Hyatt Carter
Way back in the thirteenth century, over 700 years ago, Zen Master Dōgen expressed an insight that seems a foreshadowing of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle:
When one side is illumined, the other is darkened.*
一方ヲ證スルトキハ。一方ハクラシ。
(Ippo o shosuru toki wa, ippo wa kurashi.)
This does not entail dualism, nor, in denying dualism, does it imply unity.
The idea of “unity” is only a first approximation in thinking about the ultimate nature of reality. And what is beyond unity? Nonduality. The doctrine is stated succinctly in four words:
Not one. Not two.
Or in Chinese:
不一。不二。
Neither of these can stand alone; like yin and yang, one requires the other for completion.
If, as tradition holds, the perfect symbol of unity is a circle, the imperfect symbol of nonduality is . . . an ellipse, a figure that requires two foci to determine its form.
Let us take the prefix bi-, meaning “two,” and combine it with u-nity, to form “binity,” stipulating that these two do not merge but are held in dialectical tension. Held at just the right distance apart, two magnets will strain for union but will not be united.
Binities abound: yin and yang, particle and wave, electrons and protons, positive and negative poles of electricity, the double helix, right and left hemispheres of the brain, space-time, night and day, the bilateral symmetry of the human body, male and female, the I Ching, spirit and matter, conscious and unconscious, permanence and change, East and West.
東 西
East West
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* From the “Genjokoan” fascicle of Dōgen’s masterwork, the Shobogenzo.
HyC