The Tree of Enlightenment

the object in various ways. For instance, in Chapter 23 we discovered
that the object is not stable in its mode of appearance, and
that an object can appear even without any external stimulus.
us the object is like an object seen in a dream; it is unreal.
e discovery that the object is unreal raises the question of
the status of the self, or subject. In the Mahayana and Vajrayana,
the general procedure for deconstructing the subject-object or
self-and-other duality follows these lines: We begin by showing
that the object is dreamlike and unreal, and then apply our
understanding of interdependence to reveal that, if the object
is unreal, then the subject which is dependent on the object is
also dreamlike and unreal. If the seed is unreal, the sprout, too,
must be unreal. is brings us to the understanding of the emptiness
of subject and object. is process is reflected to an extent
in the attitudes of the two main Mahayana schools – the Mind
Only school, which focuses on the dreamlike nature of experience,
and the Middle Way school, which focuses on the idea of
interdependence.
In addition to this fundamental duality – the subject-object or
self-other duality – there are many others that must be removed
if we are going to achieve enlightenment. e other major duality
which produces suffering, and on which the Mahayana and
the Vajrayana focus, is the duality between samsara and nirvana.
In general, this is a duality between what is conditioned
and what is unconditioned. Samsara is conditioned and nirvana
is unconditioned. is is reflected in the technical description of
the phenomena of samsara as conditioned phenomena and nirvana
as unconditioned reality. Samsara is conditioned because
it is characterized by origination and destruction, by birth and
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