Dualism VS Monism EXPLAINED! | Russell Brand

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Produced by Jenny May Finn (Instagram: @jennymayfinn)

[MissingPersonsMysteries]

Thank you for playing a role in my recovery over 6 years ago. You gave me a way to cope and quit a heroin and meth addiction. So just thought you should know you played a role in changing my life for the better.

[acwhitelaw]

monistic hunduism is different from dualistic hinduism, but religious dualism or monism is entirely separate from mind/body dualism-- there is no mind/body monism in materialist sciences. this guy is conflating dualism and duality.

[jjkyo]

Non-duality includes all dualities. The absolute includes all relatives. Dualism as a primary perspective only enforces more separation.

[streetfighterGeeK]

Those are really ambiguous ways to describe monism and dualism. And mostly wrong too, as far as I can tell

[ndico]

This guy speaks very confidently while sharing completely wrong philosophical information :D

[SMABEM]

The yin-yang symbol (tajitu) symbolizes tension and continual change within the One. Not duality.

[tourist]

This response would get a D in any introductory philosophy course (or psychology course).

[SusanHopkinson]

It is a mistake to think that Eastern thought considers maya to mean illusion or that the world is an illusion. It is not as it appears, but this is not the same as saying it does not exist.

[prajnaseek]

Russell, when you said, "I feel that we are experiencing the limitations of our current models", you were bang on. Yes, we have been in the midst of a scientific revolution, a shift in paradigms, or world-view, which began over a century ago. (These things take time - and a century, in human history, is but a blink.) Moreover, we have been in the midst of a cultural awakening of humanity since the late 1950s (the Beat poets, for example, along with the Civil Rights movement), which blossomed in the 1960s, and which did not die out, but has quietly grown and accelerated over the past 50-60 years, and continues to accelerate and to grow world-wide.


I would offer what Leibniz called The Perennial Philosophy - which Aldous Huxley wrote about very well - as a major clue as to where we should look for a better understanding of what reality really actually is. And the Perennial Philosophy echoes the recent findings in quantum physics, which show that the supposed material building blocks of all matter, do not exist - at least, not in the way we had imagined. ("Where is the matter? No matter. Where is the mind? Nevermind.")


Quantum physics shows us that subatomic particles are not particles - which was a misnomer we put on them, a label we put on them, while we were still steeped in the deluded world-view of Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic materialist-reductionism. Nor are they local. And non-local means non-dual. Subatomic particles are condensations or areas of concentration within energy fields - and as Einstein said, "We should stop talking about particles and fields. The field is everything." Or as Einstein also said, getting right to the heart of the matter: "The perception of a division between subject and object is a kind of optical delusion." Or as Schrödinger put it - and he was of course the god-father of quantum mathematics: "The number of minds in the universe is one." (See Einstein's star pupil and protégé, David Bohm, for further elaboration.)

Again, non-dualism is the heart of the perennial philosophy, the heart of the mystics' teachings, East and West (see Meister Eckhart, for example), the heart of Buddhist, Taoist and yogic teachings, and the heart of what quantum physics and modern science is now confirming.

(Science is the slow man in the race, but is beginning to catch up, despite the foot-dragging of the pseudo-empirical, quasi-scientific majority of "scientists", who, like Dark Age priests, cling to the old Newtonian-Cartesian materialist paradigm like it was the Holy Grail itself.)



For a scholarly perspective on Buddhism and non-dualism, Eastern philosophy, and the philosophy of science - and not a gross misrepresentation of them, as was presented here - see:


Choosing Reality - Allan Wallace

World As Lover, World As Self - Joanna Macy

The Hero With A Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell

The Perennial Philosophy - Aldous Huxley

The Way of Zen - Alan Watts

Tao: The Watercourse Way - Alan Watts

Psychotherapy East and West - Alan Watts

The Holographic Universe - Michael Talbot

Mysticism and The New Physics - Michael Talbot

Dreamtime and Inner Space - Holgar Kalweit

The Tao Te Ching - Jane English translation only

The Gospel of Thomas - Marvin Meyers translation only

The Heart Sutra - with commentary by Thich Nat Hahn

The Prajnaparamita Sutra - see Lex Hixon's, The Mother of the Buddhas

The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui-neng - Shambhala Classics edition

The Uttaratantra - see Buddha Nature: The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra

And anything and everything by the Dalai Lama, Chogyam Trungpa,

or my own teachers, Lama Zopa, Lama Tharchin and Kirti Tsenchab Rinpoche


And to this short list of seminal, core texts, I would humbly, and frankly, offer my own work, as an overview of philosophy, within a broad historical and global perspective, and within the context of sociology, political-economy, culture and ecology, and as a vision for the way ahead: Enlightened Democracy, and, The People vs The Elite. Both are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble now.


My sincere apologies to your guest, Russell, but a person cannot grossly misrepresent Buddhism and Eastern philosophy without being called and corrected on it. He needs to study far more before speaking with such an air of authority. It is inappropriate, grossly misleading, and frankly juvenile.


J. Todd Ring,

March 13, 2021

[keyow]

His questions don’t reveal any limitations. They’re incredibly easy to answer.

