What if everything--God and world, matter and spirit, you and me--is one harmonious whole?

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The Hindu theologian Ramanuja describes vertical nondualism.

Let us hypothesize that reality is nondual--organic, harmonious, and intrinsically related--such that everything within it is distinguishable but inseparable. Now, we can distinguish between two types of nondualism, the vertical and horizontal. Vertical nondualism refers to the inseparability, interpenetration, and shared energy of God, humankind, and the universe. Horizontal nondualism refers to the inseparability, interpenetration, and shared energy between all aspects of creation, including persons.

To articulate vertical nondualism, we will turn to the Hindu theologian Ramanuja, the most prominent writer within Visistadvaita Vedanta, or the teaching of qualified nondualism. This tradition interprets advaita as both one and two, hence makes room for the inherent relatedness between God, humankind, and the universe that we are advocating. Ramanuja argues that everything in the universe, moving and unmoving, feeling and unfeeling, conscious and unconscious, is an expression of God and therefore just as real as God. Ramanuja writes: “This world . . . consisting of spiritual and physical entities, has the supreme spirit [God] as the ground of its origination, maintenance, destruction, and of the liberation of the individual from transmigratory existence.” In Ramanuja’s interpretation, the difference that distinguishes two things is real, a name and form granted them by their benevolent Sustainer, Vishnu, who also grants them their fundamental unity with, in, and through himself. Both human souls and the physical universe are modes of God, who emanates, sustains, and incorporates real distinctions into the divine. Hence, everything is both one and two, distinguishable yet inseparable.

Because this God pervades all human souls and all material objects, we can experience the sacred anywhere—in heaven, in ourselves, in others, and in matter. Anyone having any one of these religious experiences is experiencing an aspect of God. If the experiencer thinks exclusively, then they may believe that their experience is the only legitimate experience. But, if one divine ontology (or metaphysic) can accommodate the varieties of religious experience, as does Ramanuja’s, then such exclusivism is unnecessary. Our religious experience can be plural, making for a richer life.

Moreover, Ramanuja’s personalist panentheism, in which God is a full-fledged person, better serves Christian faith than impersonalist Platonic idealism, which has been the intellectual source of Christian panentheism for centuries.

The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna describes horizontal nondualism.

Ramanuja’s nondual vision is primarily vertical: he explains how God emanates individual human souls and the material world of time and change, even while God remains an embodied person in heaven. However, he does not develop horizontal interrelatedness. While he advocates the dependence of souls and matter on God, he does not posit any interdependence between persons or material objects themselves. Another Indian thinker, the Mahayana Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, insists on the absolute interdependence of all this-worldly beings on one another— while denying the existence of any sustaining God. His doctrine is that of sunyata (shoon-YAH-tah): literally “emptiness.” But this is not a generalized emptiness: he insists that all existents (things) are empty of svabhava (swuh-BHUH-vuh)—“own being,” unchanging essence, inherent existence, intrinsic nature, or independent reality. Instead, everything derives its existence from everything else, even as it grants existence to everything else, in one pulsing flow of infinite relatedness.

As mentioned above, sunyata translates literally as “emptiness.” Even in the modern Indian language of Hindi, sunya (SHOON-yah) can be translated as “zero,” “empty,” “nothing,” or “nothingness.” Due to this literal meaning, many opponents of Nagarjuna have interpreted sunyata as voidness and accused him of nihilism. Nihilism is belief in nothingness. These philosophers argue that, if everything depends on its relations for existence, then nothing can exist, because things must exist before they come into relationship. This argument belies our tendency to believe in separate things, each of which possesses its proper substance, unchanging essence, or enduring nature.

This misinterpretation is sometimes encouraged when teachers of sunyata critique our attachment to things. If we consider a “thing” to be an abiding object with stable qualities that will grant us permanent satisfaction, then there is no “thing.” But to assert that there is “no thing” and that there is “nothing” makes a fine distinction that careless readers may overlook, leading once again to the accusation of nihilism. When Buddhists assert that there is “no thing,” they are asserting that everything flows into everything else, not that there is “nothing” at all.

Properly interpreted, sunyata does not assert the nonexistence of objects; it asserts the interdependence of objects. Things exist contingently, based on their manifold relations, and any object’s self-expression will change based on its context, which means the object will change based on its context.

Everything is interdependent. Nothing is independent.

