David Loy Links

There are no reviews of Nonduality because it's a monstrous book, and to be qualified to comment on it, in the review format wouldn't be easy. So here are some links brushing around it.

Patheos James Ford

"The Work of David Loy" Tasshin's Blog

Insight Journal "The Many Faces of Nonduality"

KWL: Nonduality

"The fundamental dharma of the dharma is that there are no dharmas, yet that this dharma of no-dharma is in itself a dharma; and now that the no-dharma dharma has been transmitted, how can the dharma of the dharma be the dharma?"

That's got to be the logic smashing statement.

Picture of the book.

Hung Po or Huangbo Xiyun from the above quote. Amazing we even have a drawing of someone from 850.

KWL Book club on going for refuge blog

I just got David Loy's Nonduality from the library.

KWL is a way of attacking books. What do I already know? What do I want to learn? What did I learn?

What do I already know?

I've read David Loy's book Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution from 2008. He pointed out that the corporate system in the USA is geared towards greed. When a business has a question, the usual question is what will make more profits? So dump pollutants into the river? Yes, gives the shareholders more money than treating it. Loy favors the Zen sect, been authorized to teach since 1988. his teachers were Yamada Koun and Robert Aitken.

Wikipedia says about the book: "Nonduality focuses on the nonduality of subject and object in Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism, with reference to several Western thinkers including Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The main argument is that these three Asian systems may be different attempts to describe the same (or very similar) experience. The categories of Buddhism (no self, impermanence, causality, eightfold path) and Advaita Vedanta (all-Self, time and causality as maya, no path) are "mirror images" of each other. Ultimately it becomes difficult to distinguish a formless Being (Brahman) from a formless nonbeing (shunyata). Buddhism can be understood as a more phenomenological description of nonduality, while Vedanta is a more metaphysical account."

What want to learn: I wish to become more adept with the term "nonduality" and be able to use it.

Learned: This is his reworking of his dissertation at National University at Singapore 1984. More to follow.

Also I rely in reader response to express my learning experience. The following blog entries entitled KWL will explore my responses to the book, based on what I know, what I want to learn and what I have learned. I always loved the assignment of writing a journal and responding to a text. There was no need to grade just prove you're moving yourself through the material. Grades are a way of sorting out the quality of ideas, arguments and presentations, so we can keep lesser people out of say medical school or law school. We don't want people who don't deserve to be there, be there. How they come up with this judgments is perhaps based on knowledge, or maybe it's just sorting hat magic.

Loy writes excellent essays

David Loy comes from the Zen tradition and is an academic, and I've enjoyed his latest books of  essays.  Here is his latest essay:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-loy/the-new-bodhisattva-path_b_2166676.html

Here are some quotes:

"The Buddhist path is not about qualifying for heaven but living in a different way here and now. This focus supplements nicely the customary Western focus on social justice and social transformation. As Gary Snyder put it half a century ago, "The mercy of the West has been social revolution. The mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.""

later:  "The basic problem in our society is not rich and powerful bad people, but institutionalized structures of collective greed, aggression and delusion."

I know from reading his book that corporations lead to greed (we need dividends for our investment!), media, advertising leads to delusion, and our military is a tool of aggression and not the alleged self defense.

"The bodhisattva's pragmatism and non-dogmatism can help to cut through the ideological quarrels that have weakened so many progressive groups. And Buddhism's emphasis on skillful means cultivates the creative imagination, a necessary attribute if we are to construct a healthier way of living together on this earth, and work out a way to get there."

Also:  "As T. S. Eliot put it, "Ours is in the trying. The rest is not our business.""

Also:  "Have we already passed ecological tipping-points and human civilization is doomed? We don't know. Yet, rather than being intimidated, the bodhisattva embraces "don't know mind," because Buddhist practice opens us up to the awesome mystery of an impermanent world where everything is changing, whether or not we notice it."