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Emptiness and Abba
Zen (Metamodern) Christianity
Imagine a metamodern Christian who goes to church, sings in the choir, and is also a member of a local Zen Buddhist sangha. I will call her Rita. She speaks of herself a Christian influenced by Buddhism. She prays to God on a regular basis and in a spontaneous way, influenced by Anne Lamott's Help, Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers. When she prays she believes, like Lamott, that Someone is truly listening. She speaks of this Someone as the Deep Listening of the universe, a listening in which the universe lives and moves and has its being. She addresses this Someone as God.
As a practicing Buddhist, Rita also believes in the possibility of awakening to an ultimate reality of which all things are expressions: a Creative Abyss or, as Buddhists speaks of it, Emptiness. She has tasted a bit of this ultimate reality, not just as an idea in her mind but as an experienced reality, in the expansiveness of her own consciousness during meditation. In meditation she does not aim at anything; she "wants nothing," and in that "wanting nothing," she has a taste of a deep connectedness and a certain kind of open space that includes everything. This open space is part of what she means by Emptiness.
Rita thinks Emptiness and God are real but different. Emptiness is the ultimate reality, she says, and God is the ultimate actuality.
I ask her what she means by reality and actuality. She is also influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and his ideas shape her thinking. An actuality, she explains, is something that feels things and makes decisions. Human beings are actualities; other animals are actualities; living cells are actualities; and, so Rita believes, God is an actuality, albeit everywhere at once and not simply located in one region of space. A reality is anything that can be experienced in any way, quite apart from whether it makes decisions. Pure possibilities are real even as they don't make decisions; the future is real even as it doesn't make decisions; images on a screen are real even as they don't make decisions; and Emptiness is real, albeit in a very different way. In itself Emptiness doesn't make decisions and has no intentions. It is the pure activity of anything and everything, and it includes the spontaneous self-creativity, the decision-making, of each actuality. It is a source-less source, a groundless ground, everywhere at once: the ultimate reality.
Rita doesn't just intuit Emptiness, she sees it everywhere: inside her and outside her, but never as a thing among things or an entity among entities. It is a boundless space and also a formless energy of which everything is an expression. All things are inside Emptiness and expressions of Emptiness, including God. Emptiness is in her grandmother's kindness and in the violence of war. In itself, she adds, it is not teleological. It is the sheer suchness of things as they happen, as self-creative expressions of radical interconnectedness that happens in the open space.
If someone asks if she prays to Emptiness, she will say "Of course not." Emptiness is not something to be addressed; it is something to be awakened to. "You have faith in God," she says, "and you awaken to Emptiness."
As a Christian Rita is not sure Jesus was awakened to Emptiness. And she's also not sure the Buddha had faith in God. She sees them as "about" different things: Buddhism is awakening to the way things truly are and faith is, as it were, awakening to the way things can be. Emptiness is about waking up; God is about moving forward. God is a Spirit at work in the world on the side of healing, wholeness, and love.
She thinks that this Spirit is the Abba to whom Jesus prayed and with whom he felt connected. She believes in Emptiness and Abba.
Rita knows that some people believe it unsophisticated to believe in a personal God. But she is not embarrassed by her belief in a personal God; she actually thinks it is more sophisticated, because not bound by modernist assumptions that the personal God is a figment of the infantile imaginations. To be sure, she does not perceive as all-powerful. But she feels close to God in a way different from her sense of Emptiness. She sees God as a non-controlling spirit of Love at work in the universe, expressing Emptiness but not as its sole expression. She identifies as a process-oriented, open,\ and relational Christian.
Is she also a metamodern Christian? I believe so. My aim to make space for Rita in the culture of metamodern Christianity.
*
My essay is prompted by Ilia Delio's blog, "Rebirthing Religion" and her book The Not-Yet God. Delio, influenced by Paul Tillich, reacts against the traditional image of God as a supreme being above and endorses the notion of God as the ground of being, the source from which all things emerge. For Tillich and Delio, God transcends mere existence among entities; God is Being Itself, the non-entitative, generative foundation of all existents, akin to how the ocean is the essence of all its waves. Delio, echoing Teilhard de Chardin, posits that this foundational 'ground' is evolving, infusing temporality and a sense of incompleteness into the nature of Being.