Consider an electron. We could argue that it has an unchanging essence since, as an elementary particle, an electron is absolutely simple. It is not composed of any other particles, unlike protons and neutrons, which are both made of three quarks, according to quantum theorists. So, it doesn’t depend on those other parts for its existence. All electrons share the same negative charge, the same mass, an up or down spin, etc. And, as an elementary particle, electrons last a very, very long time—perhaps 6.6 × 10²⁸ years, according to the most recent experiments.
If electrons are perfectly simple, behaviorally identical, and vastly enduring, then don’t they refute our assertion of universal interdependence? Don’t they have independent being? Even though we may know all the properties of an electron, we cannot describe the behavior of any particular electron without knowing its context. If I ask you to imagine an electron and tell me what it is doing right now, you must imagine it in a situation. You know that, in general, it has a negative charge, but you cannot know if it is currently being attracted to a proton or repulsed by another electron. You know that, in general, it is immensely stable, but this particular electron may have just been birthed by a muon or may be on the verge of annihilation by a positron or may be about to fall into a neutron star, where it and a proton will be smashed together to create a neutron. You don’t know if it is bound up in an atom or free, you don’t know its energy level, you don’t know its spin, etc.

In other words, even though all electrons share the same properties, you cannot know much about any particular electron until you thoroughly know its context. We learn the electron’s general properties, and we think we know the thing-in-itself. But there is no thing-in-itself. There is only the thing-in-relation.

To be open to life, we must love time.

Since sunyata refers to the infinite relatedness of things, to translate it literally as “emptiness” is misleading. The terms empty and emptiness have negative connotations in English: “I feel so empty” is not a celebratory comment. Since Nagarjuna argues for the perfect activity and receptivity permeating the cosmos, a more accurate translation would be openness. By design, entities within the universe are wholly responsive to one another.

For humans, who are blessed with the freedom to interpret the universe as we wish, this openness can be forgotten, ignored, or denied, but only at great expense. Those who close themselves off will feel less. Those who open themselves up will feel more.

With regard to persons, Nagarjuna rejects the existence of any unchanging, eternal, isolated self. Everyone is empty of self-existence. Again, Nagarjuna is not asserting that each person is a nothingness. He is neither an eternalist who asserts the existence of an unchanging soul, nor a nihilist who denies the existence of any self. Instead, he asserts the existence of a dynamic, impermanent, thoroughly related “self.” In other words, he does not assert that the self does not exist so much as he asserts that all selves exist, together. We are not one self but many selves, as one—one web, one nexus, one interconnected, interrelated, pulsing becoming. Everyone is entirely permeated, causally and qualitatively, by everyone else. And this absolute relatedness is realized through impermanence. Profound interdependence occurs through time and is dependent on time.

To the human being accustomed to craving permanence, the concept of emptiness will initially present as a threat, but it is actually an opportunity. Our related self is as expansive as the universe. For the person who has realized emptiness, reality is characterized by unceasing novelty. We do not fear the end of happiness, because we have always known that any period of happiness will end. We do not become undone by tribulation, because we know that tribulation will pass. Thus, the person who has realized emptiness can be buoyant, even through the vicissitudes of life, because that person recognizes the impermanence of all vicissitudes.

Impermanence, our unceasing passage through time, does not cause human suffering. Our craving for permanence in the midst of impermanence causes our suffering. The solution to suffering, then, is to stop craving permanence. The solution to suffering is to love time.

Indra’s Net illustrates the promise of openness.

The Buddhist tradition provides a powerful illustration of the dynamic reciprocity that we have been discussing, commonly referred to as “Indra’s Net.” To please the god Indra, his courtly artist resolved to create a work of stunning beauty. To do so, the artist spun a net throughout all universes, reaching forever in every direction. At every link in the net, he hung a sparkling jewel. Each jewel catches the light of every other jewel and reflects it, thereby containing within itself the sprawling splendor of the entire cosmos. At the same time, the light of each jewel is caught in all others, so that it is also active within them. Any one jewel contains the universe, and is expressed throughout the universe, in one glittering cascade of light.

In the vision of Indra’s net, we are the universe, and the universe is us. Spiritual wealth lies beyond the bounds of any narrow ego. Instead, the infinity and exteriority of reality invite the self beyond the self into the whole. Abundance surges as the outer becomes the inner, until there is no outer and inner, only an open expanse of shared energy. How much we contain, how big we are, is determined by how open we are to the universe. If absolutely open, then we can contain the whole universe. If absolutely closed, then we contain naught but our empty self. In the Buddhist view, we are as full as we are empty, and we are as empty as we are full. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 19-23)

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For further reading, please see:

Burton, David. “Is Madhyamaka Buddhism really the middle way? Emptiness and the problem of nihilism.” Contemporary Buddhism 2, no. 2 (2001). 177–190. DOI: 10.1080/14639940108573749.

Cook, Francis H. Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 1977.

King, Richard. "Early Yogacara and Its Relationship with the Madhyamaka School." Philosophy East and West 44, no. 4 (1994) 659–83. DOI: 10.2307/1399757.

McCagney, Nancy. Nagarjuna and the Philosophy of Openness. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.

Nishida, Kitaro. Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview. Translated by David A. Dilworth. Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993.

Ramanuja. Vedarthasamgraha. Translated by S.S. Raghavachar. Madras: Vedanta, 1956.

Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna's Middle Way. Translated by Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura. San Francisco: Wisdom, 2013.