We Are the Way

The Gospels tell us that Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the father except through me.” (John 14:6.) Christians interpret this as meaning that Jesus is the only path to salvation and all other religions are not paths to salvation. The Christians interpret the passage as they do because they believe Jesus is God or the Son of God, and is therefore speaking as God – they believe the “I” he mentions is the Diety. I think the Christians are wrong. I don’t think he was God and I don’t think he really said that.

I think what he actually said was only: “I am the way.” I think he was speaking not as God but as the Son of Man, a term by which he often referred to himself. I interpret 'Son of Man' as meaning ‘every-(wo)man.’ In other words, he was not speaking as God but as one of us.

The way he refers to is the Dao, as in Dao-De-Ching. That Dao. THE WAY. (Dao: Chinese: “way,” “road,” “path,” “course,” “speech,” or “method”.) I think he was telling us that he is the way, you are the way, she is the way, everything and everyone is the way, etc. The Way is what exists and what changes. The people reading this statement long after he was gone and when he was already being worshiped as a God didn’t comprehend his meaning so they added, “…Nobody comes to the father except through me.” They were wrong to add this. I do, however, believe he could have said, “…the truth and the life.” But he meant that the Way was the truth and the life and he also was insofar as he was part of the Way as are we all. We are all the Way, the Truth and the Life. That’s what he was telling us.

The full quote (John 12:4-6) is: “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

See what I mean about the Way? Thomas wasn’t asking about God. He was asking about the Way. Jesus implies that we all already know the way. This is because we are all the way.That was his message.

May the Way be with you.

I was reading the latest issue of Buddhadharma and a phrase jumped out at me. It was part of an article on enlightenment. The phrase was “personal enlightenment.” I reacted very strongly to this phrase. As I understand it, “personal enlightenment” is impossible. If enlightenment is anything it is the realization that the “person” does not exist, that personhood is a dream. There is no “person” to achieve enlightenment. I thought Buddhists knew this. I read it years ago in the phrase, “Nothing to attain and no one to attain it.” I don’t know where that quote is from.

I think the problem is that we in the West use the word “enlightenment” differently that people in the East, where Buddhism comes from. Our European period of Enlightenment was the dawn of a new era of rational thinking as opposed to religious or superstitious thinking. Thus, for us, enlightenment is related to thinking, and thinking is something each person does. So the idea of “personal enlightenment” is a result of Western misunderstanding.

I prefer Karen Armstrong’s assertion that enlightenment is is an awakening into compassion. It’s an unshakeable affirmation (a transformation) of the end of ‘me’ and the dawn of ‘we’ so strong that you cannot go back to ‘me’ ever again. So it cannot be personal. It transcends the personal and becomes universal.

The one thing I have noticed about fervently "religious" people is that they often do not question their own beliefs or fairly examine the beliefs of others. One function that religious belief has in human psychology is that it provides a framework for what is called 'black-white' thinking. Something is Right or Wrong and there is no middle ground, no grey area. Many fervently religious people I have encountered have mostly been like this. They seem to need a way to judge the world and accept or reject things (or people) without actually looking at them. Years ago I read Joseph Campbell's series called Masks of God and I have used that phrase (Masks of God) to explain the diversity of human experiences of the Divine (or whatever you want to call it.) We all don't all see the same God in the same way. But that's OK.

The Buddha and other teachers often say that the real issue is not Existence or Non-Existence. I didn’t understand this until recently. The way I understood it, the real issue in Buddhism was the Self. I saw the Self as a thing and an obstacle to enlightenment and freedom. So the real effort was to be directed toward ending the Self. I actually thought the Self had to die or be killed in order to achieve some sort of understanding or Cosmic Wisdom. Or something. Of course, this is absurd, but I assumed the absurdity was part of the problem as well as part of the solution; i.e.' when I became 'enlightened' I would 'get it'!

Now I see that each of us is dominated by the ego. This was what I read 20 years ago in Buddhist books and really didn't accept at the time. It seemed too Western, too psychological. The fact is this ego is self-centered, selfish and isolated. But it does not really ‘exist’. It’s not a thing. The ego is a point-of-view or mechanism. Thus what the teachers said was correct – it’s not about existence or non-existence. It’s about one’s point-of view. We can have a self-centered and selfish point-of-view or a compassionate and other-centered point of view. This is not something extraordinary which can be accomplished only be superior or enlightened human beings. It's something anybody can accomplish just by making the effort.