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… is very simular to what Buddha and Lao Tzu were teaching…
The Gospel of Thomas presented by The Nag Hammadi Library is considered the purest translation, that is without hidden agendas.
Someone pointed this out to me and it reads like one of the daoist tests at one point, one of the buddhist sutras- at the other.
In the religion class I just had the teacher was a Catholic priest but left since he didn’t like the limit of free thinking and no sex law. Something interesting he said was nothing was written down about Jesus teachngs until like 150 years after his death.
If this is true I think anything written about Jesus is highly suspect as being accurate.
I think what Jesus taught resembles what Buddha and Lao Tsu taught because they were siddhas – one who follows God. Of course, the nature of God and Dao are merely the same thing, in the Catholic Church God is seen as a man like Jesus because we were created in his image.
That’s the confusion I think. The God that is omnipresent, eternal, and formless refers to Dao, the God that created us was what I believe alien in origin. That’s another story, but all Jesus’s teachings reflected the nature of God or Dao in Chinese. They are all different paths to Dao or God, in the bible, it is only through Jesus that we can go to heaven, the residence of the heavenly Father.
Fajin
I think what Jesus taught resembles what Buddha and Lao Tsu taught because they were siddhas – one who follows God. Of course, the nature of God and Dao are merely the same thing, in the Catholic Church God is seen as a man like Jesus because we were created in his image.
That’s the confusion I think. The God that is omnipresent, eternal, and formless refers to Dao, the God that created us was what I believe alien in origin. That’s another story, but all Jesus’s teachings reflected the nature of God or Dao in Chinese. They are all different paths to Dao or God, in the bible, it is only through Jesus that we can go to heaven, the residence of the heavenly Father.
Fajin
in is only in the “way” jesus lived one can go to heaven, it is the way that brings one into harmony with heaven. So the way and jesus are one. In the same way as following the guidelines of Lao Zi/tao teh ching, his teachings is the way.
Or if you prefer the “qi field” jesus lived in, or the consciousness of Jesus, like krishna conscousness, its all the same.
bagua
Jesus said he is the Truth, the Light, and the Way, and he who follows Him will have everlasting life. This is to me what a Daoist is, one who follows Dao. Not one who goes about a specific criteria outlined by his master. It is just passed down to the student but it must be continually refined. It is all to reach this Krishna or Christ concsiousness. I will comment more on this when Michael goes about with round 7, I am curious to hear his perspective on immortality.
Fajin
He was trained in the egyptian mystery schools:
“as above so below,
as within, so without”22. Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, “These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father’s) kingdom.”
They said to him, “Then shall we enter the (Father’s) kingdom as babies?”
Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”
The Gospel of Thomas is quite interesting but is NOT considered to be w/o agenda by anyone who seriously studies this sort of thing. It’s been a few years since I looked into this but I believe it’s associated with a school outside the mainsteam that had a DEFINITE agenda — basically one of the “mystery” schools that were all about “hidden knowledge” for the “initiated”.
In contrast, most of christianity was — at least in the first few hundred years — all about INCLUSION and spreading the word. The Gospel of Thomas wasn’t included in the cannon precicely because it was viewed as being NOT ACCURATE, and for attributing words to Jesus to meet the authors’ own (made up) hidden knowledge agenda.
This doesn’t mean it’s not interesting, or similar to both eastern thought and mediteranean mystery cults in some of it’s imbedded philosophy.
By the way, the gospel considered to be the one that is the most w/o aganda is Mark. It’s considered the oldest, and the source (or a source) of both Mathew and Luke. It reads very blunt, without much embelishment, and kind of has the flavor of someone reporting about something that they can’t really get their head around. Not a bad read.
I’d also reccomend John and many of Paul’s letters, but for different reasons.
Finally, it’s all very nice to say “Jesus and Buddha taught the same thing” and “Jesus was just like Lao Tse”, but that is really a complete insult to everything those guys believed (at least according to most historical records).
Certainly you can pick and choose concepts that are similar among the three but Jesus was, w/o question, a practicing Jew. He believed, w/o question, in a personal god. That is, one — and only one — who was omnicient and omnipotent, and who had a definite personality and agenda. This being could be talked to, pursuaded and reasoned with.
This sort of god is central to Jesus’ beliefs and not only absent from but wholly inconsistent with the beliefs of Buddha and Lao Tse.
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