John 3:31-36
"He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony."
Jesus’ testimony was trustworthy in that he was speaking from experience (Quakers love this!). Jesus speaks as one who has felt and known communion with God, as one who has experienced God within his very self. It is difficult to comprehend this if you have not yourself tasted this. If you have an inkling of awareness of this truth, then what Jesus proclaims rings very true. When you feel this Light within you, there is no limit to the potential grace unfolding.
"Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."
About Eternal Life – I have recently come upon a new understanding of this phrase. Thich Nhat Hahn helped me to understand this when he wrote about the historical and the ultimate dimensions. Historical dimension is about history, birth, death, things happening… but the Ultimate dimension is so much more – beyond time, beyond birth and death, a level of being that is of an ultimate realm. TNH explains this notion by describing water and waves. Waves go up and down, are big and small, begin and end. But this description cannot be applied to water, which the wave is. The wave must look deeply into her self in order to realize that she is, at the same time, water.
”Perfection is for the wave to exist in both realms simultaneously. When you touch deeply the historical dimension, you touch the ultimate dimension, and when you have touched the ultimate dimension, you have not left the historical dimension.”
I believe this gives us a clue about what eternal life is. Whoever comprehends and experiences the concept of God in human, of Spirit without limit, touches this ultimate dimension of living, in the historical realm as well. If we do not grasp this, we will continue to live only in the historical dimension, where suffering is a part of life.
3 comments:
Thanks for a Buddhist perspective on John. I have heard before that John and Buddhism have certain similarities -- but have never had the opportunity to check taht out.
Eternal life is now if our eyes are open. Blake was well aware of that when he wrote his memorable prayer:
Throughout Eternity I forgive you, you forgive me. He was referring to God, but of course it applies equally to all of us.
I read in some Christian writing somewhere about the intersection of temporal and eternal and one cannot understand the eternal -- it doesn't work like the temporal -- this strikes me as roughly similar to what Hanh said.
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