I wish the early disciples of Jesus would simply have consulted one another. A Judean Messianic version of Comic Con would have been a helpful meeting of the minds. Mark’s “Blind Bartimaeus” said “Rabbi, let me see again” without knowing Jesus was the first person he’d lay eyes on. John 4’s depiction of the Samaritan woman at the well shows a Christ who says “I am he [the messiah] the one who is speaking to you.” Both in his earthly life, and under the guise of a stranger, (recall, from KKC 6, how discarding expectations is linked to recognizing the risen Christ) Jesus has several Koan-like interactions, the full answering of which partly involves calling the person doing the speaking Lord and Messiah.
In a similar vein, Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus in John 3:12 is a stand-alone Koan. After waxing lengthy with Nicodemus about the importance of being born from above, he says “I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe. How can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
The rest of the Gospel of John, in the form of Jesus’ seven “I AM” statements, goes on to answer that question. At first glance, one would think this post needed to part ways with Zen, given Zen’s classic and canonical antipathy to the self. However we find a helpful container for Johanine Christology precisely in the Zen teaching on “What a Bodhisattva does with his Self.” In order to make sense of Jesus, then, let me begin by outlining, in a laymen’s under-informed broadstrokes, two approaches a bodhisattva might have to Selfhood.
One is the majority view: since Nirvana is a space of total dissolution of self (anatman), the bodhisattva actually delays enlightenment and retains his self long enough to help others. Such a view of Bodhisattva-osity is actually helpful. For a buddhist with a hardline anti-self belief set, delaying enlightenment means retaining the self, means remaining in a world of samsara and suffering because of it. Christ as suffering-servant finds some resonance here.
The other view of self is perhaps more resonant with John, and Judaism as a whole. Minority voices in Buddism, such as the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, claim the Bodhisattva has a transcendently-balanced Self (mahatman). (This is all wikipedia searchable under “Atman, Buddhism.”
However, I’m stealing these sentiments from the excellent 2006 lecture of Dr. Tony Page, delivered at the University of London and transmitted through nirvanasutra.net.) Dr. Page quotes the sutra: “on the morning of Buddhahood, he [the Bodhisattva] obtains the sovereign Self” (chapter entitled “On Pure Actions”), and on the all-pervasive presence of the Buddha, who cannot truly be seen and yet can cause all to see him, the Buddha comments that “Such sovereignty is termed ‘the Great Self’.”
In terms of Under the Influence’s Buddhist/Christian dialogical effort of seeing Jesus as a Koanic Teacher, we can come down on the self in two different ways, then. Both are right, and both helpful: I am sure we’re looking at a continuum here, not a dichotomy. If the self is bad, then remaining in it causes Christlike suffering. If the self yields to a transcendent Self, then it points to the atman, (the soul, or true self), as Jesus points to the father.
The reason I’ve chosen to place Jesus in a “First Bodhisattva” sort of role is because it conveys one of the Johanine Jesus’ themes better than do the prevailing models of messiahship. This insight is at the core of what Jesus was attempting to teach Bartimaeus: Jesus self-identifies as the mediator par excellence. In John, Christ’s kingdom is one of absolute authority, wielded in willingness to suffer. He lays hold of mahatman, claims the “I AM” at the core of his identity. Certainly there are differences between Buddhist and Christian cosmology here. The bodhisattva has, at his core, no “Higher being” who is entirely other and transcendent. He mediates enlightenment and Buddhahood—makes the buddha present, at the very most. Regardless of what’s being transmitted, the mechanisms of mediation are similar, and very much at work in both the Bodhisattva and Christ.
Let’s take a look at the seven different ways Jesus self-identitifies.
- Jesus is the way not to hunger: “I am the bread of life" (John 6:35) “I am the bread of life” whoever comes to me will never be hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. From this scripture we don’t get a sense of whether Jesus is going to fill that hunger and slake that thirst by satisfying it, or whether life itself is the object of that longing. Hunger has multiple levels.
- Jesus is the way to see “I am the light of the world" ( John 8:12; 9:5) Whoever follows Christ will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life Jesus goes further in your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid…it is not I alone who judge, but I and the father who sent me. (The Light of life is the “mantra” just as the ability to sleep is the mantra in Yoga nidra.) (Using Dualism to his advantage)
- Jesus is the way to the Father. ”I am the gate for the sheep" (John 10:7, 9) Following the father’s familiar voice. Jesus the “gate for the sheep.” Jesus is that thing through which we pass to access the father.
- Jesus as the self-sacrificial way to safety. ”I am the good shepherd" (John 10:14) Jesus says, here, that he lays down his life for his sheep, making way for the switch from the judges model of messiahship, in which he’s a political king, to Isaiah’s suffering servant model, in which he dies a tortured failure. (We spoke of these in KKC 6) That said, in the expiation of sin that takes place for those who follow his lead, a disciple transcends his need for security by entering into vulnerability.
- The way to life amidst death)"I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25) (Lazarus) I am the resurrection and the life Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. Again, please recall the discussion of belief in KKC 6. Those who realize that they already are Christ, those that make Christ’s journey themselves, have been increasingly “believing in him” throughout their journey. Those that don’t, though they say they “believe,”
- By being the Way, Jesus is also the Goal. ”I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6) If you know me, you know my father also. Whoever has seen me has seen my Father.
- Jesus is “the vine” to our “branches.” ”I am the true vine" (John 15:1, 5) For the Branches to remain in the vine, they need to remain in what is most foundational about themselves. So all prayers must remain in the mantra, all words must remain in divine silence, in a space of passive volition. That passive volition is a space of “Betweenness”, an observational space, that we have to occupy in order to cooperate with something larger than ourselves.
Commentators say there’s a “Dualism” in John. I disagree. A dualism is a permanent separation. There is certainly a distance between where we are and where we need to be. That distance is the very stuff of Koans. Jesus posits darkness and light, heaven and earth as traversable space. What’s more, he offers seven I AM statements, in which he invokes the divine name. Far from being metaphor, he truly identifies these things with himself. He offers himself as the Mantra of prayer, the push off the blue cliff and the force that sends his disciples hurtling toward the ground of their being. I brought this up in May 18th’s The Rights to being Right: Ghandi said “I used to believe God is love. Now I believe love is God.” Jesus offers these I AM Statements to say not so much “I AM what gets you to the father,” but “what gets you to the father is me.” So he allows his own image to be eclipsed by light, by sheep gates and shepherds and vines. He allows his function as mediator and mantra to come to the fore.
Jesus locates himself with every previous messiah, every bodhisattva, every mantra, every guru: anyone or anything that, when it came down to it, showed people the way and got the job done. It was a messianic ideal in which function determined form.
So the answer given to Nicodemus is given to us all: Jesus was the Mahatman, whose self-sacrifice is the death of the ego, and the rebirth of our non-egoic self. When we come to a space, not of seeing Jesus, not of new worlds realized, but of pure seeing, we will have arrived at nowhere by means of nothing. God will be made visible in us, but not to us. St. Paul said our true selves are hidden with Christ in God. In short, Jesus would have said that both he himself, and God, are hidden in our true selves, the substance of what remains when “the old is gone, and the new has come.” It’s a blindness I myself would be privileged to see, and a daily death I’d be privileged to get accustomed to suffering.
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