Inter- Faiths Dialogue

The Absolute > The One

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Y ou are the omniscient, omnipresent being of the universe. But of such beings can there be many? Can there be a hundred thousand millions of omnipresent beings? Certainly not. Then, what becomes of us all? You are only one; there is only one such Self, and that One Self is you. Standing behind this little nature is what we call the Soul. There is only One Being, One Existence, the ever-blessed, the omnipresent, the omniscient, the birthless, deathless.

temple_hindu

quote 3154 | Vivekananda
excerpt from Jnana-Yoga, Immortality, Swami Vivekananda, pg 164

I know nothing of two worlds,
all I know is the One.
I seek only One,
I know only One,
I find only One,
and I sing of only One.

mosque

quote 3053 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
Star, Jonathan, and Shiva, Shahram, trans. A Garden Beyond Paradise. New York: Bantam Books, 1992

T hat One is called Shiva,
The Radiant One.
Ever-free, without death or decay,
He is the highest goal of liberated ones.
Witnessing everything without aid or instrument,
Steady, immovable, and changeless,
He is the source of all existence, the one attainable through yoga.

temple_hindu

quote 3016 | The Vishnu Sahasranam
Jonathan Star, the Inner Treasure, Tarcher Putnam

T hough the Infinite One is without color,
He colors the entire universe;
Though immortal,
He is born, and lives, and dies.
That One is all that was, and is, and will be,
Yet He is always the same.

He is the Supreme, Unchanging, Absolute.

He becomes the fire, the sun,
The wind, and the moon.
He becomes the starry heavens,
And the vast waters, giving life to all.

He becomes the woman, the man,
The youth, and the maiden too.
He becomes the old fellow
Tottering on his staff.
He becomes every face
Looking in every direction.

He becomes the blue butterfly,
The green parrot with red eyes.
He becomes lightning, the seasons,
The endless seas.

Without birth or death,
Beyond all time and space,
He is the One from whom
All the worlds are born.

temple_hindu

quote 3008 | The Upanishads
Shvetashvatara Upanishad

T he distinction between the persons does not impair the oneness of nature, nor does the shared unity of essence lead to a confusion between the distinctive characteristics of the persons. Do not be surprised that we should speak of the Godhead as being at the same time both unified and differentiated. Using riddles, as it were, we envisage a strange and paradoxical diversity-in-unity and unity-in-diversity.

church

quote 2802 | Saint Gregory of Nyssa
Gregory of Nyssa, from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, translated and edited by Herbert Mursillo (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. V1adimir's Seminary Press, 1979).

Q uestion: We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. How can I do this if my neighbor has wronged me?
Answer: You must understand these words rightly. Love your neighbor as something which you yourself are. For all souls are one. Each is a spark from the original soul, and this soul is inherent in all souls, just as your soul is inherent in all the members of your body. It may come to pass that your hand will make a mistake and strike you. But would you then take a stick and chastise your hand because it lacked understanding, and so increase your pain? It is the same if your neighbor, who is of one soul with you, wrongs you because of his lack of understanding. If you punish him, you only hurt yourself.
Question: But if I see a man who is wicked before God, how can I love him?
Answer: Don't you know that the primordial soul came out of the essence of God, and that every human soul is a part of God? And will you have no mercy on man, when you see that one of his holy sparks has been lost in a maze and is almost stifled?

synagogue

quote 2772 | Martin Buber
Martin Buber’s ten rungs, collected Hassidic saying, p.82

T he world is a spinning die, and everything turns and changes: man is turned into angel, and angel into man, and the head into the foot, and the foot into the head. Thus all things turn and spin and change, this into that, and that into this, the topmost to the undermost, and the undermost to the topmost. For at the root all is one, and salvation inheres in the change and return of things.

synagogue

quote 2765 | Martin Buber
Martin Buber’s ten rungs, collected Hassidic saying, p.69

T hose who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no fear.
Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no grief.
How can the multiplicity of life
Delude the one who sees its unity?

temple_hindu

quote 2633 | The Upanishads
Isha Upanishad, translated by Eknath Easwaran, 1987; Nilgiri Press, Tomales, California

