Review by Kim Young Ju, Spring, 2002
As the title of this
book implies, the author of this book openly pursues various perspectives on
ultimate reality, by whatever name it is called.
He investigates the
multiplicity of concepts, images and faces of God and the divine in the world
religions, seeking primarily to describe, compare and indicate something of the
inexhaustible multiplicity in Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, monotheism, and the
doctrine of the threefold God.
Tao (translated as
“Way” in Western languages), as an impersonal principle and a central
concept in the ancient Chinese interpretation of the world, cannot be compared
with the ideas of God in the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity,
Islam). Anyone who goes in search of Tao must give up any idea of wanting to get
knowledge about Tao.
In Hinduism, the unity
of the divine consciousness and its freedom as the ‘supreme self’
constitutes the supreme sphere of divine being. If the divine consciousness
becomes ‘I’, it is necessarily related to its creative power (sakti).
In Zen, the pivotal
point is in the emptying of the ego-consciousness, casting off that mode of
thinking that divides our being into subject and object, see-er and seen, hearer
and heard, thinker and thought, and so forth. However, this state should not be
mistaken for absent-mindedness, absolute passivity, or loss of consciousness.
To recover one’s
original ‘Face’ is to realize oneself at the very bosom of this faceless,
triune Reality with every breath, at every moment of one’s life.
According to Christian
belief, God has sunk into the world and can be experienced as immediate
presence. God stands over against the world and can be addressed as a personal
‘You’. God constantly takes new form in human beings and their history. So
the divine must be understood as ‘You’, as Spirit that has a history and has
become concrete in it.
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