​The Perfection of Love
​
How Buddhism can help Christian grow past an undue attachment
to personal, individualized existence into a perfection of love.

​John B. Cobb, Jr.
​

Below please find Chapter 13 of Cobb's Christ in a Pluralistic Age, published in 1975 by Westminster Press.  The chapter is called "The Perfection of Love."   This page is divided into two parts: (1) a summary for those who cannot read the entire chapter for one reason or another, written by Jay McDaniel, and then (2) the entire chapter.  The chapter was prepared for Religion Online by Harry and Grace Adams and is republished in Open Horizons from Religion Online.   

​​Cobb is Professor of Theology Emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California, and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies there. He is also on the Board of the Cobb Institute: A Community of Process and Practice, and a member of Process and Faith, a multi-religious organization devoted to the common good of people and the earth.  His many books currently in print include: Reclaiming the Church (1997); with Herman Daly, For the Common Good; Becoming a Thinking Christian (1993); Sustainability (1992); Can Christ Become Good News Again? (1991); ed. with Christopher Ives, The Emptying God: a Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (1990); with Charles Birch, The Liberation of Life; and with David Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (1977). He is a retired minister in the United Methodist Church. Christ in Pluralistic Age was published in 1975 by Westminster Press.

​Summary

Some key points in The Perfection of Love
with supporting quotations from Cobb.
​

Written with a Christian audience in mind, the basic thesis of Chapter Thirteen of Christ in a Pluralistic Age is that Christians have been overly attached to individualized personal existence and that Buddhism can help them move beyond this attachment toward a perfection of love.  Cobb invites Christians to consider the possibility of a Buddhized Christianity. 

The chapter is best understood in the larger context of Cobb's proposal that Christianity and Buddhism are centered around two different ultimates (God for the Christian, Emptiness for the Buddhist), both of which are real and that Buddhist enlightenment is an awakening to Emptiness whereas Christian faith is a receptivity to God.  For Cobb the immanence of God in the world is called the Logos, which he simultaneously identifies with the spirit of creative transformation and love in the world, itself enfleshed in but not reducible to the historical Jesus.  For him, Jesus is "the Christ" inasmuch as he (Jesus) so identified his own aims and desires with the Logos that, in many moments of his life, his sense of identity and God's identity were two sides of a single coin.  His proposal is that Christians are a people who seek to walk with Christ, sharing in his way and journey, which is to love.  Christians can be more open to the call of creative transformation, and thus to love, with help from Buddhism.

1.  Buddhism and Christianity each carry universalist claims, both of which lead to love or compassion as an ideal.

"The universalist claims of Buddhism are that the Buddha-nature is present in all things and that the enlightenment attained by Gautama is the goal of all things.  This leaves open the possibility that Jesus might also have attained enlightenment. Hence, Buddhists can in principle embrace a figure like Jesus as another Buddha...The universalist claims of Christianity are that the divine Logos is present in all things and that it is fully incarnate and redemptively effective in Jesus. This leaves open the possibility that Gautama might also have incarnated the Logos in a redemptive manner. Thus, the Buddhist and the Christian each can approach the normative figure in the other tradition in an attitude of openness."  (John Cobb, The Perfection of Love, Christ in a Pluralistic Age)

2.  However, even as the goals both lead to compassion, they are not identical.  It is not particularly helpful to think that Jesus was enlightened in the same way that the Buddha was enlightened.  Nor is it helpful to think that Gautama's enlightenment was identical with Jesus’ way of incarnating the Logos of God. The differences are as important as the similarities: 

 "Nevertheless, this approach has limited value. What Buddhists have found in Gautama is not the same as what Christians have found in Jesus. Furthermore, the historical evidence confirms the actual differences between the two figures. If Gautama was the normative manifestation of the Buddha principle, Jesus was a poor representative of it. If Jesus is the incarnation of the Logos, Gautama's embodiment was inadequate. There appears to be a conflict between the Buddhist assertion that the ultimate reality in all things is the Buddha-nature and the Christian assertion that the ultimate reality is the Logos; for Buddha-nature and Logos differ."  (John Cobb, The Perfection of Love, Christ in a Pluralistic Age)

3.  Once the differences are recognized and appreciated, it becomes possible for Christians and Buddhists to learn from one another and internalize aspects of the other tradition within their own paths.  This learning begins with a sense of attraction to the other tradition and also a recognition of weaknesses in one's own:

​ "In the mutually appreciative encounter of Christianity and Buddhism, each recognizes a lack within itself and an inherently attractive existential possibility in the other.  The Christian seeks to develop a Buddhized Christianity and the Buddhist seeks to develop a Christianized Buddhism." (John Cobb, The Perfection of Love, Christ in a Pluralistic Age)

4.  On the Buddhist side, Buddhists can rightly be drawn to the Christian emphasis on the dignity of each human being in her or his personhood, itself a precondition for justice concerns, and at the same time recognize that, in many instances, Buddhism has been lacking in such a recognition, because universal compassion has been overly general. 

