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Jesus’ Teachings -  Swami Ranganathananda

Trials and tribulations began to confront Jesus. Various attempts were made by the priests to entangle him in some remark of treason or blasphemy. But his intelligence and ready wit baffled their attempts. A group of priests brought a Roman coin and asked him whether it was lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not; on his asking whose image and superscription the coin bore, the priests answered that it was of Caesar. Then he answered, to the amazement of the clever priests: ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things are God’s’ – (Matthew, XXII. 21).

Then a lawyer came forward to entangle him with a clever question, as to what constituted the great commandment in the law; and the world got in the answer of Jesus a compressed statement of spirituality and social ethics.

‘Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’ (ibid. XXII. 37-40).

This great enunciation gave rise to a very practical question: Who is my neighbor? In answering it, through the famous parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus contrasted the universality of the spirit and temper of spiritual ethics with the narrow and parochial temper of creedal and sectarian morals.

‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves; they stripped him of his raiment, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. A priest and a Levite chanced to pass that way; seeing the helpless man, they, instead of going to his help, went away by the opposite side of the road.

‘But a certain Samaritan,’ Jesus continued, ‘as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him. And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee’ (Luke, X. 33-35).

After narrating this, Jesus asked his questioner as to who really behaved as neighbor to the one that fell among the thieves. ‘And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise’ (ibid. X.37).

In between the harassments of the priests, Jesus did a lot of teaching: First to the simple masses and then to his close disciples. To the former he spoke in parables, making thereby difficult subjects easy to comprehend. Each one of these parables, like the parables of the good Samaritan, elucidates one or other aspect of his central theme, the life of godliness. Some of them, like the parable of the Ten Virgins, are full of mystical significance. He spoke to the disciples about the service of man, the poor, the sick, the homeless, the naked, and the forlorn, in the spirit of the worship of God.

‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’ (Matthew, XXV. 40).

He charged the disciples to go forth and preach the gospel among the people, and he prescribed a way of life and behavior for the preachers, which breathes the spirit of renunciation, dependence on God, non-possession, peacefulness, and humility, echoing the exhortation of Buddha to his disciples. It is a tragedy of history that subsequent Christian preachers, unlike the Buddhists, have largely strayed from the strait and narrow path shown by their great Master.

To his chosen disciples, Jesus gave his spiritual teachings directly and without the aid of parables. He revealed to them, a few days before his death, his true personality as the Christ, the anointed One, and charged them not to tell it to anyone else till the day of resurrection: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father….Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself: But the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works’ (John, XIV. 6-10).

He asked all those who would choose to follow him to be prepared to deny themselves and take up their crosses; it was not a cosy and comfortable religion that he offered but a heroic path of adventure, a life of total renunciation in the love of God: ‘For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’ (Matthew, XVI. 25-26).

The Sermon on the Mount

The ‘Sermon on the Mount’ expounds moral and spiritual ideas which are universal; they do not breathe the air of jewish exclusiveness. They are the GCM of the inner life of spirit, and will not sound strange to any spiritual seeker nourished on the ideas of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita. But it sounded strange to the ears of those who listened. There was newness in them, and there was a ring of authority in their utterance. It was not an authority deriving from any sacerdotal office; it took its force from inner realization. The New Testament has put it pithily: ‘And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at this doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes’ (Matthew, VII. 28-29).

The Sermon was a tremendous departure from the accepted ideas of the time; it was a mighty attempt to release the life of the spirit from the shackles of tribal morality and dogmatic religion. Old familiar words were used, but they were given new meanings; old moral codes were invoked, but they received an inward content and direction; old familiar hopes were mentioned, only to be filled with new spiritual meanings. And all these innovations had been prefaced with a ‘but I say unto you,’ conveying a sense of authority. It was no wonder that the people were astonished at his doctrine.

