A Zen Jesus for Christmas

In 1945 an Arab peasant in the upper Egyptian desert near Nag Hammadi made a spectacular discovery. Buried in earthenware were 52 papyrus texts, some dating from the beginning of the Christian era and presenting a Jesus who said things that could have come out of the mouth of a Zen Master, or even the Buddha himself.

Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University has made the observation that one of these gospels in Particular, “The Gospel of Thomas” includes traditions even older than the Gospels of the New Testament, earlier than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, and also closer to the actual life of Jesus.

These are known as the “Gnostic Gospels”, from the Greek word “gnosis”…meaning “to know”…to know oneself, to have an insight into oneself in an intuitive sense. “To know oneself is to know God”…says Jesus in these gospels. The self and the divine are identical and one. The living Jesus in these gospels speaks of an enlightenment, the same type that is taught by Zen Masters and Taoists. Jesus is never presented as Lord, but rather as a spiritual guide. The living Buddha could easily have said, and did, everything attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas and other texts.

These texts, with Jesus talking in this manner, were seen as a danger to the developing ecclesiastical structure because they encouraged insubordination to the authority of bishops, priests and deacons. Church father Ignatius warns the laity to “honor and obey the bishop as you would God.”

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Homo storialus

Biologists may classify us as Homo sapiens, “the Wise One”, but I would call us Homo storialus, the animal who tells stories. We tell them through folklore…legend and myth. We then act them out in rituals. It is safe to say that stories plus ritual equal religion. Stories are the threads by which we weave the tapestry of our culture, our religions and traditions.

The literalistic skeptic says: “I don’t want legends. I want facts.” He does not understand the statement by D.H. Lawrence that there are two kinds of truth, a truth of truth…and a truth of facts. A truth of facts has to do with dates, names and places and so forth. But a truth of truth is revealed through legend, myth, folklore and fairytales and has to do with the inner world of the imagination and emotions. They reveal the inner shape and contour of our minds, our longings and needs…our spirits.

We are now entering a lovely period of folklore..legend..fantasy and mythology.

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The Christ myth and solstice

We are buried this time of year in mythology, legend and folklore. How many hundreds of times have we been told that Christmas celebrates the origin of Christianity? This of course is false. Christmas was around for eons before Jesus was ever born.

For thousands of years the Winter Solstice (Dec. 22-25) has been the most special time of the year and the most important date in human celebration. The sun has started its long journey home bringing Springtime.

Celebrating this event in this month of Solstice I am part of the line of descent that has been uninterrupted almost from the birth of humankind. There has been no time when someone, somewhere, was not celebrating this date.

Long before the mythological birth date of Jesus in the solstice period, our bloodstream ran in the veins of sun gods and sun worshippers…Greeks and Romans…Barbarians in the Germanic forests…Northern worshippers of Thor..and Egyptians…Jews..Gauls…Persians and Indians. No wonder that human beings have celebrated the date of the Winter Solstice for thousands of years considering that our very survival depends upon the return of the sun.

No wonder that the birth of the gods in almost all religious traditions were said to have taken place during the solstice period.

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