In Memory of Professor John B. Cobb Jr.
On the afternoon of Friday, December 27, just after Christmas, I practiced meditation in my living room for two hours. When I finished and had a look at my WeChat, I saw in the “Blue Planet” chat group news that Professor John B. Cobb Jr. had passed away.
That same day, I also received an email announcement from the Center for Process Studies in the United States. It said that Professor Cobb had remained active until the very last days of his life, continuing to care deeply about the things that mattered most to him. A few days earlier, he had suffered a fall, after which his health declined rapidly. On the evening of December 26, he passed away peacefully at home, accompanied by his family. At that moment, there were only six weeks left until his one-hundredth birthday, on February 9, 2025.
To be able to live a life such as Professor Cobb’s is a profound blessing. Part of that blessing may be attributed to fortunate circumstances, but more importantly, I believe, it came from his lifelong, unrelenting search for truth and for the true reality of life itself.
He was a theologian, a devout Christian, and at the same time an outstanding philosopher who bridged past and future in the history of philosophy. His faith did not remain confined to the church; it permeated every aspect of his life. His philosophy did not remain in the realm of the intellect; it penetrated his entire being—body and soul alike. Precisely because of this, he was able to maintain physical health, mental clarity, and inner vitality throughout what can only be described as a long life, right up to its final stage.
On Christmas Eve last year, I received a holiday greeting email he had sent out through the Center for Process Studies. In the message, he mentioned that he was ninety-eight years old. At that age, his eyesight, hearing, and even his cognitive abilities were still fairly good. The only thing he complained about was his memory. While he still could, he said, he wanted to look back on his “legacy.”
He wrote that his most important legacy consisted of the institutions he had helped to found. These institutions were all doing their work responsibly, responding to what was happening in the world. He hoped that they would not prioritize his own opinions, which he considered outdated.
Among these institutions, the first was the Center for Process Studies. Through its work, process philosophy moved from the margins of American academia into the mainstream. The second was the Process and Faith network. This project emerged because, from the very beginning, a significant portion of those most interested in process thought came from church communities. These people could not fully accept traditional Christian dogma, yet they believed that Christianity contained elements that were profoundly important both for themselves and for the world as a whole.
Professor Cobb explained that the process theology that emerged from this context belongs to Christian theology, yet it is a form of Christian theology that appreciates and learns from other spiritual traditions. The Process and Faith network serves Christian faith, but it also serves other spiritual traditions. One of the most important contributions of process philosophy, he emphasized, is that it provides an inclusive perspective through which diverse spiritual traditions can be understood in a positive way.
He also mentioned the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, founded by Dr. Wang Zhihe—one of the pioneers of contemporary process philosophy in China—and his wife, Dr. Fan Meijun. Thanks to the efforts of this institute, process thought has gained growing influence in China.
Beyond the development of process thought itself, the pressing issues that concerned Professor Cobb most deeply were ecological civilization and Sino–American relations. Together with some of his colleagues, he felt profound anxiety about the fact that the United States, in its attempt to control the world, had come to see China as its greatest obstacle. He noted that some prominent Americans had even stated that nuclear war might be acceptable. The space for dialogue was shrinking, replaced by mutual demonization.
In response, they launched the Living Earth Movement, with the aim of promoting open discussion among nations, especially between China and the United States.
He believed that unless China and the United States—the world’s two largest economies and most powerful nations—could cooperate and exercise leadership together, there would be no hope for the planet. Among all American nongovernmental organizations and initiatives, he believed that none were better positioned to cooperate with China than those guided by process philosophy.
The institutional “legacies” he mentioned in this letter also included the Cobb Institute and the Institute for Ecological Civilization.
He concluded by saying that he was deeply pleased that all these institutions were engaged in important work, led by excellent leaders, and keenly attuned to their environments. Moreover, when necessary, they were able to support one another. Together, they had formed a process community. He himself, he said, was only one among many who had participated in creating this community. Even so, he regarded it as his legacy and was glad to see that his departure would not disrupt its functioning.
As a theologian and philosopher who reportedly published more than fifty books, when Professor Cobb reflected on the legacy he would leave behind at the end of his life, he did not emphasize the unique ideas he had contributed in comparison with his predecessors, nor did he single out his innovations within process philosophy. Instead, he listed the institutions he had helped to establish. To me, this reflects the fact that he saw himself first and foremost as a Christian whose entire life should be an effort to live his faith.
