My father wrote me a poem when I was little:

”Every day has its midnight,
So is every sunrise along with a sunset,
Where there is a reunion, a separation follows.”

This might be the first time I was introduced to duality, which as I have understood for a long time, must be an essential feature of the relative world. There are right and left, male and female, good and bad, yin and yang. There seems no significance to light without dark, nor to up without down.

However, this mindset has begun to unravel in recent years. I perceive life through a more “fluid“ process. It’s no longer “black-and-white”, nor “yes-or-no”; instead, it’s more about “yes, and.” Once I free myself from the trap of duality, I have started to see a much bigger world full of possibilities. And I’m more aware of where my attention goes … not denying its ends, but seeing things from multiple perspectives at the same time, and the spaciousness in between. Each story has multiple threads. Each thread is a function of the other (for example, yin and yang), and neither has any individual significance.

This awareness leads to a deeper understanding of my own consciousness - not as a “channel” but as a “container.” Knowing, then, that I cannot deal with people’s suffering by shuttling between their opposing poles. I must rise above duality, above problems, and above suffering … to take people as a “whole” and see the “beingness” of ourselves.

While each sunrise is followed by a sunset,
I am right here and now,
Seeing sunset, seeing sunrise, seeing life in a process.