Re-interpreting Jesus II: The Kingdom of God

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jesus 

Why, after 2000 years and massive changes in culture, language, and historical circumstance, are people still talking about Jesus?  Regardless of your religious views, Jesus’ continuing worldwide influence is historically astonishing.  If someone in the year 30 A.D. predicted to you that the most famous man to ever live would be a Jew who was brutally executed as a rebel by Rome, who was a relatively marginal figure in his own time, and who’s movement was rejected by the majority of his own religion, you would have assumed that he/she was crazy.  At the end of the day, history is fundamentally unpredictable, and the human intellect will always fail to grasp the inscrutable ways of Fate.

In any case, why are people still talking about Jesus?  For me, this fascination can be partially explained by the cryptic ways Jesus spoke about God and about himself that often make him seem like an unknowable enigma to people who study his life. Unlike the historical Buddha, who used precise technical language to describe his subtle mystical experiences (If Eskimos have 100 words for snow, Vedic religions have 1,000 words for meditation experiences), Jesus used simple metaphors that were profound, but that can be interpreted in countless ways as a result of their fundamental imprecision.  This fact has made Christianity almost endlessly malleable, producing hundreds of conflicting denominations which all use the same texts to justify their beliefs.

For instance, one of Jesus’ central teachings is his almost constant emphasis on “The Kingdom of God.”  What did Jesus mean by this?  Many evangelical sects teach that Jesus was referring to a realm in the afterlife that only his devotees will be admitted to; more socially conscious preachers have taught that the Kingdom of God is a movement that will create an era of socioeconomic equality on the earth; more mystical interpretations argue that the Kingdom of God is a state of spiritual illumination similar to the Buddha’s Nirvana.

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Re-interpreting Jesus 1: Beyond Religion (The Law and the Prophets)

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 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.  For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”  – Matthew 5:17-18

Introduction

A religious historian once said that saying the word “Christianity” is like saying the word food. There are thousands of different kinds of foods, and no one assumes that the word “food” accurately describes the spectrum of possible things to eat, which is unimaginably diverse.  In public discourse, we erroneously talk about Christianity as if it were one monolithic entity.  I reality, as scholar of religions Reza Aslan likes to say, there are “Christianities.”  For every religion is, by definition, merely an interpretation of texts; so many interpretations, so many sects. Yet Jesus himself belongs to no religion or denomination, but is part of humanity’s universal library.   Anyone is free to approach his sayings with an open mind, and to develop his/her own understanding of their spiritual meaning.

I grew up in the Bible Belt, and as I reached the age of reason, I developed a strong distaste for the intolerant and often ludicrous forms of Christianity I had thus far witnessed in life.  I “threw out the baby with the bathwater,” and didn’t want anything more to do with Jesus’ teachings.  It was only later in life, ironically while living at a Zen monastery, that I re-explored the teachings of Jesus, and found in them a treasure trove of wisdom, the ingenious mystical expressions of an awakened spiritual master.

When I re-read the gospels with a mind cleared of my anti-Christian bias, Jesus often sounded more like a Zen master than the founder a dogmatic religion, and I noticed that many of his teachings were nearly identical to similar ones found in Buddhism, and other of humanity’s great religious traditions.  To see the universality of these recurring themes in multiple religious systems is important not only for Christians, but for anyone who ascribes to a particular faith.  For, to me, religions are paths to God that do not exist in mutual exclusion to one another.  It is my belief that humanity’s great religions will be doomed to extinction unless they learn to adopt this more universal, inclusive standpoint.  If they do not, they will be drowned in the tide of globalism that the human race is on an inevitable collision course with, and will remain stuck in a tribal ethos that is merely an unfortunate vestige of our blood stained past.

