, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form.”

Then, after radically misrepresenting Buddhist philosophy, your guest goes on to misrepresent Plato as a dualist as well. Plotinus certainly understood Plato better than most modern commentators, because he was the last of the ancient philosophers (leaving out Augustine, since he was not a serious philosopher); and because he was a student of Plato’s philosophy, who said that he had nothing to add to Plato, but was simply clarifying Plato’s message – the core of which is: the many are One; the One manifests as the many. Again, your guest is flatly and radically wrong, and is misrepresenting yet another philosophical school of thought.

Then he completely contradicts himself. First he said that Buddhism is a dualistic philosophy. Then he says, “The Eastern religions, they go one step further by arguing that there is no matter at all, that mind is the only thing that exists.” Wrong again. First he says Buddhism is dualistic, then he says it is monist. Do you realize that these two philosophical views are utter opposites of each other?

So, which is it, buddy? Is Buddhism a dualistic philosophy, as you say first, or is it a monist philosophy, as you say later? Clearly he doesn’t have any idea what he is talking about. A first year philosophy professor would have to give him a D-, at best, for both grossly misunderstanding two major schools of philosophy, and worse, for flatly contradicting himself. (YouTube sets extraordinarily low standards.)

Then he goes on to enlighten us on the philosophy of science, with similar results. He says, again with the certitude of Moses coming down from the mountain, with the word of God written on stone, “You can go with science, which is materialistic, which says that everything is physical.” And again, he is 100% wrong. There was this recent event in science, dude, maybe you heard about it, a new discovery, a radically new approach and understanding of science, called, “quantum physics”. It’s a brand new scientific paradigm, just discovered about a century past, which radically undermined and in fact shattered the old paradigm (see Thomas Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) of Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic, atomistic, materialist-reductionism. But then again, you can’t be expected to keep up with everything. After all, quantum physics only arrived on the scene 100-some years ago.

Then he goes back to misinterpreting and misrepresenting Buddhism – which he says, states that, “everything is mind. There’s no such thing as a physical reality.” Wrong again. Again, he is contradicting himself: first saying Buddhism is dualist, then saying it is monist. And secondly, he is flatly wrong in saying Buddhism is a mind-only (idealist) philosophy (eg: Berkeley). In actual fact, the Buddhist teachings explicitly say that the Mind-Only School is a close approximation to the truth, but is subtly mistaken. The Dalai Lama, or any other qualified Lama or Zen master, can correct him on that. Nagarjuna, the preeminent philosopher of Buddhist philosophy, makes it explicitly clear that dualistic views are mistaken, and so too are nihilistic and philosophical idealist views also mistaken – the true nature of being and reality being non-duality. If he wants to argue with the Dalai Lama or Nagarjuna, I say, good luck. He is clearly out of his depth, and is in way over his head.

As the Mahayana texts state clearly, “Nirvana and samsara are one.” How much more explicitly non-dualist can it be? Buddhism therefore, is not about exiting, leaving, or escaping the world – it is about waking up, and being fully aware of the true and profoundly rich nature of being.

The way the guest here presents dualism, as interactionism or interdependence between mind and body, or consciousness and matter, is actually one of the few accurate things he has to say. Interactionism is a more intelligent view than materialist monism, or materialist reductionism, as it is more commonly called, but it is still not the Perennial Philosophy of non-dualism, which has been expressed by all the great mystics, East and West, throughout the ages, nor is it the view of Eastern philosophy, and nor is it, to be specific, the view of Buddhism, Taoism, or the Advaita Vedanta teachings of the yogis. Again, other than accurately depicting what interactionism is, he is pretty much 100% wrong on everything he has talked about here.

Ken Wilber – someone who is an actual scholar, and who does not talk out of his ass, put it well, when he said that Western philosophy for 5,000 years has been a battle between what he called “the ascenders and the descenders”. (Ken Wilber is out of his depth and deeply mistaken in terms of political philosophy, but otherwise is a simply stellar polymath and truly brilliant philosopher and scholar – one of the dozen or so greatest scholars of the past 100 years, along with Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Joanna Macy, Rianne Eisler, Murry Bookchin, Erich Fromm, Mathew Fox, Thomas Merton, Einstein and Noam Chomsky.)

