Non-duality and 'many / one'

So I remember an old (not Zen) translation from the Tao Te Ching:

Unity begets duality. Duality begets trinity. Trinity begets the 10000 things.

I've recently been looking into case 34 in Cleary's translation of the Book of Serenity... and I'm thinking there's a one/many duality thing going on there. For completeness:

Fengxue said, "If you set up a single atom, the nation flourishes. If you don't set up a single atom, the nation perishes."

Xuedou held up his staff and said, "Are there any mendicants who will die the same and live the same?"

On the face of it I don't see a direct duality between many and one. It seems I have to go through an extra step to get to the 10000 things. There's a couple of ideas in Zen that come close - e.g. when a Zen master says he knows the minds of Buddhas or past Zen masters (presumably because their minds are neither the same nor different etc). I can get none, one, and two...and therefore three....but in Zen dialogs I'm used to more direct dualities, e.g. self and other, or Nirvana and Samsara, or knowing and not knowing, etc. One and many doesn't quite fit the mould for me.

I was reading the Laṅkāvatāra sutra recently - not because it is (necessarily) Zen, but because Zen masters refer to it occasionally (I think) and I wanted the background. It led me to thinking about how the 5 (6? 7?) senses might be self-supporting in their own way. I think I've read about bringing them together, in a Zen context. There's also the obvious idea that multiple senses make up a single reality. That sounds a bit many/one.

Am I just confused by the old Taoist stuff I read once? Has anyone got a more direct formulation of the many/one non-duality?

Submitted November 17, 2018 at 04:02PM by sje397 https://ift.tt/2BcFtCn