11

    ABSTRACT  Although  several have noticed the similarities  between
    the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg  and the teachings of Buddhism
    (among  them Philangi  Dasa and D.T.  Suzuki), there  have been no
    modern systematic comparisons.  The parallels include teachings on
    the  self(or, more  accurately, no  self), the  divine, emptiness,
    interdependence, evil, and the spirit  world.  These  seem  to far
    outweigh the differences, such as some teachings on the afterlife.
    The  similarities  might  be  a  useful  bridge  for  facilitating
    Buddhist- Christian dialogue.

    Hi  under  Judaic-Christian   names,  phrases,  and  symbols,  and
    scattered throughout  dreary, dogmatic, and soporific octavos, are
    pure,  precious  blessed  truths  of  Buddhism.  --Philangi  Dasa,
    Swedenborg the Buddhist (1887) Revolutionary in theology, traveler
    of heaven  and hell, great man of the spiritual  world, great king
    of the mystical  realm, clairvoyant  unique in history, scholar of
    incomparable  vigor, scientist of penetrating intellect, gentleman
    free  of  worldly  taint: all  of these  combined  into  one  make
    Swedenborg.... Those who wish to cultivate their spirit, those who
    bemoan the times, must absolutely know of this person.  --  D.  T.
    Suzuki, Swedenborg (1913)

In January  1887 a former  Swedenborgian  minister  named  Carl Herman
Vetterling, who now called himself Philangi Dasa, began publishing the
first Buddhist  journal in the United States.  The inaugural  issue of
The Buddhist  Ray, which  he edited  from  his cabin  in the mountains
above Santa Cruz, proclaimed  itself devoted  to Buddhism  in general,
and to the Buddhism in Swedenborg in particular. The prospectus on the
first  page informed  readers  that it would  "set forth the teachings
imparted  by  the  Mongolian  Buddhists  to  Emanual  Swedenborg,  and
published  by him  in  his  mystic  writings.  " As  this  declaration
suggests, Philangi  Dasa  was not afraid  of controversy, and whatever
the scholarly shortcomings of his journal it was not dull. "Delivering
his unorthodox views with self-righteous conviction,

                                12


he offended  readers  regularly  but his outspoken  brand of sincerity
made The Buddhist Ray one of the liveliest Buddhist journals ever."(1)

    In the same  year Philangi  Dasa  also  published  Swedenborg  the
Buddhist, or The Higher  Swedenborgianism, Its  Secrets  and  Thibetan
Origin. George Dole has tactfully described it as "rather strange,"(2)
yet the book is not without its charm.  Presented as a 322-page dream,
it  takes  the  form  of a conversation  among  Swedenborg  himself, a
Buddhist monk, a Brahmin, a Parsee, a Chinese, an Aztec, an Icelander,
and  "awoman".  The result  is an amiable  theosophical  synthesis  of
religious beliefs and mythologies from many lands. As one would expect
from his background and the texts available in his time, Philangi Dasa
knew more about  Swedenborg  than  about  Buddhism, and his ostensible
aim, to show  that Swedenborg  was really  a Buddhist, is shadowed  by
another  concern,  using  Buddhism  to  reveal  the  shortcomings   of
Swedenbor- gianism. The tone is that of a disappointed lover: Although
I set much by Swedenborg, I would as soon put a razor in the

                                13


hands of an infant as to put his theological  writings  into the hands
of a man not versed in the spiritual teachings of Asia in general, and
in the teachings of Buddhism in particular; for, he might embrace them
and, with a large number of members  of the 'New Church'  society, die
in doubt and despair."(3)

    Philangi  Dasa's journal and book have long been forgotten, yet he
was not the only one to notice the similarities between Swedenborg and
Buddhism. A few years later D.  T. Suzuki was introduced to Swedenborg
sometime  during  his  years  working  with  Paul  Carus  in  Illinois
(1897-1908).(4)   A  correspondence   with   Swedenborgians   in   the
Philadelphia  area led to an invitation  to translate  Heaven and Hell
into Japanese, which was accomplished during a Christmas-time visit to
London. Upon returning to his homeland Suzuki introduced Swedenborg to
Japan by publishing that translation  in 1910, followed by Divine Love
and Wisdom  and The New Jerusalem  (both 1914), and Divine  Providence
(1915).  In addition, he published his own study in Japanese entitled,
simply, Swedenborg  (1915).  Much of this  was compiled  from  English
sources  but the introductory  first chapter was original  and notices
that  the theological  doctrines  presented  by Swedenborg  have  some
similarity  to those  of Buddhism....  True  salvation  rests  upon  a
harmonious  unity of what one believes with what one does.  Wisdom and
Love are the manifestation  of the Divine, and Love has more depth and
breadth than Wisdom.  The Divine Providence  reaches into the minutest
things in the universe.  There must not be any occurrences that happen
by accident, but  everything  is conveyed  by  the  Divine  Providence
through Wisdom and Love. The above are the very things which evoke the
interest of scholars of religion and our Buddhists.(5)

    In 1924  Suzuki  published  a nine-page  article  suggesting  that
Swedenborg's  doctrine  of correspondences  may be compared  with  the
Shingon doctrine that phenomena are aspects of Mahavairocana  Buddha's
ceaseless  teaching.  The last paragraph  concludes: "There remains  a
great  deal I wish to write  about  Swedenborg, but that  remains  for
another day." Unfortunately that day never came: except for this brief
article, Suzuki Õs writings  on Swedenborg  ceased after 1915, when he
was 45, although  he continued  writing  for another  fifty years, the
majority  of his books (totaling  perhaps  20,000 pages) being written
after  his  mid-fifties.  Curiously,  these  later  Buddhist  writings
contain very few allusions  to Swedenborg, despite the fact that there
are references  to, and sometimes detailed discussions  of, many other
Western writers including Christian mystics such as Eckhart.

    It is not clear  why Swedenborg  figures  so little  in these many
works, although  evidently  it was not due to any disaffection: all of
Suzuki's published references  to Swedenborg  are positive, and he was
fond  of mentioning  Swedenborg  in  conversation.  According  to  his
private  secretary  Mihoko  Bekku, as  late  as the  1950  "she  would
sometimes remark, in respond to an


                                14

inquiry by beginning: "Well, Swedenborg  would say..."(7)  And when we
consider  the direction  that Suzuki's  life took after  his encounter
with  Swedenborg, does  it not  suggest  that  the  latter's  personal
example --  Swedenborg's  singleminded yet humble devotion to the task
of recording his spiritual insights -- may have served as an important
model for Suzuki?

    However influential  Suzuki's  translations  may have been for the
development  of  Japanese  Swedenborgianism, his  contribution  to the
dialogue between Buddhism  and Swedenborg  seems, like Dasa's, to have
been forgotten, and I am not familiar with any more recent work on the
topic.  Nevertheless, I think  their intuition  was not misguided, for
there indeed are profound similarities  between what Swedenborg writes
and what Buddhism teaches;  and today we have reached a point where we
can appreciate  them more fully.  In recent years the dialogue between
Buddhism  and Christianity  has  become  an important  development  in
contemporary religious thought, yet as far as I know this dialogue has
overlooked Swedenborg.  If what follows is correct, however, Buddhists
and Swedenborgians  may have quite  a bit to share and learn from each
other.

    Eschatologies  tend  to be so much a product  of their  particular
time  and place  that  few are  credible  today.  Swedenborg's  is the
exception: in many respects what he describes is more meaningful to us
today than it could  have been to his contemporaries.  One reason  for
this is that, despite its overtly Christian perspective, his religious
understanding  is largely  nonsectarian  and therefore  attractive  to
spiritually-inclined  people  of  many  different  persuasions.   This
accords with the ecumenicism  unavoidable in modern religious thought,
and  I  believe  it  is  particularly   compatible   with  a  Buddhist
perspective.  The purpose  of this paper is to notice some of the more
important parallels between Swedenborg  and Buddhism and to reflect on
their meaning for us.  These similarities are all the more interesting
because relaible  Buddhist teachings  and texts were not available  in
Europe during his time.(8)

    Swedenborg's  views will be presented by focusing mainly on Heaven
and Hell, his best known  work which  is also the best summary  of his
voluminous  writings.  Since I want to refer to more than one Buddhist
tradition, my Buddhist citations will be more eclectic.


