I’m a bit surprised that you feel lost re. the metaphysical monism thing. My understanding, and that of many others, is that Buddhism is metaphysical monism, also called dialectical monism. Let me explain.

Dialectical monism is based on the idea that duality and unity are identical - unity always appears as duality, and duality is always reducible to unity. As the Heart Sutra says, “Form Does not Differ From the Void, And the Void Does Not Differ From Form. Form is Void and Void is Form.”

Unity is primordial. Duality is an epiphenomenon of Unity. Unity is the reality, duality an appearance, or epiphenomenon. Unity, in Buddhism, prevails. Ultimately, everything that is, is One. Surely Buddhism, as a philosophy, is monistic rather than Western-philosophical/Cartesian-dualistic.

So what about our dualistic experiences, to include our experience of an “I” that now sees objects outside of my own “self?” Here is where I find Buddhist philosopher Owen Flanagan helpful. In The Problem of the Soul, he likens the philosophy of phenomenology to Buddhism’s philosophy or worldview. Flanagan writes, “Many Buddhists are master phenomenologists.” (209)

Note this Flanagan quote, which expresses Buddhist philosophy well: “What Buddhism calls “bare attention,” which is hardly bare, involves scrupulous attention to the way things – both the world and our own minds – really seem. Bare attention allows things to reveal themselves as they seem when carefully attended to, and it yields and grounds these observations. But it provides no grounds for speaking about much more than appearances.” (211)

Here the Western subject-object experiences evaporates, and experience becomes non-discursive. Here is where Christian mystics like Thomas Merton find connections with Buddhism, and where Heideggarians find “Being” as similar to what Buddhists seem to be saying.

It’s this view of ultimate reality that I find interesting but ultimately incoherent, and false.

Blessings to you,

John Piippo

Blessings!

Not only does Buddhism not “rely on the divine,” it essentially is “unrelated” to the divine.