On January 6, the twelfth day of Christmas, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the day the Lord Jesus first met the Gentile world. We are told that Three Wise Men traveled from the East to pay homage to the new born king. The three represent the Gentile population. The story is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. None of the other books of the New Testament make mention of the event. The story involves three visitors because in it, three gifts were presented to the baby Jesus and it is assumed each bore a gift. There could have been six Wise Men as far as we know bearing three gifts. However many there were, per the story, they were guided to the birth site by a star. The notion that a single star focused its full energy on a stable in Bethlehem is somewhat ludicrous; the stable and everything in it would have vaporized. I say that only to emphasize Matthew’s poetic, story telling skills.

Even so, I like Matthew, for among the Evangelists he is the one who seems to best relate to what we now know about Jesus through science and scholarship. But his writing is laced with mystery. He got “resurrection” correct by subtlety noting how Jesus’s body disappeared before the entry stone to the tomb was removed. He gives us tantalizing counter-insight into the virgin birth controversy. In the Three Wise Men story he introduces a connection between Jesus and the Eastern cultures. The author of Matthew (he is unknown) was not an eye-witness to the incidents in Jesus’s life he wrote about. Moreover, his account was written some sixty to seventy-years after His birth. We do not know his sources (they were probably from sermons and oral transmission). Bottom line, the unknown author heard certain things about Jesus and He pieced them together in an understandable narrative that purports to be a systematic account of His life. Matthew is not a newspaper account or magazine article. It would be a mistake to think the narrative is accurate in time sequence. In other words, Jesus’s first contact with the East may have been at birth. But, it also may have been later in life. The important point is that contact was made.

As written elsewhere in this site, that which Christians call “resurrection” has a strong Eastern overtone to it.In my view, somewhere along the way Jesus made serious contact with the Eastern religious traditions in His adult life.“Resurrection,”the miracles He performed, the ascetic life He chose and His solitary, prayerful habits all connect to Eastern yogic practices.

I find it strange that eighteen years of Jesus’s life are missing. We are told He debated Jewish scholars in the Temple at age twelve and that he was baptized at about age thirty. What happened in-between? How can it be that we know nothing of the formative years of, arguably, the most important man in Western history? Child prodigy that He was, I have difficulty accepting that He spent His early years helping his step-father as a carpenter’s aide.

 

In the Eastern traditions Jesus is known as St. Issa

The noncanonical secret Gospel of Thomas clearly has an Eastern tone. There would have been no need for me to incorporate Buddhist beliefs and practices into my Christian faith as I did, had I known, in advance, about the Gospel of Thomas.

The Eastern traditions claim Jesus spent His fourteenth through twenty-eighth years in India and Tibet. Records supposedly hidden in a Tibetan monastery refer to Him as Saint Issa. At least three explorer/scholars say they have seen the records: Russian Nicholas Notovitch (1894), Swami Abhedananda (1922), and Nicholas Roerich (mid-1920’s).Having traveled the Himalayas I can personally attest to how widespread the legend of Jesus is in that part of the world.

So, I have questions. I do know that Jesus’s miracle working, “resurrection,” and post-death appearances are commonly accepted as natural events in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Natural that is for those who have freed their minds from the weight of worldly living. Perhaps the author of Matthew, clever as he is with his pen, is hinting of Jesus’s early years using the story of the Three Wise Men to make the connection with the mystical Eastern traditions.

Anyway, that is my story and I am sticking to it. That is, until someone comes up with a better one.

It is that time of year again; time to dust off the family manger scene and prime the kiddos for the annual Christmas Eve pageant story of Jesus’s birth. Is virgin birth historical or is it out of control religious fervor designed to embellish Jesus’s divinity? The Christian doctrine of Virgin Birth has issues. Only two of the four Gospels (Matthew and Luke) report it. Curiously, Paul ignores it altogether. Even so, a 2013 survey by prestigious Pew Research found that 73% of American adults believe in Jesus’s virgin birth.

