If You Meet the Thou on the Road, Bow Twice and Keep Walking
By Beezone
Martin Buber’s I and Thou (1923) has long held sway as a seminal text in modern Western religious thought. It offers a luminous alternative to the objectifying gaze of modern life, reminding the reader that relation, not isolation, is the ground of being. Buber tells us there are two fundamental word-pairs in our experience: I-It and I-Thou. The former reduces the world to objects, the latter opens it as presence. In the I-Thou moment, there is a living mutuality, a sacred immediacy between beings. The “Thou” can be a person, a tree, or God—but in all cases, what matters is the relational presence, the sacred between.
Buber’s theological insights are also deeply shaped by his engagement with Hebrew scripture and Hasidic spirituality. He draws from the Biblical Hebrew notion of the name of God, “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” (Exodus 3:14)—“I Am That I Am,” or more precisely, “I Will Be That I Will Be.” This reveals a God not of fixed identity, but of relational presence and becoming. God is not a distant metaphysical entity but the Eternal Thou—the one who meets us in the immediacy of dialogue. Similarly, Buber found resonance in the Hebrew word panim, meaning both “face” and “presence,” which occurs frequently in reference to God. One does not see God as an object, but meets God face to face, in encounter.
He also drew heavily on Hasidic tales, where divine presence is not reserved for temples or saints but emerges in everyday encounters—between teacher and student, stranger and friend. For Buber, such stories were living commentaries on the possibility of I–Thou relation in the midst of ordinary life.
One such story, found in his collection Tales of the Hasidim, recounts a young man who seeks out a revered rebbe, asking how to properly serve God. The rebbe replies not with a law or theological formula, but with an act: he embraces the seeker and remains silent. In this moment, the young man feels transformed—not instructed, but met. There is no teaching, only presence. The story, like the Buddhist parable of the chariot or the ten blind men and the elephant, refuses conceptual answers. Instead, it directs the listener toward a truth that lives only in relation. Like the Buddha refusing to answer speculative metaphysical questions, the Hasidic master knows that revelation occurs not in discourse, but in encounter.
At first glance, the idea seems accessible. We understand the difference between using a person and truly being with them. But dig deeper, and the logic gets slippery. When Buber says the “I” of the I-It is not the same as the “I” of the I-Thou, he’s not just making a moral point—he’s making an ontological one. He’s saying the very structure of selfhood changes depending on the kind of relation you enter. And that’s when things begin to resemble a carefully woven lattice of concepts: I, Thou, relation, presence, world of It, world of Thou.
As one tries to follow Buber’s reasoning, the experience can feel familiar to anyone who’s read Alfred North Whitehead, or even Nāgārjuna—the Indian Buddhist master of deconstruction. The difference is that Buber builds an architecture; Nāgārjuna takes it apart. In Mādhyamika, there’s no “I,” no “Thou,” no “relation” to speak of. Everything arises co-dependently and thus lacks inherent nature. You can’t think your way to the Real—you must see that there’s no ground to stand on in the first place.
From a Buddhist perspective, Buber’s project is too dependent on the persistence of the subject. Ultimately, the “I” and the “Thou” unify only in the dissolution of both. What Buber calls a sacred mutuality, the Buddhist might see as a temporary co-arising, empty of self-nature. In Buddhism, the I never truly exists—it’s a provisional designation. In Zen, even the designation is too much.
Zen, in fact, would likely show little patience for Buber. While Buber walks toward the sacred with a language of reverence and structure, Zen slaps the mind to awaken it. When Buber writes of the tree that one can “say Thou to,” the Zen master replies: “Show me the tree before you name it.” There’s no time in Zen for the sacred theater of relation. No “I,” no “Thou,” just breath, sound, movement—just this. No poetic dialogues—only direct transmission, often wordless and immediate.
And yet Buber resonates deeply with Western religious seekers. Why? Because he lets them keep something Nāgārjuna and Zen do not: the person. The dialogical self. A self in relation, not destroyed. Buber’s mysticism comforts the Western mind: it doesn’t annihilate the ego—it sanctifies it. It doesn’t strip the self of substance—it refines its ethical orientation.
This is both Buber’s gift and his limit. He doesn’t demand the terrifying surrender that Nāgārjuna requires, nor does he throw the mind into the absurd immediacy of Zen. Instead, he asks the self to turn, to face, to relate—to stay intact while reaching beyond itself. And perhaps, for the Western spiritual imagination, this is a necessary halfway house: a place where the self learns to soften, open, and prepare to disappear.
