The Buddha Believed in the One

Five blind men encounter an elephant in the jungle, each touching a different part to “know” it.

One feels the trunk: “It’s a large snake!”
One grasps the tusk: “No, a spear!”
One touches the leg: “A tree trunk!”
One holds the ear: “A fan!”
One bumps the side: “A wall!”

They argue fiercely, each insisting his version is the truth.

A wise sage explains: “You all grasp fragments of the same elephant. Reality is one, but partial views breed endless strife.”

When I say the Buddha believed in the One, I am talking about the elephant—the whole, not the fragments.

Not a Personal God

The Buddha most certainly did not believe in a personal creator deity like the “Man Upstairs,” a bearded overseer on a throne handing out rewards and punishments. As you can see, everything depends on what you mean by the word “the One.”

In Udana 8.3, the Buddha said:

“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks, there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned.”

I define the One as the unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. In more modern terms, the One is not a being, but the Ground of Being.

The modern understanding of God as the Ground of Being was not available to the Buddha. At the time, the only “gods” he knew were those of Brahminism. And the Reality he encountered in spiritual experience was not a personal being, but something entirely different.

Therefore, he never called this Reality “God,” though he could call it that today. But even today there are connotations that come attached to the word God, such as maleness.

So even though I sometimes use the word God, I find it safer to follow Plotinus and stick with the One, or in more modern form, the Source. In Buddhism, the One is the Unconditioned. In Daoism, it is the Eternal Dao. In philosophy, it is called the Absolute or Ultimate Reality. Different names, same Reality.

Neoplatonic Buddhism

My aim as a philosopher is to bring together Neoplatonism and Buddhism into a coherent synthesis. In doing so, I draw upon comparative philosophy, current insights from psychology, and what we know from physics and biology.

This project is a life’s work—years of study, contemplation, and struggle have led me toward this synthesis. Many traditions contain profound wisdom, but these two stand out as the finest expressions of the Western and Eastern philosophical worlds.

They meet, I believe, in the same ultimate insight: There is an Unconditioned Reality beyond time and space.

We are Sparks of that Unconditioned Reality—expressions of the One, refracted into the world of becoming. We find ourselves in this matrix of change and growth not by accident, but because becoming is the arena in which the Spark evolves.

Our meaning in life is simple and profound: to return to the One from which we came. This takes place by awakening to our Source and evolving our consciousness, our spark, into the likeness of and harmony with the One. It is the flight of the alone to the Alone – Nirvana.