The ascenders view the world, nature, the body, and life on Earth, as unreal, illusory, or less real and less important, than the transcendent realm of pure spirit of consciousness. (The Earth is a waiting room, and everything in this world is inferior and also depraved at its core, and heaven is what we are waiting for., while we suffer through this dismal, sordid, pathetic material plane. World-hating dualists, is what they are.) They are dualists, in essence, who devalue, or occasionally deny the existence, of one pole: devaluing the imminent, the Earthly and the material, while valuing the spiritual and the transcendent. The descenders are the materialists, who want to devalue, or more commonly deny, the existence of the spiritual, the transcendent, or of consciousness or spirit. (They are materialist-reductionists, and epiphenomenalists, clinging to a worldview that is a century out of date, and thus are anti-empirical and unscientific, at least since the discovery of quantum physics.)

The real truth, the true nature of phenomena, being and reality, as Ken Wilber rightly points out, is what the great mystics have all said, and which quantum physics is now corroborating: which is non-duality. But this guest of Russell’s is no scholar – either of religion, of philosophy, or of science.

I mean, he seems an intelligent lad, but he is a novice, clearly, speaking as if he has the pontificate, and is delivering the Sermon on the Mount, the Answer of all answers, when he says definitively and with an air of utter authority, what Buddhism, Plato, Eastern religions, and science are all about. And he got it wrong on all four counts.

Russell Brand, by contrast, your approach is refreshingly humble, yet filled with a very legitimate and indeed important spirit of dignity and confidence – and with humility and confidence in balance, as they should be, and need to be, if we have any good sense, as you clearly do. Your guest, by contrast, is filled with presumption, and what the ancient Greeks would call, hubris. Or flatulence and hot air, to be more direct.

People should bear in mind that it was only recently, in the long view of history, that we humans knew, with full and absolute, unquestionable certainty, that the world is flat, and the Earth is the centre of the universe. Everyone knew these things to be true, and unquestionably true. And everyone was wrong. In fact, when people dared to question the holy dogma of the Earth being the centre of the universe, they were met with the Inquisition, and the serious threat of being burned at the stake for heresy.

How similar to the world we live in today.

Another thing to bear in mind is that, in truth, you are more likely to be struck by lightning seven times in a single life, than to find truly reliable information on youtube, the internet in general, or the media, or for that matter, from academia – to say nothing of pop culture icons, such as your very presumptuous guest.

In fact, unless what you are hearing, reading or watching comes directly – and I mean directly – from a Buddhist, Taoist or yogic master, the odds are that the information being presented is partially or wholly mistaken; and more than likely, not a little mistaken, but more commonly, radically mistaken, if not flatly either propaganda or delusion. People need to learn to have far more discernment, and to separate the wheat from the chaff – and the drivel, pap, dross and dung, from the gems.

I listen to what Russell Brand has to say, quite often, because he is generally very lucid, as well as good-hearted and highly intelligent, and highly articulate, not to mention often witty, and always has something interesting to say. His guests, however, are very hit and miss, at best; and sometimes, I’m sorry to say, simply full of shit.

Russell, when you said, “I feel that we are experiencing the limitations of our current models”, you were bang on. Yes, we have been in the midst of a scientific revolution, a shift in paradigms, or world-view, which began over a century ago. (These things take time – and a century, in human history, is but a blink.) Moreover, we have been in the midst of a cultural awakening of humanity since the late 1950s (the Beat poets, for example, along with the Civil Rights movement), which blossomed in the 1960s, and which did not die out, but has quietly grown and accelerated over the past 50-60 years, and continues to accelerate and to grow world-wide.

I would offer what Leibniz called The Perennial Philosophy – which Aldous Huxley wrote about very well – as a major clue as to where we should look for a better understanding of what reality really actually is. And the Perennial Philosophy echoes the recent findings in quantum physics, which show that the supposed material building blocks of all matter, do not exist – at least, not in the way we had imagined. (“Where is the matter? No matter. Where is the mind? Nevermind.”)

Quantum physics shows us that subatomic particles are not particles – which was a misnomer we put on them, a label we put on them, while we were still steeped in the deluded world-view of Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic materialist-reductionism. Nor are they local. And non-local means non-dual. Subatomic particles are condensations or areas of concentration within energy fields – and as Einstein said, “We should stop talking about particles and fields. The field is everything.” Or as Einstein also said, getting right to the heart of the matter: “The perception of a division between subject and object is a kind of optical delusion.” Or as Shrodinger put it – and he was of course the god-father of quantum mathematics: “The number of minds in the universe is one.” (See Einstein’s star pupil and protégé, David Bohm, for further elaboration.)

