AboutNonduality Satsangs are
gatherings where you will find yourself in the company of
like-minded people and in the midst of an experience
intended to celebrate, reveal, and communicate our common
ground in a profound way.
Through attention to that common
ground -- whether you call it oneness, consciousness,
Reality, Truth, etc. -- who knows what can arise? Welcome
to the great unknown, the great mystery!
Mission Statement
Nonduality Satsangs are gatherings of everyday folk who
carefully examine the appearances of life wherein acute
insight into one’s true nature might be gained
through genuine listening, authentic dialogue,
celebration, and commitment to what we sense is beyond
our small self.
What is satsang? Satsang means the company of truth. In
Nonduality Satsangs people authentically come together to
hear, express, and value the truth of their nature and
existence. They leave with a lasting insight of their
true nature. This is accomplished through their
collective presence, silence, discussion, consideration
of scriptures and texts from all traditions, through
meditation, lectures, chanting, singing, and within an
atmosphere of celebration, humor, and joy.
What is nonduality? Nonduality means "not two."
There are not two things. There is only ________ (fill
the blank with the term you prefer: God, consciousness,
oneness, reality, Truth, awareness, Presence, Self,
Brahman, quantum reality, emptiness, I Am, etc.) Yet we
witness infinite distinct forms. The teaching of
nonduality addresses the apparent paradox that there are
not two things AND that all things are distinct and
highly individualistic.
Why Nonduality Satsang? Because people hunger to know the
truth of their existence, and there is no independent
Nonduality Satsang currently offered in Atlantic Canada.
The time is right for this teaching. People around the
world are already coming to the teaching of nonduality
through such avenues as Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra,
Buddhism, quantum theory, the poet Rumi, A Course in
Miracles, Thich Nhat Hahn, Yoga, Reiki, various books and
websites, and through their own experiences and insights.
We are open to all teachings and teachers of truth and we
encourage, support, develop, and publicize other
independent Nonduality Satsangs.
Contact
If you have questions, comments, or
if you wish to bring the Nonduality Satsang to your
community, write James
Traverse or Jerry
Katz.
FAQ
Who are you?
Jerry Katz has been
disseminating the teaching of nonduality online since
1997 through Nonduality.com. He edited One: Essential Writings on
Nonduality. He was
on the Board of Advisors and co-organizer of the Science
and Nonduality Conference 2009, as well as a speaker. He
has spoken to the largest audience ever to hear about
nonduality, over 2 million people, when he was a guest
for three hours on Coast to Coast AM radio. Jerry has
lived in Nova Scotia since 1988.
James Traverse is the
driving force and primary teacher of Nonduality Satsangs.
James has been teaching Yoga in Nova Scotia since 1985.
His website is BeingYoga.com.
Dustin LindenSmith is a natural student of nonduality, a jazz
tenor saxophonist, on the Board of Jazz East. Father to
three and husband to one, Dustin has been a resident of
Nova Scotia since 1996.
Mandee Labelle's current focus and
interest is the practice of meditation and the teachings
of Adyashanti, Byron Katie and personal work with
simplicity and simple presence. Her joy is the production
and development of the Yogaheart Radio Show, an
experiential radio show which guides listeners through a
musical journey of life the universe and the evolution of
consciousness... yes all that and more on the live on-air
community radio broadcast on Wednesday afternoons on
CKDU. Information on Mandee's Yoga teachings and radio
show are at YogaHeart.ca.
To what tradition do you
belong?
Other than how we were raised, none
to which we are intimately linked. We are friendly to and
open to all traditions.
What's expected of me at
Nonduality Satsang?
That you consider what your true
nature is.
What
Is Nonduality?
Nonduality means “not
two” or “nonseparation.” It is the sense
that all things are interconnected and not separate,
while at the same time all things retain their
individuality. An awareness of nonduality gives you a
bigger perspective on life, a greater sense of freedom,
and brings you a more stable happiness.
Why do we need to know about
nonduality? How is it helpful?
The word nonduality is commonly
seen in the spiritual press and blogs. Nonduality bears
on quantum physics, movies, education, psychology,
ecology, sexuality, art, music, dance, organizational
theory, the workplace, mathematics, literature, all
religious traditions, and probably every other field of
knowledge.
A knowledge of nonduality can
change the way we look at ourselves and the world. That
change is in the direction of a unified perspective. This
perspective, if pursued, is found to go far and deep.
The Perception of Nonduality -
Your unhappiness may be viewed as the hunger for the
taste of nonduality
If you have ever had a sense or
experience of “something” deeper and more
meaningful that lies beyond the everyday you, yet that is
you in some way, you have had a taste of nonduality.
The taste of nonduality is the
sense or experience of unity, peace,
“something” vaster than the everyday you. The
taste may be known through an experience in nature, from
music or art, from being deeply involved in a hobby or
work, from being in the “zone” during an
athletic event, from sex, a walk in the park, dance,
surfing, having a few beers, or other social interaction.
