From a Zen perspective the idea that any mere human being can truly know, understand, experience Sacred Reality fully is an extraordinarily arrogant, if not titanistic, bit of thinking. In general, people conceptualize Sacred Reality in four ways. The first is to understand Sacred Reality is completely transcendental. The second is to understand it as completely immanent. The third is to understand it as both transcendental and immanent. The forth is to understand Sacred Reality as neither transcendental nor immanent. Number four leaves very little with which to work, and though there may be a mystical dimension to this way of looking at Sacred Reality, it would be impractical for all except the extreme mystic. The first conceptualization, henceforth number 1, has the problem that if Sacred Reality is totally transcendental there ought to be no logical way of mankind relating to It, or It to mankind. In particular, the mystical experience of both western and eastern practitioners would seem to contradict such absolute transcendence. It could be argued that mystical experiences are delusionary and, therefore, invalid to the argument; however, few people have gone this far to support absolute transcendentalism.

One Zen reason for questioning the validity of an absolute transcendental Sacred Reality arises from the Zen suspicion that such transcendentalism is at least partially born of a distrust of human nature. In Western religion there has been a long tradition of denying the capacity of human beings to be naturally good and the just. To try to overcome this incapacity Zen suggests that Western culture has create an entity that embodies all that is considered good and just, and has then place it in the heavens beyond human capriciousness. Until recently Western society has then forces its members to believe in this entity to insure social order. Considering human self-centeredness this lack of trust in humanity’s goodness is a not unjustified, so this external objectifying and transcendentalizing has some rationality to it. However, to insure belief in this transcendental source of the good and the just, people must then forget that they themselves created this Sacred Reality, and instead believe that it has created them. The problem with this is that having created such a Sacred Reality moral safety net, Western society came to fear and condemn all those who would deny this Sacred Reality. This, paradoxically, served only to reinforce society’s distrust of human nature, which in turn reinforces the need to believe in a transcendental Sacred Reality.

One strand of early Chinese philosophical speculation also advocated a distrust of human nature, but this was soon abandoned for a more optimistic Confucian and Taoist view. Zen is an inheritor of this optimism.

A second reason for questioning the value of transcendentalism is that while transcendentalism may have partially arisen to sanctify the good and just, it has one great contradicting element to it. If the transcendental Sacred Reality is the exclusive creator of the world, then intentionally or unintentionally it is the ultimate source for evil as well as good. This totally undermines the value of transcendentaism from a Buddhist perspective.

A third Zen reason for devaluing transcendentalism is that transcendentalism seems to encourage the concept of Sacred Reality as possessed of an eternal unchanging personhood, in short, it allows Sacred Reality to be in man’s image. The Zen objection to this anthropomorphic imaging is that it supports the idea of a supreme self, which is the antithesis of the no-self view of Buddhism. These three objections to transcendentalism should make it clear why such transcendentalism has no part in the Zen view of Sacred Reality.

Before examining the second way people have conceptualized Sacred Reality the third way, which is actually a compromise between the first and second, will be examined. The third way can be subdivided into two possibilities. These are (3a) Sacred Reality, while partly immanent is still not directly apart of the material world, and (3b) the immanent part of Sacred Reality is directly apart of the material world. For Zen (a) is only a diluted form of number (1) in that it is impossible for the material world to relate to something that is not at least partially material. In other words, for two things to relate to one another they must have some essential element in common or they are too alien for a relationship. This leaves (3b) and the second way, hence forth (2), of understanding Sacred Reality as possibilities.

(3b) is the view known as panentheism. It comes from the Greek for "All in God". Panentheism is the theory that while all of creation is within Sacred Reality and nothing is outside of Sacred Reality, Sacred Reality is still not limited to creation because there is a part of Sacred Reality outside of it. Panentheism is an attempted compromise between absolute transcendentalism and absolute immanence (pantheism). Panentheism does not have the problem of (1) or (3a) since the immanent part of Sacred Reality has a material nature. There may still be a problem, not for humanity relating to Sacred Reality, but rather for the immanent part of Sacred Reality relating to the transcendental part of Sacred Reality and vice versus. From the Buddhist perspective this particular problem is not a major concern, instead the major Zen concerns with panentheism are identical to the objections Zen has to absolute transcendentalism. First, it can be only mildly more optimistic than transcendentalism. Second, panentheism, like transcendentalism, leaves Sacred Reality morally responsible for evil in the world. Third, panentheism still allows for personhood to be attached to the sacred.

