Crossing the Gap of Understanding – 10.30.14

Excerpt: “The two doctrines of most importance and usefulness in the East are those of Advaita and Advaya. The Advaita doctrine says that the Supreme Real cannot be understood by a mind trapped in duality – which is a mind that uses ordinary language to understand things because language defines each term in terms of an opposite term: we learn what hot means in terms of cold; we learn up in terms of down; we learn being in terms of nothingness etc. But God cannot be defined or characterized or in any way described or pointed at through language that is caught in this dualistic level of description. God is beyond both being and nothingness. . . . And so the Advaya doctrine, which is the one mostly offered in the Buddhist traditions, is that we cannot speak about God at all. And therefore what you can not speak about as Ludwig Wittgenstein came to understand himself (he’s one of the fathers of postmodern Western philosophy), what you cannot speak about, pass over in silence. And it is that silence that is at the heart of the spiritual traditions of both East and West.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 30, 2014.