I.
Heaven  and Hell presents  a vision of human and postmortem  existence
which  contrasts  sharply  with our postmodernist  suspicion  of grand
narratives  that propose  to explain  everything.  No narrative  is or
could  be grander  than  Swedenborg's.  Yet, like  Buddhism  with  its
doctrine  of anatman  (Sanskrit, "no self"), his vision  is postmodern
insofar   as  it  denies   an  ontological   self.   In  our   century
psychoanalytic  and deconstructive  ways of thinking  have provided us
with some homegrown  handles  to grasp  what  remains  a very counter-
intuitive   concept,  the  notion   that  our  sense-of-self   is  not
self-evident  or self-present  but a mental  construction.  Swedenborg
agrees  with  Buddhism  that the self  (his  Latin  term  is proprium,
literally  "what belongs  to oneself", for him the understanding  that
one thinks

                                15


and  wills  from  oneself)  is an  illusion.  According  to  both, the
sense-of-self  --  the sense  that  I am a self-existing  being  whose
thoughts and actions are self-generated -- is better understood as the
effect  of an economy  of forces.  For  Swedenborg  these  forces  are
spiritual -- that is, spirits.


    Good spirits (angels) and bad spirits (demons) are always with us,
and their  influence  accounts  for much of what we understand  as our
mental and emotional  life.  The evil spirits take up residence in our
evil  affections  and bond there, as do the good  spirits  in our good
affections  (HH 295).(9) It is because their influence harmonizes with
our own affections  and tendencies  that it enters our way of thinking
and  is accepted.  In this  way  harmful  spirits  reinforce  our  bad
character  traits, and good spirits our better character traits.  Some
spirits are the source of our anxiety and depression (HH 299). Each of
us has free will --  that is, our ability  to choose  is preserved  --
because we are balanced  between these two complexes  of positive  and
negative spiritual forces.

    The natural Buddhist parallel  to such an economy of forces is the
five skandha  "heaps"  or aggregates, whose  interaction  creates  the
illusion  of  self,  according  to  the  Pali  Sutras.  However,  this
particular  similarity  may  or may not be very  deep, for within  the
Buddhist  tradition  (which, we  must  remember,  originates  in  oral
teachings  over  2400  years  old,  creating  textual  quagmires  that
Swedenborgians  do not need to worry about) it has not been altogether
clear what each skandha refers to (rupa, vedana, samjna, sankhara  and
vijnana may be translated in various ways) or how their interaction is
to be understood  (they are usually  taken ontologically, but they may
refer  to five  different  stages  in  the  cognition  of  something).
Therefore it is also unclear how "spiritual" each skandha is, although
the  earliest   Pali  commentaries   seem  to  understand   them  more
impersonally  and mechanically  as processes  that  lack  a self doing
them.

    What  remains  important, however, is  how  both  deconstructions-
of-self challenge  the religious  and philosophical  climates of their
own time by denying the existence of a Cartesian-type soul, defined by
its self-consciousness, which is to be liberated so it can become pure
consciousness. Just as Buddhism contradicts the Hindu notion of a pure
soul or consciousness  covered  with karmic  impurities, so Swedenborg
contradicts  the long Western tradition (going back at least as far as
Plato) of a sinful or confused psyche that needs to be cleansed  so it
can shine forth in its uncorrupted glory.  Instead, each individual is
one's inmost affection or ruling love (HH 58).  In place of a pristine
self-consciousness, Swedenborg emphasizes that


                                16


what I love is what I am. What we do motivated by such love seems free
to us.  The religious task is not to discover what resides behind this
love -- some pure consciousness that is supposedly doing the loving --
but to transform  myself by changing my ruling love (from love of self
to love of God and neighbor).

    Perhaps  this  understanding  of  our  mental  life  becomes  more
meaningful  if we relate  Swedenborg's  doctrine  to  two  fundamental
Mahayana  Buddhist  teachings: the denial of a duality between subject
and object, and the denial  of duality  between  mind  and body.  Both
resonate  deeply with important  Swedenborgian  claims.  The denial of
subject-object  nonduality  is found in many Mahayana canonical  texts
and commentaries.  As the Japanese Zen master Dogen put it, "I came to
realize that mind is no other than mountains  and rivers and the great
wide  earth, the sun and the moon and the stars."(10)  If there  is no
self inside, it also makes  no sense to talk about  the world as being
"outside"  one's  mind.  Everything  becomes  "my" mind.  I think this
illuminates  a Swedenborgian  claim which  is otherwise  difficult  to
understand: he writes  that the divine  influx  is not experienced  as
coming from our internals, rather it comes through  the forehead  into
our internals: "The influx  of the Lord Himself  into  man is into his
forehead, and  from  there  into  the  whole  face"  (HH  251).  If  I
understand this correctly, the implication is a very Buddhist one: not
(as in so much  Christian  mysticism)  that  we must  realize  the God
within, but rather that the sense of a within  apart from the world is
the self-delusion  that needs to be overcome.  How is this delusion of
self to be overcome? Dogen also provides a succinct explanation of the
Buddhist  approach: "To study the buddha way is to study the self.  To
study  the self is to forget  the self.  To forget  the self  is to be
actualized  by myriad things.  When actualized  by myriad things, your
body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away.  No
trace of realization  remains, and this no-trace continues  endlessly.
"  Since  there has never been a self, only the illusion  of self, the
point  of the Buddhist  path  is not to eliminate  the self  but to Òf
orget  "oneself, which is accomplished  by becoming  so absorbed  into
one's meditation-exercise  that one becomes it.  When my sense-of-self
evaporates, I realize  that  I am  the  world.  Instead  of  attaining
immortality, I realize that I cannot die because I was never born. And
how  is  delusion  of  self  overcome  according  to  Swedenborg?  The
Spiritual  Diary, where he first described his own experiences  in the
afterworld, records  several  conversations  with spirits  who did not
understand  that  "we  are  to undergo  a process  of annihilation, or
becoming nothing ", to which Swedenborg  replied that "this was what I
desired, to wit, to be absolutely  nothing, for  then  I should  first
begin to be something.  " something."  They were afterwards instructed
that by nothing was meant that a man should lose all that was his own,
that is, his cupidities, and so his iniquities,... and that they could
never be anything  until they had lost that which was theirs, and that
in proportion  as they  experienced  that  loss, or  were  reduced  to
nothing, they would  begin  to be something;  and that then they would
have whatever they desired or thought...  (SD 2043 - 4) For Swedenborg
as much  as for Buddhism, the path  is letting-go  of one Õs self.  By
transforming observed objects into manifestations of nondual mind, not
only  the so-called  material  world  but the events  of "my"  of "my"
mental activity  become  more "animated", that is, they gain more of a
life of their own independent of being thought by me.  Swedenborg says
something  very similar: those  things  of wisdom  and love which  are
called thoughts, perceptions, and affections, are substances and forms
...  The affections, perceptions and thoughts there [in the brain] are
not exhalations but are all actually and really subjects, which do not
emit anything from themselves, but merely undergo changes according to
whatever  flows against  and affects them.  (DLW 42) Then perceptions,
thoughts and feelings are not what "I" do; it is more accurate to turn
that around  and say that my sense of self is a function  of what they
do. In this way Swedenborg Õs understanding of our mental life accords
with his understanding of how influx operates, both that from the Lord
(usually mediately through angels) and that from evil spirits.

    So much of twentieth-century  philosophy  has been concerned  with
deconstructing  dualisms such as mind-body  and mind-matter, which are
now  seen  as problematical  and alienating, that  it is necessary  to
remember Swedenborg  was writing in the eighteenth century when it was
much less clear that there was any problem or what alternatives  there
might be.  Swedenborg's  view of their relation  is therefore  all the
more striking. In the afterworld the body of every spirit is the outer
form of that spirit's love, corre-


                                17



sponding  exactly  to the inner  form of his soul or mind (e.g., 363).
From  a person's  face, in particular, all the more inward  affections
are visible  and radiate, because  faces are the very outward  form of
these affections (47). From conversation too the wiser angels know the
whole condition of another person (236). After death, angels carefully
examine one's body, beginning  with the face, then the fingers, and so
on, because the details of one's thought and intention  are written on
the entire  body as well (463).  The new spirit  is later "devastated"
because the outward and inward elements must correspond and act as one
(498, 503).  The result is that the mind and body of a spirit  come to
correspond  so  completely   that  it  is  no  longer  meaningful   to
distinguish between them. This is the basis of that complete conjugial
union experienced  most fully in the afterworld  and sometimes even in
this life, for both soul and mind, although  they appear  to be in the
head, are "actually in the whole body" (CL 178).

    The fact that such union  can occur  in this world as well reminds
us not to draw too sharp  a line between  the world  to come  and this
one. Bioenergetic therapies such as Rolfing confirm that that the body
is not  just  a vehicle  for  mind, for  it retains  memories  of past
traumas that can be stimulated by massage.

II.

The love of self, which closes  our inmost parts to the divine  influx
(HH  272), is the problem  to be overcome.  With  the  support  of his
rationality, man has  corrupted  the  output  of the  spiritual  world
within himself  "through  a disorderly  life.  So he must be born into
complete  ignorance  and be led back from there  into  the pattern  of
heaven by divine means"(HH 108).