Like philosophy, faith concerns our understanding of the nature of life and the universe. Unlike philosophy, however, faith requires more than forming concepts and theories in the mind; it demands that these ideas be embraced as convictions and lived out in every aspect of one’s life.
For a genuine believer, it is not enough merely to claim what is the true nature of life and the universe, or to publish one’s reflections in articles and books. What truly matters in life is not knowledge in itself, but whether we experience our existence as meaningful, valuable, and hopeful. Knowledge about life and the universe deserves to be called knowledge only when it enables us to genuinely feel the meaning, value, and hope of being alive.
In this light, I believe I can understand why Professor Cobb regarded the institutions he helped to found as his primary legacy. As a Christian, a process philosopher, and a theologian, he had internalized the core ideas of process philosophy and process theology to the very marrow of his being.
The core perspective of process thought can be said to overturn prevailing mainstream assumptions. It denies that the essence of the universe is static, material substance; instead, it understands reality as pure experience, relationship, process, and event. Everything exists in perpetual change, and within this eternal flux there is no material substance that can be firmly grasped as fixed reality.
Eternal change does not, however, reduce the world to meaningless chaos, because the fundamental principle of a universe in flux is creativity—or innovation. It continuously brings forth the new, generating order and structure, and on that basis developing further novelty in an unending, self-renewing process.
For this reason, process philosophy also includes a concept of God. This concept does not arise from arbitrary belief, but from the necessity of forming a coherent framework capable of explaining the world. On the one hand, God is manifest as the phenomenal world; on the other, God is the fundamental cause that propels the development and transformation of that world. These constitute God’s two basic natures.
It is clear that even if one were to arrive at these insights purely through rational inquiry, one would recognize that writing them down and publishing them is only part of the task. A universe that is essentially dynamic and continuously self-renewing demands that we live out this life-generating principle within our own lives.
Likewise, given the finitude of our individual lives, it is entirely reasonable to ensure that the principles we have recognized and lived by can continue to be disseminated and developed through others, in an organized way, so that humanity may have hope of sustaining peace and flourishing over the long term.
In both respects, Professor Cobb’s diligence, focus, consistency, and extraordinary achievements reached nearly the limits of what a human being can accomplish in a single lifetime. Through more than fifty books—both single-authored and co-authored—he recorded his lifelong research and reflections on theology, philosophy, and related fields such as ecology and economics. At the same time, through concrete, sustained practical efforts, he influenced countless outstanding individuals and established the institutions that would carry his work forward.
For many of us, abandoning a mechanistic materialist worldview during our lifetime would be an immense challenge. For Professor Cobb, however, this was never an issue. He was born into a family in which both parents were Christian missionaries.
While many children raised in Christian families suffer psychological harm due to overly conservative beliefs, Christianity’s influence on Professor Cobb was consistently positive. In his autobiography, he states at the outset that his basic faith and sense of mission were rooted in his childhood, and he always expressed deep gratitude toward his parents.
For those who have not experienced such a family and cultural environment—especially those raised in more materialist households—understanding this sentiment can be difficult. At its core, faith is not merely an intellectual matter; it is a deeply embodied experience of mind and body, sometimes even carrying a mystical dimension.
In his autobiography, Professor Cobb recounts an experience from around the age of twenty-one. One evening, as he knelt by his bed to pray before sleep, he suddenly felt as though the room was filled with the presence of the divine. He experienced an unprecedented warmth—and unmatched ever since—along with a sense of love and complete acceptance. The feeling may have lasted about a minute before gradually fading. Yet the pure joy of that moment remains precious to him even in retrospect.
Nevertheless, when he entered the humanities program at the University of Chicago at age twenty-two, he underwent a crisis of faith. Influenced by his prior experience in the military, he did not want to base his life on beliefs that could not withstand scrutiny. He sought to immerse himself in the rational world, subjecting his faith to thorough examination.
He pursued this effort rigorously. When studying the works of any thinker, he said, he always tried to place himself within that person’s perspective, temporarily viewing the world as they did. He studied one thinker after another, most of whom lived in intellectual worlds in which God played no role. As a result, he found that he could no longer return to the earlier world in which God had been omnipresent. For him, this constituted a genuine crisis of faith.
