Preface: The correspondences between Evangelion and Buddhist thought may be intentional, or they may simply arise from what might be called the cultural unconscious—the deep sediment of East Asian religious imagination that persists even when unacknowledged. Whether deliberate or accidental, these resonances reveal a meeting point between psychology, myth, and metaphysics that rewards quiet examination.

1. The Walls Between Beings

The “A.T. Field,” or Absolute Terror Field, is described as the invisible wall that separates one living being from another. Within the story it is both physical and psychological—a defense mechanism that keeps the self intact. This mirrors the Buddhist analysis of the ātman-illusion: the belief in an independent self that protects itself from the flow of impermanence. The terror that sustains the field is precisely the fear of non-self.

When the A.T. Fields collapse during Instrumentality, individuality dissolves into undifferentiated consciousness. The result is both ecstatic and horrific—an image of śūnyatā misunderstood. True emptiness in Buddhist experience is luminous and liberating, but when grasped as a thing to attain, it becomes the void of annihilation.

1. The Fluid of Non-Duality

The orange fluid called LCL functions at several levels. It sustains life, allows mind to merge with machine, and finally becomes the universal medium of Instrumentality. Its origin from Lilith—the primordial source of human life—gives it a mythic weight.

Viewed through a dharmic lens, LCL is the tathāgatagarbha, the womb of suchness: the formless matrix from which phenomena arise and into which they dissolve. Pilots immersed in it regress to a pre-egoic state, not unlike meditation where distinctions of body and environment fade. In the final cataclysm, all beings return to this fluid—an involuntary realization of non-duality.

1. Angels as Impermanence

Each Angel appears briefly, defies comprehension, and perishes. They do not linger to explain themselves. They are manifestations of anicca, the relentless impermanence of conditions. Humanity’s war against them is the futile struggle to preserve continuity in a world that will not stay still.

Shinji’s repeated encounters with the Angels enact the existential meditation on change. Every victory leaves him emptier, less certain of what “self” remains. The Angels are not enemies so much as visiting koans—each one a question about the nature of existence.

1. The Bodhisattva of the Threshold

Rei Ayanami’s calm detachment and self-sacrifice place her in the position of a bodhisattva figure. She has no fixed identity, existing as a series of bodies animated by the same soul, and her final act—refusing to serve her creator’s selfish desire and instead offering choice to another—is a gesture of pure upekkhā and karuṇā.

Her equanimity is not numbness but insight: seeing the interchangeability of forms, she recognizes connection with all beings. In her silence there is the stillness of Avalokiteśvara gazing upon the world’s cries.

1. The Misguided Monk

Gendō Ikari represents the distortion of wisdom severed from compassion. Like a monk who has mastered doctrine but not heart, he seeks liberation through control. His plan for Instrumentality is a parody of enlightenment—dissolving the self not through understanding but through force. In Buddhist literature this is the error of clinging to emptiness, the cold liberation of the śrāvaka without the warmth of the bodhisattva.

1. The Earthly Mother

Misato Katsuragi stands as counterpoint—embodiment rather than transcendence. Her compassion is messy, sensual, fallible. She reminds the viewer that awakening is not flight from the world but intimate participation in it. She is the Kannon of ordinary life, appearing amid beer cans and regret.

1. The Middle Way of the Protagonist

At the end of End of Evangelion, Shinji rejects both isolation and dissolution. He chooses the painful middle: to exist again as a separate being, capable of relationship and suffering alike. This is the Middle Way between the extremes of eternalism (clinging to self) and nihilism (erasing it). The final, ambiguous rebirth on the shore is less apocalypse than a moment of awakening—the recognition that life, with all its wounds, is still worth returning to.

Closing Reflection

Evangelion is not a Buddhist text, yet it dreams in Buddhist symbols: walls that are selves, fluids that are emptiness, battles that are meditations. Whether these images were planted or merely grew from the soil of a culture long steeped in dharma, they speak of the same inquiry the Buddha called the “one taste” of liberation—the understanding that form and emptiness are not two.

In the ruins of Tokyo-3, amid the wreckage of gods and machines, the Dharma glimmers like water on broken glass: fleeting, fractured, and utterly sufficient.