"In Mahayana Buddhism, when nonattachment is fully attained, those who are enlightened are concurrently filled with compassion. Being attached to nothing, they are compassionate toward all. They are aware of the distinctions within the flux, but they no longer discriminate among the forms or between themselves and others....This is a beautiful ideal also from the Christian perspective. However, this universal compassion does not lead to the kinds of social engagement that the Christian takes for granted and that have become matters of pressing concern in the homelands of Buddhism as well. The reason is that the initial analysis through which nonattachment is fostered so denies the intrinsic value of particulars that discrimination among particulars as better and worse is undercut. The compassion that results is diffuse since concentration on relative evaluation of alternative courses of action requires an attention to particulars that has been negated." (John Cobb, The Perfection of Love, Christ in a Pluralistic Age)

​5.  On the Christian side, Christians can rightly be drawn to the Buddhist version universal compassion and simultaneously recognize that their own emphasis on a certain kind of individuality, even as it has wisdom, is also lacking.

"The Christian structure of existence has developed a strong self, capable of self-objectification and of acceptance of responsibility for itself. It has also encouraged a heightened awareness of self-identity through time. Perhaps, under the influence of Buddhism, this stress on self-identity through time, with its concomitant separation of personal selves from one another, can be modified in such a way that Christians can appropriate what they find most attractive in Buddhism."..."Christians, however, are aware of the problems generated by the strong personal selfhood of their tradition. Anxiety, alienation, brittleness, pride, and self-seeking are too intense to be overcome by the love and community we affirm. The fading of the vivid sense of God's personal reality has left the self isolated and lonely. In contrast the serenity of the Buddhist appears as a needed release." (John Cobb, The Perfection of Love, Christ in a Pluralistic Age)

6. Buddhism can help Christians grow in a dissolution of an overemphasis on self-identity through time, with all the problems it involves, and grow into a perfection of love, wherein Christian love becomes more inclusive, less divisive, less "attached" in a destructive sense, more transpersonal, and more loving.

"The encounter with Buddhism may prove an essential step for the West to free itself from its attachment to individualized personal existence as a final good. The West is prepared for this encounter by its increasing recognition of the appalling price in human misery and risk to human survival that has been paid for our achievements in personal existence. We have become disillusioned with the view that these problems can be solved by appeals for justice and  personal righteousness. We recognize that radical changes are required. But we are frightened by the prospects of change. Perhaps the encounter with the transpersonal existence of the Buddhist, the recognition of the serenity and strength it embodies, the experience of Buddhist meditation, and the study of Buddhist philosophy will give us the courage to venture into that kind of radical love which can carry us into a postpersonal form of Christian existence." (John Cobb, The Perfection of Love, Christ in a Pluralistic Age)

​- Jay McDaniel, October 24, 2021
​

The Perfection of Love

Chapter 13 of Christ in a Pluralistic Age

​ by John B. Cobb, Jr
​

The vision of a new kind of city provides hope that the human race could live with its environment in a way that would allow for the flourishing of both human beings and our fellow creatures. In that context we could nourish other hopes. One such hope is that through the interiorization of pluralism our understanding and existence will be transformed and we can move toward a new spiritual unity. Since openness to others is love, it can only be through the perfection of love that such unity is achieved. If so, the spiritual unity we envision is at the same time the fuller incarnation of Christ. This chapter fashions an image relevant to one phase of the creative transformation that is required. 

Naming the Logos (the principle of creative transformation) as "Christ" makes possible and necessary the inner acceptance of pluralism, and thereby moves the process of creative transformation into a new phase. Since the Christian finds the Logos incarnate in Jesus, faith in Jesus cannot be in tension with the interiorization of the radically different achievements of other traditions or in opposition to their claims. But even the identification of Christ with the Logos does not make the inner encounter with other traditions easy. In this identification what is meant by the Logos is transformed by its identity with Christ, and, equally, what is meant by "Christ" is transformed by identification with the Logos. Furthermore, although Christians can discern the working of the Logos in all traditions, we see that other traditions do not intend primarily to order themselves by and to the Logos. Hence, some of the meanings that we are called by Christ to enter and to appropriate are alien to him.

As the depth of the differences among the religious traditions is grasped, the spirit of pluralism is in danger of relapsing into mere tolerance of diversity. It seems that one can find identity only in one tradition or another. It would seem safest to study other traditions only to attain objective understanding, or if one enters them subjectively, it would seem safest to do so in a provisional, temporary way that will not alter one's own basic attitudes, vision, and structure of existence. For example, if one's own position is tolerant openness, one cannot inwardly appropriate the intolerant closedness of another. It would seem that the intolerant character of another tradition can be recognized and tolerated, but not internalized.

Yet this is not sufficient. The affirmation of pluralism is not mere tolerance. Those who enter the pluralistic consciousness want others to join in it. They are not indifferent observers of the mutual hostility of traditions, but, rather, they seek the conversion of all to the pluralistic spirit. The call of Christ does not allow us to relapse from the effort at inner appropriation of other traditions to mere objective toleration.

The situation is bewildering. Traditions are in profound disagreement; they offer radically different ends; there is no common essence in terms of which diversity can be minimized; one cannot simply accept them all. There must be choosing, and these choices will inevitably be shaped by one tradition or another. There is no position of neutrality from which their respective values can be perceived and integrated into a new syncretism. What then can the call for interior appropriation mean?

