Monads and Emptiness

by Gerald Schueler, Ph.D.

The Sanskrit term sunyata is interpreted in Zen as suchness and in Tibetan Buddhism as emptiness.  Suchness and emptiness are two terms for the same idea, one being positive and the other negative. Sunyata is not a state of consciousness or state of mind, but rather a state of being as well as a philosophical concept.

Tibetan Buddhism proposes the Doctrine of Two Truths. According to this doctrine, there is a conventional truth and an absolute truth. Conventional truth is basically the truth of the physical senses, the relative truth of everyday physical life. Absolute truth is that which never changes, and would include such things as mathematics and fundamental natural laws as well as ideas in the Platonic sense.

According to Tibetan Buddhism, all relative truth is empty of permanent reality. Zen would say that everyday things have no suchness. Buddhism calls this relativity maya, which is usually interpreted as illusion. The Doctrine of Maya does not conclude that physical objects are unreal. Rather, it concludes that they are empty. Furthermore, because they are empty, they can change. Thus emptiness is an essential condition for growth.

According to tradition, the last teaching of the Buddha was that all aggregates are unreal in the sense of being maya. An aggregate is anything that can be shown to be composed of parts. Its polar opposite, that which cannot be divided into parts, is the monad. The Doctrine of Monads suggests that the nature of everything is, at its center or essence, monadic. When monads combine together, they form aggregates. These aggregates take on form and other characteristics such as color and mass. According to this view, aggregates are simply monadic relationships. The aggregates or relationships form the basis of conventional truth, while the monads themselves form the basis of absolute truth.

When we look at a tree, we say that it is real because we can see it and feel it. Not only that, but other people can also see and feel the same tree. By convention, we say that there is a solid and real tree. Tibetan Buddhism would say that the tree has only a conventional reality, and not an absolute reality. Why? Because, according to the Doctrine of Emptiness, the tree is empty. It is an aggregate, a collection of components.

Convention says that there is only one tree that is seen and felt by many people. Because each person has slightly different sense capabilities and brain-nerve functioning abilities, each person tends to see and feel the tree differently. An alternate view is that there is, in fact, a multitude of trees, one for each person. The first view would place reality external to each person and delegate any variation to personal interpretations. The second view would place reality inside each person so that conventional truth is a projection that is given mutual consent by a majority of people. The first view suggests that there is only one reality that is experienced differently by different people. The second view suggests that each person experiences their own reality, that what is real is what is experienced, and that all reality is relative to the subjective self who is experiencing it. In this second view, reality is fluid and changes with experience. Projections that others can confirm are said to be solid objects and real, while projections that are not confirmed are said to be hallucinations and unreal. In this view, conventional reality is created by consensus.

According to the Doctrine of Emptiness, it does not matter which view of reality we care to accept. In either case, all aggregates are empty. It doesn't matter whether aggregates are real external things or whether they are mutually confirmable psychic projections. In either case, they are empty. In the same way, objects seen in our dreams are empty. In fact, all forms are empty.

According to the Doctrine of Monads, it also does not matter which view of reality we care to accept. On the one hand, aggregates are viewed as collections or hosts of monads. Reality is external. Aggregates are empty. On the other hand, each person is viewed as a monad whose manifestations or projections form aggregates that are empty. Reality is internal. In both cases aggregates are empty.

The Doctrine of Emptiness suggests that all compounded objects are empty. If they were solid, they would not be able to change. Solid objects are permanent. Empty objects can change. In this sense we can say that monads are solid. According to the Doctrine of Monads, the center or essence of each person is a monad. Our essential nature is monadic essence.

G. de Purucker, a past Leader of the Pasadena Theosophical Society, called the monad a "consciousness center." There is not much more to be said for the monad itself. It is an indivisible consciousness center having no "parts." It does, however, self-manifest. Furthermore, its manifestations can split or divide into parts. To separate these two, H. P. Blavatsky, the founder of the modern Theosophical Movement, called the fundamental monad itself the "divine monad" and its self-manifestation the "spiritual monad" which she called its "ray."

With the definition of a monad and its ray in mind, we can visualize the first manifestation of the monad as having three distinct components: (1) a subjective consciousness center or I (everything that is identified with a self), (2) an objective not-consciousness environment or Not-I (everything that can not be identified with a self), and (3) an inter-connecting link between the two.

The above visualization suggests several important things. The monad itself is non-dualistic. The I and Not-I of the ray form the first fundamental dualism. They are polar opposites, called Purusha and Prakriti in Sanskrit. Their inter-connecting force or energy was called Fohat by Blavatsky. The triune "spiritual monad," which could be called the I-Not-I Monad, is the basis of all spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical manifestation. In short, the entire physical universe is formed from such I-Not-I Monads.

Although we call the "monadic ray" a spiritual monad or an I-Not-I Monad, technically it is not a monad at all because, as we have seen, it is divided into three parts and monads cannot be divided. Therefore, in a technical sense, even the spiritual monad is empty. Indeed, the Mahayana Buddhist Master Nagarjuna, who gave us the philosophical concept of emptiness, pointed out that even emptiness is empty. Blavatsky herself was well aware of the conflict in her terminology when she said, "Thus it may be wrong on strictly metaphysical lines to call Atma-Buddhi a MONAD, since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore compound" (SD Vol I, p 179).

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