There is a continuity from John to Jesus. John preached baptism unto repentance with a view to preparing man for the kingdom of heaven; and Jesus took up this idea, in spite of its background of Jewish dogma, for, as he expressed it, he came not to destroy, but to fulfill the law and the prophets. Repentance is based on the Jewish dogma of original sin; but whatever be the dogma behind it, it has its significance for spiritual life, in so far as it initiates the inner cleansing process; it leads to humility and receptivity of heart. As a moral act, it steels the mind against further evil doings. Without this resolve, no spiritual life is possible. But repentance is not everything; there are further steps to be taken before we can achieve the kingdom of heaven which, though near at hand, is yet far. It was these further steps that Jesus elucidated in his impressive Sermon.

Jesus opened the Sermon with a reference to repentance and its fruit: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: For their is the kingdom of heaven’ (ibid. V.3).

But he struck a new note thereafter; that not only the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but that it is within us—not outside; and that we can realize it. This was a revolutionary conception that spiritual realization was to be had there and then, in this very life, not after death. And so he added: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God’ (ibid. V.8)

Thus purity of heart is the one condition for spiritual realization. It follows that everything else—acts of piety, morality, and social service—is but the means to attain this purity. This was entirely new language for his listeners—that we can realize God, become intimate with Him, and be blessed in this very life. And here we have his unique message, the message of a spiritual religion of inward realization. We are reminded of the ringing proclamation of the Upanishads: ‘Atma va are drastavyah’—The self, O dear, must be realized (Brhadaranyaka-Upanisad, II. 4.5); ‘Tam akratuh pasyati vita-soko dhatuprasadat mahimanam atmanah’—He who is humble and pure realizes the glory of the Atman; and becomes free from grief (Katha-Upanisad, II. 20)

The farthest that Judaism had gone till then was to make man hear the voice of God; the idea of seeing God was thus an innovation which, with all its corollaries, was the main point of departure from the prevailing tribal god and faith. These corollaries are set forth in the succeeding passages dealing with the inwardness of morals, rituals, and pietistic acts, indicating the clear departure from the old, in the emphatic words in refrain: ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time… But I say unto you.’ The moral and ethical demands of a spiritual religion are far more exacting than those of a socio-political faith; hence he said: ‘That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew, V. 20).

The departure became complete when he exhorted his listeners to strive for perfection: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect’ (ibid. V. 48).

This exhortation sounds strangely Vedantic in significance. He then wound up the Sermon with a ringing statement on the need for the practice of the teaching; and not merely the hearing of it or believing in its truth, and illustrated the nature of wisdom and folly:

‘Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: For it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: And great was the fall of it’ (ibid. VII. 24-27).

How akin this sounds to the exhortation of an earlier teacher, Sri Krishna, in our own country: ‘Those devotees who practice, in a converging life endeavor, this teaching of mine which fulfils all the righteousness and leads to immortality, endowed with faith and a godward passion, are extremely dear to me’ (Bhagavad-Gita, XII. 20).

Here is refreshing statement of the scope and goal of religion. The emphasis is on sadhana, the practice of religion, with a view to attaining anubhava, realization. ‘Religion is realization; it is being and becoming’, in the words of Swami Vivekananda; it is character. It is not a cosy belief, but an adventure, something that sets the soul on fire, the carrying, as Jesus would say, of one’s cross by oneself and not by proxy. It reminds us of Buddha’s last words addressed to his dear disciple, Ananda: ‘Be a lamp unto yourself, O Ananda; depend not on any external refuge; work out your emancipation with diligence.’

Perfection is a complete transformation of character through the realization of the kingdom of heaven which is within. It is the fruit of lived religion. This conception frees religion from all elements that are magical and misty, materialistic and primitive. The strength that comes to a life through the realization of the ever-present Atman within is something palpable. It is the rock-bottom of experience, which ensures steadiness of wisdom and character; it is the sthitaprajna, the life of steady wisdom, of the Bhagavad-Gita.

© `The Christ We Adore’ by Swami Ranganathananda, published (1998) by Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Champawat, Himalayas. Reprinted with permission.

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