Dualistic Thinking

   Many thinkers believe in 'conquering' adversity by splitting things into right and wrong, good and bad, etc. I remember reading a chapter this week from Robert Tremmel's Zen and the Practice of Teaching English where he talks about the success of using dualism to conquer difficulties. He remarks, "Even though it is fashionable in these days of 'New Age' ideas to attack Western culture for...tendencies toward dualistic thinking, the record shows that this use of mind has been a potent tool for building great civilizations and comfortable, technologically advanced democracies."  (p.73) Tremmel later offers a reason for adopting a more holistic approach in classrooms, where teachers use bare attention rather than imposing a conceptual layer into their classrooms. But his point is quite interesting. Would civilization collapse, I wonder, without 'dualism'? On the other hand, are the dualistic concepts that civilization advances not responsible for oppressive notions of merit and worth?
   I think that in a sense, dualism doesn't begin with something outside the mind, but it is part of the mind. But what normally happens, I think, is that people see the concept first, without realizing that the concept or category was created by mind in the first place. To use an example, instead of seeing that I create the category of 'dogmatic' and 'free thinking', I only see a person as 'dogmatic'. In labelling the person that way, I shut down any possibility to understand what makes me see that person behave 'dogmatically', or what makes me label them this way. Instead of probing into the way categories are created, I assume the category exists in a real world 'out there'. But actually, it only exists because of my situation in space and time, and how I connect with my thoughts. What a person sees is shaped by their way of seeing. And that way of seeing is so subtle, because the way is not reducible to an object.
     I believe that I have seen something before. A thought now reminds me of 'something else' that had arisen in the past, so I then conclude that what I see now must be the same as what I saw in the past. But are the two thoughts really connected? They connect in mind, but this doesn't mean that the thoughts have the same causes and conditions. It only means that I am looking at the thought now in light of the previous thought. I see a person and I think, "there he goes again, up to trouble!" But what I have really done is connected that person's present circumstances to what I see in the past. It never occurs to me that the two situations are different, and have different conditions giving rise to them. I only think, "ha, this person must be like this". My thinking limits me, in that sense. There is a story in Aesop's fable called "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It's an interesting story, because most people reading it (including perhaps the author) take it as a cautionary tale not ask for help when one doesn't really need help, and not to distort the truth. But could this lesson be turned around? Could it be about people who trust their previous thoughts more than the present situation, leading to the boy's eventual demise to the wolf?
   It's easy for past thoughts to become generalizations. Is the solution to replace them with new thoughts? There is a behavioral therapy out there called "Stimulus Exposure" therapy (or something like that), and it talks about exposing people to what they fear the most. According to the theorists behind this therapy, people with phobias often connect the present experience of a feared object to a past memory ingrained in mind. Through repeated, habitual exposure to 'safe' versions of this stimulus, the therapists believe that a person's fears can be cured. I do have to wonder,  though, can anyone replace a thought with another thought? This therapy optimistically assumes that one can do so. But is there another way to approach that?
   Dualistic notions tend to rest on the idea that we replace what we dislike with what we like. But if I realize that all thoughts are not 'connected' at all except through mind's activity, I am no longer motivated to replace one thought with another. They then become just thoughts, with no permanent, enduring reality. From this view, I don't need to 'fight' one thought with another, and so the notion of dual sides to things might start to fade away a bit.

Tremmel , Robert (1999), Zen and the Art of Teaching English. Boynton-Cook. Heinemann