If we look at Buber alongside other traditions—Whitehead’s process metaphysics, D.T. Suzuki’s blend of Zen and Western psychology, or even Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of the face—we begin to see a spectrum emerge. Some thinkers want to refine the person, others to dissolve it. Buber stands somewhere in the middle, trying to preserve the personal while still gesturing toward the infinite.
So yes, if you meet the Thou on the road, bow twice. Honor the encounter. Let it open your heart. But don’t mistake it for the end. Buber’s “Thou” is a gateway—not the Absolute itself.
Keep walking.
Postscript: The Public Buber
It’s worth noting that in contemporary culture, Buber is often invoked not for his mystical depth but for his relevance to civic life. As one biographer put it, “Buber is immensely relevant to our life today… when so many of us have seemingly intractable problems with our neighbors. Dialogue with our neighbors is urgent and necessary.”
This is Buber as balm for broken democracies, as inspiration for interfaith panels and ethical conversations at the edge of political conflict. And to be fair, there’s value here. His insistence on the sacredness of relation can help soften polarization and remind people of their shared humanity.
But if we reduce Buber to moral utility, we risk stripping him of his deeper challenge. The I-Thou relation is not simply good manners in a multicultural age. It is a trembling moment of encounter with the mystery of being itself. It asks not just for dialogue, but for presence, even sacrifice. If we turn Buber into a technique for empathy, we may miss his deeper call: not just to meet the Other, but to be undone by them.
So yes—let him bring people together. Let him speak to neighbors. But let us not forget: the Thou is not just your neighbor. It is the Infinite disguised in proximity.
Appendix: A Contemporary Interpretation of Buber
In a recent blog post on Buber’s I and Thou, the author writes:
“In the I-It mode, we relate to others and the world as objects to be used, manipulated, or experienced. This mode is characterized by objectification, categorization, and instrumental reasoning. While necessary for practical purposes, Buber believed that an overemphasis on the I-It mode could lead to alienation, dehumanization, and spiritual emptiness.
In contrast, the I-Thou mode involves a direct, mutual, and present encounter between two beings. In this mode, we relate to others as unique, whole persons, rather than as objects or categories. The I-Thou relationship is characterized by openness, reciprocity, and a deep sense of connection. Buber believed that it is through such genuine encounters that we can experience the fullness of our humanity and the presence of the divine.”
A Response
This interpretation is a thoughtful and accurate distillation of Buber’s basic framework. It highlights the distinction between objectification and presence, between managing the world and entering into relation with it. It rightly notes the spiritual risk of over-identifying with the I-It world and celebrates the profound healing potential of I-Thou encounters.
But for those who dig deeper into Buber’s text—and hold it against other philosophical and religious traditions—the terrain becomes less straightforward.
First, Buber does not merely describe different modes of relating. He is not saying, “Sometimes you treat things as objects, sometimes you treat people as subjects.” He goes further, suggesting that the “I” who says It and the “I” who says Thou are not the same self. This means that relation itself constitutes being. The self is not a fixed entity choosing between modes; it is a fluid phenomenon shaped by the quality of encounter.
Second, Buber’s Thou is not another person in the ordinary sense. One cannot maintain the I-Thou stance; it comes and goes like a wind. The moment it is grasped or reflected upon, it becomes an It. The blog summary, while accurate, can give the impression that we can “choose” to be in I-Thou relationships as an ethical decision. But Buber is describing something more radical: a moment of presence that transcends our choosing.
Third, when compared to traditions like Buddhism—particularly Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamika school—or Zen, Buber’s philosophy may appear to stop short of full ontological surrender. In those traditions, there is no enduring “I” to speak of, no self to relate, and no Thou to meet. Relation itself is ultimately empty. From that standpoint, Buber’s model might seem like a sacred holding pattern for a self that Eastern traditions are more eager to dissolve.
And yet, Buber’s approach may be precisely what makes his work so meaningful to the Western spiritual imagination. In a world suspicious of abstraction but hungry for connection, he offers a language of presence that speaks to the personal without sacrificing the spiritual. The I-Thou relation does not aim to annihilate the self, but to refine it through encounter.
In that sense, the blog interpretation is a helpful beginning—but not an ending. For those willing to keep walking, Buber’s road leads not just to better relationships, but toward an unnamable presence that both requires the “I” and undoes it in love.