Contradictions are key to understanding the way of the Buddha. The Path is walked by all, yet walked by few. The world is ready to receive your thoughts, but only if you have no thoughts at all. The sublime is most potent in mundanity. The pain of existence meshes with the desire to let things be as they are.

Once you examine these contradictions without trying to make them into anything else, the contradiction disappears because you have now joined with that which you are trying to run from. When we do this for long enough, contradictions become tiny flowers on the wallpaper—one detail pleasant to look at but not the entire picture. Contradictions build the walls that we need to break through in understanding the world is one solid piece.

Contradictions aren’t the enemy of a Buddhist—they are her very fuel to understand what is right or wrong with her practice. And seeing these contradictions in the daily light of experience means that there is always an opportunity to improve. Without the understanding of contradictions, we cannot understand the pieces of ourselves nestled within the yes/no. There is a grand world beyond the binary, one that cannot be expressed in totality with the words of division. One can’t express the totality of three with one and two.

The contradiction—unsteady power that nearly collapses on itself—is the koan of regular existence. How can two things exist at once? How can the everyday be sublime? When you encounter contradictions, be joyful. If you come across a contradiction, it indicates binary language to overcome. You’ve found a piece of yourself that can take you deeper into your practice, a weighted fishing lure that takes you to the bottom of the San Marianas trench.

The answer to contradiction lies in stepping outside of the binary, running into the totality without any preconception of what it should be. When this is done properly—”properly” meaning without any expectation of what you get in return—there is no contradiction after all. In totality, everything is absorbed as it is. The macro evaporates the micro.

There is no need for opposing language if everything we see is part of the same system. The system—the universe—is as it is, and all contradictions disappear at a grand enough scale. Everything continues to function, however it does. Because it is a part of this universe, it is part of the great whole. And in that way, there truly is no contradiction. If the soil is poisonous but the plants healthy, it is still part of the larger ecosystem—the grander scale unifies contradictions. If you’re looking at the contradiction, you may be looking too hard—or not looking hard enough.

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