The transition from viewing God as "a being" to understanding God as a non-entitative, generative source (Being Itself) resonates with many who feel distanced from conventional, authoritarian depictions of God as a patriarch in the sky. If the image of a personage carries with it tyrannical and inflexible associations, linked with hierarchy and a strong sense of over-and-againstness, then shifting to God as Being Itself, accompanied by a sense that God is deeper not higher, as much within as without, can be very liberating.
*
A shift to Being Itself can seem more aligned with Buddhist thought, which in its Yogacara traditions speaks of a mind-like Emptiness of which all things are expressions, which is not itself an expression among expressions. What Buddhists call Emptiness, ontologically understood, can seem like what Tillich calls Being Itself or God. From this line of thinking, two questions emerge: one from a Buddhist perspective and one from a more devotional Christian perspective.
From the Buddhist perspective, the question arises: Does the idea of Being Itself go far enough? From many Buddhist points of view, the worry would be that Being Itself, perceived as a generative source, might inadvertently become conceptualized as a substantive entity that appears "more real" than the phenomenal world, leading to attachment. The very phrase "Being Itself" can suggest a "something" with teleology. There is a need to progress from a recognition that all things emerge from a ground to a recognition that the ground is groundless: from "Form is Emptiness" to "Emptiness is Form." On this view, this very world, rightly understood, is not simply an expression of Emptiness; it is Emptiness emptying itself as the spontaneous self-creativity of each finite existence. It is the ocean emptying itself into each wave, with nothing left behind. Emptiness is not a source; it is the suchness of each and every self-creative event.
Moreover, the creativity of this self-emptying is not teleological. Emptiness is not "Love" with an uppercase 'L' or "Beauty" with an uppercase 'B'. There is as much Emptiness in an act of violence as in an act of kindness, in the violence of the stars as in the tenderness of a kiss. Emptiness is the pure activity of the universe: the happening of everything that happens, and everything that happens as it happens. This happening is not God.
*
From the Christian devotional standpoint, the question would be different. It would be whether Being Itself embodies the compassion that has been pivotal in Christian tradition—a compassion that influences the world creatively and healingly and empathically "feels the feelings" of sentient beings. When Christians and others pray to God in moments of intimacy, they feel that someone or something is receiving their prayers: someone is listening. Is Being a Deep Listening? On this view, "God" is a being and not just Being Itself. God is a deeply compassionate Spirit, like a Buddhist Bodhisattva. Or, for that matter, like the Abba of Jesus. God is a loving presence, different from us, who hears and responds to prayers of address. God is addressable as a subject or self, albeit everywhere at once but with no fixed address.
*
The Christian might also ask the Buddhist: "I hear what you are saying about Emptiness, but I want to ask if, in the Buddhist tradition, there is anything like what I mean by the Abba of Jesus." The Buddhist might well respond: "Thank you for asking, and yes, there is. What you are describing sounds a lot like the Bodhisattva of Compassion in Pure Land Buddhism. It is not the ultimate reality, which is Emptiness, but it is, as it were, an ultimate actuality. Jodo Shinshu Buddhists and others address this Bodhisattva as Amida Buddha, perhaps Jesus addressed the Bodhisattva of Compassion as Abba."
The Buddhist adds that there is indeed such a distinction, namely between the Dharmakaya and the Sambhogakaya. The Dharmakaya is the formless Emptiness beyond all conventional descriptions. It is neither good nor evil and is the ultimate reality of the universe. The Sambhogakaya has form and is adorned with all the marks of a Buddha, existing in pure lands or blissful realms. The Sambhogakaya experiences things; the Dharmakaya is in all experiencing things but is not itself an experiencer. "How does this sound to you?"