    The need to become ignorant suggests  a Buddhist-like  critique of
conceptualization,  which  Swedenborg   also  makes:  insights,  being
outward  truths, do not  by themselves  save  us, but  the  way  those
insights change us (HH 517). Innocence is the esse of everything good,
and everything  is good to the extent  it is innocent.  Such innocence
does not preclude  wisdom, for everything  is also wise insofar  as it
partakes  of  innocence  (HH  281).  To a Buddhist  this  sounds  like
tathata, the "just this!" ness which describes the unselfconscious way
an enlightened  person  lives.  Having  given up the love of self, and
let-go  of the sense of self, we do not attain some other reality  but
realize the true nature of this one, which is all we need. That is why
the essence of Zen can be "chopping wood and carrying water."

    The importance  of this can hardly be overemphasized, because this
is how both traditions  solve the problem of life.  To be spiritual is
nothing  more than being open to, and thereby  united with, the whole:
that is, to accept one's situation  and therefrom  manifest the whole,
in contrast  to self-love  (Swedenborg)  and the delusion  of separate
self (Buddhism).  The essential  point  is that  this is not something
that can happen only after

                                18

we  die.  We are  in heaven  right  now  if our  internals  are  open,
according  to Swedenborg, and nirvana is to be attained  here and now,
according to Sakyamuni Buddha.  In fact, nirvana is nothing other than
the true nature of samsara, according  to the Mahayana tradition.  One
version of this is that the passions, just as they are, are wisdom and
enlightenment.   This  contradicts   the  orthodoxy  of  earlier  Pali
Buddhism, which  understands  desire  as  the  source  of  our  duhkha
(suffering, dissatisfaction), but  the  Mahayana  point  is  that  our
desires can be transmuted from self-ish cravings into self-less joys.

    Swedenborg's attitude towards the pleasures of life makes the same
critique of earlier ascetic, life-denying versions of Christianity: It
is by no means  forbidden  any one to enjoy the pleasures  of the body
and  of sensual  things;...  for  these  are  outermost  or  corporeal
affections from interior affection. The interior affections, which are
living, all derive  their  delight  from good and truth;  and good and
truth derive their delight  from charity  and faith, and then from the
Lord,  thus  from  Life  itself;  and  therefore  the  affections  and
pleasures  which  are from thence  are alive.  (AC 995)  This does not
imply  that  the  spiritual  life  is  an epicurean-like  devotion  to
"higher"  pleasures, for there is another  aspect  of tathata-activity
which Swedenborg and Buddhism both emphasize: that, as Swedenborg puts
it, the Lord Õs kingdom is a kingdom of purposes  which are functions;
divine worship  is not a matter of attending  church but living a life
of love, charity and faith (HH 112, 221).  "People who like to do good
for others, not for their own sakes  but for the sake of good, are the
ones  who  love  the neighbor;  for good  is the  neighbor  " (HH 64).
Compare to this a Buddhist  proverb (I do not know its origin) that in
the beginning one does good deeds for the sake of the neighbor;  later
(when  one has realized  that the neighbor  too has no self)  one does
good  for the sake of the Dharma;  but finally  one does  good  for no
reason at all --  which in Swedenborg's terms is to attain the highest
innocence.

    For Buddhism  such a life is best exemplified  by the bodhisattva,
who being un-self-preoccupied is wholly devoted to the endless work of
universal salvation.  A bodhisattva is so unselfconscious that when he
or she gives something  to someone, it is without  the awareness  that
one is giving, that there  is someone  else who receives, or even that
there is a gift that is given.  Such generosity  is emphasized  as the
first  and most  important  (because  it is said  to include  all  the
others) of the prajnaparamitas, the "higher perfections"  developed by
those who follow the bodhisattva  path.  This corrects  the "spiritual
materialism"  inherent  in the more common religious  attitude  toward
doing  good  deeds, which  is concerned  to accumulate  merit  or good
karma.  For Swedenborg  too, those  who are led by the Lord  think  of
nothing  less than the merit  that their good works  might accrue  (AC
6392).  His account  of this  would  fit comfortably  into  a Mahayana
scripture:

                                19



    When  an angel  [or  bodhisattva! ] does  good  to anyone  he also
    communicates  to him his own  good, satisfaction, and blessedness;
    and  this  with  the  feeling  that  he would  give  to the  other
    everything, and retain  nothing.  When he is in such communication
    good flows into him with much greater satisfaction and blessedness
    than he gives, and this continually with increase.  But as soon as
    a thought  enters, that he will communicate  his own to the intent
    that he may maintain  that influx of satisfaction  and blessedness
    into himself, the influx  is dissipated;  and still  more if there
    comes  in  any  thought   of  recompense   from  him  to  whom  he
    communicates his good. (AC 6478)



Unlike  those who have retired  from the world to live a solitary  and
devout life, "angels" life is happy because of its blessedness, and is
made up of serving good purposes which are works of charity"(HH  535).
Both traditions deny that salvation is effected by performing rituals,
or  faith  alone,  or  deeds   alone,  or  even  by  having   mystical
experiences.  To be spiritual  is to live a certain  kind  of life, in
which love of self is replaced by selfless love.

    In  order  to be  able  to  live  this  way, however, we  must  be
regenerated, which  for  Swedenborg  involves  an  opening-up  of  our
internals  that seems  very similar  to the enlightenment  or pravrtti
"turning  around" of Buddhist  liberation.  The origin of evil is that
"man turned  himself  backwards, away from the Lord, and round towards
himself"  (CL 444);  we need to "turn back around"  away from self and
towards the Lord.  This turning-around  liberates the Lord's influx to
flow into us. This influx is life itself. We have no other life of our
own, being receptacles  of this divine life.  The question is how much
of this  influx  we are open  to.  Depending  on my ruling  love, this
influx  is choked  and  constricted  (by self-love)  or flows  like  a
fountain (into love of God and neighbor).

    I think  this  points  to the  solution  of a perennial  religious
problem: the relationship  between personal  effort and transcendental
grace.  This tension  recurs  in the argument  between  Augustine  and
Pelagius;  in the Hindu Visistadvaita  debate about "cat salvation" (a
mother cat carries  her kittens)  versus  "monkey  salvation"  (a baby
monkey must cling to its mother's chest); and in the Japanese Buddhist
problem  of the relationship  between  tariki "other effort"  effort "
(throwing oneself on the mercy of the Buddha) and jiriki "self effort"
(which requires one's own efforts to become liberated). All "I" can do
is to open  up to the spiritual  influx  by my ego getting  out of the
way, that is, letting-go  of myself, whereupon this influx necessarily
fills me, just like the sun shines when the clouds dissipate. But such
letting-go is rarely easy: insofar as the self is the problem, this is
not something that the self can do. In Zen, for example, letting-go is
not subject to my willing; during zazen I learn how to "forget myself"
indirectly, by concentrating  on and  becoming-one-with  my meditation
practice.(12)

                                20


III

Although   the  issue   is  complicated,  I  think  that  Swedenborg's
conception  of  the  Divine  avoids  the  extremes  of a personal  and
impersonal  Absolute in much the same way that Mahayana Buddhism does.
The dilemma is that a completely impersonal Absolute, such as found in
certain types of Vedanta, must be indifferent to our situation;  but a
more personal God, understood  to have a will and desires analogous to
ours, may choose some people (or some peoples)  for a special  destiny
--  perhaps without their doing anything  special to deserve it (e.g.,
predestination). Yet there is another alternative, if God is not other
than  us, if He is in fact  the life-giving  force  in everything: our
esse being, as Swedenborg  might express  it, or our lack of being, as
Mahayana  might express  it --  or both, as the 13th century Christian
mystic Eckhart  does express  it, since both descriptions  are ways to
communicate the same insight, that there is no dualism between God and
us.  So Eckhart  can play with the binary terms Being and Nonbeing  by
nonchalantly reversing their meaning. Sometimes he refers to the being
of creatures and describes God as a nothing, without the slightest bit
of existence.  At other times Eckhart contrasts  the "nullity"  of all
creatures  with the being of God, in which case it is not that God has
being, or even  that  God is being, but that  being  is God (esse  est
deus).  If God is the life or being  in everything, then it is just as
true to say that no thing  has any being  of its own.  Is this also an
adequate explanation  of the sunyata (emptiness)  of beings, according
to Mahayana, and of the nature of the Lord for Swedenborg?

    The nature  of God and the role of Christ  for Swedenborg  are two
difficult issues which are not fully addressed in Heaven and Hell, and
even when we consider other writings  which address those matters more
fully -- especially Divine Love and Wisdom and True Christian Religion
--  I do not  find  what  he writes  entirely  clear  or satisfactory.
Curiously, however, there may be some of the same ambiguity within the
Buddhist tradition. Let us consider the two issues separately.

