One of the “innovations” of Process Buddhism is a certain democratization and pluralization of the function of “God” in Whitehead’s original articulation of his process-relational metaphysics.
Rather than there being a single divine element offering the value hierarchies by which we can drive our own development, there is a continuum of divinities which can inform our being/becoming. This way Process Buddhism can accommodate both monotheism and polytheism, but ultimately Process Buddhism is a kind of “omni-theism” (everything is divine) in the sense that any given actual entity has the innate potential to function like a Process God/Deity, but some are more effective and influential than others (Jesus and Buddha being my favorite examples of “enduring societies” of occasions who take on a divine function).
“Omnitheism” could also accommodate pan-theistically inclined naturalists by dissolving the dualism between natural processes and divine processes. However in the last instance, divinity in Process Buddhism is pan-en-theistic in that divinities are not reducible to or wholly identifiable with natural processes (therefore they are “transcendent”) even though they cannot be found outside of natural processes (therefore they are “immanent”). For Process Buddhism, omnitheism describes the ontological nature of divinity as the totality of reality as a holonic unity-in-difference, panentheism describes the cosmological nature of divinity as the relational medium of exchange between the actual world of living beings and the virtual realm of creative possibilities.
Every being has the potential to function as a “Process God” or maximally realized ultimate for other beings, but usually it is only those who most consistently embody the indivisibility of the two ultimate principles of open/emptiness and inclusive-transcendence in their very mode of becoming who end up functioning as maximally realized ultimates. This maximal ultimates influence the being/becoming of others through the persuasive power of their unconditional love.
The ultimate function of the maximally realized ultimate is to goad all other beings to their own maximal self-realization, and independent of this function, maximally realized ultimates have no inherent existence of their own. In Process Buddhism all beings are becomings and thus are constituted by and differentiated in terms of their activity or mode of becoming. Beyond this activity, there is no being, and all activities have a function they fulfill since all occasions are motivated to satisfy a subjective aim. So maximally realized ultimates have, at minimum, a simple subjective aim to satisfy in their very process of concrescence, which is the aim to aid in the realization of others’ maximality. The more occasions that are driven by this subjective aim, the greater the degree of maximality of the enduring society which prehends them. Every bit of the entire being-becoming of maximally realized ultimates — such as the Buddha and Jesus — is driven by this fundamentally soteriological subjective aim.
Holopoiesis 