Masao Abe

Masao Abe

All I-Thou relationships among men and between man and God are possible only within an endlessly expanding self-awakening. Zen calls this our “Original Face,” the face we have before we are born. “Before we are born” does not refer to “before” in its temporal sense, but in its ontological sense. The discovery of one’s prenatal face—in its ontological sense—places us within an endlessly expanding self-awakening. To the extent that we are men, whether from the East or from the West, this is equally true of all of us. We should not think that we will come to our awakening at some future time and place and will then be awakened. On the contrary, we are originally—right here and now—in the expanding of self-awakening that spreads endlessly into all directions. This is why we can talk about relationships with the world and about an I-Thou relationship with God.

– from “God, Emptiness, and the True Self”

Masao Abe (1915-2006) was a Japanese philosopher and professor of religious studies who was well known for his participation in Buddhist-Christian interfaith dialogue and his writings on Zen as a worldview. He saw reverence of the Buddha as a stage on the way to conceiving of a “formless” Buddha, which allowed one to awaken to one’s True Self. In developing this view of reality, Abe also overcame the positive nihilism espoused by modern Western philosophy associated with Friedrich Nietzsche. Abe’s desire to enter into dialogue with Christian thinkers in the West was in part due to a concern for securing the spiritual foundations of humanity in an age of globalism.