It may be known in meditation,
Yoga, any other spiritual practice, a near death
experience, while driving your car, or in the midst of
any activity, or for no apparent reason at all.
If you have ever felt deeply
dissatisfied, intensely unhappy, psychically imprisoned,
it might be said that you can only feel this
dissatisfaction because part of you knows there is a
place of freedom. That freedom is the experience of
nonduality. Your unhappiness may be viewed as the hunger
for the taste of nonduality, nonseparateness.
The Pursuit of Nonduality - The
discovery of who you really are
After experiencing or sensing the
taste of nonduality, you may begin to pursue nonduality.
Your pursuit may take you to books, teachers, ashrams,
India, Internet groups. You may engage spiritual
practices, attend meetings with nondual teachers, go on
retreats.
Since you are not separate from the
“something” that is deeper, vaster, more
meaningful than the everyday you, it follows that this
pursuit is the discovery of who you really are.
Short descriptions of
nonduality:
Nonduality is the natural state of
reality, not a religion or cult or escape. -Tim Gerchmez
~~~
When you go beyond
awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which
there is no cognition, only pure being. In the state of
non-duality, all separation ceases. -Nisargadatta Maharaj
~~~
“Advaita (nonduality) does not
mean “one” in the sense of eliminating all
differences. The differences are present in the one in a
mysterious way. They are not separated anymore, and yet
they are there.” –Bede Griffiths
~~~
When you contemplate your own
consciousness with intense awareness, leaving aside all
thoughts of good and bad, you are automatically led to
the experience of non-duality. How is this possible?
Think of it like this: the clean clear blue sky is like
consciousness, while the smoke and pollution pumped into
the sky are like the unnatural, artificial concepts
manufactured by ego-grasping ignorance. Now, even though
we say the pollutants are contaminating the atmosphere,
the sky itself never really becomes contaminated by the
pollution. The sky and the pollution each retain their
own characteristic nature. In other words, on a
fundamental level the sky remains unaffected no matter
how much toxic energy enters it. The proof of this is
that when conditions change, the sky can become clear
once again. In the same way, no matter how many problems
maybe created by artificial ego concepts, they never
affect the clean clear nature of our consciousness
itself. From the relative point of view, our
consciousness remains pure because its clear nature never
becomes mixed with the nature of confusion. -Lama Yeshe
~~~
Q: Perhaps there’s a more
direct way to talk about Nondual mysticism?
Ken Wilber: Across the board, the
sense of being any sort of Seer or Witness or Self
vanishes altogether. You don’t look at the sky, you
are the sky. You can taste the sky. It’s not out
there. As Zen would say, you can drink the Pacific Ocean
in a single gulp, you can swallow the Kosmos
whole–precisely because awareness is no longer split
into a seeing subject in here and a seen object out
there. There is just pure seeing. Consciousness and its
display are not-two.
~~~
Nonduality isn't about concepts; it
is about getting rid of concepts, including a concept of
absolute.
In a nondual state there are no opposites. There is
neither an awareness of being passive nor an awareness of
being active; awareness without content comes near. In a
nondual state there is no contradiction or paradox;
common language fails in its ability to describe events
from a nondual perspective. The sense of "I am the
doer" is permanently absent as is the sense of
"I am not the doer;" what comes near is
"things being done" as there is no
"feeling" of I and there is no experiencer.
Nonduality as the common platform is the state where self
is no more. This is what unites all methods, paths and
the "self-styled." As a matter of fact, this is
what [nonduality.com] is conveying already by its
diversity. It is the idea of a bouquet of different
flowers standing in one vase and sipping the same water.
-Jan Barendrecht
~ ~ ~
To awaken to the
absolute view is profound and transformative, but to
awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true
nonduality.
...
Enlightenment means the end of all division. It is not
simply having an occasional experience of unity beyond
all division, it is actually being undivided. This is
what nonduality truly means. It means there is just One
Self, without a difference or gap between the profound
revelation of Oneness and the way it is perceived and
lived every moment of life. Nonduality means that the
inner revelation and the outer expression of the
personality are one and the same. So few seem to be
interested in the greater implication contained within
profound spiritual experiences, because it is the
contemplation of these implications which quickly brings
to awareness the inner divisions existing within most
seekers. -Adyashanti
~ ~ ~
Nothing need vanish for one to
realize that they *are* nonduality. It is a simple act of
recognition. Nonduality, as pure being absolute, exists
in every moment of awareness. In the simplest *and* the
most complex of human experience, the Self shines the
same, without effort or attachment to whatever is going
on "around" it. Nonduality isn't a
"place" our minds go to, it *is* the very
essence of who we are. -Jody
~ ~ ~
Non-duality, in discussion, does
become a belief system....and it contains all the
elements of the cultural basket in which it is
carried...in our case, the threads of western modalities
on individuality, personal power and self-worth,
hierarchy, authority, etc. Of its nature, non-duality as
a state of mind, is concerned with none of those
things.....it is simply the natural state of being which
does not compare, evaluate, divide, intellectualize or
even understand; it simply throbs to the rhythm of the
universe, resonates with, not against....as a process of
exploring that state of mind we find that resonating
against points us toward resonance with....there are no
oppositions...only the perception of opposition. -Kristi
Shelloner
~ ~ ~
3 definitions of nonduality:
- there are no two things, or even
one
- everything is consciousness
- there is neither any absolute existence nor any
absolute non-existence. -Greg Goode
~ ~ ~
Defining nondualism is like adding
legs to a snake.