This question can be answered in general terms only by saying that to become open to real otherness while remaining rooted in one's own tradition provides an opportunity for the creative transformation of that tradition. After initial resistance, Christian theology was open to Greek philosophy, and, without ceasing to be Christian, it was inwardly transformed by its interiorization of the Greek mind. Similarly, after an initial struggle, Christian theology was open to modern science, and, without ceasing to be Christian, it was inwardly transformed by its interiorization of the scientific method and results. Today, after an initial struggle, Christian theology has opened itself to the traditions of Asia, and, without ceasing to be Christian, it will be transformed by the radically different consciousness they embody.

This generalization can be given concreteness only in particular instances. We cannot inwardly appropriate everything at once. There is vast diversity and conflict among the traditions of the Orient as well as between them and the traditions of the West. The pluralistic consciousness calls for painstaking labor with no successful outcome antecedently envisioned. Even so, we do need images to guide our efforts and to give some sense of what it would mean for our own tradition to be transformed through uniting others with itself. The remainder of this chapter undertakes to offer an image of a hopeful outcome of the Christian appropriation of Buddhism in two senses. First, it proposes that Christianity can be creatively transformed through interiorization of this alien tradition. Second, the result of this creative transformation is a new mode of existence toward which Christian hope may aspire.

Buddhism has striking parallels with Christianity. Its relation to the religious matrix of India is analogous to that of Christianity (and Islam) to Judaism. It has shown a remarkable ability to spread to other cultures, and it has flourished chiefly on foreign soil. Like Christianity, Buddhism points to a particular historical figure and celebrates his work and his authority in canonized scriptures. Gautama, like Jesus, is often worshiped by his followers. The universalistic claims made for the truth and importance of Gautama's teachings by Buddhists are much like those made by Christians in respect to Jesus. The relation of Buddha to Gautama is analogous to the relation of Christ to Jesus.

However, the role of Gautama in Buddhism is not identical with that of Jesus in Christianity. Although Buddhists recognize that Buddhism as a movement was initiated by Gautama, they stress that Gautama is but one of many who have attained Buddhahood. He is one among numerous manifestations of the Buddha principle or the Buddha-nature. The once-for-all uniqueness of Jesus is not asserted of Gautama.

Can, then, the universal claims made by Christians and Buddhists be reconciled? The universalist claims of Buddhism are that the Buddha-nature is present in all things and that the enlightenment attained by Gautama is the goal of all things.  This leaves open the possibility that Jesus might also have attained enlightenment. Hence, Buddhists can in principle embrace a figure like Jesus as another Buddha.

The universalist claims of Christianity are that the divine Logos is present in all things and that it is fully incarnate and redemptively effective in Jesus. This leaves open the possibility that Gautama might also have incarnated the Logos in a redemptive manner. Thus the Buddhist and the Christian each can approach the normative figure in the other tradition in an attitude of openness. 

Nevertheless, this approach has limited value. What Buddhists have found in Gautama is not the same as what Christians have found in Jesus. Furthermore, the historical evidence confirms the actual differences between the two figures. If Gautama was the normative manifestation of the Buddha principle, Jesus was a poor representative of it. If Jesus is the incarnation of the Logos, Gautama's embodiment was inadequate. There appears to be a conflict between the Buddhist assertion that the ultimate reality in all things is the Buddha-nature and the Christian assertion that the ultimate reality is the Logos; for Buddha-nature and Logos differ.

Before this is accepted as a contradiction, more careful scrutiny is needed. The two terms, Buddha-nature and Logos, are fluid in their meanings and connotations, and neither can be defined exactly. Each has both an objective use to describe the reality man encounters and knows and a subjective use to describe man's inner being. The objective use of Buddha-nature suggests a flux, a substancelessness, an emptiness, a void, an absence of conceptual meaning. The subjective use suggests detachment, openness, release, quiescence, serenity, and silence.  

The objective use of Logos suggests order, agency, relevant novelty, creative transformation, and intelligibility. The subjective use suggests critical and creative reason, love, purpose, disciplined imagination, and authentic speaking. In spite of these differences, it is possible that both Buddha-nature and Logos characterize ultimate reality. For example, ultimate reality may be both flux and order, and this is recognized in East and West. In Buddhism the ideas of dharma and karma carry strong connotations of order characterizing the substanceless flux. In the West, already in Heraclitus, what is ordered by Logos is flux. Between some forms of Buddhism and some forms of Christianity, therefore, the respective affirmations of the ultimacy of Buddha-nature and of Logos need not be contradictory.

If this is so, the issues between Buddhism and Christianity are shifted to another plane, the specifically religious one. They have divergent understandings of salvation and, therefore, of the means of attaining it. For the Buddhist, salvation is the realization of the universal Buddha principle normatively embodied in Gautama. For the Christian, salvation is new life through faith in Christ. Here there is explicit conflict and apparent contradiction. Realization of the Buddha principle and new life through Christ differ.

