Eckhart Tolle says this, in The Power of Now, about salvation: “True salvation is a state of freedom—from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging. It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.”  

While God offers salvation, it’s up to the individual to take it. You might argue this is even true in Christian thought—God makes salvation available to everyone, but only by accepting it—only by our own action—do we attain it. Regardless of whether that means accepting Jesus in your heart or asking forgiveness of one’s sins and receiving absolution, or however each church in Christianity might define it, the point is that the individual has to want to be saved. (Well, except for the whole “elect” thing, but that never made sense to me.) The dynamic is: salvation is out there, and you, exercising free will, choose whether to accept it.  

Free will. Self-determination. God would want a creation that had the power to exercise those abilities, no? He/she’s not a puppet master. It’s no fun to win the championship if the game is rigged. 

This meshes also with the teaching of Buddha: the path to salvation is up to the individual. It is how you decide to view the world that determines whether you are saved. In other words, it’s all in your head. It’s all about how we perceive ourselves and the world and ourselves in relation to that world. If you are burdened by the perception that you are caught up in an evil, nasty, world full of suffering, you ain’t saved. (Yes, the world has evil, and nastiness, and suffering. But those things don’t define the totality of the world.) If you can appreciate the beauty of a world full of wonders and if you see yourself connected to all the world, you might be. 

But not necessarily. Salvation lies in getting past suffering, in dropping need and hunger and guilt and regret. Salvation lies in embracing the vibrancy of grandeur of life. (I suppose you also have to embrace its ugliness, too. I do have a problem with that. I can ignore ugly, but I can’t embrace it.) You can’t undo the past, and you can’t count on happiness in the future. You can’t be sure you’ll make it up to someone else later. Better not to hurt him or her in the first place. 

Dwelling only in the past or future empowers the tyranny of suffering. You can only be happy now. You can only find salvation now. You can only love others, and life, now. 

Maybe salvation is simply the decision not to dwell in the past, not to long for the future. Maybe salvation is simply the decision to accept where we are, because in doing so we shed the baggage that we carried with us and we lose anxieties about what is to come. We have the chance to love others, and ourselves.

Beats me.