The Sanskrit terms dvaita and ādvaita have long shaped Indian philosophical discourse, yet they remain notoriously difficult to translate with precision—especially when transplanted into modern, Western contexts. Literally, dvaita means ‘two-ness‘ or ‘duality’, referring to the division of reality into opposing pairs: self and other, subject and object, good and bad. Its apparent opposite, ādvaita, is often rendered as ‘non-duality’—a term that has entered both popular and scholarly Buddhist writing.

However, the phrase ‘non-duality’ often carries dualistic overtones of its own. It can suggest a philosophical position in opposition to dualism—a sort of counter-stance that paradoxically reaffirms the very binary it seeks to overcome. ‘Not-two’, by contrast, is gentler, more spacious. It doesn’t deny twoness, nor affirm oneness. Instead, it lets go of the need to take sides altogether.

This subtle shift in language is not merely semantic. It points directly to the kind of transformative seeing that lies at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching. And to understand that, we must return to the source.

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