To me, the mystical statements of Jesus undeniably reveal the mind state of an awakened person.  When Jesus utters ridiculous and (in their historical context) blasphemous statements like, “I and the Father are One,” and “The kingdom of God is within you,” he is expressing his direct experience of God-Consciousness, or Enlightenment.  Just as it would be ridiculous to worship a Zen master as a god for saying, “I myself am the Buddha,” it is ridiculous to worship Jesus the human being for saying, “I myself am one with God.”  Both are merely expressing universal mystical experiences in different spiritual languages.  The day will come when the majority of Christians will realize that their own Christ-Consciousness is the source of Jesus’ mysterious teachings, and will realize in astonishment that they themselves are one with God, just as he was.

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Peaceful Protest: Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita on Helping the World from a Spiritual Perspective

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Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. -Krishna

krishna  – Krishna was an earhtly prince who did many practical things to help the people of his time, but was always established in Self-Realization through yoga meditation.

Intorduction

In periods of seated meditation, there are states of great peace and great turmoil that pass through the mind in oscillating intervals.  As with the personal, so the collective: as human civilization evolves, periods of relative peace are often followed by chaotic times that require protest and dedicated work on behalf of the oppressed.  As current events unfold, it appears we are entering a period marked by increasing ignorance, injustice, and even impending catastrophe: nationalist politics threaten to deprive the rights of minorities; terrorism strikes fear into the hearts of decent people worldwide; climate change even threatens to destroy the world as we know it.

Any rational person understands that mere prayers and a “spiritual” perspective are not enough.  When people are hungry, they must be fed.  When laws are unjust, they must be protested.  When leaders concoct schemes to defraud the innocent, we must fight nonviolently to thwart their plans.  In short, all sorts of practical work must be done to improve the world, and every person has their own particular work to do.

To realize God is not to deny the obvious suffering in the world, but to have a different perspective on it.  While we do our work, we can simultaneously understand that the physical world, with all its seeming madness, is not the only Reality.  The sages and mystics of many religions tell us that our life is like a dream, and that whatever happens in the dream ultimately has no effect on the Dreamer, our True Nature. Everything we see in the physical world of matter is like the waves on the ocean.  The waves are sometimes peaceful, and sometimes raging in terrifying storms.  Yet whatever happens on the surface, the depths of the Sea remain at peace.  A sage is a person who works on the surface for the welfare of the world, but is simultaneously in touch with the depths.  Perhaps a better way to say it is that a sage is someone who sees that the waves and the depths are, in reality, one and the same.

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The Rest is Gravy: A Rambling

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“Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalm 37:4

Interfaith corollary: “If you single-pointedly worship Me, I will take care of all your needs.” – Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita

This is my first blog post in a while.  I’ve been working full time as a drug and alcohol counselor, a strange and unexpected twist on my spiritual journey that I hope to write about more in the future.  My job has been demanding most of my creative energy, and this blog had to be set aside temporarily.  Lately, though, I’ve realized that I should pay more attention to the inner desire I have to write, and make more time in my week to prioritize it.  This post has no real organization, but is merely me “popping the cork” to a hopefully entirely new generation of blog posts where I will write about spirituality, religion, society, and my own bumbling journey along the path to God.  But enough of my excuses for my lack of involvement in this blog, which probably amount only to laziness if I am scrupulously honest with myself.

So what have I been learning in nearly the past year since I’ve written seriously on this blog?  I’ve been learning the same lesson over and over again that was wonderfully and simply expressed by King David nearly 3,000 years ago in the above Psalm.  Oftentimes we complicate the spiritual path, forgetting that God-Realization is far more important than mundane aspects of our life we incessantly stress about (“the desires of your heart”).  For me, the heart of the spiritual path is turning away from empty material hopes, and placing one’s hope in the higher satisfaction of God-Realization – the actual experience of God/Bliss which many religions attempt to describe, but that no religion can ever possibly contain.

