Various
civil rights movements throughout history have called for non-discrimination,
and today, San Francisco Zen Center joins the celebration of recent steps
toward non-discrimination regarding whom consenting adults can love and
marry.
But
non-discrimination is a very long way from the Buddhist concept of
non-duality. The former says I am
equal to you. The latter says I am you. The former explains why Crash
won Best Picture. The latter
explains why Brokeback Mountain didn’t. The former asks us to examine our
prejudices. The latter asks us to
give them up wholesale, no matter how cherished, advantageous and “true” they
appear.
Nagarjuna exhorts: If you don’t want the problems caused by discriminations, then
stop making them.
Cohen warns:
To label is to dismiss.
The Samdhinirmocana
Sutra opines: Those who conceptualize difference … abide in conceit and are
obscured.
The bottom
line in Buddhism is that there is no other,
and all attempts to make other cause
suffering. This is why Right View
is so important, and why without it true non-discrimination is sunk. The ability to have perspective
unfettered by fear and judgment is critical to being able to see other as
self.
In other
words, discrimination is I.
Non-discrimination
is we.
Non-duality
is.
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