Archive for the ‘Zen’ Category

I have been reading a lot of Shantideva’s The Way of the Boddhisattva lately. It strikes me that it has a very Christian flavour, so much so that I have been wondering if Shantideva was a reincarnation of Jesus. My brother came around for dinner last night and he was telling me about this documentary he had seen (see below) that Christ was a Buddha.

It reminded me of a book in my library called Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, which goes into a lot more detail on the subject. He draws on the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. Much of the material covered in the BBC documentary is drawn from the same material.

The Bible doesn’t overly suit my type of mind. Neither do lot of Buddhist texts for that matter. In my mind there are no -isms or -anities. What religion is there other than the luminous mind? Gods, devas, and miracles aren’t really my cup of tea as awareness is miraculous enough for me. Nevertheless, as I recall, the Gospel of Thomas (in the apocrypha) talks about Thomas, Mary and Jesus heading down to India.

In the esoteric school I did my early training in, one of the basic beliefs was that Christ was none other than Maitreya Buddha. It all gets a bit complex about the relationship between Christ and Jesus, not that it really matters. One of the views as much I understood it was that Buddha perfected wisdom, creating the religion for the East, and Christ perfected love, creating the religion for the West. Two sides of the same coin.

To that end, the other day, I was listening to a FBA lecture where the basic premise was that for bodhicitta to arise you had to simultaneously detach from the world and engage your fellow beings through loving kindness.

The story goes that Chiyono was incredibly beautiful. And for this reason, as much as she tried, she was refused entry into zen monasteries. The masters claimed that she would drive the monks mad. One day she burned her face to the point where she was not recognisable as man or woman; and she was permitted to study in the monastery.

Despite this amazing and perhaps courageous act, enlightenment didn’t come quickly to Chiyono. However, she was a deteremined student. At last, one moonlit night, she filled her old water bucket from a well (a well that centuries later would still bear her name). As she walked away, she saw the full moon reflected on the surface of the water. As she continued along the path, the circular bamboo strip gave way that had held together the staves of her bucket. Instantly, the bottom broke through, the moon’s reflection vanished, the bucket disintegrated, and all its water drained into the soil beneath. At this moment, Chiyono experienced a sudden, penetrating flash of insight-wisdom.

She later explained it this way: ‘‘I had hoped the weak bamboo binding would hold the water bucket together. But suddenly the bottom fell out of the bucket: no more water. No more moon in the water. Emptiness in my hand!’’