Some readers may be turned off by the fact that I am quoting from the Bible, but do not mistake my feeling of connection to a Bible passage (I am ethnically Jewish, after all) for blind sectarianism. Although I study religions for a hobby, at the end of the day I am a seeker of the Divine Itself. I am not Jewish, not Christian, not Hindu, not Buddhist, but a seeker of the Nameless Bliss and Joy is eternally One with my own natural awareness in this very moment!  Scriptures undoubtedly have spiritual, inspirational, and cultural value, but they cannot generate an actual experience of the Divine; they are like a tiny candle compared to the mighty Sun.  Truly – although I revere God-inspired scriptures such as the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and the sutras of the Buddha –  scriptures become like a hindrance, or even repulsive like animal feces, to anyone who has had a genuine mystical experience.  They are the path and not the Goal.  They are the treasure map, but not the Treasure.

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Inspiring article I found on the New York Times website

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https://www.nytimes.com/…/muslims-give-money-to-jewish-inst…

The link to the article I am referring to is above, which talks about how Muslims donated big sums of money to Jewish institutions after the antisemitic destruction of Jewish grave sites.  It is great when the media gives a more balanced perspective of Islam and actually reports on the good deeds of the Muslim community, and the literally thousands of denunciations of terrorism that pour forth from Muslim leaders all over the world every year. I take an interfaith persective genrerally, but speaking as a Jewish man, Muslims are my brothers and sisters who worship the same “God of Abraham, Moses, King David and Jesus” found in BOTH the Bible and the Qu’ran. It is truly a tragedy that many Jews, Christians, and Muslims remain ignorant that the Bible and the Qu’ran, though obviously different in certain ways, nevertheless reflect nearly identical worldviews and spiritual mythologolgies. Any true Jew should view Muslims as part of their spiritual family, and visa versa. When will we stop arguing over what name to call God and start living lives that reflect His love for all humanity?

Some Brief Thoughts on Spiritual Peace

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There is an eternal Spirit that is not affected by the tumultuous events of the world. Anyone rooted in this God-Awareness has a peace that nothing can ever take away. Anyone who rises above the belief that they are the body can be peaceful spiritually even in times of great distress and historical chaos. The events in a movie can be wonderful, boring, or tragic, but the Watcher of the movie is always at peace. Through regular meditation practice and God’s grace, any human being – like Jesus or the Buddha – has the capacity to realize that their Buddha Nature, True Nature, or Christ Consciousness is always free, never dies, and is actually Peace Itself. Things, dreams, and relationships with people can be temporary blessings, but only the realization of our oneness with God/Buddha Nature can truly satisfy us.

This is a hard truth, but until we learn this primordial spiritual lesson, we will circle and circle, lifetime after lifetime, wondering why we are perpetually unfulfilled. Yet when we return to God it is understood that His Joy is infinitely superior to any temporary joy based on human desire; yet in truth we do not “return” to God, for God realizes that He has only been pretending to be “you,” and has been free all along.

Wishing you the highest boon of full awakening in God-Consciosuness that all beings are, whether they know it or not, truly seeking,

Jeffrey

Lessons from the Gita 3: God Realization – The End of Religion

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krishna  – Krishna revealing to Arjuna the timeless Way of the Yogis.

“In this world there are two orders of being: the perishable, separate creatures and the changeless Spirit.  But beyond these there is another, the Supreme Self (Brahman), the eternal Lord, who enters into (or manifests) the entire cosmos and supports it within.  I am that supreme Self, praised by the scriptures as beyond the changing and the changeless.  Those who see in me that Supreme Self see truly.  They have found the Source of all Wisdom, Arjuna, and they worship me with all their heart.”

The End of Religion

In the West, everything is a debate.   Politics is Democrat vs. Republican; economics is Capitalism vs. Socialism; and religion is so often unfortunately painted as religion vs. science, or even as one religion vs. another.  Atheists argue that all religion is a lie, and the religious respond with equally passionate claims of dogmatic surety.  We often and unwisely approach religion as a problem to be solved with our intellect, or as an “argument” to be won by debate.  Does it ever occur to us that God is an experience that is not confined by any tradition, that cannot be confirmed or denied by the perishable human intellect?