    For Swedenborg  God is life itself, which angels  and spirits  and
humans are recipients  of.  This divine essence manifests  as love and
wisdom, which  are inseparable  in the same way as the sun's  heat and
light  are  --  an inspired  analogy  or  rather  correspondence  that
Swedenborg  makes much of, since in heaven God appears  as (but is not
Himself) a sun (HH 116-140). When, however, we inquire into the nature
of God in Himself, apart from all the things infused  and the activity
of infusing  them, what Swedenborg  writes  is less clear, at least to
me.  He emphasizes repeatedly that God is a man, or (better nowadays!)
human.  Three main reasons are given for this: humans, like angels and
spirits, derive their form from God, "there being no difference  as to
form, but as to essence" (AE 1124, DLW 11); heaven is in the form of a
man, both in whole and in part (HH VIII-IX); and humans


                                21

should conceive  of God as a man, for it is not possible  to think of,
love  and  be  conjoined  with  something  indefinite   and  therefore
incomprehensible (e.g.,HH 3, TCR 787; AC 7211,8705,  9354).

    What seems significant is that none of these reasons unambiguously
implies  theism as that term is usually  understood.  The first two do
not require that God has a self-existence  apart from his universe (in
general)  and  from  those  beings  who  experience   his  influx  (in
particular);  they imply something important about the form we and the
universe necessarily embody as recipients of influx, yet nothing about
the form-in-itself  of the source of that influx.  The third reason is
more difficult  to evaluate  because  it appears  in several different
versions;  its general thrust, however, addresses what we should think
rather than what is the case.  Swedenborg  is clearly concerned  about
the dangers of conceiving of God in the wrong way, insofar as this can
lead us astray.  Those who believe  in an invisible  Divine called the
Reality  of  the  Universe, the  source  of all  that  exists, end  up
believing  in no Divinity  at all, because  such  a Divine  "is no fit
subject   for  thought  "(HH  3);   those  who  acknowledge   what  is
incomprehensible  "glide in thought into nature, and so believe in no
God " (AC 9354).  Yet no one in heaven "can have any conception of the
Divine in itself....  For the angels are finite and what is finite can
have no conception of the infinite.  In heaven, therefore, if they had
not an idea of God in the human  shape, they would have no idea, or an
unbecoming one " (AC 7211).

    In sum, inasmuch  as God  is infinite, all our conceptions  of Him
must miss the mark, but inasmuch  as we need a conception  of Him, the
best image is that of a Man. To a Buddhist, this is reminiscent of the
old 19th  century  argument  that, since  a religion  must have a God,
Buddhism  cannot  be a religion.  The  question  this  begs  is: is it
possible  to have a religion  (such as Buddhism)  that criticizes  all
conceptions  of the Divine, including  the image  of God as human, yet
still  functions   as  a  religion  because  its  spiritual  practices
nonetheless promote the Divine influx?

    Insofar as Swedenborg's quintessential teaching is that the Lord's
love and wisdom  flow into every  thing, then clearly  no being exists
apart  from God, and the fact  that God is human  does not necessarily
imply that God exists as human-like apart from the beings that receive
this influx.  But I wonder if this may be taken a step further.  If we
extrapolate from Swedenborg's  favorite analogy --  God as a radiating
Sun --  may the Lord be understood  as a potentiality  which  achieves
form  only  in His creation? From  that  perspective, God needs  us in
order  to become  fully  real, both  individually  (as we open  to His
influx) and collectively (as His heaven grows and ramifies).

    If this understanding  is acceptable  (and it may not have been to
Swedenborg  himself), I think  it is consistent  with much of Buddhism
and  may even  help  to clarify  some  aspects  of Buddhist  teaching.
Central to Mahayana  is the concept of sunyata, usually translated  as
"emptiness". For Nagarjuna, the most important Mahayana philosopher,


                                22


that things are sunya is a shorthand  way to express that no thing has
any  self-being  or self-presence  of its own.  In the succinct  Heart
Sutra,  a  famous  summary  of  the  prajnaparamita   scriptures,  the
bodhisattva Avalokitesvara  realizes that "form is sunyata and sunyata
is form;  form is no other than sunyata  and sunyata  is no other than
form".  Unfortunately, the usual English translation "emptiness"  does
not convey  the full  connotations  of the  original, for the Sanskrit
root su literally  means "swollen", not only like an inflated  balloon
but also like a pregnant woman swollen with possibility.  According to
Nagarjuna, it is only  because  things  are  sunya  that  any  change,
including spiritual development, is possible.

    Sunyata, then, invites  interpretation  as  a  formless  spiritual
potential  which is literally  no-thing in itself yet functions as the
"empty  essence"  that gives life to everything  and enables  it to be
what it is.  Such an influx is experienced as "empty" for two reasons:
it has no particular form of its own/in itself, and insofar as I am it
I cannot know it.  This is consistent with Swedenborg's  understanding
of the Lord as constituting the life in all of us, the love and wisdom
that flow into us to the extent  that we are receptive  to it.  On the
Buddhist side, this also helps to avoid the nihilistic  interpretation
of sunyata that the rather-too-negative term has sometimes invited.

    Sakyamuni  Buddha, the historical  founder  of Buddhism  who lived
four to five hundred  years before  Christ, did not urge his disciples
to unite with God or experience His influx. Instead, he taught them to
follow  in his own footsteps  by pursuing  the same types of spiritual
practice in order to attain the same nirvana. However, this difference
may be less of an obstacle than it seems. For one thing, the nature of
nirvana  is notoriously  obscure, since the Buddha refused to say much
about it except that it is the end of suffering and craving; those who
want  to know  what  nirvana  is must  attain  it for  themselves.  In
addition, the comparative  study of religion  has led us to an insight
that is difficult  to deny today but would have had little meaning  in
Swedenborg's  time: that very similar experiences  may be subjected to
different  and incompatible  explanations, according  to the tradition
one is familiar with.  In Sakyamuni's time Indian popular religion was
polytheistic, which means  that he did not teach in the context  of an
absolute God transcending or incorporating all other gods; nor does he
seem  to have  been  familiar  with  the Upanisadic  conception  of an
impersonal Brahman, another alternative being developed by other sages
about the same time. So it is hardly surprising that Sakyamuni did not
communicate his own spiritual insight -- the influx of love and wisdom
that dissolved  his ego-self? --  in either terms but instead  created
his  own  religious  categories   (no  self,  nirvana,  etc.),  unlike
Swedenborg, who naturally  understood  his own experience  in terms of
the  developed  Christian  tradition  that  he had  grown  up  within,
centered on the idea of an absolute Lord.

    Later and in different  social contexts, theistic conceptions  did
become  important  in  popular  Buddhism, such  as  the  Amida  Buddha
worshiped in

                                23


more devotional sects. These devotional schools -- which as Swedenborg
noticed  require  that  we  think  of the  Divine  as  human  --  have
undoubtedly been more important for more Buddhists than the dialectics
of Buddhist philosophers such as Nagarjuna.

    In these ways Christian  theism as Swedenborg  explains it --  the
Lord as our life, due to His influx of love and wisdom  --  may become
more compatible  with the sunyata  of Buddha-nature  as many Buddhists
have  understood  it.  Except  for  the  unique  role  of  Christ  for
Swedenborg.  Here too, however, it seems  to me that his understanding
is not unproblematic.  Taken as a whole, Swedenborg's writings contain
a tension  between  two different  positions  that never quite  become
consistent.  On the more orthodox  side, he defends the uniqueness  of
Christ as God-man and the importance  of accepting  him as our savior.
On the more ecumenical  side, his emphasis  on the influx  of love and
wisdom  leads him to reduce  the salvific  role of Christ so much that
Christ can be reconceptualized  without much difficulty  as one avatar
among many, a view quite compatible with Buddhism.

    Nevertheless, there  is no doubt that Swedenborg  understands  the
historical  Christ  as unique  and  the Christian  church  as special.
Before  his advent, the  Lord's  influence  was mediated  through  the
angelic  heavens, yet  from  the  time  he became  human  it has  been
immediate. Since then the Christian church has formed the heart of the
human race on earth and in heaven as well.  Christians  constitute the
breast of the Grand Man, the center towards which all others look.  It
is not necessary  that all or most people accept  Christianity, but it
is very important that some people do, "for from thence there is light
to those who are out of the Church and have not the Word" (DLW 233, AC
637, DP 256).

    Yet who is in the Lord's spiritual church?

