Monad
The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the Monad.
- as a mode of consciousness call it “unity”
The Monad is a base, reality, and a transcendent state or dimension of being which is beyond the world of common experience where even the the formless realms are not present. It is infinite and beyond all duality, relativity, time, space, and measurement.
- The Monad is the whole of the infinite sequence of dependent origination and is thus not conditioned. It is the whole of Dependent Origination things and is this not dependent on anything itself. The whole of the causal chain transcends the conditioned nature of the parts abstracted from it.
- Infinite as distinguished by the finite
The Monad is what some call the “eternal present.” All conditioned things are impermanent, but the present moment is always. Everything flows out of it. It is constantly producing. Conditioned things move in and out of this present. This this present sits between creation and destruction. is the indeterminate and infinitely small point sitting between past and future. One might call the Monad the “creator” in the sense in that it is constantly destroying and creating a new.
- beyond time
That which flows through the Monad is dependent upon conditions, but the Monad itself is unconditioned and is not dependent on anything itself. The Monad is to be distinguished from the countless named things that are considered to be its manifestations. It is a source that is acting alone has an indivisible origin.
- where things move may be called the “will of God. To achieve a flow state is thus to align our will with god so to speak
- Being the source of all, it is also the greater whole from which all the individual elements of the Universe derive.
The Monad is the totality of dependently originated things, including space (which is dependent upon matter and vice versa), therefor bringing it beyond space. It is also eminent within all things rather then separate. It is panentheistic.
It is not a “thing” with boundaries to define it as objects in space are. As Jesus put it in the Gospel of Thomas, “It won’t come by looking for it. They won’t say, ‘Look over here!’ or ‘Look over there!’,” rather, it is “spread out over the earth, and people just don’t see it.” It is the “intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere” referred to by Alan of Lille In his treaty Maximae theologiae.
The Monad is both the all and the creator of the all, and being both the substance from which it proceeds and the governing principle, or Dhamma, which orders. Yet the things themselves and the Universe all originate from the Monad. Thus, the Monad creates itself, and is both transcendent as the creator of the Universe and immanent as the created Universe.
The Monad is not a name for a particular thing, but the underlying natural order of the Universe whose ultimate essence is difficult to circumscribe because it is non-conceptual yet evident in one’s experience. It is the reality of life before its descriptions of it, the muddle we encounter when we confront the world without ideas. It the formless void that existed before “God” (intellect) started to create a universe (a system) in Genesis, or before the first imprint.
The Monad is not a concept to be grasped intellectually. Speculative philosophical questions lead the practitioner away from liberation. In all its uses, the Monad is considered to have ineffable qualities that prevent it from being fully understood through conceptual understanding. Rather, it may be known intuitively and through experiential understanding, and its principles can be followed and emulated.
- It also denotes a state of consciousness, which we can take away “the” and simply call Monad.
The penetration of the Monad brings the destruction of the three unwholesome roots, culminating in complete purification of mind. Such purification includes the experience of perfect happiness. The Monad appears in the four nobel truths as the cessation of dissatisfaction. The existence of the unborn makes possible the deliverance from what is born, made, come to be, and conditioned. The full realization of the Monad thus also brings irreversible release from Samsara upon physical death, thus it is often referred to as the “deathless” or “immortality.”
References
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Bodhi, Bhikkhu. (2005). In the Buddha’s Words An Anthology of Discourses From the Pali Canon Chapter IX. SHINING THE LIGHT OF WISDOM (Location 5496). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
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Emerson, W,. Ralph. (1844). Self-Reliance and Other Essays Chapter 2 Self-Reliance (Location 553). Dover Publications.
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Samyutta Nikaya 38:1; IV 251–52
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Samyutta Nikaya 43:1–44, combined; IV 359–73
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