When I first began my spiritual search seven years ago, I was immediately drawn to the religions of the East like Taoism, Hinduism as expressed in the Bhagavad Gita, and especially Zen Buddhism.  What most intrigued me about them was the idea that the Divine was not something outside of me to be “believed” in, but an actual experience that is the essence of what we ultimately are.  These religions were not “true” or “untrue” in the intellectual sense of the word, but merely described paths to an experience that is beyond all words and concepts.  To “have faith” in this sense was not to have faith in a God in heaven, but to have faith that through spiritual practice the experience of God is possible to have for yourself.

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Lessons from the Gita 2 – Three Dimensions of Renunciation

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krishna – Krishna teaching the mysteries of the universe to his devotee Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.

“Those who have attained perfect renunciation are free from any sense of duality.  They are unaffected by likes and dislikes, and are free from the bondage of self will.  The immature think that knowledge and action are different, but the wise see them as the same.” – Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita

Renunciation is a word that freaks many people out, largely because they do not understand its spiritual meaning.  They associate it with images of emaciated forest Yogis who engage in silent meditation for years at a time, or perhaps with Christian hermits spending long days and lonely nights fasting solitude.  This misunderstanding unfortunately hinders many people from integrating the blessings of renunciation into their everyday lives. For periods of intense meditative separation from everyday routine are indeed a small aspect of renunciation, but true renunciation is a state of mind that is not limited to any particular life circumstance.

The Bhagavad Gita revolutionized and redefined the idea of renunciation at time in India when the population felt that God-Realization was only attainable by a small spiritual elite.  It proclaimed that renunciation is a matter of the heart, which transcends the mundane conceptions of monk and lay person, spiritual practitioner and “worldly” person that unfortunately still dominate many religious communities today.  The Gita radically proclaimed that a life of actively serving others (while inwardly renouncing desire and practicing frequent meditation) is actually superior to a life of solitary meditation alone.  Anyone who understands that God-Realization is the highest goal of life, and strives to structure their life around this lofty ideal, is a renunciate in spirit, regardless of their vocation, race, gender, or religion.

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A Bumbling Okie’s Brief and Shameless Ramblings On Easter

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This theme is so vast and rich that I hope to write a much longer blog post about it soon when I have the time.  Moreover, I will talk about only one aspect of the myth here (the esoteric perspective based on realization) that does not negate the other aspects.  A myth is a myth because of its multifaceted and mysterious nature.  The myth of the resurrection also contains ideas of grace, relationship with the Personal God, and many other themes.  There are many, many sides to this inexhaustible diamond; who in their right mind can claim to grasp its meaning?  That said, here are some shameless ramblings:

In my opinion, whether you literally believe in it or not, the resurrection of Jesus is a powerful symbol that points to our own eternal nature, or Christ Consciousness. Culturally, the archetypal theme of the death and resurrection of the hero goes all the way back to prehistoric shamanic religions, and was present in later pre-Christian cultures all over the world (in the Osiris myth of Egpyt, for instance). The resurrection is ultimately an archetypal and mythological statement about humanity, a “finger pointing to the moon” of our own eternal nature.   Like Jesus, we all must “die” to our ego and transcend death through the “resurrection” of our Deathless Awareness, which is always present yet mysteriously hidden by our own spiritual ignorance. As one of the great myths of mankind, the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t even matter – in fact, thinking about myth overly historically empites it of its power, as the unrivaled mythologist Joseph Campbell was always fond of harping on.