This leaves us only with (2), uncompromised immanence or pantheism. The word pantheism comes from the Greek ‘All’ plus "God". It is the view that there is no part of the material that is not part of Sacred Reality, and there is no part of Sacred Reality that is not part of the world. In other words, the material world and Sacred Reality are absolutely identical.

As noted, a major Buddhist reason for questioning the validity of views (1) and (3) is that it makes the ultimate source of evil in the world something outside of mankind. This means that an alien Sacred Reality has unjustly victimized humanity. The pantheistic identity of the material and spiritual states of being must also be the ultimate source of evil. However, pantheism makes all inanimate and animate creation, humanity included, its own creator. This means that we, as our own creator, are the ultimate source of good and evil, and not some outside source. This, in turn, means that humanity has no reason to feel victimized by anything other than itself.

Human experience, especially at a mystical level, suggests that either panentheism or pantheism are logical possibilities. This does not mean that number (1) is impossibility, but as noted above, it does leave the human mind with no way to justify an empirical experience of Sacred Reality. Also, as previously noted, panentheism may have the problem of the two parts of itself, the transcendental and the immanent, relating to one another. It is because of such problems that for Zen the self and Sacred Reality are more practically understood in pantheistic terms. If, in the future, mankind’s thinking evolves in such a way that he can more precisely conceptualize Sacred Reality then pantheism might not be as practical; but until then Zen logic more or less favors a provincial, rather than an absolute, pantheism..

Pantheism actually comes in a number of different forms. First, it can be intellectual or purely philosophical, as in that taught by such philosophers as Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). Second, it can be personal and devotional, as in some forms of Hinduism and Sufism. Third, it can be impersonal and mainly metaphysical, as in the philosophies of Plotinus (204-270) and Shankara (788-820). Fourth, it can be semi-religious, as in the nature-oriented pantheism of Daoism and of some poets. Finally, it can be as the tripartite (Aesthetic Continuum, Eternal Now, and the Buddha-nature) pantheism in Zen.

Pantheistic views are can also be divided into those that are acosmic and those that are cosmic. Acosmic pantheism is world denying; while the cosmic form is world affirming. In the first of these the human sense-experience is regarded as illusory (Sanskrit. maya), and thus only Sacred Reality, not the world, truly exists. Indian pantheism, whether Hindu or Buddhist, is essentially acosmic.

In theory, the Mahayana non-dual understanding of reality ought to mean that there can be no duality or ‘gap’ between the transcendental Sacred Reality (Nirvana) and mundane or profane existence (Samsara). Theory aside, however, in reality Indian Mahayana, in sharing with non-dual Hinduism the belief that the world is ultimately illusory, does acknowledge a kind of gap between humanity (samsara) and the Sacred (nirvana). If man’s everyday life is but a mirage created either by his ignorance or by his impure worldly desires, then he is, for all practical purposes, genuinely separated from transcendental reality. Therefore, acosmic pantheism paradoxically must be considered a gap religious view. This gap nature can further be seen by the fact that if the ordinary world is to be devalued then logically humanity must feel alienated not only from the world, but from itself, since humanity so closely identifies or clings to the world. Moreover, this acosmic view encourages a still further alienating spiritual elitism in that those individuals who are considered to have realized (awakened to) the illusory nature of the world are considered superior or more valuable than those still deluded by the world. These more valuable beings are Arhats, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas.

East Asian pantheism, in contrast to the Indian form, is generally cosmic or world affirming. Zen, by affirming the natural world and humanity, must logically favor cosmic pantheism. Zen as pantheistic is actually more Daoist than Indo-Buddhist. This is because both Daoism and Zen recognize the diversity in unity as well as the unity in diversity. Both Zen and Daoism greatly appreciate the reality and value of the particular. Indo-Buddhism, like Hinduism, only recognized the value of unity, thus regarding the diversity as maya (delusion).

The Zen commitment to a more thorough non-dual view of reality not only must deny any ontological gap between the sacred and the profane, but also any gap between matter and spirit. This concept of non-duality is especially strong in Japanese Zen due to its reinforcement by Shintoism, which also denies a true gap between the sacred (Kami) and the profane, or between the material world and the spiritual one. The Shinto pantheistic influence on Buddhism in Japan can be noticed in the Japanese Buddhist belief that even grass and trees have Buddha-nature, which Indian Buddhism denied to plant life. It can also be seen in the Japanese view that all one’s ancestors upon death become incorruptible Buddhas (Hotoke).