In order to resolve this crisis—and to affirm God within a modern framework of thought—he encountered process philosophy and the founder of process theology, Professor Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) of the University of Chicago Divinity School.
He completed his master’s program in the humanities ahead of schedule and transferred to the Divinity School to pursue his doctorate. The atmosphere there provided him with strong support, enabling him to conduct an open-ended inquiry into whether belief in God was still possible in that historical context.
While it may be natural for a child or adolescent to feel and believe in God’s presence, affirming such belief through speculative reasoning in an era dominated by mechanistic materialism and scientism is a formidable challenge.
From Hartshorne, however, Professor Cobb realized that another coherent mode of thought was possible: one need not explain the world in terms of matter in motion, but could instead understand it as a field composed of interrelated events. Moreover, each event is itself a self-sustaining existence. “In this sense,” he explained, “each event is first a subject that cares about other events, and only then an object cared about by others.”
Gradually, through this process of intellectual exploration and reconstruction, Professor Cobb felt that he “slowly recovered a rational faith in God and the ability to speak about God.”, although this did not restore the intimacy he had felt with God in his youth. Even as his conviction in God’s reality deepened, that earlier intimacy did not return.
The core ideas that enabled him to rebuild his faith came from process philosophy, which had been greatly developed by the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). Hartshorne, notably, had been Whitehead’s teaching assistant during Whitehead’s years at Harvard.
Professor Cobb commented on Whitehead’s thought in these words: “Whitehead awakened in me such a confidence that the deeper I probed, the more I would like to know. I discovered a unique, comprehensive perspective. It offered extraordinary originality and insight into physics, personal faith, education, and many other issues. I encountered a combination of professional rigor and personal wisdom that I had found nowhere else.”
He even characterized his own role in this way: “If my personal career proves to have genuine historical significance, it will be because, in a time highly unsympathetic to Whitehead’s thought, I managed to keep interest in it alive.”
Professor Cobb did not see himself as an original philosopher. He said that his role was “simply to clarify and recommend Whitehead’s thought as I understand it, to support people in relating it to other philosophies, and especially to encourage its application to new fields.” He added, “I am not especially concerned with revising the details of the system. What matters more to me is using its fundamental insights to reshape the way modern Western thought guides our view of the world.”
My own study of Whitehead and Professor Cobb is not deep enough for me to judge whether these are over modest remarks. What is beyond doubt is their sincerity, which enhances my respect for Professor Cobb. For a scholar to so genuinely devote himself to another thinker’s insights, and to commit his entire life to bringing those insights into every dimension of the society—rather than striving for academic novelty—can only arise from deep fidelity to truth and to life itself.
Unlike Professor Cobb, I did not come to process philosophy through a crisis of faith, but through a health crisis. Faith does not appear to be a pressing issue for most Chinese people. This may not be a good thing, but neither is it necessarily bad. Most Chinese do not habitually reflect on the ultimate nature of life and the universe; living each day steadily and pragmatically constitutes a mainstream life philosophy.
Yet just as Professor Cobb inevitably faced a crisis of faith in his twenties, crises that shake the foundations of life will eventually confront us as well—if not spiritually, then physically.
What helped prepare me, to some extent, for my diagnosis of lymphoma at the age of thirty-eight was my doctoral research in philosophy of law. This research made me aware that humanity has never reached a final answer to the question of what it means to be human. It remains an open question. Scientific inquiry represents another path—outside of religious belief—through which humanity attempts to respond to this question. Contrary to common assumptions, however, the essence of science is not the discovery of definitive answers, but the ongoing pursuit of dialogue and the cultivation of shared understanding.
Growing up in a cultural context more deeply influenced by Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions made it easier for me to respond to my health crisis in a different way than a purely Western framework might allow. Especially after my studies in legal philosophy had already revealed how deeply my understanding of health and illness had been shaped by Western assumptions, I knew I had every reason—and indeed every necessity—to explore life’s reality and potential from another perspective.