*
I cannot speak for the Christian being addressed, but I can speak for process theologians influenced by Whitehead. Whitehead is well-known for rejecting the authoritarian God-images that Delio and others reject, while at the same time offering what, for him, is a more positive image of a personal God and likewise suggesting that the personal God is different from the ultimate reality but a primordial expression of it. In effect, he says "yes" to Emptiness and Abba.
On the one hand, Whitehead proposes that the universe emerges from a creative void, a 'groundless ground' of existence that is present in all things, both good and evil. On the other hand, he proposes that the universe is enfolded within a cosmic Love, namely God as the living whole of the universe. Whitehead refers to this living whole as "God" and the groundless ground as "Creativity." Some suggest that he could have used the term 'God' for both or perhaps distinguished between the 'groundless ground' as the Godhead and the living whole as God.
Regardless, Whitehead provides a framework suggesting that when people pray, there is empathic compassion at the universe's core (God), which, in a sense, is "a" being among beings, all-encompassing. Concurrently, Whitehead acknowledges that this compassionate presence is an expression or actualization of a non-material activity manifesting universally—an Emptiness perpetually manifesting as Form. A person can awaken to the ultimacy of this Emptiness. Emptiness is the ultimate reality of the universe; Abba is the ultimate actuality. They are both "true."
*
My own sense is that a metamodern Christianity can and should make space for appreciating the ultimate reality of Emptiness (the Godhead) and the lovingly personal reality of Abba/Amma (God) to whom devotional Christianity points. Such a perspective would be metamodern in the deepest sense: building upon the wisdom of traditional Christianity, modernist approaches to life, postmodern sensibilities, and offering a synthesis.
In the metamodern Christian context, not everyone will with distinguishing between Godhead and God, between ultimate reality and ultimate actuality. Some will view only the Godhead (Emptiness) as real, others will see the personal God as indistinguishable from ultimate reality; and still others will reject the very notion that there is an ultimate reality, focusing on the interplay between God and creation.
There are still more options. Metamodern Christianity is a spectrum, accommodating a range of interpretations from non-dualistic to personal, relational understandings of the divine. Metamodernism is, or can be, a very broad tent, fostering dialogue among diverse views, reflecting the richness of human and spiritual exploration.
- Jay McDaniel
As a practicing Buddhist, Rita also believes in the possibility of awakening to an ultimate reality of which all things are expressions: a Creative Abyss or, as Buddhists speaks of it, Emptiness. She has tasted a bit of this ultimate reality, not just as an idea in her mind but as an experienced reality, in the expansiveness of her own consciousness during meditation. In meditation she does not aim at anything; she "wants nothing," and in that "wanting nothing," she has a taste of a deep connectedness and a certain kind of open space that includes everything. This open space is part of what she means by Emptiness.
Rita thinks Emptiness and God are real but different. Emptiness is the ultimate reality, she says, and God is the ultimate actuality.
I ask her what she means by reality and actuality. She is also influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and his ideas shape her thinking. An actuality, she explains, is something that feels things and makes decisions. Human beings are actualities; other animals are actualities; living cells are actualities; and, so Rita believes, God is an actuality, albeit everywhere at once and not simply located in one region of space. A reality is anything that can be experienced in any way, quite apart from whether it makes decisions. Pure possibilities are real even as they don't make decisions; the future is real even as it doesn't make decisions; images on a screen are real even as they don't make decisions; and Emptiness is real, albeit in a very different way. In itself Emptiness doesn't make decisions and has no intentions. It is the pure activity of anything and everything, and it includes the spontaneous self-creativity, the decision-making, of each actuality. It is a source-less source, a groundless ground, everywhere at once: the ultimate reality.
Rita doesn't just intuit Emptiness, she sees it everywhere: inside her and outside her, but never as a thing among things or an entity among entities. It is a boundless space and also a formless energy of which everything is an expression. All things are inside Emptiness and expressions of Emptiness, including God. Emptiness is in her grandmother's kindness and in the violence of war. In itself, she adds, it is not teleological. It is the sheer suchness of things as they happen, as self-creative expressions of radical interconnectedness that happens in the open space.
