The Gospel of Thomas (Part 4)

Translated by Thomas O. Lambdin

16

Jesus said, “Men think, perhaps, that it is peace which I have come to cast upon the world. They do not know that it is dissension which I have come to cast upon the earth: fire, sword, and war. For there will be five in a house: three will be against two, and two against three, the father against the son, and the son against the father. And they will stand solitary.”

I am unsure about this one. Here I believe he alludes to the apocalypse or rending (revealing) of the veils. The aggressive attitude, if one dismisses any actual social rebellion, if we assume has a spiritual aspect, might pertain to the mastery of physical elements and therefore mastery of the senses.

Now this is very speculative and assumes strong concordance between the dhamma that Jesus preached and Buddhism, but I wonder if the ‘two’ here means duality or more specifically beings who live within duality. The ‘three’ might be the three unwholesome roots: attachment, aversion and ignorance. This matches with the last sentence which might suggest karmic processes.

17

Jesus said, “I shall give you what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has never occurred to the human mind.”

This, I think, pertains to the non-dual state where sensory phenomena and cognitive thought are transcended with a recognition of the dharmakāya or Buddha mind.

Here Jesus points to a place (of being) beyond that defined by our five senses and mind (as we experience it). The five senses and discriminative mind are the first six consciousnesses that are transformed into one of the Buddha bodies (nirmāṇakāya) upon full realisation. The seventh consciousness, where our sense of being arises, is emptied through the ceasing of objectification, which prevents the subjective nature of mind arising through perceptions. Once emptied, the ālaya or eighth consciousness has nothing to reflect (the reflection of phenomena ceases) and is transformed into the great mirror-like wisdom or dharmakāya.

Visual objects, sounds, even contact arises only as the subjective experience of the mind and are neither mind, nor actually existent. The phenomena is simply this: the mind’s experience, that arises as a reaction to objectifying reality. These arise like echoes due to karmic significance. We only see the cup because that has or had significance. And there never was a cup there, just a pattern of elemental phenomena that we strongly associate with the concept of cup.

Touching is therefore both a mental phenomena and is in truth more like a mirage. It is clearly apparent when certain conditions are met, but the moment these conditions cease, it ceases — like a moon reflected in water. All phenomena are like this, and if we could realise this, we would become liberated from becoming attached to them and saṃsāra.

18

The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us how our end will be.”

Jesus said, “Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death.”

Beings trapped in saṃsāra have no beginning nor end. Until one has the necessary realisations to break the chain of dependent arising, one is condemned to cycle endlessly through the six types of being.

The first step that breaks one away from conditionality is faith. Now it might not look like faith, it might look very much like doubt, but this is kind of an unconscious faith. One might learn to have doubt in the reality one is presented for a variety of reasons. This doubt in one’s current paradigm is what develops into the Faculty of I will Know the Unknown, which is a collection of mental factors that manifest in spiritual restlessness.

Our prisons are conceptual – we lose ourselves as an idea within a framework based on the duality of our senses. One cannot think one’s way out, as much as one cannot use a prison to break out of a prison. Until we find a way of breaking out of this conceptual prison we are bound by fate and tied to saṃsāra.

With the realisation of the first stage of enlightenment, the sotāpanna or stream-enterer, one ‘takes one’s place in the beginning’, for one now has a straight path out of saṃsāra and will achieve full liberation in no more than seven (earthly or desire realm) existences – ‘he will know the end and not experience death’.

19

Jesus said, “Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being. If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will minister to you. For there are five trees for you in Paradise which remain undisturbed summer and winter and whose leaves do not fall. Whoever becomes acquainted with them will not experience death.”

I suspect, but am not sure as the word play is unusual.

The first lines are suggesting those who (deliberately) came into being, i.e., followed the noble path before becoming fully enlightened and exist as thus.

The five trees might be either the five senses, or more accurately the five skandhas which are transmuted and then transmuted further with arahantship and buddhahood. The reference to summer and winter is more a note towards the cycles of becoming that include saṃsāra, which, once liberated from, dispels any cyclical response of the enlightened mind, which now rests in timeless awareness. Such liberation transcends even the duality of existence/non-existence represented in timeless awareness.

20

The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.”

He said to them, “It is like a mustard seed. It is the smallest of all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it produces a great plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”

The kingdom of heaven, I am assuming here means nibbāna, not heavenly existence. Here, Jesus outlines the necessity for preliminary work, and the concept of a progressive experience that starts off tiny and eventually blossoms into a large structure that provides shelter for living beings. I am not sure if ‘birds of the sky’ means the literal sheltering of living beings or more specifically points towards thoughts, which are sometimes symbolically represented by birds.