Letter #15: Don't Pluck Your Eye Out!

It hurts. And it's disgusting.

Where was I? Oh yeah. How can we learn to live life so that it speaks God’s nature to us?

Throughout Christian history, great saints have withdrawn from the world to avoid its temptations. The first monk, Anthony of Egypt, earned his sainthood in the 4^th century by retreating into desert solitude. He denied himself the pleasures of existence and resisted seductive visions of naked women — a scene immortalized by countless painters who seized on the pious excuse to paint naked women! This kind of self-denial became one of the central models of Christian holiness.

But Jesus himself had a more expansive vision. Like Buddha, he did not reject life’s pleasures. The Son of Man came eating and drinking and even turned water into wine. But like Buddha, Jesus did repudiate covetous attachment. If you look at a woman and crave or covet her (that’s what the original Greek says), then you have committed adultery in your heart. If you can’t simply enjoy female beauty, if — if — your eye offends you, then — only then — pluck it out.

Unlike Buddha, though, Jesus does not detach from the world to rise above suffering. He calls us to take up the cross of suffering and live life in abundance — through him, who is the way to that life and the truth of it and the life itself.

Zen meditation is a way to Buddhist enlightenment. What is the Christian way to the Kingdom?

When you think of Christianity as The Way, many of Christ’s edicts become clearer. Love — of God and God’s image in your neighbor — is both the path and the destination. The moral shalt-nots — don’t commit murder, adultery and so on — are not mere warnings to avoid naughtiness so you don’t get punished by Sky Daddy. They are disciplines that teach your heart the reality of others, which is the beginning of love. The same is true of charity. The poor you have always with you, but when you practice letting go of evanescent riches, you learn to recognize the humanity of even the lowliest.

So it is too with the least popular of Christ’s commandments: Judge not. Condemning the sins of others won’t advance you a single step toward the Kingdom. Stop — and you’ll be forced to work on the plank in your own eye until you can see God’s love shining on the just and unjust alike.

And, of course, communion. It is practice in experiencing the material world as the body of its creator.

The Way is a way of seeing — seeing what God sees until you love as God loves. “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” [John 15:11]

Through moral discipline, charity of hand and mind, and ritual, Christ is offering a path to love, joy, and life in abundance.

Namaste.