The Humble Self

Buber, the Dalai Lama, and Love as a Way Beyond the Ego

There are philosophical and religious traditions that, at first glance, seem to stand far apart. The Jewish dialogical philosopher Martin Buber and the Tibetan Buddhist Dalai Lama belong to such different worlds. Buber writes from within a Jewish, European, and existential tradition. The Dalai Lama speaks from Tibetan Buddhism, with roots in Indian philosophy, meditation, and the teaching of emptiness, compassion, and non-self.

And yet there is a meeting point between them.

That meeting point is love.

Not love as romantic feeling. Not love as a private mood or sentimental warmth. But love as a fundamental way of being in the world. Love as openness. Love as responsibility. Love as compassion. Love as the opposite of turning the other person into an object for my will, my usefulness, or my fear.

The Dalai Lama has often emphasized that different religious and philosophical traditions do not necessarily have to cancel each other out. They can complement one another, especially when they place love, compassion, and human dignity at the center. This is an important thought in a time when differences are often used to create distance. For the Dalai Lama, difference in itself is not a threat. The question is rather what these traditions do to the human being. Do they make us more open, more compassionate, more responsible? Or do they make us harder, more self-centered, and more afraid?

In this light, Buber and the Dalai Lama can be read together. They do not say the same thing. That would be to smooth over the real differences between Jewish dialogical philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism. But both point toward liberation from the closed ego. In Buber, this liberation takes place through the encounter with a Thou. In the Dalai Lama, it takes place through the insight that the self we cling to is not as fixed, independent, and self-sufficient as we believe.

Buber is known for his distinction between I–It and I–Thou. In the I–It relation, I stand before the world as something I can observe, use, analyze, explain, or control. This is not wrong in itself. We must be able to use things. We must be able to analyze, plan, and understand. The problem arises when all of life becomes an I–It relation. Then human beings, too, are turned into things. The other becomes a function, a role, a diagnosis, a problem, a resource, or an obstacle.

In the I–Thou relation, something else happens. I no longer stand before the other as an object. I meet the other as a presence. The other is not merely someone I know something about. The other addresses me. The other makes a claim upon me. The other cannot be fully reduced to my understanding.

This is where love enters.

For Buber, love is not first and foremost a feeling I have inside myself. Love is something that happens between human beings. It lives in the relationship. It opens a space in which the other is allowed to be more than my idea of him or her. To love is not to possess. To love is to stand in a relation where the other may appear as a Thou.

The Dalai Lama approaches this from another direction. In Buddhism, one of the fundamental insights is that human beings suffer because they cling to a fixed self. We want to protect this self, defend it, expand it, and confirm it. We are wounded when it is not seen. We become angry when it is threatened. We become afraid when it loses control. Much human suffering springs from this clinging to a self that understands itself as separate from everything else.

But the Dalai Lama does not say that the human being does not exist, or that personal responsibility is an illusion. That would be a serious misunderstanding. There is a practical self. I act. I suffer. I can harm others. I can help others. I can take responsibility. But this self is not an isolated substance. It is woven into relations, language, body, history, nature, society, and other living beings.

When I see this, the hardness of the ego can soften. I no longer need to defend myself as if the whole of existence were a struggle over my own significance. I can see that my happiness and the happiness of others are not completely separate. I can see that my vulnerability is not unique, but part of being alive. I can see that others, like myself, wish to avoid suffering and seek security, joy, and meaning.

This insight is not only metaphysics. It becomes ethics.

It becomes compassion.

For the Dalai Lama, love and compassion are closely connected. Love may be understood as the wish that others should be happy. Compassion is the wish that others should be free from suffering. Both presuppose that I do not close myself within myself. Both presuppose that I see the other as real. Not as an obstacle. Not as a competitor. Not as a foreign entity without significance. But as a living being with an inner life.

Here the Dalai Lama and Buber meet in a remarkable way. Buber says that I come into being in the encounter with Thou. The Dalai Lama says that I am liberated when I see through the illusion of the ego and open myself to compassion. Both break with the idea of the isolated human being. Both claim, each in their own way, that the self does not find its truth in self-absorption.

