This is a deeply rich and subtle question—how non-duality contends with the signifier, and especially the Master Signifier (S1), that privileged point in Lacanian psychoanalysis around which the subject organizes meaning, identity, and lack.
Let’s unfold this in two directions—Lacanian and non-dualist, and see where they converge and diverge, or possibly, silently touch.
1. Lacan’s Master Signifier (S1): Naming the Void
In Lacanian terms, the Master Signifier is the “quilting point” (point de capiton)—a signifier that halts the endless sliding of signification, gives structure to the symbolic, and anchors the subject. Yet—it anchors by covering a lack. It is empty in itself, but structuring. Think: “God,” “Father,” “Truth,” “I,” “Love,” “Nation.”
• The Master Signifier is a phantasmic fix.
• It allows the subject to believe in coherent meaning, but at the cost of repressing the Real.
• To be a subject in Lacanian psychoanalysis is to be subject to the signifier—alienated in language, divided.
2. Non-Duality: Not Two, Not One
In non-dualist traditions (Advaita Vedanta, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Chan/Zen, even Spinozist monism), reality is not constituted by a play of signifiers, but by an immanent, indivisible field of being. Language, from this view, is a veil—not merely slippery, but illusory.
Key moves:
• Non-duality sees no ultimate gap between signifier and signified—because there is no separate signified to grasp.
• The idea of a Master Signifier would be precisely the kind of illusory construct that sustains avidyā (ignorance) or Māyā.
• The ego, which organizes itself around such Master Signifiers, is not liberated but bound—in duality.
In Zen: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
— The Buddha is the Master Signifier par excellence; to awaken is to see through him.
3. So What Does Non-Duality “Do” to the Master Signifier?
It doesn’t replace it with another. It doesn’t fight it directly. Rather, it lets it fall, like autumn leaves.
• It recognizes that signifiers bind reality, but do not touch Reality-as-such.
• The Master Signifier becomes a mirror, not a mask—a thing to be seen through, not clung to.
• The non-dual insight is not that there’s a truer S1, but that you never needed one. That S1 = śūnyatā. The Master Signifier is empty.
“The Name-of-the-Father” becomes the “Name-less of No-One.”
4. A Strange Convergence: The Empty Master Signifier = Śūnyatā
Here’s the subtle link. Lacan says the Master Signifier is structurally empty—it is a signifier without a signified.
Nāgārjuna says all dharmas are empty of svabhāva—own-being.
• Could it be that both traditions converge on the same insight, but diverge in ethical implication?
• For Lacan: this gap is trauma, the Real.
• For non-duality: this gap is freedom, the ineffable ground of liberation.
5. From Alienation to Liberation: A Shift in Tone
|
Lacan |
Non-Duality |
|
The subject is split by language |
Language is part of illusion (Māyā) |
|
S1 is needed to anchor meaning |
S1 is precisely the veil of illusion |
|
The Real is unbearable |
The Real is ungraspable but luminous |
|
Desire is endless lack |
Desire is extinguished in realization |
But perhaps we can say:
To awaken is to see that the Master Signifier was always already empty.
And still, out of compassion, we speak.
Would you like to take this further—perhaps toward the idea of skillful means (upāya), where the “Master Signifier” becomes a provisional raft, not a metaphysical anchor?