Since the meaning of salvation diverges, the conflict is not a contradiction. By salvation the Buddhist means enlightenment, and enlightenment is associated with the detachment, openness, release, quiescence, serenity, and silence listed above as subjective expressions of the Buddhanature. By salvation the Christian means Christian existence, a life in which freedom expresses itself in community in active love.

The contradiction disappears if we interpolate accordingly. Enlightenment is attained only through the realization of the universal Buddha principle normatively embodied in Gautama. Christian existence is attained only through faith in Christ. There is still room for discussion of the truth of these claims, but there is no contradiction between them. Buddhists may be correct about the enlightenment they prize, and Christians may be correct that Jesus is the source of the mode of existence they find normative. Indeed, it would be historically surprising if these claims were far from the mark!

Nevertheless, the real conflict between Buddhism and Christianity is not so easily overcome. The Buddhist believes that enlightenment is the fundamental answer to our deepest human need. The Christian believes that Christian existence is the fundamental answer to our deepest human need. They could reconcile their claims by agreeing that some people need one and some the other, but this would be a profound break with the universalistic character of both traditions. Alternately, they could regard enlightenment and Christian existence respectively as among the desirable attainments for all people, but this demotion of their respective goals to secondary status would be a still more drastic break with their traditions.

In The Structure of Christian Existence, 1 I concluded that Buddhism and Christianity had produced two structures of existence, each final in its own direction. Buddhism has broken the dominance of the self, or "I,', in its continuity from the past and into the future. In doing so, it has freed people from defensiveness, anxiety, and self-concern. It has achieved a unique serenity and openness. Christianity, however, has heightened self-transcendence to the utmost. Christians objectify themselves and assume responsibility both for what they do and for what they are. Thus selfhood is intensified to the highest degree. This makes both possible and necessary the peculiar form of Christian love, agape, as concern for the other in her or his otherness.

I was not able to see how these two radically different solutions of the ultimate human problem could be reconciled. Christianity and Buddhism each might respect the other from a distance and see that it was indeed successful and unsurpassable in its own terms, but this recognition would not lead to the appropriation by either of the attainments of the other, since these attainments were radically opposed. One could not simultaneously annihilate and intensify selfhood. Pluralism seemed to entail ultimate and irreconcilable differences and the irresolvable bifurcation of humanity. Hope's longing for unity seemed frustrated.

This conclusion is difficult for either a Christian or a Buddhist to accept. Both are concerned for the unity of humanity. Each views its basic image (i.e., Christ or Buddha) as universal in relevance. The fact that, despite the differences, each can be moved by the other's image offers hope for ultimate reconciliation.

In the mutually appreciative encounter of Christianity and Buddhism, each recognizes a lack within itself. The Buddhist recognizes as a limitation the lack of attention its adherents direct to the particularities of the world. Buddhism has failed to nourish scientific inquiry and social ethics. A Buddhist may be a scientist, and being a Buddhist may make one more disciplined and open to truth, but there is no inner connection between Buddhism and science. If science disappeared, there would be little impulsion within Buddhism to renew it. Similarly, Buddhists who are in positions of social responsibility are given by their Buddhism the strength, poise, openness, and disinterestedness to carry out the responsibilities. But there is little impulsion within Buddhism to assume such responsibilities, and there has been little Buddhist reflection on the complex questions of power and justice.

Christians, however, are aware of the problems generated by the strong personal selfhood of their tradition. Anxiety, alienation, brittleness, pride, and self-seeking are too intense to be overcome by the love and community we affirm. The fading of the vivid sense of God's personal reality has left the self isolated and lonely. In contrast the serenity of the Buddhist appears as a needed release.

The fact that Buddhists and Christians can each recognize attractive features in the other's positions does not guarantee that their achievements are compatible. But it does suggest that each, in interaction with the other, may go through a further transformation. In now unforeseeable ways, this process may lead to a new whole in which the essential convictions  and achievements of both are preserved. The Buddhist experiences the Buddha principle as manifest in Gautama as the essential spur to this further development. The Christian experiences the universal claim implicit in Christ as the impetus.

Although the manifold changes that might make for a Christianized Buddhism and a Buddhized Christianity cannot be predicted, an indication of what might be involved in some of them will give reality to the suggestion that such developments are possible. One change from within Buddhism will be suggested briefly first, and then a possible transformation of Christianity will be developed more fully.

Buddhist philosophy is multifaceted. In some of its forms it tends toward an extreme pluralism; in others, toward monism; in still others, toward nihilism.2 But all these philosophies are united in their commitment to display the absence of substantial reality and value in the objects that ordinary experience invests with such reality and value. Buddhist pluralists analyze the objects of desire: possible possessions, other persons, the self. They show that all of these are composites of elements that are in a continuous flux of becoming. Fully recognizing this leads to nonattachment toward them, that is, to the readiness to let them go.

When reality is denied to the elements as well, then the result is either to view only the whole of things as having reality or to stress the emptiness or voidness of all things. Buddhists do not thereby deny, in every sense, the existence of things; but they insist that everything is empty of substance and, hence, of anything to which one might be legitimately attached. Here again the philosophical analysis serves the cause of nonattachment to particular entities.

