Obviously there are problems with making huge claims and interpretations as I'm about to do. Jesus' suffering on the cross is massive, far greater both physically or historically than I can imagine and I am just a drop in the great ocean of this. However we are never-the-less a part and play our part.
Is Christianity different or similar to Buddhism? Can a Christian be a Buddhist and vice versa without conflict? Important questions that many tackle.
I woke this morning with a simple perspective. What did Jesus go through in those last days? He was disbelieved, insulted, rejected, mocked, tortured and killed. These are all our greatest fears. But at the same time he was deeply trusted and loved by others. There were people who wanted him dead, and people who would have died for him. What a contrary thing people en masse are. This is what we all face. No one is universally loved and respected and no one is universally hated and rejected. This means that everyone even God experiences a mixed reception from the world.
Buddha's story is usually sanitised into this pure loved transcendent peaceful being. But in his life his mother died soon after childbirth, he gained the hate and disappointment of his father and entire family for abandoning his princely duties and leaving the palace. He gradually rejected people and people gradually fell away from him as he pursued his path ever deeper. Finally even the 6 ascetic monks who had agreed to attend to him in his path of fasting and self mortification gave up on him when he abandoned this and ate the rice pudding. Finally he faced the entire army of hate and fear summoned by the great demon Mara. And when they could not raise any weakness in him they turned to the daughters of Mara who tried to lure him away from the path with every thing attractive and lustful and still he was not distracted and Mara accepted defeat. Essentially Life threw literally everything at Buddha and he was not distracted from his true nature of peace, love and grounding. So its not as graphic as Jesus' passion but the path was the same.
So how did Jesus and Buddha deal with all this turmoil going on around them?
They both abandoned themselves.
This sounds like cowardice, disloyalty, suicide. And this is exactly the point. The great illusion, the great attachment at the heart of our lives is the deepest belief that if we abandon ourselves we will die. We will lose something so precious that it is worth fighting to the death for.
Jesus and Buddha both show us that after abandoning this false self in fact we Live! That is the great secret at the heart of the universe.
Now whether Jesus rose again physically or just spiritually is the great theological debate. But for now is it enough to know that abandoning the false self, the self we think is us, is enough for ever lasting life.
Of course this can be complete misunderstood. This does not in fact mean that you kill yourself if you want to live. That is ridiculous. Why did Jesus need to be crucified for that. He could have just thrown himself off the walls of Jerusalem.
Now the point--apart from fulfilling the scriptures (and not going into Jewish theology here)--is that Jesus had to suffer all the other things at other people's hands and not retaliate and save himself.
“He saved others, but He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel! Let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him." [Matthew 27:42]
Well the question I'm asking here is: what self would he have been saving? His mortal useless physical self, or the Greater Immortal Self? Well you don't need to save the immortal self do you. So if you want immortality you must not be tempted to save the mortal physical self.
And its not about actually saving something you will have to show afterwards, it about having the attitude of not saving. Being free from having to save something.
But all of us in that situation would not have the faith and would take any exit. Imagine the relief when we cry out and declare that we were wrong and we submit to Rome and the Sanhedrin and accept their judgements and teachings and promise not to cause dissent or encourage people to question and challenge authority in future. Imagine the relief when the soldier runs off to Pilate and returns with an order to have you taken down and released. You can have your own life back again and live a peaceful life. But then the day of old age, illness and death comes and you realise you were given back a rotten apple that was slowly decaying and was going to rot into nothing in your hands and you were tricked. This is the work of the Devil. This is what both Jesus and Buddha were fighting.
So to gain that immortal self we have to let go the temptations of the flesh and the desire for an easy and normal life. This is attachment to a fake self.
But we don't need to start a war with the world. The actual final move to release is almost imperceptible. Its just the most gentle letting go our once hard grip on ourself.
That self we think is us, that we think is at the centre of our lives and which everything that happens happens to; that self which we protect from insult and injury; that self that we think people like or hate; that self that somehow has to be the intersection of all the things that we see in our life; which must somehow unify our life with a solid fixed and distinct thing: that self is a myth. It doesn't exist. Some people will like us, some will hate is and there can be no self that is both likeable and hateable at the same time. There is no fixed entity of a particular type. But protecting and holding on to this thing like it was there is the source of all the struggle and all the passion and suffering in our lives.
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