If someone asks if she prays to Emptiness, she will say "Of course not." Emptiness is not something to be addressed; it is something to be awakened to. "You have faith in God," she says, "and you awaken to Emptiness."
As a Christian Rita is not sure Jesus was awakened to Emptiness. And she's also not sure the Buddha had faith in God. She sees them as "about" different things: Buddhism is awakening to the way things truly are and faith is, as it were, awakening to the way things can be. Emptiness is about waking up; God is about moving forward. God is a Spirit at work in the world on the side of healing, wholeness, and love.
She thinks that this Spirit is the Abba to whom Jesus prayed and with whom he felt connected. She believes in Emptiness and Abba.
Rita knows that some people believe it unsophisticated to believe in a personal God. But she is not embarrassed by her belief in a personal God; she actually thinks it is more sophisticated, because not bound by modernist assumptions that the personal God is a figment of the infantile imaginations. To be sure, she does not perceive as all-powerful. But she feels close to God in a way different from her sense of Emptiness. She sees God as a non-controlling spirit of Love at work in the universe, expressing Emptiness but not as its sole expression. She identifies as a process-oriented, open,\ and relational Christian.
Is she also a metamodern Christian? I believe so. My aim to make space for Rita in the culture of metamodern Christianity.
*
My essay is prompted by Ilia Delio's blog, "Rebirthing Religion" and her book The Not-Yet God. Delio, influenced by Paul Tillich, reacts against the traditional image of God as a supreme being above and endorses the notion of God as the ground of being, the source from which all things emerge. For Tillich and Delio, God transcends mere existence among entities; God is Being Itself, the non-entitative, generative foundation of all existents, akin to how the ocean is the essence of all its waves. Delio, echoing Teilhard de Chardin, posits that this foundational 'ground' is evolving, infusing temporality and a sense of incompleteness into the nature of Being.
The transition from viewing God as "a being" to understanding God as a non-entitative, generative source (Being Itself) resonates with many who feel distanced from conventional, authoritarian depictions of God as a patriarch in the sky. If the image of a personage carries with it tyrannical and inflexible associations, linked with hierarchy and a strong sense of over-and-againstness, then shifting to God as Being Itself, accompanied by a sense that God is deeper not higher, as much within as without, can be very liberating.
*
A shift to Being Itself can seem more aligned with Buddhist thought, which in its Yogacara traditions speaks of a mind-like Emptiness of which all things are expressions, which is not itself an expression among expressions. What Buddhists call Emptiness, ontologically understood, can seem like what Tillich calls Being Itself or God. From this line of thinking, two questions emerge: one from a Buddhist perspective and one from a more devotional Christian perspective.
From the Buddhist perspective, the question arises: Does the idea of Being Itself go far enough? From many Buddhist points of view, the worry would be that Being Itself, perceived as a generative source, might inadvertently become conceptualized as a substantive entity that appears "more real" than the phenomenal world, leading to attachment. The very phrase "Being Itself" can suggest a "something" with teleology. There is a need to progress from a recognition that all things emerge from a ground to a recognition that the ground is groundless: from "Form is Emptiness" to "Emptiness is Form." On this view, this very world, rightly understood, is not simply an expression of Emptiness; it is Emptiness emptying itself as the spontaneous self-creativity of each finite existence. It is the ocean emptying itself into each wave, with nothing left behind. Emptiness is not a source; it is the suchness of each and every self-creative event.
Moreover, the creativity of this self-emptying is not teleological. Emptiness is not "Love" with an uppercase 'L' or "Beauty" with an uppercase 'B'. There is as much Emptiness in an act of violence as in an act of kindness, in the violence of the stars as in the tenderness of a kiss. Emptiness is the pure activity of the universe: the happening of everything that happens, and everything that happens as it happens. This happening is not God.