    It is throughout  the  whole  terrestrial  globe.  For  it  is not
    limited to those who have the Word, and from this have obtained  a
    knowledge  of the Lord, and some truths  of faith;  but it is also
    with  those  who have  not the Word, and  are  therefore  entirely
    ignorant  of the Lord, and consequently  do not know any truths of
    faith (for all truths  of faith refer to the Lord);  that is, with
    the Gentiles remote from the church....  And although  ignorant of
    the Lord while in the world, yet they have within them the worship
    and tacit  acknowledgement  of Him, when they are in good;  for in
    good the Lord is present. (AC 3263; my emphasis)

During  his visits to hell Swedenborg  encountered  Church dignitaries
learned  in the Christian  Word "but  in evils  as to life", while  in
heaven he met both Christians and Gentiles "who were in falsities" and
"were yet in good as to life" (AC 9192). When we are being regenerated
we can fight against falsities "even from truth not genuine if only it
be such that it can be conjoined


                                24

by any means  with good;  and it is conjoined  with good by innocence,
for innocence is the means of conjunction  " (AC 6765).  From passages
such as these  --  and there  are many of them --  it is difficult  to
conclude that it is necessary or even important to be a Christian. The
point is not simply that one is saved by living  a good life, but that
one lives a good life because  one has become receptive  to the influx
of divine  love and wisdom.  And insofar  as the means  of conjunction
with  this  influx  is "innocence", it  is unclear  why  it should  be
necessary to believe in any particular doctrine whatever. If we accept
this  important  ecumenical  strand  within  Swedenborg's  writings, a
strand  which has been even more important  in Buddhism, then there is
no need for anyone to be a Christian or a Swedenborgian or a Buddhist,
except insofar as those teachings and communities help us to turn away
from  self-love  and open  up to the influx  of self-  less  love  and
wisdom.

    Why did the Lord manifest on earth as man? The internals of humans
are under  the dominion  of either  spirits  from hell or angels  from
heaven;  when  in the course  of time  the  hellish  influence  became
stronger  and "there  was no longer  any faith  nor  any charity", the
Lord's advent was necessary  to restore order and redeem man (AC 152).
This may be a good reason  for the appearance  of a savior but it is a
poor argument for the uniqueness of Christ as the savior.  In fact, it
is the  same  reason  given  in the  Bhagavad-gita  for  the  periodic
appearance  of avatars, and in Buddhism for the periodic appearance of
Buddhas (the one previous to Sakyamuni was Dipankara, the next will be
Maitreya).

IV

In the previous  section the sunyata "emptiness"  of Mahayana Buddhism
was interpreted  as a formless spiritual potential  that gives life to
everything.  I argued  that such an understanding  is consistent  with
Swedenborg's  conception  of the Lord's  influx into each of us.  This
approach  to  sunyata  has  been  especially  important  as  a way  to
understand   the  Dharmakaya  (  "Truth-body"),  the  highest  reality
according  to Mahayana teachings, as we shall see shortly when we turn
to the Tibetan  Book of the Dead.  However, this has not been the only
understanding of sunyata in Buddhism and it is questionable whether it
would have been acceptable  to Nagarjuna  himself, who argued  for the
sunyata  of things  not  by referring  to influx  but by demonstrating
interdependence (things are sunya because they have no self-existence,
being dependent on many other phenomena).

    This  emphasis  on interdependence  became  an essential  Mahayana
teaching  and in fact  the  essential  teaching  of Hua-yen, a Chinese
school of Buddhism which describes  this relationship  using metaphors
such as Indra's  Net: Far away in the heavenly  abode of the great god
Indra, there is a wonderful net that stretches  out infinitely  in all
directions....  [There is] a single glittering  jewel in each "eye" of
the net, and since the net itself in infinite in all

                                25


dimensions, the jewels  are infinite  in number....  [I]n its polished
surface there are reflected  all the other jewels in the net, infinite
in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one
jewel  is also reflecting  all the other  jewels, so that there  is an
infinite reflecting process occurring. Indra's Net " thus symbolizes a
cosmos  in which  there  is an infinitely  repeated  interrelationship
among all the members of the cosmos". Each jewel is nothing other than
a function of the relationships among all the others, and likewise may
be said to contain all the others within itself. All is one and one is
all: the whole  world  is contained  in each thing, and each thing  is
nothing  other  than  a manifestation  of the  whole  world.  Is there
anything  comparable  in Swedenborg? The analogy is hard to miss.  All
the realms  of the heavens  constitute  a whole  (HH VIII), in fact  a
Grand Man (and all the hellish  realms an Infernal  Man) (HH 553);  in
that Grand  Man who is heaven, for example, those  who died as infants
form the region of the eyes (HH 333).  Each of heaven's communities is
also a single person (HH IX), and conversely each angel is a heaven in
smallest  form (HH 53);  the same relationship  seems  to hold for the
hells and the demons in them.(16)

    For  Buddhism, however, there  is a potential  problem  with  this
second conception  of interdependence, which can understand  the world
as merely a mechanical  relationship  among material forces, something
that  clearly  is not what  Madhyamika  and  Hua-yen  are  wanting  to
describe. Understanding sunyata as influx avoids this.

    We end up with two different  types  of dependence: dependence  of
non-self- existent things on the influx of spiritual potentiality that
gives them being/life, and the organic or "ecological" interdependence
of each  such  thing  on the functioning  of all  other  things.  When
expressed  this way, what  seems  significant  is that  both types  of
dependence  are important  both  to Mahayana  and  to Swedenborg.  The
interpenetration  of  one  in  all  and  all  in one  in  Swedenborg's
afterlife  presupposes  the divine  influx  which  permeates  all  the
realms, including  hell  where  it  is perverted  into  self-love.  In
Buddhism  these  two  interpretations   of  sunyata  have  often  been
antagonistic  to each other, but Swedenborg's vision reminds us that
they do not necessarily exclude each other.

    This  dependence/interdependence  must be understood  dynamically.
Like Buddhism from its inception, Swedenborg  emphasizes  process (the
Buddhist    anitya,   impermanence)    over    substance    (svabhava,
self-existence).  Persistence  is  a continual  occurrence  (HH  106),
enduring  is  a constant  emergence  (H  9).  This  is  true  even  of
Swedenborgian regeneration and Buddhist enlightenment. The regenerated
are regenerated  continually  through  life and also in the afterlife;
heaven  as it grows becomes  more and more a Grand Man.  Most Buddhist
schools emphasize the need for continual practice, even for the deeply
enlightened, and the urge to deepen one's practice endlessly is a sign
of genuine  realization.  There is a saying in Zen that even Sakyamuni
Buddha is only halfway there.

                                26

V

Perhaps the clearest  parallel of all is with Swedenborg's  account of
evil and its punishment, which is so Buddhist  in spirit that it could
be used  to explain  the  Buddhist  doctrines  of karma  and samskara;
again, Swedenborg's explanation  may help  to clarify  the  Buddhist
perspective. Like Sakyamuni Buddha and for that matter Christ himself,
Swedenborg emphasizes intention (e.g., 508).  In this way evil becomes
tied to its own punishment:

    Everything evil brings its own penalty with it. The two are bonded
    together.  So the person  who is involved  with something  evil is
    also involved  in the penalty  of the evil.  Yet no one suffers  a
    penalty  because  of evil  things  he did in the world, but rather
    because of evil things he is doing currently.
    Still, it comes  down  to the same  thing  whether  you say he suffers
    penalties  on account  of the evil things  he did in the world, or
    that he suffers  penalties  because of the evil things he is doing
    in the other life, because everyone returns after death to his own
    life, and therefore  to similar  evils.  For the person  is of the
    same quality as he was during his physical life....
    Good  spirits, though, are not punished  at all, even if they  did
    evil things  in the world, because  their evils  do not come back.
    (HH 509)

So the Lord  does not do evil  to anyone  (HH 550).  Evil  has its own
punishment, thus hell; goodness its own reward, thus heaven (AC 9033).
    This is in effect  a sophisticated  account  of karma which avoids
two extremes: both the problem with a more mechanical understanding of
moral cause-and-effect  (common in popular  Buddhism)  and the problem
with  a  more  juridical  understanding  of  hell  as  punishment  for
disobeying  divine authority  (common in popular Chistianity).  In the
first case, if you steal someone's money then yours will be stolen, in
either this or a future lifetime;  in the second case God punishes you
because you didn't follow His commands.  Swedenborg's  central insight
is that people suffer or are rewarded  not for what they have done but
for what they have become, and what we intentionally  do is what makes
us what  we are.  That  is why in most  cases  there  is no difference
between the evil things done in the world and the evil things that one
is inclined  to do in the afterworld.  This  conflation  makes  little
sense  if karma is understood  dualistically  as a kind of moral  dirt
obscuring one's mirror-like pure self.  It makes a great deal of sense
if I am my intention or ruling love, for then the important  spiritual
issue is the development of that ruling love.  In that case my actions
and my intentions build my character --  that is, my spiritual body --
just as surely as food is assimilated to become my physical body.  All
schools  of  Buddhism  similarly  emphasize  the  importance   of  our
samskaras,  which  are  mental  tendencies:  one's  habitual  ways  of
intending  and reacting  to particular  situations.  In Buddhism, too,
these samskaras are the vehicles of karma. They sur-

                                27

vive death and cause rebirth;  in fact, they are what is reborn, since
there is no pure self to be reincarnated.

