Looking Out and Looking In

Looking outward, we see duality

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Looking Outward

We experience everything that exists in our awareness, including the awareness and experience of a body and mind that we call our self.

Looking outward, we accept or reject what arises in our awareness. What we embrace and what we renounce define who we are — they are our identity. They are also the display of duality.

If there were no duality (differences), there would be nothing to accept or reject, or to embrace or renounce. In that way, duality is the entire basis of our identity. We exist only in duality. It is who we are.

Looking outward, we act and respond only in duality. We are forever comparing, judging, and choosing between good and bad, right and wrong, better and worse, and liked and unliked.

Looking outward, we can not do otherwise.

You exist as an idea in your mind.
— Shyunru Suzuki, in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

You are karma. Karma means action. You can not do nothing.
— Alan Watts

Looking Inward

Looking inward, the outward experiencer (your self) disappears. There is only the…