For most people, a cancer diagnosis is terrifying, and they cannot imagine the possibility of discovering an inner capacity for self-healing. For me, however, this was a natural inference and choice. This, I believe, is precisely the significance of consciously engaging in rigorous reflection on questions of truth. Without such training, people are often governed by instinctive reactions, impulses, and emotions, and are unable to make rational judgments.
As I began to experience, through the practice of qigong and meditation, the innate energy and power of the body itself—and to witness the resulting effects of healing and improved health—I knew this was neither accidental nor trivial.
I began to understand why, as Chinese, we do not share the Christian tradition’s belief in a supernatural personal God. From their inception, Daoist and Confucian thought had already articulated a cosmology and a corresponding view of life that closely parallel Whitehead’s process philosophy.
The essence of the universe is not immutable material substance, but a process endowed with intrinsic creativity and developmental momentum. Our lives, accordingly, are the same. We do not need to place our hope for salvation in an external God or savior. What we need to have faith in is ourselves—in the innate, natural life force within us.
Naturally, as I approached the age of forty, I found my own faith—not faith in an external supernatural power, but faith in a cosmology rooted in China’s ancient traditions, and faith in my own inner vitality.
It was a faith that arrived late, yet at exactly the right moment. It did not arise spontaneously when my cognitive capacities were still underdeveloped, but emerged when those capacities had matured, in the midst of confronting a major life crisis, through a mode of inquiry that was highly rational and reflective, yet also deeply empirical.
As my thinking, research, and empirical practice—mainly various forms of meditation including sitting and moving—progressively confirmed the robustness of my understanding of core Daoist and Confucian principles, I began to form an intuition: within Western intellectual traditions, there must exist forms of thought capable of resonating with Daoist and Confucian cosmology.
Guided by this intuition, my interest in process philosophy deepened. I first encountered process philosophy during discussions on ecovillages, where I met Dr. Wang Zhihe. Although I did not immediately immerse myself in its study, my repeated encounters with process thought soon convinced me that it was an area worthy of deeper exploration, particularly as I searched more consciously for Western counterparts to Daoist and Confucian cosmology.
Whitehead integrated physics, mathematics, and philosophy, and articulated a worldview that—while not entirely new—was radically subversive of the dominant consciousness of our time: namely, that the essence of the universe is life, not matter.
He argued that unless we unite matter and life, with life as the essential nature of the “true reality,” we can understand neither matter nor life.
This insight broke down the barriers between my Daoist- and Confucian-inspired cosmology and science—especially physics—bringing my understanding of the world to an unprecedented sense of harmony and wholeness. While the full implications of this insight still await further exploration and empirical validation, the confidence it inspired was already immensely strengthened.
My writings on these ideas, as well as my work in meditation-based healing, drew the attention of Dr. Wang Zhihe. In December 2022, at his introduction, I was invited by the Cobb Institute to deliver an online English-language lecture titled “Healing in a Chinese Process Way” to more than thirty Chinese and American scholars, including Professor Cobb himself.
Since Whitehead, process philosophy has exerted significant influence in theology, interreligious dialogue, ecology, education, psychology, and even physics and biology. Yet it has not produced any major impact in the field of medicine and healing. In my view, this may be precisely the domain in which process philosophy has the greatest potential to persuade the broader public, gradually replacing mechanistic materialism in mainstream consciousness.
Professor Cobb responded to my lecture with great enthusiasm. In his welcoming remarks, he said:
“You are a kind of marvelous ideal of what I think can be produced today best in China. I do think China has the potential, for example, to give spiritual leadership to the world, just because it has gone through a period in which the government had so minimized that dimension. You approached this simply open-mindedly, and looking for wisdom. So many of us are kind of stuck in one tradition or another and have difficulty in really being fully open to all the others.”
At the conclusion of the lecture, he commented:
“You open up a world of non-physicalistic ways of helping health. This is extremely important. But I’m so eager that the control over the university by scienticism can be broken. And I think the kind of evidence that you provide have a real chance of making breakthrough. … I so appreciate your openness to evidence. You encounter what you encounter. You evaluate. You don’t bring some advance notion of what is right or wrong, what is allowed and what is not allowed. Great achievement.”
For more than a decade, my research into meditation and Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions has been conducted independently, without affiliation to any academic institution or organization, guided solely by my own inquiry and empirical practice. To receive such high praise from a figure of Professor Cobb’s stature and influence moved and encouraged me deeply.