Again, non-dualism is the heart of the perennial philosophy, the heart of the mystics’ teachings, East and West (see Meister Eckhart, for example), the heart of Buddhist, Taoist and yogic teachings, and the heart of what quantum physics and modern science is now confirming.

“Science” – and it must be placed in quotation marks, since there are few who are truly empirical, and hence, few who are truly scientific – is the slow man in the race; but is beginning to catch up, despite the foot-dragging of the pseudo-empirical, quasi-scientific majority of “scientists”, who, like Dark Age priests, cling to the old Newtonian-Cartesian materialist paradigm like it was the Holy Grail itself.

Western philosophy, as is widely acknowledged, is at an impasse. I would say a cul de sac is a better description. Academic Western philosophy, and most of what passes for “intellectual culture” alternates between the nihilist morass of polysyllabic post-modernist psychobabble, and the equally nihilistic myopia of stridently dogmatic materialist flatlander anti-science. We need to go back to fundamentals, retrace our steps, and re-think and re-examine our first principles and basic assumptions. We got off on the wrong track with Descartes’ dualism, 400 years ago, and with Newton’s mechanistic materialism, and with a largely unconscious assumption of certitude, which Stephen Toulmin unearths in his important work, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, and which, to a frightening and very real, and very large degree, threw us back into the dogmatic quasi-religious, pseudo-science of the Dark Ages. Uncover and examine these three grossly delusional assumptions which underpin the modern world, and we will be getting somewhere. Then only, will the fog begin to clear.

Until then, we have three main options in the West: post-modernist nihilism; materialist nihilism; and pop culture pap – all of which have the merit and the intellectual rigour of a dung ball. It is time to think more critically, and to take a fresh look at things. Then we will experience a new Renaissance – which is, by the way, emerging now, despite and maybe because of the darkness of the times – and not before.

Overcoming the absurd and grotesque hubris and supreme arrogance of the modern Western world, and rediscovering a little true humility and open-mindedness, would do wonders as well, and is absolutely imperative and essential. As Bertrand Russell said, we will have to allow the East into our thoughts, and on an equal footing. And we must allow the global South, as well, into our thoughts, and also on an equal footing. And further, we must overcome this grandiose smugness, which silently or sometimes aloud proclaims, foolishly, that we have nothing to learn from the ancients, from the “primitive” indigenous peoples of the world, from the medieval world, or from the first Renaissance. What assumptions we make – and what darkness we live in, as a result. When we broaden and deepen our perspective in these ways, then sparks will fly, and the new Renaissance will be secure, and will truly and rapidly blossom, to the great and profound benefit of all.

J. Todd Ring,
March 13, 2021

For a scholarly perspective on Buddhism and non-dualism, Eastern philosophy, and the philosophy of science – and not a gross misrepresentation of them, as was presented here – see:

Choosing Reality – Allan Wallace

World As Lover, World As Self – Joanna Macy

The Hero With A Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell

The Perennial Philosophy – Aldous Huxley

The Way of Zen – Alan Watts

Tao: The Watercourse Way – Alan Watts

Psychotherapy East and West – Alan Watts

The Holographic Universe – Michael Talbot

Mysticism and The New Physics – Michael Talbot

Dreamtime and Inner Space – Holgar Kalweit

The Tao Te Ching – Jane English translation only

The Gospel of Thomas – Marvin Meyers translation only

The Heart Sutra – with commentary by Thich Nat Hahn

The Prajnaparamita Sutra – see Lex Hixon’s, The Mother of the Buddhas

The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui-neng – Shambhala Classics edition

The Uttaratantra – see Buddha Nature: The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra

And anything and everything by the Dalai Lama, Chogyam Trungpa,

or my own teachers, Lama Zopa, Lama Tharchin and Kirti Tsenchab Rinpoche

And to this short list of seminal, core texts, I would humbly, and frankly, offer my own work, as an overview of philosophy, within a broad historical and global perspective, and within the context of sociology, political-economy, culture and ecology, and as a vision for the way ahead: Enlightened Democracy, and, The People vs The Elite. Both are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble now.

My sincere apologies to your guest, Russell, but a person cannot grossly misrepresent Buddhism and Eastern philosophy without being called and corrected on it. He needs to study far more before speaking with such an air of authority. It is inappropriate, grossly misleading, and frankly juvenile.