In Mahayana Buddhism, when nonattachment is fully attained, those who are enlightened are concurrently filled with compassion. Being attached to nothing, they are compassionate toward all. They are aware of the distinctions within the flux, but they no longer discriminate among the forms or between themselves and others.

This is a beautiful ideal also from the Christian perspective. However, this universal compassion does not lead to the kinds of social engagement that the Christian takes for granted and that have become matters of pressing concern in the homelands of Buddhism as well. The reason is that the initial analysis through which nonattachment is fostered so denies the intrinsic value of particulars that discrimination among particulars as better and worse is undercut. The compassion that results is diffuse since concentration on relative evaluation of alternative courses of action requires an attention to particulars that has been negated.

These statements could be challenged. Indeed, it is difficult to make this point in language that is not misleading. A Buddhist landscape, for example, is profoundly attentive to the particular. However, the particular is valued as representing all particulars, or the totality of things, rather than being valued in terms of its distinctiveness and unique value. Critical discussion of the relative values of different economic and political structures in particular times and places is not  encouraged by this view of the particular.

However, not all Buddhist philosophy equally disparages interest in the particular. It is possible to deny substantiality to particulars while recognizing that, however ephemeral they may be, their particularity has its own value. It may be possible to do this in such a way that nonattachment is cultivated in the Buddhist sense. If so, then the compassion that follows from nonattachment can be directed toward particulars in their particularity in a way that allows for and even fosters reflection about the matters of social ethics that have heretofore been too much neglected in Buddhism.3

From within Christianity a quite different development will be required. It will involve a change both in the understanding of the self and in its actual formation.

Most Christian anthropology has been substantialist. Even when the word "substance" is not used, it is implied. The soul, person, or self is thought of as an entity that has its existence in itself. It is the subject of feelings and actions, but it is thought of not as constituted by those feelings and actions but as underlying them. In some modern formulations it is regarded as transcendental, that is, as standing outside the empirical and phenomenal spheres in such a way as to be fundamentally independent of them. In Kant's sense it is noumenal.

This view of the self has been challenged in the West, especially in recent times. Hume was unable to find such a substance underlying the flux of experience. The German idealist tradition reaffirmed an ultimate nonempirical agent, and this view was retained by Edmund Husserl, the founder of modern phenomenology. However, it was rejected by his pupils Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre wrote a book on The Transcendence of the Ego4 to argue that the ego is an intentional object in experience rather than the underlying or transcendental agentsubject in experience. Thus existentialism has desubstantialized the self in a way that overcomes one of the features of Christianity that is most objectionable to Buddhism.

However, the existentialists have not gone far enough. Some of the objectionable characteristics of substance still linger in their characterization of selves. Heidegger depicts a single Dasein as remaining self-identical from birth to death. It lives in a world with other Daseins, but fundamentally it does not interact with them. Each Dasein is open to Being, and each includes its world. But the Daseins can only be pictured as having parallel routes.5 Even the obvious tendency to be influenced by others is depicted as the enemy of authenticity, which is attained instead by fully recognizing that one must live out of one's own resources in terms of one's own project on the lonely road toward death. Living toward death takes on special significance because the fact that death must be endured absolutely alone frees one from the illusion that one can depend on others or that what others do or think has any real importance. This picture of the Dasein is the one that arises inevitably when persons are conceived as substances. Persons must be seen as mutually external, alongside each other, each remaining self-identical from creation to destruction.

Sartre shares this basic vision. He goes farther than Heidegger in his discussion of interpersonal relations, but his discussion does not alleviate the picture of mutual "overagainstness" that Heidegger offers. On the contrary, mutual relations are pictured as mutual threat and destruction. We objectify each other by the look. In No Exit, the protagonist sums up the climactic insight that arises from this analysis: "Hell is just -- other people!"6

Heidegger and Sartre do not represent the Christian understanding of the self on this side of their thought. Christianity has always regarded persons as existing in community and community as constituted through mutual love. Even so, these existentialists have brought into clarity of focus certain tendencies implicit in the substantialist view of self, with which Christians have too often identified. Selves conceived as substances can act upon each other only externally, and there is an inherently negative element in being acted upon in this way.

The step beyond the existentialists that Christians must take is a fuller rejection of substantialist thought. Substances remain identical with themselves while their accidents or attributes change. Buddhists have stressed that there is no such self-identical substance enduring through time and especially that the self has no such status. Christians should agree. They should more fully appropriate the recent stress on a social self, that is, on a self that emerges out of the social matrix. The powerful experience of self-identity through time requires explanation, but it can be understood in terms of the special intimacy of relations that one moment of human experience has with its predecessors and successors and the tendency for the members of this series to embody similar patterns. It need not be explained by a numerical identity that strictly unites past, present, and future experiences.

Once the strict numerical identity of self from birth to death is given up, interpersonal relations can be understood in a different way. Real influence of one upon another becomes intelligible. This influence need not have the objectionable character involved when it is thought of as the action of one substance upon another. Instead, the influence can be understood as a contribution to the constitution of experience. 