    How are such mental tendencies formed?

    We can now see that it is not so hard to lead a heaven-bound  life
    as  people  think  it  is  because  it  is  simply  a matter, when
    something  gets in the way that the person knows is dishonest  and
    unfair, something  his spirit  moves  toward, of thinking  that he
    should not do it because  it is against the Divine precepts.  If a
    person gets used to doing this, and by getting  used to it gains a
    certain disposition, then little by little he is bonded to heaven.
    As this takes  place, the higher  reaches  of his mind are opened;
    and as they  are opened, he sees  things  that  are dishonest  and
    unfair; and as he sees them, they can be broken apart....
    But we need to realize  that the difficulty  of thinking  this way
    and of resisting  what is evil  increases  as a person  does  evil
    things  intentionally.  So far as he does, he gets  used  to them,
    until he does not see them. Then he reaches a point where he loves
    them, and finds excuses for them out of the pleasure  of his love,
    corroborates  them  by all kinds  of deceptive  notions, and calls
    them legal and good. (HH 533)

A person suffers not because of "inherited  evil" but "because  of the
realized  evil  that  does belong  to him --  that  is, the amount  of
inherited evil that he has made his own by his life activities" (342).
In this  way  Swedenborg  and Buddhism  both  present  a psychological
version  of karma which denies any sharp distinction  between  the one
who intends and the intention itself.  I am my predominant intentions,
which means that habitually  acting in certain ways is what constructs
me.  That is why a person with bad samskaras --  a "bad character"  --
cannot  be saved in spite of himself: because  he is those  samskaras,
which  cannot  dwell in heaven  because  they would not be comfortable
there.  Therefore they spontaneously go to where they are comfortable,
which happens to be where there are others with similar samskaras. One
of the reasons evil people suffer in the afterworld is the same reason
good people  are blessed  there: they end up living  with others  just
like them.

VI

Swedenborg's  account  of the  spirit  world  (in Book  II)  has  many
similarities  with the Tibetan understanding  of the afterlife and the
rebirth process, which provides by far the most detailed account among
the various Buddhist  traditions.  However, there are some problems in
working  this out.  The Bardo Thodol Chenmo  text first translated  by
Evans-Wentz and published as The Tibetan Book of the Dead is only part
of one of several such Bardo texts in the


                                28

Tibetan tradition, and because that particular  text was composed with
reference  to a tantric mandala of 110 peaceful  and wrathful  deities
there is much obscure symbolism about those deities.(17)

    Yet even if one ignores this difficult iconography there remains a
sophisticated description of death, intermediate life and rebirth that
resonates  deeply  with  Swedenborg's  account.   Both  emphasize  the
importance  of  one's  last  thought  (444)  --  in  other  words, the
particular  samskara activated at the moment of death --  and that all
one's  samskaras  survive  death,  along  with  a  psychic  body  that
duplicates  one's physical  body: "after death, a person is engaged in
every sense, memory, thought, and affection  he was engaged  in in the
world: he leaves nothing behind except his earthly body " (Ch.  LXVII,
LXVIII).  According  to both accounts, the dead are initially  unaware
that they are dead. Even as God does not turn His face from anyone and
does  not cast anyone  into  hell  (HH 545), so the luminosity  of the
Dharmakaya (experienced  as a primordial clear light comparable to the
divine sun in Swedenborg's  heaven), which is nothing other than one's
own sunyata mind, does not reject anyone. For both traditions there is
a self-judgement that occurs in the presence of God/the Dharmakaya, in
which  the true nature  of one's samskaras/ruling  affections  becomes
revealed to oneself. In the Bardo tradition too, the good and wise are
attracted to the pure, formless Dharmakaya  and the texts urge them to
become  one with it;  yet since it mirrors  all one's karma those less
good are repulsed  by it and are attracted  to the samsaric realm that
corresponds to their ruling karma.

    Swedenborg emphasizes  the limits of the Lord's compassion: no one
enters  heaven  by direct  mercy  (HH LIV), for the Lord does  not and
evidently  cannot violate  the design that he is (HH 523).  Since this
mercy is constant  with each individual  and never withdraws, everyone
who can be saved is saved, but those  whose ruling  affection  is evil
have learned to shut out his influx.  In the intermediate  Bardo realm
too, even a Buddha  cannot  stop  someone  who wants  to go somewhere,
since  (as Swedenborg  expresses  it) he or she is that  attraction  /
affection and could not be stopped without being annihilated (HH 527).

    There   are,  nevertheless,  some   important   differences.   For
Swedenborg  the spirit world is an intermediate  one because there one
is "devastated": that is, outward elements  must be changed until they
conform  with inward  elements  (HH 426).  One's  inmost  level can no
longer be reformed, but the outward elements must be gradually  set in
order  until one's ways of thinking  and feeling  are consistent  with
one's deepest intentions.  Yet, as the meaning  of the Tibetan title (
"The Great Liberation  through  Hearing  in the Bardo")  suggests, the
presupposition  of the Bardo ( "intermediate realm ") texts is that it
is still possible  to exercise  some freedom  in the Bardo world, that
despite  the karmic  attraction  there may still be some choice in the
matter -- perhaps because there may be more than one "ruling" love.

    I can think  of two ways  to resolve  this  difference.  One is to
understand

                                29


the Bardo  Thodol  less  ingenuously  as a book  meant  for the living
rather than the dead, as a way of encouraging  the survivors to reform
their lives --  their samskaras  --  while they still can.  Reading it
orally  beside  the  corpse, surrounded  by  the  chastened  mourners,
certainly  serves  this function, yet there is another  way to look at
it. I wonder if there is some inconsistency in the way that Heaven and
Hell emphasizes  that one's ruling love cannot be changed  to eternity
(477 ff.) while also describing  incidents such as angels "attempts to
influence  new spirits  (e.g., 450), which  efforts  would  be largely
wasted if they could have no effect  whatsoever   on one's ruling love
(and therefore  on one's eventual  place in heaven  or hell).  It also
seems debatable  whether  we always  have only one ruling love;  maybe
there  are some  cases, or many  cases, where  two or more  affections
contend with each other throughout one's life and even afterwards.  If
so, perhaps Swedenborg's book is the disingenuous one.

    A difference  of emphasis, or more, follows  from  the distinction
between morality and insight.  Both Swedenborg and Buddhism understand
them  to be closely  related, yet  to the  extent  that  they  may  be
distinguished Buddhism as a "wisdom tradition" emphasizes wisdom more,
while Swedenborg emphasizes morality.  One of the ways this difference
shows  itself  is  in the  distinction  that  Buddhism  makes  between
"heaven"  as one  of the six  realms  of samsara  --  pleasurable  yet
complacent, therefore  not as good a place to be as our present  human
realm  --  and  the  liberation  that  is  nirvana.  From  a  Buddhist
perspective  even  good karma  is troublesome  insofar  as it operates
mechanically;  better  is the prajna  wisdom  that frees  one from all
karma and therefore from all the realms of samsara.  A good example of
this is the Bardo Thodol  understanding  of what happens  when a newly
deceased spirit encounters the pure luminosity of the Dharmakaya.  One
is encouraged  to unite with the white light by realizing  that one is
it;  in comparison  to this, even  the  most  sublime  of the peaceful
deities, which  represent  good karma, is nothing  more than  a higher
form of delusion. I do not find this distinction in Swedenborg.

    This leads us to perhaps the major difference  between  Swedenborg
and  Buddhism, and  what  is  undoubtedly  a  major  obstacle  to  any
conflation.  Swedenborg's Christian conception of the afterdeath drama
is  orthodox  insofar  as it understands  this  life  as  a one-chance
preparation  for heaven or hell, since one's ruling love never changes
even to eternity (477, 480).  In contrast, all traditional  schools of
Buddhism  understand  the alternative  to nirvana as rebirth in one of
the six samsaric  realms  (heaven, titan, human, hungry  ghost, animal
and  hell), which  includes  the possibility  of returning  as a human
being.  However, even this difference is complicated  by the fact that
some Bardo Thodol  passages  warn the spirit about never being able to
escape  from  where  one is inclined  to go: "Now is the time  when by
slipping into laziness even for a moment you will suffer for ever. "If
you go there you will enter hell and experience unbearable suffer-

                                30

ing  through  heat  and  cold  from  which  you will  never  get  out.
"Theoretically, though, escape is always possible  no matter where you
are, if you realize  the sunyata  of your own mind.  The corresponding
experience  in Swedenborg  would be regeneration  even in hell, by the
opening   up  of  one's  internals   to  the  Lord's  influx  and  the
transformation  of one Õs ruling love;  yet he does not allow for that
possibility, despite  the fact  that the divine  love never  withdraws
from anyone (DP 330).


