Meditating on the Non-Duality of Self and Others – H.E. Garchen Rinpoche

Meditating on the Non-Duality of Self and Others –  Amitabha Teaching called Revealing the Path to Liberation by His Eminence Garchen Triptul Rinpoche

“Look at the mind that is free of subject – object duality!” This is the point that we will contemplate. When you do not grasp at subject – object duality, when you see the nature of the mind and rest in this nature, all dualistic fixations will diminish naturally. How are we to meditate on this?

There is an easy way to contemplate this. For example, there are two people, two friends who love each other. Ordinarily, there is the thought that this is ‘me’ and this is ‘him’. But when you look further into the truth of that, you will see that what you call ‘me’ and what you call ‘him’ is really the body; we appear in the form of two bodies, but the bodies will be destroy in the end when we die. It will be burn away by fire or carried away by water. The body is not the ‘me’; the body is impermanent, it is compound and therefore we can’t find the ‘me’ in the body.

We may then think that the ‘me’ is the mind, so you should look inside your own mind and try to find the ‘I’, the ‘me’ in the mind. When you look inside your mind, there is no ‘I’ to be found there, but there is love that you have for your friend. Then, a very strange feeling will arise. You will think: when mind watches mind and looks at the love that is naturally there, although you cannot see it, there is a pervasive love. It is just like space but you can’t obtain it, you can’t find it. It has no form. When you look at the feeling of love that you have for that friend, your love and his love are the same.

Hence, we are actually non dual, we are not separate. You love that person and that person loves you. This love is the same. Our bodies will be destroyed but there is only one mind. Our minds are one, just like there is only one thing called water in the world. When we understand this, we will understand the non-duality of subject and object of self and others.

This is how we should first meditate: thinking of two people and realizing that we are actually one. Although our bodies appear as two, our mind is actually one. If we meditate in this way, we can understand our true nature.