This allows also for the recognition that the amount and kind of unity that exists in one person or another can vary. Self-identity through time is a matter of degree and can be constituted in diverse ways. The structuring of existence has been encouraged by the Buddhist tradition in one way, and by the Christian tradition in another. A common conceptuality can show the real possibility of both structures of existence.

The Christian structure of existence has developed a strong self, capable of self-objectification and of acceptance of responsibility for itself. It has also encouraged a heightened awareness of self-identity through time. Perhaps, under the influence of Buddhism, this stress on self-identity through time, with its concomitant separation of personal selves from one another, can be modified in such a way that Christians can appropriate what they find most attractive in Buddhism.

Any modification of the self-other relation of Christian existence must take account of the existential grounds for the stress on self-identity through time. This stress has been intricately involved in the ethical dimension characteristic of the Jewish heritage of Christianity. Christian ethics requires that the person in the present moment accept full responsibility for past actions and commitments on the one side and be able to make trustworthy promises of future actions. The ideal of faithfulness assumes and encourages a heightened identity of self through time. Any tampering with the idea of self-identity appears to threaten this important Christian concern. Furthermore, the Christian teaching of love briefly adumbrated in Chapter 4 does not directly challenge the separateness and mutual externality of selves. It can be understood even when the selves are viewed as separate substances acting on one another from without.

Nevertheless, the thrust of the New Testament is to subordinate ethics to love rather than to view love as one ethical requirement among others. That we have not carried through this shift in our actual Christian existence is painfully apparent from Christian history. As we encounter the Buddhist critique of self, we now sense that our failure to subordinate ethics to love may be the result of our continued cultivation of the self-identity through time peculiarly appropriate to a primarily ethical emphasis.

The change that would be involved in a primary emphasis on love can be envisioned only if we follow Buddhism in the denial of a substantial self. In a nonsubstance view the identity of the self through time is a matter of degree determined by the strength of the inheritance of feelings, pattern, and purpose from moment to moment in one linear succession and the relative weakness of inheritance from others. My sense of a particular future as my future governs my identity with that future now. I dread suffering in that future in a way that is qualitatively different from my concern about the suffering that someone else is likely to endure. Hence, my present action is motivated much more strongly by the effort to ward off suffering for myself than by the desire to prevent the suffering of others. But the teaching that I should be just as concerned about the neighbor as about myself challenges this discriminating attachment to a particular future. Insofar as I really become concerned about the neighbor's future in the way I am concerned about my own, the neighbor's future would become my future. The neighbor's future would no longer be so sharply distinguished from the anticipated experiences associated with my body.

When selves are thought of as substances with given self-identity through time, the way in which one feels one's own past is supposed to be entirely different from empathy. Empathy has then to do with the relation of one person to another; it is an external relation. But reflection on empathy tends to break down this substantialist view. If one really has empathy for another, then the feelings of the other penetrate one's being and effectively share in constituting that being. The self that is affected by the other internally, even in small measure, cannot intelligibly be regarded as a substance.

When the substantialist view of self is rejected, it appears that much of the identity of the self through time can be understood by the peculiarly intense empathy that one has for a particular set of past experiences, namely, those associated with one's own body. The sense of identity with these past experiences is so strong that it leads to notions of absolute identity, which in turn lead to viewing all relations with others as purely external. Real empathy with others, however, to whatever extent it occurs, belies the absoluteness of this distinction. 

The ordinary situation is one in which a moment of human experience has intense empathy with (or inheritance from and conformation to) past experiences of the same person and very limited empathy with the past experiences of others. Empathy with the personal past remains stable. Empathy with others is fleeting. The degree of inheritance from the one set of past experiences is so much greater than that from the others that it is easy to conceptualize the two modes of relation as entirely different. Such conceptualization heightens the actual difference and inhibits empathy for others. The breakdown of such conceptualization can help to open experience to a greater degree of empathy toward others. Christian conceptualization has typically weakened empathy, but a call for empathy is present in the tradition. If the conceptualization is changed and the call is heightened, the result could be a lowering of the barriers that separate one self from another.

To transform an association of individualized persons into a more intricately interconnected community would not destroy the ideal of faithfulness, but it would alter it. The reason I can now commit my future self to act in certain ways is that I have considerable control over that self. I have much less control over others. This situation would not disappear in a community structured by love, but the emphasis would shift from "I" to ''we.'' Where one experienced oneself as deriving much of one's being from others and contributing oneself to them, one would be less inclined to function as an individualized person in relation to both past and future commitments. Each person would be supported by others in the fulfillment of commitments made, and each would be inclined to make commitments only as others shared in them. The ideal of faithfulness would shift its primary focus from the lonely individual to the corporate community.

The Christian will sense another danger in this talk of subordinating ethics to love. Love as empathy and agape is too easily imagined as binding together a community of like-minded persons in a warm and supportive intimacy that shuts others out. Primitive Christianity too often stressed love of the brethren at some expense to outsiders. Sensitivity training and human potential groups in our own time can too easily create ingrown and self-satisfied communities of mutual support. 