Nonduality can't be something that
is used. It can't be employed at one time and not at
another. Nonduality is what every moment of
space-time-experience arises from and returns to. It is
never absent from any moment of space-time-experience. It
has no use, no value, from the usual perspectives of
forming meaning and value.
-Dan Berkow
~ ~ ~
There's no way *not* to live
non-duality -- everyone is being lived this way all the
time, even if we think we're not. This is the teaching of
non-duality. Non-duality is not something that we must
make true. It can't NOT be so. -Greg Goode
~ ~ ~
This is not the path to
non-dualism. Where's the path then? There is no path. It
is "pathless" as J. Krishnamurti said. No
teachers are needed, for it is already there. How many
seekers expressed regret for the time spent chasing gurus
when they realized that what they sought had always been
right in front of them. Not even hidden. Well, maybe
hidden by those over-wrought flights of fancy that one
projects onto the world. It is when you give up the
search that all the words and fantasies fall away, and
the truth can finally wash the senses clear. -Al-Maqtul
Bey
~ ~ ~
Would you mind terribly if I threw
"nonduality" to the wind for a moment, and just
said that I love you? -Tim Gerchmez
More descriptions of nonduality on
nonduality.com
Nondual
Traditions in Nova Scotia
A
Course in Miracles
Doug Rosborough
Buddhism:
Thich Nhat Hahn
Waves and Water
Buddhism:
Tibetan, Kagyü (Shambhala Buddhism)
Gampo Abbey
The Shambhala Centre Halifax
Shambhala
Meditation Group - no website
45 School Street, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia B0J 1E0
Nova Scotia (902) 677 2243, novaqust@fox.nstn.ca
St. Margarets Bay Shambhala Centre
Sydney Cape Breton Shambhala
Meditation Group - no website
P.O. Box 303 Sydney Mines, NS B1V 2Y5 Nova Scotia
(902) 562-2361,. cbssbmg@mac.com
Truro Meditation
Group - no website
32 Parker Street, Truro, NS B2N 3R1 Nova Scotia
(902) 895-8798, Contact: Bridgette DeBoer
Wolfville
Shambhala Meditation Group - no website
c/o Jacqueline Connaughton R.R. #1 Hantsport, NS B0P
1P0 Nova Scotia. (902) 582-1305
Annapolis Royal
Shambhala Meditation Group - no website
RR#2, Box 2047A Granville Ferry, NS B0S 1K0 Nova
Scotia
(902) 532-7189, csloan@tartannet.ns.ca, Christine Sloan
Pembroke Shore
Shambhala Meditation Group - no website
RR#3 Box 3140 Yarmouth, NS B5A 4A7 Nova Scotia
(902) 742-7945
Buddhism:
Tibetan
Halifax Nalandabodhi Study Group
Buddhism: Zen
Atlantic Ch'an Buddhist Assocation
- no website
2145 Windsor Street, Halifax, NS B3K 5B5 Nova
Scotia
(902) 422-0042
Atlantic Soto Zen Centre
Wolfville Zazenkai
Gurdjieff Work
Gurdjieff Society of Atlantic
Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia
The Gurdjieff Association of the Maritimes
Hinduism:
Advaita Vedanta
Arunachala Ashram Advaita Vedanta (Sri Bhagavan Ramana
Maharshi)
Hinduism: Art of Living
Art
of Living Halifax
Hinduism: ISKCON -
International Society For Krishna Consciousness
Halifax International Society for
Krishna Consciousness
Integral Approach to
Transformation
The New Earth Institute
Noetic Sciences
The Noetic Nautilus Society
Nonduality
Nonduality
- The Varieties of Expression Based in Halifax, and online since 1997.
"Nearly endless opportunities for understanding the
wonder of existence."
Nonduality
Satsang - Nova Scotia - the
host of this website
Spirituality, General
Spiritual Seekers "We are excited about creating an
internet community which connects people in Atlantic
Canada who have many different spiritual interests and
beliefs."
"The Autopoetic
Ideas Festival Through
presentations, conversations, and experiences the
Festival creates opportunities for participants to awaken
to their own essence and to propel them forward with
purpose on their path."
Yoga
Being
Yoga
YogaHeart
Yogic Tranceformation
The
Yoga Loft