Moreover, I found myself entertaining a bold thought. In my view, meditation practices integrating Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions with process philosophy not only offer a thorough path to healing disease, but more importantly, reveal the principles of dynamic balance and development between body and mind—pointing toward a path of sustainable human flourishing.
For Professor Cobb, already ninety-eight at the time, if engaging in such practices could improve or even reverse aspects of his physical and mental condition—including strength and memory—it would powerfully demonstrate the relevance of the integrative approach of meditation for our age. It would also compellingly show that process philosophy is not merely abstract theorizing confined to academic ivory towers, but something directly connected to everyday life.
Process philosophy needs to be understood by ordinary people, and in combination with Eastern meditation traditions, to offer natural healing and cultivate confidence in the boundless potential of human life. Such a vision would represent an unprecedented liberation in human history.
I wrote Professor Cobb an email outlining these thoughts, offering to support him in this exploration and to serve as a dialogue partner. I was aware that this proposal might seem presumptuous or naïve. Yet he replied promptly.
He found my thinking inclusive and comprehensive. He foresaw a great impact on my part through bringing Chinese healing to the United States in a much stronger way. With healing we can teach a way of thinking. He said he did hope we could have hours of face-to-face conversation about this.
Regarding my suggestion that such practices might help him live longer, however, he confessed to having mixed feelings. He said he was ready to die. But if he could be useful, he wanted to do what he could before dying.
He said he had not had a strong sense of needing to meditate and had done very little. He was not looking for anything to add to his daily schedule. The Christian form of meditation, he explained, was to be open to God’s call. In Whiteheadian terms, this means trying to keep the subjective aim of each occasion close to the initial aim. But he would appreciate discussion.
I found Professor Cobb’s response entirely understandable, and it allowed me to glimpse his inner world more deeply. Even among the great figures who have offered humanity profound insight into itself—Buddha, Jesus, Laozi, Confucius—their fundamental dispositions and ways of experiencing the world were likely quite different.
Although I believe our era calls for deep integration of the wisdom of all great traditions, we cannot expect a sage like Professor Cobb—who spent his entire life immersed in Christian faith and Western intellectual traditions—to swiftly embrace and identify with another spiritual tradition, especially one as distant from Western modes of thought as Daoism.
Professor Cobb himself seemed aware of this. In his autobiography, he writes at the outset: “I have not subjected my childhood faith to sufficient criticism. I may still cling too strongly to aspects of that faith which I continue to value. That faith may still shape my perspectives and hopes more than it should.”
In April 2023, I planned a trip to the United States. In addition to visiting Zen master Reirin Gumbel of the Milwaukee Zen Center, retired NASA physicist and philosopher Timothy Eastman, and Dr. Matthew Segall of the California Institute of Integral Studies, I also intended to visit Dr. Wang Zhihe and Professor Cobb in Claremont. I hoped this would allow for deeper discussion of meditation, perhaps even inspiring Professor Cobb to practice more seriously.
Unfortunately, events did not unfold as hoped. I held a ten-year U.S. visa and needed only to complete an online registration. The simplicity of the process led me to neglect proper preparation, including failing to book a return ticket, since I was unsure how long I would remain in the United States.
Upon landing at San Francisco International Airport, I was stopped by customs officers. They found the online announcement concerning my workshop which said donations were welcome at the website of the Milwaukee Zen Center, and concluded that my travel purpose violated the terms of a tourist visa. I was deported, my ten-year visa was canceled, and I was barred from entering the United States for five years.
When I informed Professor Cobb of this, he was deeply regretful. He even speculated that my deportation might have been related to mentioning him in my travel plans, since he had never supported American imperialism. He worried that his recent book Confessions, which directly criticized U.S. imperialism, might have drawn the attention of the government, and that my visit was therefore perceived as politically sensitive.
In this way, I permanently lost the opportunity for in-person, in-depth dialogue with one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
Even so, the honest record of his deep reflection on the faith that he had followed since his childhood and the strengthening of that faith in this process in his autobiography, his thoughtful comments on my explorations, and his sincere responses to my proposals have made him, in my mind, more than anyone else, a luminous lighthouse. He showed me how one might live an entire life.
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