Matthew, the leading champion of virgin birth, staked his claim by referencing an Old Testament prophecy found in Isaiah 7:14. In arriving at his claim, Matthew relied on the Septuagint, the 2^nd century BC Greek version of the Hebrew Bible. And, that is a problem. When the Septuagint was translated, the Hebrew word “almah,” meaning “young woman of marriageable age,” was translated to the Greek word “Parthenos,”meaning “virgin.” Now, understand, the Hebrew language has a word for virgin. It is “bethulah.” If Isaiah meant virgin he would have written “bethulah,”not “almah.” But he didn’t. He wrote “almah,” a “young woman of marriageable age.” Furthermore, the Isaiah verse is not even remotely connected with messianic prophecy. It concerns a sign that will be given to Ahaz, the King of Judah, by the time an unspecified “almah’s” son is of young age. In short, there is no credible connection between virgin birth and the Old Testament.

The mistranslation is known as the almah/bethulah controversy and has long been the lightening rod in the virgin birth debate. The Catholic Church has always vigorously defended Matthew’s use of the Septuagint and its Hebrew to Greek translation. That is, until lately. In 2011, with issue of a revised edition of the St. Joseph Edition of The New American Bible, the Catholic Bible, the Catholics relented and finally agreed with the dissidents that the Hebrew word “almah” does in fact mean “a young woman of marriageable age.” Catholics however continue to defend Matthew’s claim of a virgin birth on the basis that Matthew was divinely inspired to write what he wrote. In other words, either intuitively and/or through his sources, the author of Matthew understood Jesus was born of a virgin. This claim gives me heart-burn. It implies that God’s inspiration always works in the direction of penning something on a piece of paper, parchment in this case. The claim discounts the possibility that the other authors of New Testament books, excluding Luke, were inspired to not write what they didn’t write. For, as said, none knew of the virgin birth, or if they did, thought, hard to believe, it was not important enough to mention. The matter raises a question in my mind about what it means to be inspired?

Did Matthew really believe in virgin birth? I wonder. His genealogy connecting Jesus to King David includes the names of four women (five counting Mary). In ancient times the names of females were not normally included in ancestral lineage as women were considered as simple carriers of the baby, making no genetic contribution to the child.

The four women in question are: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Bathsheba is not named directly but is identified as the wife of Uriah. These are not nice women. Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and tricks Judah into having sexual relations with her (Genesis 38); Rahab is described as a harlot (Joshua 2);Ruth asks Boaz to have sex with her (Ezekiel 16); Bathsheba cheated on her husband and became pregnant by David. (2 Samuel 11). With respect to Mother Mary, Matthew ends the lineage by saying that Jacob, the second to last male in the genealogy line up, fathered Joseph. But, he then breaks the father/son flow by not saying that Joseph fathered Jesus. Instead Joseph is mentioned simply as the husband of Mary who is identified as having given birth to Jesus.

In other words, Matthew tells us that Joseph is the not the father of Jesus although he is married to Mary (Matthew 1:24), and that Mary is Jesus’s mother. Is Matthew delivering a stealth message to his readers? Perhaps his sources told him of the virgin birth and he included it as a sense of obligation but doesn’t really believe. So, he references a totally unrelated source in the Old Testament to validate, as best he can, the lore but sends a different message through the ancestral lineage to indicate there may be more to the story.

There was a speculation in the early Church that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier and made pregnant in the incident.  The soldier was supposedly named Panthera (or Pantera in some translations). Archeological finds have confirmed that the name “Pantera” was used by real people in 1^st century Palestine and was particularly favored by Roman soldiers. The matter acquired interest amongst scholars when a grave complete with marker of a Roman soldier was accidentally unearthedin Germany in 1859. The soldier is identified as Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, a freed slave.