*
From the Christian devotional standpoint, the question would be different. It would be whether Being Itself embodies the compassion that has been pivotal in Christian tradition—a compassion that influences the world creatively and healingly and empathically "feels the feelings" of sentient beings. When Christians and others pray to God in moments of intimacy, they feel that someone or something is receiving their prayers: someone is listening. Is Being a Deep Listening? On this view, "God" is a being and not just Being Itself. God is a deeply compassionate Spirit, like a Buddhist Bodhisattva. Or, for that matter, like the Abba of Jesus. God is a loving presence, different from us, who hears and responds to prayers of address. God is addressable as a subject or self, albeit everywhere at once but with no fixed address.
*
The Christian might also ask the Buddhist: "I hear what you are saying about Emptiness, but I want to ask if, in the Buddhist tradition, there is anything like what I mean by the Abba of Jesus." The Buddhist might well respond: "Thank you for asking, and yes, there is. What you are describing sounds a lot like the Bodhisattva of Compassion in Pure Land Buddhism. It is not the ultimate reality, which is Emptiness, but it is, as it were, an ultimate actuality. Jodo Shinshu Buddhists and others address this Bodhisattva as Amida Buddha, perhaps Jesus addressed the Bodhisattva of Compassion as Abba."
The Buddhist adds that there is indeed such a distinction, namely between the Dharmakaya and the Sambhogakaya. The Dharmakaya is the formless Emptiness beyond all conventional descriptions. It is neither good nor evil and is the ultimate reality of the universe. The Sambhogakaya has form and is adorned with all the marks of a Buddha, existing in pure lands or blissful realms. The Sambhogakaya experiences things; the Dharmakaya is in all experiencing things but is not itself an experiencer. "How does this sound to you?"
*
I cannot speak for the Christian being addressed, but I can speak for process theologians influenced by Whitehead. Whitehead is well-known for rejecting the authoritarian God-images that Delio and others reject, while at the same time offering what, for him, is a more positive image of a personal God and likewise suggesting that the personal God is different from the ultimate reality but a primordial expression of it. In effect, he says "yes" to Emptiness and Abba.
On the one hand, Whitehead proposes that the universe emerges from a creative void, a 'groundless ground' of existence that is present in all things, both good and evil. On the other hand, he proposes that the universe is enfolded within a cosmic Love, namely God as the living whole of the universe. Whitehead refers to this living whole as "God" and the groundless ground as "Creativity." Some suggest that he could have used the term 'God' for both or perhaps distinguished between the 'groundless ground' as the Godhead and the living whole as God.
Regardless, Whitehead provides a framework suggesting that when people pray, there is empathic compassion at the universe's core (God), which, in a sense, is "a" being among beings, all-encompassing. Concurrently, Whitehead acknowledges that this compassionate presence is an expression or actualization of a non-material activity manifesting universally—an Emptiness perpetually manifesting as Form. A person can awaken to the ultimacy of this Emptiness. Emptiness is the ultimate reality of the universe; Abba is the ultimate actuality. They are both "true."
*
My own sense is that a metamodern Christianity can and should make space for appreciating the ultimate reality of Emptiness (the Godhead) and the lovingly personal reality of Abba/Amma (God) to whom devotional Christianity points. Such a perspective would be metamodern in the deepest sense: building upon the wisdom of traditional Christianity, modernist approaches to life, postmodern sensibilities, and offering a synthesis.
In the metamodern Christian context, not everyone will with distinguishing between Godhead and God, between ultimate reality and ultimate actuality. Some will view only the Godhead (Emptiness) as real, others will see the personal God as indistinguishable from ultimate reality; and still others will reject the very notion that there is an ultimate reality, focusing on the interplay between God and creation.
There are still more options. Metamodern Christianity is a spectrum, accommodating a range of interpretations from non-dualistic to personal, relational understandings of the divine. Metamodernism is, or can be, a very broad tent, fostering dialogue among diverse views, reflecting the richness of human and spiritual exploration.
- Jay McDaniel