Still, the difference is important. Buber does not want to dissolve the self. He wants to save it from being locked inside I–It. The self becomes real when it stands in a living relation. For Buber, it is not enough to say that everything is connected. What matters is address, encounter, responsibility. The other comes toward me as a Thou.

The Dalai Lama goes deeper into the emptiness of the self. He examines the very idea of an independent self. What we call “I” does not exist as a separate, unchanging core. It is composite, dependent, and changing. But precisely for this reason, it can also be transformed. Hatred can be weakened. Fear can be softened. Compassion can be cultivated. Love is not only a gift. It is also a practice.

This is a strong point in the Dalai Lama. Love is not merely something we wait for. It can be cultivated. We can train the mind to see others with greater kindness. We can practice patience. We can notice how anger arises. We can ask how much of our suffering is caused by the actual situation, and how much is caused by our own clinging, pride, or fear.

In Buber, love is more event than practice. It happens in the encounter. I cannot produce an I–Thou relation by will alone. I can make myself available to it. I can be open. I can refrain from reducing the other to an It. But the living encounter always has something gracious about it. It cannot be owned.

One might say that the Dalai Lama gives us a way, while Buber gives us a space. The Dalai Lama shows how the human being can practice softening the ego and developing compassion. Buber shows how love appears in the living space between I and Thou. One speaks more of inner transformation. The other speaks more of the miracle of relation.

But the two perspectives can complement each other. Without the Dalai Lama’s insight, Buber’s I–Thou can become difficult to live in practice. The ego quickly returns. I want to be seen. I want to be understood. I want to be right. I want the other to be what I need the other to be. Then Thou easily slides back into It. The other once again becomes an object for my needs.

And without Buber, the Dalai Lama’s compassion can become too general, almost too vast. I can love all sentient beings in thought, and still overlook the concrete person before me. Buber reminds us that love is not only directed toward humanity, but toward this human being. Not only toward all suffering beings, but toward this Thou who meets me now.

In this way, they can correct each other. The Dalai Lama helps Buber show how the grip of the ego can be loosened. Buber helps the Dalai Lama hold on to the significance of the concrete encounter. Love is both compassion for all living beings and responsibility toward the concrete other.

This also has political and cultural significance. We live in a time when human beings are often reduced to groups, identities, diagnoses, opinions, nations, religions, or positions. The other easily becomes an It. A problem. A threat. A representative of something we like or dislike. Buber reminds us that every human being is more than the category. The Dalai Lama reminds us that even the enemy seeks happiness and fears suffering.

This does not mean that love makes judgment unnecessary. Neither Buber nor the Dalai Lama asks us to become naive. Evil, violence, and injustice must be confronted. But the question is what kind of human being I myself become in the face of injustice. Do I become hard, closed, and hateful? Or can I act firmly without losing compassion?

Love is therefore not weakness. It is a demanding form of clarity. It sees the other without reducing the other. It sees suffering without becoming cynical. It sees difference without turning difference into hostility. It sees the self without making the self the center of the world.

For readers in both the West and the East, this may be an important point. Buber and the Dalai Lama show that love does not belong to one tradition alone. It can be expressed differently, justified differently, and practiced differently. But it points toward something universally human. The human being does not become fully itself in isolation. Nor does the human being become free through the victory of the ego. We become human when the self opens.

In Buber, the self opens toward Thou.

In the Dalai Lama, the self opens toward the suffering and hope of all living beings.

In both places, the loneliness of the ego is broken. In both places, love becomes a way out of the captivity of the self. Not by making the human being disappear, but by making the human being more transparent to the other. Less concerned with self-protection. More able to see, listen, and respond.

Perhaps this is the deepest connection between them: love begins where the self is no longer alone with itself.

Buber might say that this happens when I meet Thou.

The Dalai Lama might say that it happens when I see that my own wish for happiness cannot be completely separated from the wish for happiness in others.

Both point toward a humbler form of humanity. A humanity in which insight and love belong together. For without insight, love can become blind. And without love, insight can become cold.

The mature human being needs both: clarity and warmth. It needs Buber’s living encounter and the Dalai Lama’s compassionate mind. It needs an I that dares to say Thou, and an I that dares to let go of itself.

Then love becomes not only a theme in religion and philosophy.

It becomes a form of life.