God is no-self (the love of God)

This is part of a series reflecting on God-talk and Buddhist terminology. It is an opening to dialogue, not a final word on the subject.


No-self is a teaching that is hard to comprehend and even harder to realize consciously as lived experience. The Westernized translations tend to go like this: While one does not exist intrinsically, as a self-sufficient and self-contained entity, nothing about the self is unreal. Only the perception of the self as existing on its own forever unchanging and apart from everything else is unreal.

The same can be said of the love of God -- that is, everything else is unreal.

There is an image in Christian mysticism which has been captured in a famous icon of the Holy Trinity by Rublev wherein three angels, representing the three aspects of God, are each inclined to one of the others. The love of God creates and completes this circuit as it creates and completes all things in a dynamic equilibrium. The Father (emptiness) gives rise to the Son (form) which dissolves revealing the Father (emptiness).  This dynamic movement is the essence of the Spirit.

In this view, then, the love of God cannot be captured or limited but flows ceaselessly through all things. But this love can be missed if one tries to set up artificial boundaries or distinctions, even really productive and useful labels and models to help make sense of the world. This is especially true of limiting beliefs about one's identity.