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What is Buddhist non-duality?

It is a fairly difficult concept to grasp, because of us Westerners, heirs of a Judeo-Christian culture, tend to interpret non-duality as the end of Manichaeism, that is to say interpreting it in terms of good and evil.
I suggest interpreting the concept of non-duality as not opposing what is to what should be, or more precisely to what we would like to be.

Biased Judeo-Christian interpretation of non-duality

In the Judeo-Christian system, the human being is often perceived as being pulled between two forces: good and evil. Hence the term duality (1). Good is associated with the pursuit of God, and evil with the uncontrolled satisfaction of passions. The predominance of this representation in the Judeo-Christian culture likely stems from the great influence of Saint Augustine and his Manichaean background. Let us just note here that there is a near semantic equivalence between: 1. The opposition between good and evil. 2. Manichaeism. 3. Duality.

This dual representation of the world leads more virtuous individuals to live in a predominance of guilt related to their frequent failures to control their impulses. This is what led to the enthusiasm for Eastern Buddhist wisdom widely spread by books and films by Arnaud Desjardins, which seemed able to liberate the individual from this guilt. For individuals coming from a Judeo-Christian culture, who discover the Eastern culture, non-duality is initially perceived as the end of being trapped in guilt connected to duality, which is seen as the opposition between good and evil. The awakening of Eastern spirituality is the promise of happiness accessible in this world.

What is duality?

Yet, his Indian teacher, who was not caught up in a Judeo-Christian culture centered on the opposition between good and evil, did not tell Desjardins 'Don't be Manichean' or 'Don't worry if it's good or bad.' According to Desjardins himself, he was told: 'Be one with,' which I freely translate as 'Do not dissociate yourself from the facts' to make the sentence clearer for those who have no Buddhist background.

We arrive at the interpretation I suggest for non-duality: do not interpose between yourself and the facts, a representation of what should be.
Here is an illustration of such mental interposition: 'People should be less materialistic' is dual because it consists in mentally creating a second world in which people are less materialistic.

Let us start by explaining why the individual is tempted to do this. For that, let us return to the basis of philosophy, namely the doctrine of Epictetus: when facing a problem, separate what is up to you from what is not. Fight with all your strength, determination and intelligence on the part that is up to you, and do not waste your worries on the part that is not up to you.
As soon as we pass to a dual interpretation of the world, that is to say we create mentally what should be, we automatically place the gap between what is and what should be in what is not up to us, therefore we easily disempower ourselves.

The problem with this trick is that it neglects the harmful aspect of cognitive dissonance resolution. Indeed, when we interpose between ourselves and the factual reality what should be, instead of actively opposing it, cognitive dissonance often ends up turning back against us over time and making us more or less agree with what we initially rejected, and rightly so, at the beginning. This is illustrated by the Stockholm Syndrome.

Finally, note that most of the time, the dilemma of not being in agreement presents itself in the form: in a meeting, a person presents a fact that you know is incorrect. Will you challenge it publicly or not?

The Buddhist view and its limits

In the Buddhist tradition, non-duality is explained as being one with the whole. In particular, the creator and the created are one. However, such a definition raises a major difficulty regarding the individual's ability to oppose tyranny. Such problems arise every time a unary explanation of the world (non-duality), binary (Manichaeism or Yin and Yang), or ternary (the father, the son and the holy spirit of Catholicism) is preferred. It leads to infinite debates, like throughout the entire Middle Ages between the oneness or the Trinity of God.
That is why we have adopted a slightly shifted definition of non-duality compared to the traditional Buddhist definition.

Buddhism also features a major contradiction:
1. The path of wisdom is to free yourself from beliefs.
2. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, in complete contradiction with 1.
Once we have adopted our definition of non-duality, we are led to conclude that Buddhism is dual, because it interposes between the world of facts and oneself an imaginary world where reincarnation would be an objective reality.

Buddhism as a doctrine is dual, with the same motivation as the individual: disempowerment. Indeed, the notion of reincarnation allows the masses to avoid fighting injustices, and thus in particular the privileges of a theocracy, on the pretext that the privileged will be condemned to reincarnate until they solve the problem by themselves.
We find a parallel here with Catholicism, which by creating the notion of afterlife, of heaven and hell, invites the masses not to fight social injustices in this world.
This is why Krishnamurti rejects all religions, including Buddhism.

Go deeper

See the question 'Do not judge'

Read the chapter « Effects of forced submission: theory » in the book A theory of cognitive dissonance by Leon Festinger. In short, the weaker the constraint but sufficient to obtain the subject's compliance against his inner conviction, the more the inner conviction will be questioned under the effect of cognitive dissonance.

Read Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt:
'The 'internal immigrant' saves his conscience by being in disagreement within his inner self, but without changing his actions ... to avoid being unmasked!'

For a more detailed description of non-duality (Buddhist) resulting from a unary representation of the world, see the introduction of the book The Meaning of Things: Interviews on Non-Duality by Francis Lucille.

Regarding the limits of Buddhism, refer to the documentaryBuddhism, the law of silence by Elodie Emery and Windrille Lanos, broadcast by Arte, and probably available on YouTube. It shows the inability of high Buddhist dignitaries to take responsibility in the face of abuse.

(1) See the CBC/Radio-Canada show Rencontres in 1972, with Arnaud Desjardins, at 15:00 (available on YouTube under the title 'Interview with Arnaud Desjardins in 1972')