VII

As a final comparison, let us briefly consider  Swedenborg's  doctrine
of correspondences  or representations, which constitutes a version of
afterlife idealism: although the afterworld is in many ways similar to
this  one, things  there  are  not  as fixed  or  stationary, for  the
condition of things varies there according to the angels that perceive
them, and they disappear when those angels depart (HH 173 ff.).  Since
all  the  things  that  correspond  to  more  inward  things  actually
represent  them [in heaven], they are called "representations."  Since
they do vary depending  on the conditions  of the deeper things in the
angels, they are called "appearances."  This is despite  the fact that
the  things  visible  to  angels  "eyes  in  the  heavens, the  things
perceived   by  their  senses,  are  visible  and  perceived  just  as
realistically  as things  on earth  are by man --  actually  with  far
greater clarity, crispness, and vividness. (175)

    To any Buddhist  philosopher  this  sounds  quite  similar  to the
Buddhist doctrinal school known as Yogacara or Vijnanavada  (sometimes
translated  as "the  Representation-only  School").  This is the other
important  philosophical  school  of Mahayana, along  with Nagarjuna's
Madhyamika, with  which  it eventually  merged.  In  contrast  to  the
detailed correspondences offered by Swedenborg, Yogacara addresses the
issue on a more abstract  level which, frankly, I have not found  very
interesting.  More illuminating  is the continuing  parallel  with the
Bardo  Thodol,  which  understands   all  postmortem  experiences   as
mentally-projected   images,  making  the  world  beyond  "akarmically
corresponding  image  of earthly  life".  The  descriptions  of  those
visions   which,  according   to  the  Bardo  Thodol,  appear  in  the
intermediate  state  (bar-do)  following  death are neither  primitive
folklore nor theological speculations. They are not concerned with the
appearances of supernatural beings... but with the visible projections
or  reflexes  of inner  processes, experiences, and  states  of  mind,
produced  in the creative  phase of meditation.  The challenge  of the
Bardo realm is to recognize  the peaceful  and wrathful  deities  that
appear as the karmic projections  of one's own mind.  The deceased  is
instructed  not to be afraid of any of the deities that appear, but to
recognise  them  as  one's  own  sunya  hallucinations.  "If  all  the
temptations  of  deceptive  visionary  images,  which  are  constantly
referred  to in the texts  as hostile  forms  of the intellect, can be
recognized as empty creations of one's own mind and can be immediately
penetrated, one will attain liberation."(21)


    The  difference, as we have  already  noticed, is that  the  Bardo
Thodol

                                31

urges the deceased  not to identify  with any such images  in order to
attain to the liberating  luminosity of the formless Dharmakaya, while
Swedenborg's angels  dwell happily  in a mental  world  that changes
constantly according to their affections.  Evidently the common ground
here is that neither spirit is deceived by those correspondences  into
believing  that  the things  of one's  world  are objectively  real, a
delusion which occurs when samsaric attachments and delusions motivate
us to fixate on them.  Those who know things are correspondences  will
not be trapped by and in those correspondences.

VIII

If the above parallels  are genuine, they raise a concluding  question
that  should  not  be  ignored:  Why  are  Buddhist  and  Swedenborg's
teachings  so similar  in these ways? These are various  posibilities,
which  readers  can work  out for themselves, but one ramification  in
particular  deserves to be addressed: Did Swedenborg become acquainted
with Buddhism  through  his travels in the afterworld? One of the most
intriguing  references in his voluminous works is an alusion to "Great
Tartary,"  where  the  teachings  of  the  ancient  church  have  been
preserved:

    I have shoken with spirits and angels who cam from there, and they
    said that they possess  a Word, and have from ancient  times;  and
    that their divine  worship  is performed  according  to this Word,
    shich  consists  of pure correspondences....They  said  that  they
    worship  Jehovah, some as an invisible, and some as a visible God.
    Moreover  they  said  that they do not permit  foreigners  to come
    among  them, except  the Chinese, with whom  they culivate  peace,
    because the emperor of China is from their country....Seek  for it
    in China, and perhaps  you will find it there  among  the tartars.
    (AR 11; my emphasis)(22)

    To what does this refer? And where? Anders Hallengren has reviewed
the historical evidence and concluded that the most probable reference
is the Buddhism of Mongolia and Tibet. ( Since Kublai Khan, founder of
the Chinese Yuan dynasty, was converted  by a Tibetan rinpoche  in the
thirteenth  century, Mongolian  Buddhism has been a version of Tibetan
Buddhism.)(23)  To this  I can  add  only  one  point, concerning  the
curious  fact that their worship  "consists  of pure correspondences."
What can this mean? The Vajrayana  Buddhism of Tibet and Mongolia is a
Mahayana  form of tantra  that employs  meditative  practices  such as
mandalas  (complex  visual  images, usually  paintings), mantras  (the
repetition  of sacred  sounds), mudras (hand movements), and so forth.
In  the  case  of  a mandala, for  example, a  practitioner  typically
meditates  on its visual form until he or she is able to reproduce  it
completely--indeed, it is said to be clearer- in the mind's eye;


                                32

finally, one unites with the deities  depicted, who represent  aspects
of one's own Buddha-nature.  The complex symbolism of most mandalas is
not  very  relevant  to  the  theoretical  concems  of  most  Buddhism
philosophers, while the opposite is true for meditators.  Tantra is by
nature esoteric  because it is a nonconceptual  symbolic  system.  The
mandala  is "a microcosmic  image  of the universe."(24)  it is, above
all, "a map of the cosmos.  It is the whole universe  in its essential
plan, in its process of emanation and reabsorption."(25) This suggests
that  meditations   employing   these   images   might   be  the  pure
correspondence that Swedenborg mentions. I do not know how to evaluate
this supposition, but in the future I will be less inclined to dismiss
such images as "mere iconography"!

Conclusion.

Here it has been possible to mention only some of the more provocative
parallels between Swedenborgianism  and Buddhism.  It has nevertheless
been enough  to suggest  that Swedenborg  could  serve as an important
bridge in the contemporary dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism.
Swedenborg's  double  emphasis  on divine love and wisdom, which forms
the core  of his theology, is reproduced  in the relationship  between
Christianity  and Buddhism, which  respectively  emphasize  the way of
love and the way of wisdom  --  and, as Swedenborg  and Buddhism  both
emphasize, each way entails  the other.  I also hope to have shown how
Swedenborg  and  Buddhism  can  help  to  illuminate  each  other.  In
particular, Buddhism, with probably the world's richest collection  of
meditative   techniques   and  practices,  has  much  to  offer  those
Swedenborgians  who seek more specific  guidance  on how to let-go  of
themselves  in order to realize personally  the spiritual  influx that
Swedenborg's    grand   metaphysical   system   describes   so   well.
Unfortunately, we cannot expect this bridge to carry much traffic, for
the same reason that Swedenborg's  eschatology has been ignored by the
mainstream   Christian   tradition:  his  grand   conception   of  the
afterworld,  and  of  this   world,  is  too  dependent   on  his  own
extraordinary  spiritual experiences, which few if any of us seem able
to confirm for ourselves.

    Not having visited  heaven  and hell, I can only hope that if they
exist  they function  in the way Swedenborg  has described.  After one
studies  his  remarkably  detailed  and  well-structured  eschatology,
others  begin to lose their  credibility.  This response  is itself  a
remarkable  fact, pointing  to  the  unexpected  plausibility  of this
grandest  of narratives.  If the universe  doesn't function in the way
Swedenborg explained, well, it should.

NOTES

  I am  grateful  to Leonard  Fox, Donald  Rose, and  especially  Jane
Williams-Hogan  for their comments  on an earlier draft of this paper.
Reprinted with the permission of Arcana, Box 533, Bryn Athyn PA 19009.