Sidon, the home of Pantera according to the grave marker, is one of two famous ancient cities in what is now Lebanon near the Israel-Lebanon border. The other city is Tyre, about 20 miles away. The district of Tyre is mentioned in Mark 7:24. You may know the story. Jesus and the apostles traveled there and met a Greek (pagan) woman who begs Him to drive a demon from her daughter. Jesus refuses, initially, saying the children (meaning the Israelites) need to be fed before the dogs (the non-Israelites). Later, He reconsiders and drives out the demon. With Jesus’s initial, crotchety response to the woman, one must ask the question; “What was He doing in the district of Tyre amongst the gentiles in the first place?” Did He have a reason for being there? Then, Mark adds intrigue to the visit, telling how Jesus on arriving in the district “…entered a house but wanted no one to know about it…” Now there is an interesting tidbit of seemingly trivial information. Why did Mark take the time to point out “…entered a house but wanted no one to know about it…”Was there someone in the house Jesus wanted to visit in secret? Possibly a relative?

Additional intrigue shows up in John’s Gospel. In a raucous exchange reported in John 8:41 the Pharisees tell Jesus they are not bastard sons, as if to say [to Him], you are but we are not.

The Pantera tradition also shows up in two places in ancient Jewish texts.  One involves a famous Rabbi of the late 1^st century-early 2^nd century who tells of a teaching he heard near Nazareth which was conducted in the name of “Yeshu ben Pantera.” In another reference, a Jewish healer, attempts to heal a snake bite wound in the name of “Yeshu ben Pantera.” Yeshu ben Pantera refers to Jesus son of Pantera. Note also that the term is not used in a derogatory sort of way and suggests that Yeshu ben Pantera may have been a common way of referring to Jesus in His lifetime.

The Greek philosopher Celsus in a scathing late 2^nd century criticism of Christianity relates that he found written evidence that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier named Pantera. The 2^nd century Christian theologian, Origen, acknowledges the tradition but says it was concocted by those who could not accept that Mary was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit. The 4^th century Christian apologist Epiphanius also knows of the story. He explains that Pantera is a nick-name for Joseph’s father, thus, Jesus came to be known as Jesus, Son of Pantera.

It bothers me also that Jesus never referred to a virgin birth. To me, that would be a very large trump card to use in His frequent debates with Jewish leadership, as well as for communicating His teachings.

The sum of all of this is thus: Jesus’s birth certificate, were there such a thing, would state “Father Unknown.” The virgin birth story is best handled as a matter of blind faith; the facts on the ground do not support it.

 Murder on the Orient Express, an Agatha Christie mystery, is currently showing in movie theaters throughout the USA. It centers around Belgian super-detective Hercule Poirot, a man of extraordinary perception and insight. Poirot displays strong preference for “sameness” in everything, as opposed to “separateness.” The poached eggs he has for breakfast must be the exact same size. Once, when stepping into a pile of manure with his right foot, he then steps into the pile with his left foot just to even things out, restoring sameness. Describing himself he says: “I see things not as they are but as they should be.” Insight, as it turns out, is a by-product of the practice of sameness.

After cleverly solving a murder case while traveling on the Orient Express, Poirot arrives at a sameness verdict.  Instead of applying the traditional guilty vs not-guilty guideline, he concludes that the murder was justified under the circumstances, admonishes the murderers who are on-board the train, then dismisses the case by saying the murderer escaped. Like the eggs and the manure experience, he applied sameness. Guilty vs not-guilty is not always black and white. The murder was somewhere in between.

Per the Gospel of Thomas, one can conclude that Poirot’s extraordinary investigative skills flow naturally from his sameness attitude about reality.Through sameness, Poirot was soundly anchored in the kingdom of God. Jesus, when asked by His disciples what they must do to enter God’s kingdom, tells them to eliminate separateness in their lives. He says: “…make the two into one, make the inner like the outer, the upper like the lower, the male the female, the female the male.” In this teaching Jesus tells usthat viewing reality from a perspective of separateness is a barrier to entry into the kingdom. In the kingdom, everything is of the same essence. There are no differences. In other words, while a knife and a fork appear separate, in reality they are atoms that are organized differently. In their very essence, they are the same.The kingdom is reserved for those who dismiss separateness.

Note that prayer, fasting and charity are not mentioned as requirements to enter the kingdom. All that is required is a world view of sameness. Prayer, fasting and charity are very much a part of the kingdom; however, they are not qualities one forces on one’s self. They are qualities that manifest in you once the kingdom is entered.

