LEXICON
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DUALITY
In Buddhist and other traditional eastern spiritual thinking, the problems of
humankind, in terms of the many negative aspects of human existence, such
as crime, war, greed, hatred or violence are considered to stem primarily from what can be regarded as a single source, or what is called Duality. Examples
of the negative aspects of duality in terms of human conduct or contentment,
are the pairings of such things as love & hate, good & bad, right & wrong, honesty & dishonesty, feast & famine, health & illness or honesty & dishonesty. The concept of duality can be viewed as the the absence of unity or singular wholeness and oneness, like the singular aspects of such things as unconditional love, complete honesty, perfect goodness or consummate compassion.
The seeming universal presence of the oppositional condition of duality, is considered in the eastern philosophy of the Tao from China, as an essential essence of existence, as illustrated by the fundamental oppositions of
Yin and Yang. This pairing represents attributes such as male & female,
creative & receptive, light & dark or heaven & earth. The nature and condition
of material existence is considered to be based upon the pairing of opposites. Thus singular entities can have stable, continuous, particular and individual qualities and conditions such as the mass and heat of the sun which can
remain fairly constant for eons. Opposed to this condition is the qualities and
conditions of space, that can be said to be absent mass and heat and which represents expanse, in which dense objects such as the sun can float and move. These two conditions are intensely opposite in terms of the physical properties they exhibit, but at the same time they are complimentary in the
sense that in specific spatial relations, such as the earth's orbit around
the sun, a more or less ideal condition of living existence is produced. In
terms of the Human Sensory Apparatus, all sensation and feeling is the
sensory contrast between opposites such as cold & hot, sweet & sour,
hard & soft or light & dark. Every physical entity possesses specific structure
of composition that provides for its stable existence through its span of duration. Because different entities have different compositions, such as the difference between fish and rocks, for living creatures that are mobile, there exists the duality between right and wrong activity and behavior. Where
volition is involved, right and wrong can become the duality of good and evil.
DUALITY (1 of 4)
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