Tao Upanishad #54

The mind always thinks in duality. Of the nondual it has not even a glimpse. Thought divides existence into two. Of the One it has no experience.
Even those who speak of Advaita remain caught in duality. Those who talk of the One, even in their talk the two are contained. Those who say, “Only the One is,” still distinguish between samsara and moksha. Those who say, “All is Advaita,” also say Brahman and Maya are separate. Those who say the One alone expands into all still accept a division between pleasure and pain; and certainly they divide the auspicious and the inauspicious.
Among all the sages who have happened in this world, Lao Tzu is the greatest expounder of nonduality. This may sound a little surprising. For we have produced Shankara; and it seems difficult to find a greater nondualist than Shankara. But even in Shankara’s Advaita the discussion of duality goes on. He strives mightily to erase the two; yet what we strive to erase we have already accepted. That which we try to deny we have, somewhere deep down, already granted. Shankara labors tirelessly to prove that Maya is not; but his whole life is engaged in proving that Maya is not. Why be so concerned with what is not? What is the use of proving that what is not, is not? Even for Shankara, its being pricks somewhere.
A dream—granted—but a dream still happens. However much you deny it, however much you call it false, it does not cease by being called false. It does happen. And after the dream of night, when morning comes and you know it was a dream, still its effects continue. One who has seen a pleasant dream carries its happiness upon his face even after waking. And one who was engulfed in a nightmare wakes to a mind still sad and withered. Even after waking! So a dream is not merely only a dream. When we say “a dream is a dream,” we mean only this: it is not as solid as the waking world. And yet, it is.
Lao Tzu presents nonduality not as a philosopher but as one who has known; not as a doctrine. Because here lies the difficulty—and it is a bit subtle. Whenever we make doctrines, we have to use thought. And thought cannot go beyond duality. That is its compulsion. So when we try to pass beyond duality through thought, we may go on talking of nonduality, but duality remains, at the bottom, present within that very discourse. Thought cannot cross the two. Therefore, regarding the nondual, either one must fall silent; or there is another way—the way Lao Tzu has adopted. This way is fundamentally different from Shankara’s. Let us understand it a little.
Lao Tzu says: what appears as opposition is not opposition. It is only apparent. The opposition that seems to be between samsara and moksha too is only an appearance. Because we do not see the whole; we see in fragments.
There is a limit to our seeing. You are looking at me; my face is visible, but my back is not. If you look at my back, my face ceases to be seen. You cannot see me whole. Whenever you see, you will see only half. The remaining half is inferred. That I also have a back—this is your inference; for you are looking at my face. At another time you may have seen my back. You add the two and construct a One. But you have never seen the One. You see the two.
It is a delightful fact. Even a tiny pebble you cannot see in its entirety. Some portion of it remains unseen. A small grain of sand you cannot see as a whole. Its smallness makes no difference; you still see only half. You see half and half at two times, then join the two in thought and make a whole. Therefore, the grain of sand you see in imagination is constructed by your inference—hypothetical, a mere construct. It is not your experience. Your experience is of halves. You have seen two halves and by joining them in thought you have manufactured a One.
This is the limit of thought. It can see only the part, the fragment. Because of this mode of seeing, opposition appears—darkness separate, light separate. And we do not succeed in joining them, for they are vast events. We fail to see that darkness and light are two aspects of the same thing. If light is the face, darkness is the back. But we do not join light and darkness; they are immense happenings.
But science says: the meaning of darkness is only this—less light; and the meaning of light is only this—less darkness. You cannot even conceive of light without darkness. There is no way to imagine darkness without light. If darkness were to vanish, do not think that only light would remain. If darkness disappears, light too will utterly be no more. Do not think that if light is destroyed, the world will drown in darkness. With the destruction of light, darkness too will be destroyed. They are two aspects of the same reality. The difference between them is not one of opposition. Opposition arises because of our partial seeing. This insight of Lao Tzu is very original; it should be understood.