Because the resurrection functions fundamentally as religious mythology, it is ultimately about us all.  Traditional Christianity does the teachings of Jesus a great disservice by misinterpreting that the deeper truths of the New Testament only apply to the historical Jesus. Jesus taught UNIVERSAL truths about the nature of humanity.  As he became an awakened Christ through his deep realization of the Christ-Consciousness, we all have the capacity to become awakened Christs (or Messiahs, Anointed Ones); in the same way, the historical Buddha was a human being who became the Buddha through his own personal awakening experience, and we all have the capacity to become Buddhas, for we all have Buddha Nature. To realize your own Christ-Consciousness (or Buddha Nature, True Nature, Krishna Conscisouness, etc.) through meditation and spiritual practice is the ultimate joy, and goal of life. Truly, spiritual awakening is like being “resurrected” from the “dead” idea that we are only the body and mind. In reality, we are much, much more… Like Jesus, our True Nature is eternal!

Anyone who, through meditation and spiritual practice, realizes their own Christ Consciousness will understand the deeper meaning of the resurrection myth. They will see that, in reality, it has nothing to do with Jesus, for he was only a vessel that the myth expressed itself through. They will realize that Jesus was just a wave on the great Ocean of Spirit, and that you too are a wave on that same Sea! What was true with him is true for you. You are no different in nature; Jesus had merely realized It fully. Unfortunately, most modern churches that teach in his name will ironically persecute you for saying this.  If you say you are “one with Spirit” (a heretical utterance in most churches), you say the same thing Jesus was perecuted by the pharisees for saying about himself 2000 years ago.  History is fully of depressing yet fascinating ironies…

To conclude this shameless rant, we should all take heart in the hope that whatever we go through on this planet is only temporary. In reality, we are One with eternal Bliss Itself (our True Nature is God!), if only we realized this. We all have the capacity to rise above the dualities of the world through deep meditation and ethical living, and to see our Source.  This goal is indeed difficult, and is perhaps the most difficult path a human can walk.  Though it may seem like a “tall order,” the myth of the resurrection of Jesus makes it clear that any human being – through the grace of God and their own spiritual effort – has the capacity to wake up and be free!

May God reveal Itself to you, and may you “resurrect” from the illusory idea that you are your body/mind.  May you become an awakened Christ and a fully realized Buddha by realizing that, in reality, you have been one all along!

With Cosmic Unconditional Love emanating from the Source of all life,

Jeffrey

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Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita: Introduction

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krishna and arjuna – Krishna revealing the Bhagavad Gita to His famous devotee Arjuna (Although I have never heard of any scriptural evidence for this, Arjuna is usually depicted with a sweet 1980’s style mustache in most paintings of him).

“All those who take refuge in Me, whatever their birth, race, sex, or caste, will attain the Supreme Goal.”  – Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita

Every now and then, I discover a book that radically changes the way I perceive the world.  For me, the Bhagavad Gita was one of those books.  I remember randomly taking it off the shelf at Borders in 2009, and as I grazed its mysterious pages, my heart leapt with wordless recognitions of its greatness and profound depth.  I have read the Gita many times since then during difficult moments in my life, and it has infallibly been a potent source of inspiration and spiritual insight.

The Gita is many things: an archetypal expression of the human condition, a guide to Self-Realization, a quintessential text on yoga philosophy – some have even called it “the Bible of India.”  It has been a source of inspiration for countless thousands of spiritual seekers and eminent minds, including Gandhi, Emerson, Thorough, and Paramahansa Yoganada, just to name a few.

Including and superseding all these descriptions, the Gita is a powerful poetic expression of the Krishna’s Awakened Mind, the spiritual Muse of the text penned by Vyasa, a sage in his own right.  Any authentic scripture is, at its deepest core, an expression of a spiritual state of mind that the words point to, but do not contain.  To understand the essence of a scripture is therefore to experience that state of mind yourself, not merely to memorize the words.  In the West, nearly the entire Christian world has unfortunately overemphasized intellectual knowledge of scripture, as if the unfathomable Christ-Mind of the Spiritual Master Jesus could be understood by merely memorizing passages.

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