The “lake” in the dream isn’t actually a lake. Its just the fabricated image of a lake. An image made in the brain just as any other sight you see. The occipital lobes are just as capable of painting a picture of their own volition as they are painting one via the light that enters the retina.

Now you may ask what that “image” is. What is the experience itself? Does the “image” actually exist?

Yes, but not in the way you would think of a printed picture. This image is itself the interpretation of electrical impulses sent by one portion of the brain to another. That’s all.

It’s very easy and simple to explain away these questions that are often poised as the “end all” of Materialism.

[MonisticIdealism]

_Dualism_ fails to overcome the mind-body problem.
_Materialism_ fails to overcome the hard problem of consciousness.
_Idealism_ preserves the irreducible consciousness of dualism and the scientific monism of materialism without the mind-body problem and hard problem of consciousness.

[FelipeZabala]

Just to clarify:

Out of the 4 main philosophical tenet schools in Buddhism, it is only the Chittamatra or "Mind-Only" School, who asserts the non-existence of external/physical reality. And this is school, even though very relevant, is still considered one of the lower schools within the system.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, has said that the view of this school is closely related to the notions that quantum physics brings to the table in terms of how reality exists, so it's a very interesting topic of study.

From the perspective of Prasangika-Madhyamaka or Consequentialist Middle-Way School, all external phenomena exist conventionally and perform their respective function. However they lack inherent, independent existence.

Russel: I've said it before and I'll say it again: you need to sit down with B. Alan Wallace and talk about this things. I'll be looking forward to that.

[exposingpowerfullieslivest]

In Qabalah, Chokmah is consciousness, Binah is Mara, The Mother, The Great Sea, i.e: "Cosmic Root Substance"; Chokmah uses Binah as an immediate vehicle and all emanations proceed from there. The idea of a debate between one or the other seems silly; there is a fundamental substance or reality to the physical, and a fundamental substance and reality to consciousness; it doesnt have to be either or

[GregoryWonderwheel]

Westcott Louden doesn't seem to know much about either philosophy or Buddhism. His description of "monism" though not entirely false is woefully simplistic and misrepresentative. Pitting "dualism vs monism" is itself a product of a dualistic imagination. Consciousness is possible because of the bifurcation of ideation. Thus duality seems to be natural. But the mind that bifurcates to create consciousness is not itself bifurcated in essence, only in physical structure and function. Thus to realize the unified foundation of reality, we have to be able to transcend consciousness itself with its bifurcation of antithetical functioning. This non-dualist awakening is shown in the formula "zero= one = infinity". I agree with Louden that everything is a manifestation of mind, but Louden himself doesn't seem to understand what he means by referring to mind.

[JBurdn]

Get Rupert Spira on Under the Skin please and if I'm being greedy also get Eddie Izzard for some comedic chats.

[thewiseturtle]

Physics/physical isn't just matter/material stuff, it is energy, too, which is what mind is. It's not supernatural or mysterious, it's just patterns of vibrations. Each pattern is "aware" of a specific part of reality, like the water in the dream. It's just a pattern of energy, which is what matter *does*.



Energy/mind is the verb to matter's/brain's noun. That's all.

[jonphipps]

Sometimes it feels like Humans are to Consciousness what Computers are to the Internet..

[MooseCracker]

Wescott seems to define the terms in a very different way from western philosophy or Buddhism.

🤔 he said dualism is a very Buddhist approach and then said idealism is Buddhist. There is the mind only school in Buddhism it doesn't really jive with Plato's idealism but in a sense is similar to some Hegelian thought.

Maybe I'm just too accustomed to the standard definitions:
"Dualism", being that we are separate from each other/ the environment, thoughts being separate from brain is dualistic but so is having a brain separate from the outside world... past and future are separate etc... In otherwords everything is in parts/ a whole is compounded parts. This is essentially how we experience our reality whatever the case may be on an absolute level.

Monism where everything is the greater whole can't be separated into parts (only tricked into a sense of separation) the whole / absolute isn't comprised of individuals, but rather, is uncompounded/ is one thing.

Idealism then being that, things are identified based on an ideal actuality of the item being identified, i.e. the play button on the vid is called a triangle but really it's only triangular. If we zoom in on the corners enough we find that the angles aren't perfect but are actually either rounded or stepped (the corners of each step zoomed in enough runs into the same issue). So with idealism, a thought is, we make concessions in order to work with relative or our perceived reality, but there must also be a perfect triangle (maybe in a less gritty reality or from a perspective outside of our universe etc) this is howcome we even have the notion of what a triangle is....

I summed those up a bit rough too, but my point is, using the standard meanings he's pretty far off on how each relates to religions and/ or science. I'm not convinced that his definitions can really be applied to those things either.

I don't know everything, make mistakes etc, like anyone and Wescott gets that luxury too... Doesn't take away from the quality of the program, just means it was a bit ___ism filled and i lost the sense of what his actual view is.

[iordanneDiogeneslucas]

I would say i am a firm monist. There is one underlying substance of which all else arises.

[zzzT.]

i searched for non duality and this video popped up. i will continue searching for non duality in futility. 🤠