By Harshna Chandolia
We often speak about Brahman, about oneness, about non-duality, that everything comes from the same source, that the same divine exists in all of us.
But how does this actually translate into the way we live?
Because the truth is, most of us are not living in that realization. We are on the path, not at the destination. So the question becomes: how do we begin to practice non-duality in our everyday lives?
It begins by noticing something very simple: how we see others.
We don’t meet the world as it is. We meet it through layers of conditioning such as class, status, language, appearance, and utility. Almost instantly, we place people into categories of importance: who matters, who doesn’t, who is like me, who is not. This is where duality lives.
We say everything is one, but our behaviour reveals otherwise. Our respect is selective. Our kindness is often transactional. Our empathy expands and contracts depending on who is in front of us.
Look at the simplest moments in your day. How do you speak to someone who is serving you? To the person delivering your package after being out in the heat for hours? To someone cooking your food, even if they make a mistake? To the guard at your building or the server at a restaurant, the people who quietly make your life easier but often go unnoticed?
Do you meet them with the same respect and presence, or does hierarchy slip in without you even realizing it? It becomes even clearer in moments of friction. When things don’t go your way, when someone makes a mistake, when your order is late or wrong, when someone doesn’t meet your expectation, in those moments, do you still respond with empathy, or does your sense of importance take over?
This is not about ignoring mistakes or avoiding correction. Of course, things can be addressed. But how do you do it?
Do you respond with the same patience and understanding you would offer someone you love? Would you speak the same way to your own child as you do to someone serving you, or does compassion disappear the moment inconvenience enters?
Because this is where the practice lies. Not in being kind when it is easy, but in seeing whether your empathy is consistent, or whether it changes depending on who is in front of you.
To practice Advaita is not just to understand that all is one. It is to remove the divisions through which we see the world. And that begins with awareness, not of the world, but of the filters through which you see it.
Slowly, as that awareness deepens, something begins to dissolve, not the world, but the way you divide it.