Two birds,
but they fly together.
We see duality all the time in our perceptions:
Ourself and other,
“I” and what I see,
This opinion and that,
The way things are and how we’d like them to be,
What we like and what we don’t like,
…and the multiplicity of everything within our field of perception.
All these are like two birds flying together across the sky. They are two birds—yes, they are two, we’re not denying there are two birds—but in our seeing them there’s only one happening in our field of vision, one seeing. With awareness of this, you can see yourself (that is, the one who is the see-er) along with the act of seeing and whatever objects you see, as one occurrence. They are all one happening, one scene; and the correspondence between the word “scene” and the word “seen” is not a coincidence.
When we think about what we are looking at, we think “Oh, look at all the many things, all the contrasts, all the opposites.” But if we just look, it’s evident that everything we see, everything we feel, and our own sense of being the one looking, are all occurring simultaneously in one field of vision—or you could say, one field of awareness.
The see-er and the seen may seem to be two, and may feel that way. But take a step back in your mind’s eye, and see both the see-er and the seen. From that point of view, it’s clear they are one occurrence. The actuality is that in one and the same moment you are aware of yourself and you are simultaneously aware of what you see. And if you have a feeling of a split between yourself and what you see—the so-called objects of your attention—that feeling is also taking place in that same moment. It is only in thought, in thinking about it, that we divide up the perceiver and the perception.
In all these dualities that we may see and feel—inner and outer, contrasting views, ourself and other—the actuality is that in seeing both at the same time, we are really standing in the space of non-duality, looking from a non-dual position. We tend to overlook the fact that the place from which we see these dualities is non-dual—it is just space, just looking. And if our idea changes and we say “I am looking” and it again is felt as a duality, a split between “I” and “seeing,” we can again back up a step and notice that a seeing is taking place that sees both “I” and “seeing.” That seeing has no attributes, that seeing has no see-er, no split into seeming two.
Since this piece is titled “Non-Duality and the Cross-Eyed King,” at this point you may be wondering, What happened to the cross-eyed king? Well, he’s been waiting off stage, and now it’s his turn: In Rumi’s Masnavi, the characters who are “cross-eyed” or “squinting” see double when in reality there is only one. The cross-eyed king thinks Moses and Jesus are on opposing sides instead of seeing the Divine in both, and the cross-eyed servant sees two vases—or vessels—when there is only one. And the two characters have in common that they both believe their distorted vision.
Like the characters in Rumi’s Masnavi, if we are cross-eyed we may not be able to help the fact that we see double—that we see duality instead of oneness—but we can understand that this seeing is just the result of our condition, and we can start to train ourselves in stepping back and seeing more with the eye of understanding. And we can learn to put our trust in that eye more than in the two physical eyes. There may be two eyes, but their seeing is one.
© 2022 Shanti Natania Grace
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