T hose who are suffering or who fear suffering, think of Nirvana as an escape and a recompense. They imagine that Nirvana consists in the future annihilation of the senses and sense-minds; they are not aware that Universal Mind and Nirvana are One, and that this life-and-death world and Nirvana are not to be separated.

temple_buddhist

quote 2616 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch XIII, p.352, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

T hey address me by different names not realizing that they are all names of the one Tathagata. Some recognise me as Tathagata, some as The Self-existent One, some as Gautama the Ascetic, some as Buddha. Then there are others who recognize me as Brahma, as Vishnu, as Ishvara; some see me as Sun, as Moon; some as a reincarnation of the ancient sages; some as one of "the ten powers"; some as Rama, some as Indra, and some as Varuna. Still there are others who speak of me as The Un-born, as Emptiness, as "Suchness," as Truth, as Reality, as Ultimate Principle; still there are others who see me as Dharmakaya, as Nirvana, as the Eternal; some speak of me as sameness, as non-duality, as un-dying, as formless; some think of me as the doctrine of Buddha-causation, or of Emancipation, or of the Noble Path; and some think of me as Divine Mind and Noble Wisdom.

temple_buddhist

quote 2604 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch XII, p.344, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

C onditions of existence are not of a mutually exclusive character; in essence things are not two but one. Even Nirvana and Samsara's world of life and death are aspects of the same thing, for there is no Nirvana except where is Samsara, and no Samsara except where is Nirvana. All duality is falsely imagined.

temple_buddhist

quote 2554 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch.II, p.292, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

T he Blessed One replied, saying: Mahamati, the error in these erroneous teachings that are generally held by the philosophers lies in this: they do not recognize that the objective world rises from the mind itself; they do not understand that the whole mind-system also rises from the mind itself; but depending upon these manifestations of the mind as being real they go on discriminating them, like the simple-minded ones that they are, cherishing the dualism of this and that, of being and non-being, ignorant of the fact that there is but one common Essence.

temple_buddhist

quote 2542 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch.II, p.283, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

I f it is argued that material force is produced from the Vacuity, then because the two are completely different, the Vacuity being infinite while material force is finite, the one being substance and the other function, such an argument would fall into the naturalism of Lao Tzu who claimed that being comes from non-being and failed to understand the eternal principle of the undifferentiated unity of being and non-being. If it is argued that all phenomena are but things perceived in the Great Vacuity, then since things and the Vacuity would not be mutually conditioned, since the physical form and the nature of things would be selfcontained, and since these, as well as Heaven and man, would not be interdependent, such an argument would fall into the doctrine of the Buddha who taught that mountains, rivers, and the total stretch of land are all subjective illusions. This principle of unity is not understood because ignorant people know superficially that the substance of the nature of things is the Vacuity, the Void, but do not know that function is based on the Way of Heaven (Law of Nature).

candle

quote 2363 | Chang Tsai
Chang Tsai, Cheng-meng, Ch.1, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 30

W hen it is understood that the Vacuity, the Void, is nothing but material force, then existence and nonexistence, the hidden and the manifested, spirit and eternal transformation, and human nature and destiny are all one and not a duality. He who apprehends integration and disintegration, appearance and disappearance, form and absence of form, and trace them to their source, penetrates the secret of Change.

candle

quote 2362 | Chang Tsai
Chang Tsai, Cheng-meng, Ch.1, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 30

T he Great Ultimate is the One. It produces the two (yin and yang) without engaging in activity. The two (in their wonderful changes and transformations) constitute the spirit. Spirit engenders number, number engenders form, and form engenders concrete things.

candle

quote 2342 | Shao Yong
Shao Yung, Supreme Principle Governing the World (Huang-Chi Ching Shu), 8B:23a, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 29

In saying that the Great Ultimate produces without activity, Shao Yung is different from Chou Tun-i who said that the Great Ultimate generates yang through movement . Shao, did not want to differentiate activity and tranquillity or yin and yang sharply as in the case of Chou. As Huang Yueh-chou said in his commentary, the point is that spirit produces the two not as two separate entities but the two embraced in the One, namely, the Great Ultimate

N on-being is inherent in the one. But when we look for it in the multiplicity of things, it is like Tao which can be looked for but not seen, listened to but not heard, reached for but not touched.

quote 2280 | Wang Bi
WANG PI, Lao Tzu chu, or Commentary on the Lao Tzu, ch. 47, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 19.