1.Helen  Tworkov  and Thomas Tweed, "The original  Ray," Tricycle: The
Buddhist Review (Fall 1991);6-7.
2.George F. Dole, Cbrysalis 9, no. 1 (spring 1994): 75.
3.Philangi  Dasa, Swedenborg  the Buddhist;  or, The Higher Swedenbor-
gianism, Its  Secrets  and Thibetan  Origin  (Los  Angeles: Buddhistic
Swedenborgian  Brotherhood,1887),14.  I am grateful to Leonard Fox for
providing  me with a photocopy of this book.  My Dasa epigraph is from
p. 7.
4.  Did Suzuki read The Buddhist Ray while he was working for the Open
Court Publishing  Company? It is likely  that Paul Carus was aware  of
it.
5.This  tranlation  is  taken  from  Tatsuya  Nagashima, "daisetsu  T.
Suzuki,  Internationally  Known  Buddhist: Crypto-Swedenborgian?"  New
Cburch  Life (May 1993): 202-17.  Later  in the first  chapter, Suzuki
makes a seemingly  ingenuous  remark that is worth quoting  because it
touches  on one  of  the  most  attractive  qualities  of Swedenborg's
"dreary, dogmatic, and soporific octavos": "Swedenborg's writings have
a sphere  of consistent  sincerity  and honesty.  He is not  a man  of
fraudulence  and deception.  He just writes honestly  what he sees and
hears.  There is no pretension in him.  Whether or not one believes in
him, we must admit that there is a reason  why one feels his sincerity
coming  from  what  he writes"  (ibid., p.214).  The  whole  book  has
recently  been  translated   into  English  by  Andrew  Bernstein   as
Swedenborg:  Buddha   of  the  North  (West  Chester,  PA:  Swedenborg
Foundation, 1996).  My  Suzuki  epigraph  is from  the  preface.  I am
grateful to Mr.  Nagashima  and to Ms.  Mihoko Bekku for providing  me
with information about Suzuki's Swedenborgian background.
6.Dt.  Suzuki, "Swedenborg's View of Heaven and 'Other-POwer,'" Chugat
nippo  February  8, 1924, reprinted  in Zuibitsu  Zen [Essays  on Zenl
(1927)  and in the  Collected  Works  (SDZ)  Vol.  19: 297-642  Trans.
Bernstein in D. T. Suzuki, Swedenborg: Buddha, op. cit.
7.Mihoko Bekku, telephone coversation, 12 March 1995.  Ms.  Yukie Dan,
secretary  of the Eastern Buddhist  Society  (which publishes  Eastern
Buddhist, a journal founded by Suzuki), has provided me with a list of
Swedenborg references  in Suzuki's Collected Writings (in Japanese): a
total  of ten, in addition  to the studies  and  translations  already
mentioned.  She notes: "Generally, Swedenborg  is not thought to be of
much importance to Suzuki, who does not mention him overtly.  But this
information sheet listing fairly explicit mentions of ES would suggest
that Swedenborg  was never apart from Suzuki.  So we now believe he is
significant, but significant  in which  way has  yet to be elucidated"
(Yuki Dan, personal communication, 29 January, 1995).
8.  Contact between India and Europe occurred  long before Alexander's
conquests  (326 -  323 B.C.), and Marco Polo gives  an account  of the
legend  of the Buddha.  In the 13th century  papal envoys visited  the
Mongol Khan, and their accounts aroused much interest in Europe. Later
missionaries  also sent back numerous  reports, but since few of these
were  published  it  is  difficult   to  determine  how  much  correct
information  on Buddhism  reached Europe before the 19th century.  The
important  exception, curiously, was Tibet.  At the  end  of the  16th
century Jesuit missionaries  believed that Christians lived there, and
a series of Catholic missionaries  visited beginning  in 1624.  One of
them, Ippolito Desideri, stayed in Lhasa for five years (1716 -  1721)
and acquired an excellent knowledge  of Tibetan language and religion;
he wrote a Relazione on his studies during his return but this was not
published until 1904.  Only in the 19th century did systematic studies
of Buddhism begin and reliable translations begin to appear. See J. W.
De Jong, A Brief History  of Buddhist  Studies  in Europe  and America
(Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1987), pp. 5 - 15.
9.Arabic  numberals  in the text refer to the numbered paragraphs, and
roman  numberals  to the chapter  headings, in the following  works of
Swedenborg:  Heaven  and  Hell,  trans.  George  F.  Dole  (New  York:
Swedenborg  Foundation  [SF], 1976);  Ac Arcana  Coelestia  (SF 1985);
Conjugal Love, trans.  A.  W.  Acton (London: Swedenborg Society [ss],
1938);  True  Christian  Religion  (2  vols.)  (SS  1975);  Apocalypse
Revealed, trans. Alice Spiers Sechrist (SF 1981); Apocalypse Explained
(6 vols.), trans.J.  Whitehead (SF 1911); Divine Providence trans.  W.
F.  Wunsch (SF 1971); Spirtual Diary (5 vols.) trans. a.  W. Acton (SS
1977); and Divine Love and Wisdom, trans. George F. Dole (SF 1985).
10. As quoted in Philip Kapleau, ed., The Three Pillars of Zen (Tokyo:
Weatherhill,  1965),  205.   The  original   reference   is  from  the
Sokushin-zebutsu fascicle of Dogen's Shobogenzo, but the same point is
made by Dogen in other fascicles as well.
11.While  the spirtual importance  of the forehead  and the top of the
head (the parietal  aperture left by the fontanelle)  has been largely
ignored  in the  Christian  tradition, it has been  emphasized  in the
Buddhist  tantric  and Indian yogic traditions, which have a system of
seven chakras that puts greatest importance on the "third
eye" in the middle  of the forehead  and the chakra  at the top of the
head ( according  to the Tibetan  tradition, the latter  chakra is the
proper way for the mental body to exit the physical body after death).
12.Swedenborg  says little  about meditation  practices, although  The
Ture Christian  Religion  (767) medtions  the Lord appearing  as a sun
before angels when they practice  spiritual  meditation.  Swedenborg's
own preferred practice was meditating  on the meaning of the Bible and
allowing  his mind to be guided  by the Lord into an awareness  of its
spirtual significance.
13.See, for example, the translation  by Donald  S.  Lopez Jr.  in The
Heart Sutra Explained (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1988): pp.19-20.
14.Krishna: "Whenever there is a decline in righteousness  and rise of
righteousness,  then  I  send  forth  [incarnate]   Myself.   For  the
protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the
establishment  of righteousness, I come  into  being  from age to age"
(Gita 4: 7-8 in S.  Radhakrishnan, trans., The Bhagavadgita (New York:
Harper and Bros., 1948).
15.Francis  H.   Cook,  Hua-yen  Buddhism:  The  Jewel  Net  of  Indra
(University Park: Pennsyilvania State University Press, 1977), p.2.
16.Much  of Swedenborg's  vision of the afterworld, and this aspect in
articular, is compatible with John Hick's concluding  theory in Death
and  Eternal  Life  (London:  Collins,  1976),  an  almost  exhaustive
historical  study  of Christian  eschatology  that, characteristic  of
modern theology, ignores Swedenborg's:

    The distinction  between  the self  as ego and the self  as person
    suggests that as the human individual becomes perfected he becomes
    more and more a person and less and less an ego. Since personality
    is  essentially  outward-looking,  as  a  relationship   to  other
    persons, whilst  the ego forms a boundary  limiting  true personal
    life, the perfected  individual  will  have  become  a personality
    without egoity, a living consciousness which is transparent to the
    other  consciousnesses  in relation  to which  it lives  in a full
    community  of love.  Thus we have  the picture  of a plurality  of
    personal  centres  without  separate  peripheries.  They will have
    ceased  to be mutually  exclusive  and will have  become  mutually
    inclusive  and  open  to one another  in a richly  complex  shared
    consciousness.  The barrier between their common unconscious  life
    and their  individual  consciousnesses  will  have disappeared, so
    that they experience  an intimacy of personal  community  which we
    can at present barely imagine."  (459-60)

Not a bad description of Swedenborg's heaven; compare AC 2057: "Mutual
love in heaven consists in this, that they love the neighbor more than
themselves.  Hence the whole heaven presents  as it were a single man;
for they are all thus consociated by mutual love from the Lord.  Hence
it is that the happiness of all are communicated to each,

                                35


and those  of each to all.  The heavenly  form is therefore  such that
every  one  is  as  it  were  a  kind  of  center;  this  a center  of
communication and therefore of happiness from all;  and this according
to all the diversities of that love, which are innumerable."
17.On  the Bardo  Thodol, see Glenn  H.  Mullin, Death  and Dying: The
Tibetan Tradition (London: Arkana, 1986), pp. 21-22.
18.Heaven and Hell 256 gives an alternative explanation for the belief
that people  "can return  to a former  life"  occasionally  a confused
"recollection"  can occur due to experiencing  the memories of spirits
that always accompany us.
19.The  Tibetan  Book  of the  Dead, trans.  and  with  commentary  by
Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa (Boston: Shambhala, 1992), pp.
199, 212-13.
20.Lama  Anargarika  Govinda, Foundations  of Tibetan  Mysticism  (New
York: Samuel Weiser, 1969), p.122.
21.Detlef Ingo Lauf, Secret Doctrines of the Tibetan Books of the Dead
(Boston: Shambhala, 1989), p.69.
22.See also Conjugal  Love 77, True Christian  Religion 279, Spiritual
Diary 6077.
23.Anders  Hallengren, "The Secret of Great Tartary," Arcana 1, no.  1
(1994); 35-54.
24.Lauf, Secret Doctrines, p.65.
25.Giuseppe  Tucci, The theory  and Practice  of the Mandala  (London:
Rider, 1969), p.23.