There's a Zen koan that states: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
In Luke 14:26 we read: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters and yes, even their own life, they cannot be my disciple"
I didn't learn of the former until fifteen or so years ago. The latter I've known since my Sunday school days of
nearly a half century ago, but I always brushed over it because... Sheesh!
So that's bunk, clearly a mistake that's got nothing to do with praying for prosperity and getting it from God.
Fast forward to today. The latter is one of my favorite versus in the Bible. And the former? If I meet the Buddha he's toast! I still study his teachings right alongside those of Christ and value them both highly, but I ain't about to make an idol out of either one of them. The apostle Paul said it's no longer I that live but the Christ lives through me. In the Thomas Gospel Jesus said whoever drinks from my mouth becomes as I am and I become he. The game's rigged. We're all it. or It with a capitol I. Or Something!
The rest is a reworked published revered to draft republished take on it all...
Jesus walked on water. The Buddha walked on water some 500 years earlier. They both entered the world via virgin birth. Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes. The Buddha immediately walked and a lotus blossomed everywhere he stepped. Both the Buddha and Jesus went beyond the religious teachers of their day. Jesus was tempted by Satan; the Buddha by Mara. The number of temptations each faced was three. The Buddha reached enlightenment while sitting under the Bodhi Tree. Christ's path to salvation leads through the Cross. These are the two ways back into the Garden--to eternal life. The cherubim are guarding the East gate of the Garden in the Biblical tale. The Buddha was facing East when he reached enlightenment. The sun rises in the East. Turn your face towards the light!
The cross was referred to as the Holy Rood in the Middle Ages. The legend was built up in, around and through the Old Testament. It was read and told widely amongst Christians of the time. A brief account is Adam sent his son Seth back to the Garden of Eden to get an elixir that would render him immortal. Seth got as far as the gate but the cherubim wouldn't allow him entry. They did, however, give him a seed from the tree of eternal life. Upon finding his father dead on his return Seth placed the seed under Adam's tongue and buried him at Golgotha. The tree that grew from the seed was cut down and found its way into many tales before finally becoming the cross on which Christ was crucified right back there at Golgotha--right over Adam's skull! Thus Christ's blood dripping down onto the skull baptized the first man and laid the path for all the rest of us to find eternal life through him.
The cross and the bodhi tree are the same tree--the world tree that's appeared in myths predating each tale by thousands of years--but more on that later.
As for the Garden, Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine and other Christian theologians had differing views about it. Some believed it was merely a spiritual place, others a geographical location, and still more a mixture of the two. Dante's Devine Comedy had influenced thought greatly by the time Columbus set sail. Dante wrote that when Satan was cast out of heaven he hit the earth so hard that a huge fiery pit was formed on one end of the earth and the displaced earth pushed up a mountain on the other end. Satan was lodged in the middle of the earth of course since everyone knew that's where hell was. The mountain that was formed on the other end of the earth was purgatory, with paradise at its summit. Paradise remained the Biblical Garden with its four rivers and all, so when Columbus saw all the fresh water pouring into the sea from the Orinoco river he wrote that he found paradise. He believed he had found Eden.
We know now that he didn't of course, and even if he had the cherubim wouldn't have allowed him or any of the rest of us back into the Garden. Christ on the cross is the only way back everlasting paradise in that tradition. As for the Buddhist approach, there are threatening threshold guardians in that tradition as well, but the Buddha essentially says don't mind them, the way is open come on in. Since living in the East I can confirm this much is true. I see the threshold guardians all the time here. They may be in the from of Nio (human-like) at the sides of a Buddhist temple gate or Koma inu (Lion dogs) at the entrance to Shinto shrines, but make no mistake, these and the cherubim are one in the same. While threshold guardian symbols have varied over the millennia and regions the motif, like that of the tree, appears in myths dating back many thousands of years before the lives of Christ or the Buddha or even the Biblical account of the Garden. No matter the tradition, however, they are symbols of that which is inside of us. Fear and desire. Let go of all desire and fear and you can walk right past them and reenter the realm of eternal life.
Fear and Desire. The third temptation of the Buddha was social duty. Thou Shalt! Do what your told. Believe what you're supposed to believe, or at least lie and say you believe it!
“In all traditional systems, whether of the Orient or of the Occident, the authorized mythological forms are presented in its to which the individual is expected to respond with an experience of commitment and belief. But suppose he fails to do so? Suppose the entire inheritance of mythological, theological, and philosophical forms fails to wake in him any authentic response of this kind? ?How then is he to behave? The normal way is to fake it, to feel oneself to be inadequate, to pretend to believe, to strive to believe, and to live, in the imitation of others, an inauthentic life. The authentic creative way, on the other hand, which I would term the way of art as opposed to religion, is, rather, to reverse this authoritative order.