T he ten thousand things have ten thousand different forms but in the final analysis they are one. How did they become one? Because of non-being…. Therefore in the production of the myriad things, I know its master. Although things exist in ten thousand different forms, their material forces are blended as one.

quote 2278 | Wang Bi
WANG PI, Lao Tzu chu, or Commentary on the Lao Tzu, ch. 42, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 19.

O ne is the beginning Of number and the ultimate of things. All things are produced by the one and this is why it is the master of all. And all things achieve their completion because of the one.

quote 2276 | Wang Bi
WANG PI, Lao Tzu chu, or Commentary on the Lao Tzu, ch. 39, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 19.

H eaven, earth, infinite space, and infinite time are the body of one person, and the space within the six cardinal points is the form of one man. (1) Therefore he who understands his nature will not be threatened by Heaven and Earth, and he who comprehends evidences will not be fooled by strange phenomena. Therefore the sage knows the far from what is near, and to him all multiplicity is one. Men of old were one with the universe in the same material force, and were in harmony with the age.

quote 2271 | The Huai-Nan Tzu
Huai-nan Tzu, SPPY, 8:3a-b, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 17.

(1) Read chi (system) as hsing (form), according to Wang Nien-sun, ibid., bk. 13, p. 47. See also Liu Chia-li, Huai-nan chi-cheng (Collected Textual Commentaries on the Huai-nan Tzu), 1924, 8:6a.

A ll things are one.

quote 2257 | Tchuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu, ch. 17 (school of Tchuang Tzu), NHCC, 6:17b-21b, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 8.

T ung-kuo Tzu asked Chuang Tzu, "What is called Tao-where is it?" "It is everywhere," replied Chuang Tzu.
Tung-kuo Tzu said, "It will not do unless you are more specific." "It is in the ant," said Chuang Tzu.
"Why go so low down?"
"It is in the weeds."
"Why even lower?"
"It is in a potsherd." "Why still lower?"
"It is in the excrement and urine," said Chuang Tzu. Tung-kuo gave no response.

[…]

Do not insist on any particular thing. Nothing escapes from Tao. Such is perfect Tao, and so is great speech. The three, Complete, Entire, and All, differ in name but are the same in actuality. They all designate (chih, mark) the One.

quote 2252 | Tchuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu, ch. 22 (school of Tchuang Tzu), NHCC, 7:49a-50a, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 8.

Compare this with a most celebrated Buddhist dialogue: Question: What is the Buddha? Answer: It is the dried human excrement-removing stick. It is a famous saying by Zen Master Wen-yen (d. 949). See Ogato, Zen for the West, p. 109. The translation "dirt cleaner" by Ogato for the dried human excrement-removing stick is evidently a Zen accommodation to Western decency!

T herefore what he liked was one and what he did not like was also one. That which was one was one and that which was not one was also one. He who regards all things as one is a companion of Nature. He who does not regard all things as one is a companion of man.

quote 2233 | Tchuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu, chapter VI, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 8.

T he universe and I exist together, and all things and I are one.

quote 2222 | Tchuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu, chapter II, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 8.

T ao produced the One.
The One produced the two.
The two produced the three.
And the three produced the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry the yin and embrace the yang, (1) and through the blending of the material force (ch'i) (2) they achieve harmony.

quote 2199 | Lao Tzu
Laozi 42, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 7.

It is often understood that the One is the original material force or the Great Ultimate, the two are yin and yang, the three are their blending with the original material force, and the ten thousand things are things carrying yin and embracing yang. However, there is no need to be specific. The important point is the natural evolution from the simple to the complex without any act of creation. This theory is common to practically all Chinese philosophical schools.

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