Some Zen scholars have objected to calling Zen pantheistic, but it seems that they have either wrongly equated pantheism with monism or been influenced by the Western negative criticism of pantheism and monism. The term monism comes from the Greek mono-meaning one, and implies that reality is so at one with itself that all its diversity is in some way illusory. This view is to be found in the Hindu oneness between Sacred Reality (Brahman) and the human soul (atman). But Zen does not view reality in such a monistic way. Instead it accepts the unity in diversity and diversity in unity of Interdependent and Mutually Interpenetrating Phenomena. This means that the whole (Sacred Reality) is greater than the mere sum of its parts.

As long as a pantheistic understanding of reality does not lose the sense of diversity, especially as represented by the distinct otherness of others, it need not be thought of as monism. A certain sense of separateness is required in order to feel compassion and love towards others and to be of service to them

Monism also has a weakness in that it tends to deny real evil and suffering in the world by regarding it as illusory, as in Hinduism. This all too often becomes an excuse for not sacrificing oneself in the compassionate and loving service to others. This monistic denial of evil, especially suffering, is one of the reasons that Mahayana Buddhism always describes its philosophy as non-dual (Advaya) rather than monistic.

The potential for pantheistic thought to be corrupted into monism is not the only reason Western religion has been so suspicious of, even violently opposed to, pantheism. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition objects to pantheism on the basis that first it can be a kind of subtly disguised atheism, and second, that it allows for claims of self-deification. In all religions where the sacred can only be considered real if there is a sufficient gap between it and the profane, which is the case for Western religions, then the first objection to pantheism seem valid. To be truly valid, however, Western religious advocates would have to explain why some devoted Eastern pantheists take monastic vows and sometimes undertake extremely ascetic practices so they can have profound mystical experiences of pantheistic reality. As for the second objection, it would also only be valid if this deification were selective. If a mystic claimed, as some have, that his mystical experience has made him more Sacred Reality than everyone else then the mystic has a corrupt understanding of pantheism. In pantheism everyone, mystic or non-mystic, is equally Sacred Reality and no amount of mystical experience can make one person more Sacred Reality than another.

Most Western critics of pantheism also fail to take into consideration that the pantheism of the East has a different focus from that of the West. The pantheism in South and East Asia sees all diversity of phenomenon as sacred and so pantheism is an attempt to conceptually unify that divinity. In other words, it is a pantheism that arises out of the feeling that mankind was not separate from or superior to nature. This might be described as the transforming of an animistic and polytheistic attitude into an immanent monotheistic one, that is one without Western transcendentalism. This, of course, is very alien to the West.

The pantheism of the West, more often than not, has been a way of trying to bring a very abstract, aloof transcendental divinity down into the more concrete mundane world. In other words, to bring the unity of Sacred Reality into the diversity of the world. Since from an orthodox Western religious perspective this attempt includes some degree of divinizing both sinful man and inferior nature, it is a blasphemous or sacrilegious affront to the superiority and dignity of Sacred Reality. Indeed, it is seen as a kind of emasculating of Sacred Reality, which accounts for it being seen as the equivalent of atheism or materialism in all but name. The difference, however, between an atheist or materialist and a pantheist is that materialists argue that matter is driven by blind forces, while pantheists argue that matter is driven by some embedded life factor. Also, materialism has a problem acknowledging anything more than a materialist meaninglessness to existence. Pantheism says that their is a meaningfulness that goes beyond or deeper than mere materialism. It acknowledges a profound spiritual mystery to existence.

How does Zen understand this pantheism? Zen can acknowledge Sacred Reality as that aspect of reality that is the ultimate standard of ideal thought and ideal behavior; and at the same time is not immediately or directly accessible to everyday human consciousness. Along with this it must be noted that for Zen, Sacred Reality can only be an ‘experience’ not a ‘being’. This experience has the three aspects of beauty or the Aesthetic Continuum, of timelessness or the Eternal Now, and of the good, the unconditional worth of all beings, or universal Buddha-nature. Although ultimately these three form an interrelated unity, nonetheless, it is possible to experience any one of these independently of the others. These help to account for some of the differences between the mystical experiences various Zen masters have acknowledged.

Finally, for those Zen practitioners who may be uncomfortable with the -theism (God) part of the word pantheism, an alternative name for it is ‘pan-en-henism’ (all-in-one-ism).

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