As in the novels of [James] Joyce, so in those of [Thomas] Mann, the key to the progression lies in the stress on what is inward….In the words of Joyce’s hero: “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets”
For what to the soul are nets, “flung at it to hold it back from flight,” can become for the one who has found his own center the garment, freely chosen, of his further adventure.
~ Reflections on the Art of Living by Joseph Campbell pg 75
The following is me musing on flying past those nets.
Two lotuses slid down a muddy pond bank, stopped right in front of me and bloomed shortly after I walked on water myself. I was standing on a plank that spanned a pond. I lost my balance but wasn’t worried. I just stepped out onto the water knowing it’d hold me up, and so it did. Thus I’m right in there with Jesus and the Buddha in that regard. Please don’t bow down and worship me though. That’d make me uncomfortable.
My old roommate and close friend Justin was there on the bank, which should’ve surprised me since he died a few years ago, but it didn’t when I saw him. He was alive and well as ever. I wouldn’t bow down and worship him either though. I don’t think he’d like it much either.
I'm always reflecting on these and other things, like the times that I’ve stood at the base of the world tree. I even grafted a new branch onto it once—a new world tree to grow out of the old one. Not long ago I was swimming in the deep of the ocean and two serpentine fish coiled together like a caduceus came up from below and pushed me right out of the water. They didn’t have wings but still it was pretty cool. The caduceus is an old symbol that dates back many thousands of years B.C. It was on Hermes’ staff. The same symbol represented Ningishzida, “lord god of the tree” which has been found on Sumerian seals from 4,000 B.C. He and other ever dying, ever resurrecting serpent gods that went by other names ended up becoming the snake in the Garden of Eden. The goddess that dates back many thousands of years prior to that myth is hiding there in the Genesis tale too. She’s Eve. The Hebrew character for Hawwah (Eve) also means serpent.
These things fascinate the bejeezus out of me. I imagine how much differently we’d view our dreams if there was no TV, iPhones, computers, or even contact with people or news from far off lands—no idea what the earth is like beyond a hundred miles from where we stand, let alone its place in the universe. That'd make it easier to believe that Eden was out there somewhere, or that the earth was center of all creation and hell was down below.
Of course now we know there was never such thing as a geographically located paradisiacal garden with a talking serpent, biological virgin birth or global flood in which one man saved a pair every species of animal on earth in an ark. I'll never forget my son stopping me mid-tale with that one one night.
"Dad, that's impossible" He said.
He was in the second or third grade at the time. He'd figured out I was Santa by then too.
I didn't try convincing him otherwise since I don't much believe it either, but I did say there's a lot that can't be explained in this life and sometimes stories help us make sense of it all. Unfortunately, nyth loses its power completely if read literally. Our 21st century knowledge of the universe and the origin of our species has shattered any chance of the sun ever having stopped, let alone over Gibeon! Or moon over Aijalon or so much else. For heaven's sakes! These things can no longer be read as factually true or historic, and yet here I sit typing this a bit hesitant to share as much where others can see it, because I know many people who insist it is literally true.
How is that possible? For hundreds of years now science has proven it's just not so. Galileo was put under house arrest for his discoveries; Luther called Copernicus a Jackass for saying the Sun was the center of our Universe. Bruno and others were burned at the stake for saying less than I am here. They’ve been vindicated of course. The church was wrong, yet still people insist on reading metaphor as history.
Change is hard; pride screams don’t you dare follow your heart and go against what you were told. Even years after questioning it all it took damn near killing myself with alcohol to become willing to ask myself “Is it possible all the religious people I know are wrong?” and thus go my own way, accepting the truths I found and discarding what insulted my soul. Ironically enough doing just that, rejecting unquestioning dogma or "faith", led me to a more genuine faith in something, or capitol “S” Something, far more powerful and sublime than the notion of God I had before. That “Something” can be read as “God” or any other metaphor, but either way it’s still metaphor because I don’t know what or even if it is, and neither do you.
Which is as it should be. In the Kena Upanishad it is stated:
"He, who among us says he knows, does not know it. It is known to those who say they do not know it. It is not known to those who say they know it."
The "it" there is the "Something" of course.
All I know is if you put a name to it and explain it to me then it’s far too insignificant and weak to hold my interest, let alone keep me sober. Yet that which we can’t even mentally grasp, let alone explain, has at times captured me in awe.
I've seen in everything from a bug to a sunset
I've heard it in everything from a child’s laugh and a thunderclap.
And still, occasionally, it drops hints in my dreams.
It’s Something