It would be a different world if sameness could participate in the debate between political left vs right, religious preferences, women’s rights, racial matters, the transgender issues and the like.

Jesus was a smart man. And, so was Hercule Poirot.

What is Halloween really about?

The word is made up of the words, “hallow” and “ween.” Hallow means holy, sacred, greatly revered. Ween derives from the word between, i.e. “be it ween,” meaning the state of being that lies in the middle of two extremes. Thus, the word Halloween means a revered state of being that lies in the middle of two extremes.

At Halloween, we ask someone; “Who are you going to be?” So, a person decides to become a new personality by putting on a costume. While in costume the person occupies sacred ground, in-between who they want to be superimposed on who they actually are. In the definition of the word Halloween, they are in an in-between special state. We convince our children early on that the in-between ground is special. Costumed, they go door to door and receive a treat for being in-between who they are and who they want to be. If the person who answers the door shows disrespect for their “in-betweeness,” by not forking over a reward, they are subject to penalty. Thus, the saying, “trick or treat.”

I wonder, shouldn’t we all try to find hallowed ground once Halloween is over? The Bible opens with Genesis 1:1; “In the beginning…” Duality was introduced into the world when the beginning began. Two is found to be greater than one, higher is better than lower, more better than less, par is better than bogey, success is measured by the size of the home and the cost of the car, left is different than right and male is different than female. These are all conditions imposed on us when the beginning began.

But, what we call “in the beginning” is actually the end of the reality that existed before the beginning began. I call this forgotten place the kingdom of God. To me, life is about returning to the “pre-beginning reality” because that is where we find connection with God. It is a struggle because of societal demands that are based on duality. Peace and bliss is found by balancing who we have to be respecting our responsibilities in a dualistic world against who, deep down inside, we want to be; a resident in God’s non-dual kingdom.Those who can find balance are in hallowed ground.

Now that Halloween is over, “Who are you going to be?”

Rainbow body is unique to the Nyingma tradition, one of four Tibetan Buddhist schools of thought. Nyingma is a strain of the ancient Bön (sometimes Bönpo) religion, the indigenous religion of Tibet before the infusion of Buddhism in the eighth century. The practice of Dzogchen is a central feature of the Nyingma school and is known to produce rainbow body, something the other schools do not. Here we can connect the physical dissolution of the body with the mental state that is required to bring it about and, in the process, fundamentally alter the way we perceive reality.

Figure I

Dzogchen practitioners seek to realize true nature of mind. True nature of mind is not something one must acquire. It is latently present in every living human being. The problem is that mind’s true nature is blanketed and compromised with the human desire for a material existence, manifest in the seemingly unending quest for comfort, pleasure and security.True nature of mind is the subtle, intangible, ineffable underpinning behind all phenomena.If Figure I, for example, represents true nature of mind, smooth and uncorrupted, then Figure II is how it appears when thoughts of materiality arise. The lumps represent the elemental building materials that mother nature and man’s ingenuity and skill set use to make the physical stuff we call reality. The objective of Dzogchen is to get rid of the lumps, so to speak.

Figure II

Look at it this way. The creation story, Genesis 1, starts, “In the beginning, when God created…” True nature of mind is the primordial condition that existed before the “beginning” began. That is, there is a universal, undisturbed mind of which we are all apart. Material existence is an individualized aspect of that primordial mind, fashioned into people and things, causing the perception of separateness. The objective of Dzogchen for the individual is to return to the primordial state, i.e. the state that existed before the word “beginning,” and return to the primordial mind. So, when we speak of true nature of mind we are referencing an uncorrupted (primordial) universal mind (the true nature) and an individualized mind (the corrupted, individualized, version of the primordial mind.)

Recall the principle of duality of matter discussed in earlier blogs. All matter has a dual nature. It is either particle—a solid, pellet kind of thing. Or it is wave, a subtle, intangible, ineffable state of existence. Wave then is reflective of true nature of mind; the natural state of all sensory perceptions. In other words, all material phenomena, by nature, are empty of existence.But, materially ordered thoughts mess up the naturalness and add lumpiness and individualization.

