Prophet Without Honor

Back to the Basics

When I was coming to our Asheville cabin to help look after my wife’s autistic brother, I faced a sudden decision: what spiritual books do I bring (and not too many).  My car was already cluttered enough.  I decided on the old stand-bys: Shunryu Suzuki, Dainin Katagiri, and Chogyam Trungpa (whom I was already reading).  And I brought my Bible.  Reading is a major part of how I spend my evenings: I always do some devotional reading before I move on to my current book.  The other night, asking myself what I wanted to read next, I decided to go back to the most fundamental things I have: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and the Gospel of Mark.  Those books have both been foundational for me.  I’m feeling some need for a foundation.

When I first started meditating, after I’d been at it for about a year, I arranged a meeting with my teacher, Larry Rosenberg, and began the process of getting to know him (I’d been taking his classes for months).  He recommended an obscure Theravadan text that I found dry as dust when I began to read it.  I could see it was helpful, but it wasn’t inspiring me.  I took it back to the Center’s library, and on my way out saw a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.  On a whim I checked it out.

I honestly think that Shunryu Suzuki is one of the great religious thinkers of the 20^th century, and that his greatness is in his utter simplicity.  If he had been teaching in Japan, where he had had the usual training for a Japanese priest, and had steeped himself in Dogen, he might have been ordinary.  But when he came to the United States, and had to teach those truths to an American audience unfamiliar with them, also had to speak in a language which he knew only minimally, he had to simplify everything, and of course Dogen could use some simplifying.  What he teaches, in that very basic book, [1]is how to live a religious life.  What to actually do.  People like me who are way up in their heads need that kind of thing.  I spent years trying to figure out theory.  Just give me the practice.

The Gospel of Mark is somehow the same way.  No birth narratives, no extra stuff at all; by the tenth verse of the first chapter Jesus is having what I see as his enlightenment experience (“And just as he was coming up out of the water he saw the heavens torn apart and Spirit descending like a dove on him”) and heading to the wilderness for the forty days during which, I assume, he assimilated that experience and faced his demons.  He collects disciples and immediately starts healing and teaching, but mainly healing.  And by the sixth verse of Chapter Three, he has already come in conflict with the powers that be and more or less sealed his fate.  “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”

The thing about the Gospel of Mark is that so much of it is so weird that it therefore rings true.  How could somebody make that up?  By that third chapter Jesus was already overwhelmed by the crowds that were following him, trying to deal with that.  He went home, as if trying to get his bearings, but ran into the same problems there.  Those verses are startling, every time I read them.

“Then he went home, and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.  When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’  And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of demons he casts out demons.’”

His family went out to restrain him?  People were saying he had gone out of his mind?

That is where Jesus makes one of his most famous arguments.  How could he be Satan, when he is casting out Satan?  A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Then he makes a statement which when I was younger always terrified me, but in context here seems perfectly apt.

“’Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin,’ for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’”

In the context of what has been happening, what Jesus says seems not threatening, simply obvious.  He has been traveling around, speaking to people, healing; at one point, when he was confronted with a paralytic, he said, ‘Your sins have been forgiven.’  That upset the scribes, who believed only God could forgive sins.  Who did this man think he was, God?

Not exactly.  What he had discovered was not that he was God, but that he and God were one.  He says that explicitly elsewhere.  And he has seen (as the Buddha saw) not just that that is true for him, but that it’s true for everyone.  Sin is separation from God, and though people feel separate, and sometimes do things that would separate themselves from God, they don’t succeed.  God is with them always.  That’s the good news.

So he seems to be saying: the Holy Spirit has been operating here.  Can’t you see it?  I’ve healed people.  I’ve shown them they’re one with God, as everyone is, even you scribes, who argue with everything I do.  But if you can’t accept the simple work of the Holy Spirit, which is right before your eyes, there’s no hope for you.

[1] Its history is fascinating: it was a bunch of talks that he gave to a small group in Los Altos; it was put in its final form by a student of his named Trudy Dixon who seemed to understand his teachings so well, and appreciate him so much, because she was dying of cancer.  She died after completing the book, at the age of 30.