Preface: The correspondences between Evangelion and Buddhist thought may be intentional, or they may simply arise from what might be called the cultural unconscious—the deep sediment of East Asian religious imagination that persists even when unacknowledged. Whether deliberate or accidental, these resonances reveal a meeting point between psychology, myth, and metaphysics that rewards quiet examination.

1. The Walls Between Beings

The “A.T. Field,” or Absolute Terror Field, is described as the invisible wall that separates one living being from another. Within the story it is both physical and psychological—a defense mechanism that keeps the self intact. This mirrors the Buddhist analysis of the ātman-illusion: the belief in an independent self that protects itself from the flow of impermanence. The terror that sustains the field is precisely the fear of non-self.

When the A.T. Fields collapse during Instrumentality, individuality dissolves into undifferentiated consciousness. The result is both ecstatic and horrific—an image of śūnyatā misunderstood. True emptiness in Buddhist experience is luminous and liberating, but when grasped as a thing to attain, it becomes the void of annihilation.

1. The Fluid of Non-Duality

The orange fluid called LCL functions at several levels. It sustains life, allows mind to merge with machine, and finally becomes the universal medium of Instrumentality. Its origin from Lilith—the primordial source of human life—gives it a mythic weight.

Viewed through a dharmic lens, LCL is the tathāgatagarbha, the womb of suchness: the formless matrix from which phenomena arise and into which they dissolve. Pilots immersed in it regress to a pre-egoic state, not unlike meditation where distinctions of body and environment fade. In the final cataclysm, all beings return to this fluid—an involuntary realization of non-duality.

1. Angels as Impermanence

Each Angel appears briefly, defies comprehension, and perishes. They do not linger to explain themselves. They are manifestations of anicca, the relentless impermanence of conditions. Humanity’s war against them is the futile struggle to preserve continuity in a world that will not stay still.

Shinji’s repeated encounters with the Angels enact the existential meditation on change. Every victory leaves him emptier, less certain of what “self” remains. The Angels are not enemies so much as visiting koans—each one a question about the nature of existence.

1. The Bodhisattva of the Threshold

Rei Ayanami’s calm detachment and self-sacrifice place her in the position of a bodhisattva figure. She has no fixed identity, existing as a series of bodies animated by the same soul, and her final act—refusing to serve her creator’s selfish desire and instead offering choice to another—is a gesture of pure upekkhā and karuṇā.

Her equanimity is not numbness but insight: seeing the interchangeability of forms, she recognizes connection with all beings. In her silence there is the stillness of Avalokiteśvara gazing upon the world’s cries.

1. The Misguided Monk

Gendō Ikari represents the distortion of wisdom severed from compassion. Like a monk who has mastered doctrine but not heart, he seeks liberation through control. His plan for Instrumentality is a parody of enlightenment—dissolving the self not through understanding but through force. In Buddhist literature this is the error of clinging to emptiness, the cold liberation of the śrāvaka without the warmth of the bodhisattva.

1. The Earthly Mother

Misato Katsuragi stands as counterpoint—embodiment rather than transcendence. Her compassion is messy, sensual, fallible. She reminds the viewer that awakening is not flight from the world but intimate participation in it. She is the Kannon of ordinary life, appearing amid beer cans and regret.

1. The Middle Way of the Protagonist

At the end of End of Evangelion, Shinji rejects both isolation and dissolution. He chooses the painful middle: to exist again as a separate being, capable of relationship and suffering alike. This is the Middle Way between the extremes of eternalism (clinging to self) and nihilism (erasing it). The final, ambiguous rebirth on the shore is less apocalypse than a moment of awakening—the recognition that life, with all its wounds, is still worth returning to.

Closing Reflection

Evangelion is not a Buddhist text, yet it dreams in Buddhist symbols: walls that are selves, fluids that are emptiness, battles that are meditations. Whether these images were planted or merely grew from the soil of a culture long steeped in dharma, they speak of the same inquiry the Buddha called the “one taste” of liberation—the understanding that form and emptiness are not two.

In the ruins of Tokyo-3, amid the wreckage of gods and machines, the Dharma glimmers like water on broken glass: fleeting, fractured, and utterly sufficient.