The human agency called self is a major issue in Dzogchen. Self will be discussed in future blogs. For now, it is the part of being that causes us to think we are different than the person (or objects) standing next to us. In Dzogchen,the emptiness (wave or true nature of mind) that is the natural, connected oneness of everything cannot co-exist with the notion of self which stresses the differences in everything. Recognition of the inherent emptiness of everything (primordial mind—not lumpiness) and the elimination of self then are the major issues in Dzogchen.

The word “recognition” in the above paragraph means more than intellectual understanding. It means experiencing it through action which leads to detachment. Ascetic, meditative lifestyles that center around selflessness are the most prevalent traits of rainbow body adepts. The practitioners engage in deep, prolonged, meditation practices in to absorb the teaching of emptiness and the need for cessation of attention to self. The meditation typically takes place in remote hermitages, far removed from society.Practitioners, ever aware of the pitfalls of karma, live under a high moral imperative to avoid otherwise being blown off course by karmic influence.The practice is conducted under the watchful guidance of an accomplished Master who guides his student through the learning process.

The atom is the window to reality. And why not. Everything is made of atoms. Why would one ever expect reality to be different than the things it is made of? Understand the atom and you will, at first, be troubled. You will be troubled because it makes no sense; it can’t possibly be. Then, later, after pondering, you will be amazed. You will be amazed when you find that, that which can’t possibly be is, in fact, possible. Once you are amazed you will know. You will know something that can’t be unknown and will proceed confidently through life with a certain bulletproofness and a certain swagger because you know something that most do not know. You will realize that perception and understanding are two different things.

Comment on reality by Albert Einstein. “Beyond all the visible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable.”

As posted in earlier blogs, what causes the atom to revert to its natural state of nothingness (i.e. wave)? It happens when the human ceases to pay attention to it. What was the mindset of Jesus and the rainbow body adepts? They were totally selfless people; they ceased paying attention to themselves. They recognized that matter duality is the controlling principle of reality, that emptiness is primordial and lived accordingly in selfless lives? Cessation of attention to self? Cessation of attention to the atom? Both produce disembodiment; one on a human scale the other on an atomic scale. Could this be a coincidence? I don’t think so.

Everything is made of atoms. There are seven thousand trillion, trillion of them in the human body. No one has ever seen at atom with their eyes; its existence is inferred.  Words can’t describe it. The best one can do is come up with descriptions that stir the imagination. To that extent, an atom is like a poem. Atoms have strange properties that no one fully understands. Albert Einstein said it best: “Behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable.” Atoms, as we shall see, are just a thought.

Atoms have a dual nature. They are either particle; that is, they can be located with a GPS system. Or, they don’t exist. Scientists call the state of non-existence “wave.” Sadly, this strange property is a well-kept secret. While duality is widely accepted by science, it is treated as a novelty of the atomic world without relevance in the real world of everyday objects like pots and pans, fire hydrants, baseballs and such. Mainstream science avoids talking about duality because the explanation involves consciousness, something that conflicts with its otherwise rigid methods of inquiry. In other words, one can’t conduct a meaningful science experiment if the mental state of the experimenter affects the outcome. Religion avoids talking about it like the plague. The Bible doesn’t mention it and it turns Western theology on its head. For these reasons, the general population remains totally unaware of atom (indeed all matter since all matter is made of atoms) duality.

Matter duality does in fact exist in the world of everyday objects. The evidence is found in Jesus’s Resurrection and the Rainbow Body phenomenon. The two demonstrate duality in play on a human scale, providing the opportunity to verify the phenomenon outside the laboratory. It is here we find the answer to the question: “How does the atom know if it should be wave or particle?” It is also here that we must part company with mainstream science and religion. For reasons mentioned above, neither can contribute to the conversation.

As we shall see in future blogs, atoms are real (i.e. particle, not wave) whenever a human being intends for them to be real. With respect to your body, a field of organized atoms, you are the one doing the intending.