But both Buddhist and Christian images warn against this persistent misconception of love. The Buddhist transcends all discrimination through enlightenment. Jesus exemplifies a love that shares the pain of the suffering and extends concern to those least able and least willing to reciprocate. The ultimate ideal must be a community of mutual love, and to whatever limited extent that is even now realizable, it is not to be disparaged. But, for the Christian, the way forward lies through love of the oppressed as well as of those who oppress us. This love can express itself adequately only as it plans, organizes, and acts. But even in this process it can be guided by an image of perfection of love, and it can attempt in fragmentary ways to realize that communion in the midst of pain and alienation. Clarification of the ideal of transcending individualism can help both to undergird sustained efforts for justice and to direct them. The following diagrams represent some features of the possibility that is envisioned.

1

O O O O O O o o o o o o
O O O O O O o o o o o o
O O O O O O) o o o o o o
O O O O O O o o o o o o
O O O O O O o o o o o o

2

A A A A A A a a a a a a
O O O O O O o o o o o o
B B B B B B ) b b b b b b
O O O O O O o o o o o o
C C C C C C c c c c c c

3

A A A A A A ba ba ba ba ba ba
O O O O O O o o o o o o
B B B B B B ) b b b b b b
O O O O O O o o o o o o
C C C C C C bc bc bc bc bc bc

4

Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
O O O O O O o o o o o o
B B B B B B ) b b b b b b
O O O O O O o o o o o o
Bc Bc Bc Bc Bc bc bc bc bc bc bc

Diagram 1 represents the general metaphysical situation as a flux of events or experiences. The symbol ) at the center represents my experience as it is now coming into being. The diagram presents the total situation from my present perspective. I am affected by all the events that have taken place in my past, represented by capital 0's to the left. In its turn, my present experience will affect all the events that lie to the right, that is, in the future, represented by small o's.

Diagram 2 indicates that, within the flux of events, forms of personal order obtain. My experience is a part of a sequence in which each inherits from a particular strand of past experiences in a dominant way, thus constituting me as a person and projecting my personal identity as the succession of b's. Other successions (A-a and C-c) constitute other persons. We are mutually external to one another. The successions 0-0 represent sequences of bodily and nonhuman events.

Diagram 3 indicates how perfect agape would ideally modify the situation represented in Diagram 2. My present experience would be concerned for the futures of A and C in the same way as it is concerned for the future of B. This is indicated by representing all these future events as b. The diagram is misleading if it suggests that my present decision influences the character of the serial successors of A and C as much as those of B, or that the diversity of future events is reduced. Subscripts are used to indicate this continuing variety. The extension of the b's expresses only the kind of importance these events would have for my selfconstitution. It represents with respect to the future what it would mean for me to love my neighbor as myself. Perfect love transforms the neighbor's future into a part of my future in anticipation of which I now constitute myself.

Diagram 4 illustrates the ideal consequences when perfect empathy is added to perfect agape. Instead of inheriting from one serially ordered set of past experiences as my own, feeling other aspects of the past as alien, I inherit from and partly conform to the feelings of others in a way that resembles my inheritance from and conformation to the succession of B's. This does not mean that the differences between the A's and B's and C's are reduced. The use of B's throughout represents only the similarity of the way in which I am related to all the events in this wider past.

Such diagrams have many limitations. They represent only my perspective. In Diagram 4, if the perspective of A-a were adopted, all the letters would be shown as A's and a's. This would not imply a change of character of the events; it would imply only that, from the perspective adopted, perfect empathy would open that experience to the entire past and perfect agape would open it to the entire future. If all human experience attained this character, diversity would continue, but the separating sense of mine and yours based on the externality of personal selves represented in Diagram 2 would be transcended in a sense of ours. Whitehead described this condition as "Peace," which "is self-control at its widest -- at the width where 'self' has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality."7

Another limitation of the diagram is that the 0's used to buffer the persons from one another are represented as having no other function. In fact, they stand for events in the body and the environment of the body which also are causally efficacious and can be empathetically appropriated. Indeed, a heightened agape for, and empathy with, the events in the body and the natural environment is particularly important in our time, but these diagrams are designed to highlight relations among human persons. Therefore, the 0's are needed as buffers to indicate that, as long as we live in a bodily form, relations with others do not have the same immediacy as relations with our own past experiences. However much we live from and for others and thus reduce our isolation, estrangement, and "overagainstness" toward one another, we cannot expect our mutual separation to disappear. Diagram 4 is an ideal to be approached, but it cannot be fully attained.

The Buddhist ideal is sometimes formulated as the full realization of the situation represented in Diagram 1. The distinction between human experience and other events is minimized. The flux is to be recognized as flux. The events within it are all seen as instances of dependent coorigination, which pass on their contribution for good or ill to the whole of what comes afterward. In Mahayana Buddhism this reinforces the view that the fullest realization is the one that is for all rather than for the individual alone.