We see opposition between joy and sorrow. Lao Tzu says: they are not opponents. Therefore, the person who thinks, “May such a moment come when sorrow is absolutely absent,” does not know that in that very moment joy too will be absolutely absent. If you want joy, you will have to want sorrow. If you want joy, you will preserve sorrow. Sorrow is being produced by your very desire for joy. Because they are one. You have taken them to be two, but your taking makes no difference to existence. Your knowing is deluded.
Reflect a little: a friend comes to your home and you are happy; if an enemy comes you become unhappy. You may think, “Let me arrange things so that if an enemy comes I am not unhappy.” The day you make such an arrangement, that day a friend will come and there will be no happiness either. You may think, “Let me be honored and feel no joy; and if I am dishonored, feel no sorrow.” They are joint events. We can split them in our looking, but we cannot split them in existence.
Lao Tzu says: what appears as opposition is not opposition. The opposing poles are two ends of one existence. But existence is so vast that when we look, we can see only one end; by the time we reach the other, the first has slipped from sight. And up to now we have not been able to join the two. Those who join them are the supreme saints. Those who see both ends as joined, as one, are the supreme saints. Those who cannot join them, we call ignorant. This alone is ignorance: that existence appears to us always divided into two—in friend and enemy; in love and hate; in light and darkness; in auspicious and inauspicious; in heaven and hell—it appears to us split.
Heaven and hell are two ends of a single thing. Therefore there is no hindrance in going from heaven to hell, or from hell to heaven. The journey is easy. How long does it take to pass from pleasure into pain? Have you ever noticed which is that precise instant where pleasure turns into pain? At what point does pleasure end and pain begin?
If you inquire so, you will find that that instant never really comes. The more you search, the more you discover there is no interval, no gap between joy and sorrow. There is no gap between pleasure and pain. The more you search, the more you see that pleasure is only one end of pain. Pain never begins. When you were in pleasure, it was already present. Only you were seeing the half. Slowly, as the whole comes within your glimpse, the other end becomes visible—and it is called pain. Every sorrow can become joy, every joy can become sorrow. They are interchangeable; there is nowhere any obstruction. There is not even the jolt you feel when changing gears in a car. Not even that. There is no change at all; you are on the same track.
Therefore there is a very delightful truth: wherever you see opposition, there in truth is non-opposition. And this non-opposition is not merely the absence of conflict. Lao Tzu adds another point: not only is there non-opposition, there is complementarity. Not only are joy and sorrow not enemies; joy rests upon sorrow and sorrow rests upon joy. Not only are the auspicious and the inauspicious not foes; they are friends, mutual collaborators.
Imagine a world where there is no unrighteous man—saints will die out at once. Where there is no ignorant man, the wise will become utterly useless. You would not even know they exist. With one, the other is joined. One stands upon the support of the other.
This is of immense value for the seeker. For the seeker spends his whole life in this very turmoil. The worldly man is caught in it, and so is the seeker. The difference lies only in the choice of objects. The worldly man is occupied with preserving pleasure and removing pain. The seeker is occupied with preserving the auspicious and removing the inauspicious. But both commit the same mistake. The one you call a sannyasin is in the same error as the worldly man. Their choices differ. The worldly man says, “I will save happiness and cut away sorrow. If not today, then tomorrow—by effort and enterprise—I will erase sorrow and retain happiness.” The sannyasin says, “I have no taste for pleasure and pain; I will preserve the good and eliminate the bad. I will remove what is evil and protect what is virtuous.”
On the surface they appear very opposed, but in Lao Tzu’s vision the outlook of both is equally deluded. The auspicious and the inauspicious are also two ends of one thing. Where the auspicious becomes inauspicious is hard to say. Where the inauspicious becomes auspicious is hard to say. And life is such an expanse that, if we could see the whole, we would drop the very language of duality.
Have the doers of good done good in the world, or have the doers of evil done evil? If we look at the vastness of history, it becomes very difficult—very difficult. At a certain point, evil turns into good.