The Christian ideal represented in Diagram 4 differs from this, although not necessarily from actual Buddhist intentions. The difference can be made clear only if the self is distinguished from the person or psyche. The series of capital and lowercase B's in Diagram 2 represents the continuing person or individual psychic life. The momentary self is not represented in these diagrams. It is the "center" within each experience from which, or in terms of which, the past is selectively appropriated and the future anticipated. The symbol ) in Diagram 2 is the center constituted by the reenactment of elements from the antecedent B's and by anticipation of subsequent b's in such a way that the distinction between self and person is of little importance. To develop in the direction of Diagrams 3 and 4, however, the self must become increasingly transcendent of this personal past and future in order to constitute itself in relation to the inclusive past and future. The limitations of personal individuality are overcome by strengthening selfhood, by differentiating the self from every other function in experience and action, and by the self accepting full responsibility for itself. Unless and until the self is strong and assured, it cannot expand from private self-identity to corporate inclusivism. The losing of the personal self through the widening of interests, of which Whitehead speaks, is possible only through the heightening of the momentary self.

Whereas this heightening and strengthening of self hood appears to conflict with Buddhist teaching, the ideal represented in Diagram 4 closely approximates the Buddhist one in that the self grows out of the whole process through dependent coorigination. It does not perpetuate itself. The self in one moment of experience does not arise out of a single preceding self, as is characteristic of the Christian existence we know, but it arises out of the whole past, especially including other persons.

The difference between Buddhism and what is here proposed as a Christian goal may be stated in another way. Buddhism has negated the self and thus inhibited the development of strong, isolated selfhood. The Christian goal is to go beyond fully developed personal individualization. It is an expansion of the self to include others. Yet the expansion does in fact achieve a result highly analogous to that attained in Buddhist enlightenment. Perhaps it might someday be recognized by Buddhists as a fulfillment of their goal, a fulfillment which nevertheless is free from limitations that have characterized Buddhism in the past.8

That Christianity and Buddhism could each be so transformed by their internalization of each other as to move toward a future unity is an image of hope in a time of fragmentation. But many Christians perceive the postpersonal existence here adumbrated as more disturbing than enticing. Our Western ideals are bound up with personality and personal fulfillment, and postpersonal existence is too easily heard as a return to prepersonal existence. Soleri's vision of the city as organism inspires this fear despite his expressed conviction that people will find fulfillment rather than loss in the new levels of interconnectedness. To allay this kind of fear, Teilhard spoke of the preservation of the personal in the organic unity of the Omega.

The encounter with Buddhism may prove an essential step for the West to free itself from its attachment to individualized personal existence as a final good. The West is prepared for this encounter by its increasing recognition of the appalling price in human misery and risk to human survival that has been paid for our achievements in personal existence. We have become disillusioned with the view that these problems can be solved by appeals for justice and  personal righteousness. We recognize that radical changes are required. But we are frightened by the prospects of change. Perhaps the encounter with the transpersonal existence of the Buddhist, the recognition of the serenity and strength it embodies, the experience of Buddhist meditation, and the study of Buddhist philosophy will give us the courage to venture into that kind of radical love which can carry us into a postpersonal form of Christian existence.

NOTES

1. Cobb, The Structure of Christian Existence, Ch. 12.

2. Note that most Buddhists deny that Buddhism is a pluralism, a monism, or a nihilism. Cf. Kenneth K. Inada, "Some Basic Misconceptions of Buddhism," International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1 (March 1969), pp. 101-119.

3. The possibility of this kind of development in Buddhism has been discussed in some detail by David Griffin, "Buddhist Thought and Whitehead's Philosophy," International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sept. 1974), pp. 261-284.

4. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, tr. by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (The Noonday Press, 1957).

5. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1962), sec. 26.

6. Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit, tr. by Paul Bowles (Samuel French, Inc., 1958), p. 52.

7. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, p. 368. 8. Buddhist leaders do, of course, recognize limitations just as Christians do, but at somewhat different points. Masao Abe writes: "Up to the present time it seems that Buddhism has not wrestled with this problem [of man's social life and history] successfully. Only rarely has Buddhism even raised a basic question about it. The time has come for it to ask whether and how the problem of ethics and history can be solved from the standpoint of jinen, which is entirely non-dichotomous. In order to be able to answer this basic question, Buddhism must break through its traditional patterns of thought and rethink the whole matter from the depth of its genuine spirit." ("Buddhism and Christianity as a Problem Today, Part II," Japanese Religions, Vol. 3, No. 3 [Autumn 1963], pp. 30-31.)

​More Essays in Open Horizons on Buddhism

1. The Perfection of Love: John Cobb on what Christians can learn from Buddhism
2. The Buddhist Ground of the Whiteheadian God: Thomas JJ Altizer
3. Don't Bow: Grace Jill Schireson
4. Tibetan Buddhism in Process Perspective
5. All is Void and there is no Buddha
6. Buddhism Resource Page
7. Whitehead and Zen Buddhism
8. Why Christians Turn to Buddhism: Six Reasons
9. Imagining a Methodist Buddhist
10. Becoming: East and West
11. Can a Christian Be a Buddhist, Too?
12. On Being English Teacher for a Zen Master
13. ​Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy
14. Process Theology and the Tibetan Book of the Dead: Songs from the Bardo
15. Becoming a Drop of Kindness: Yungchen Lhamo, Tibetan Buddhism, and Whitehead
16. ​When I Fall Down I Get Up Again: Short Reflections on Whitehead and Zen