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Main Index
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available. He can fly with God and the disciples can fly with him. Maybe they are not so expert at flying, but their readiness is there. And that is the only thing that is needed, the most essential. Maybe they cannot go to the very heights alone, but trusting the Master they can follow -- they can follow to any length, to any extreme they can go.
The Master flies with God, the disciple flies with the Master. The disciple cannot see God yet, but he can see the Master, and through the Master he can feel God. That's why the Master becomes almost a God to the disciple. He is. By and by, the closer the disciple comes to the Master, the more and more he will see that the Master is an emptiness or a mirror in which God is reflected. Sooner or later, he himself will become an emptiness, a mirror, and will be able, in his turn, to help others.
... HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING,
BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT:
FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
This is one of the most fundamental statements ever made. Many other Beatitudes will follow, but nothing to be compared with this. It is exceptional, it is extraordinary. And the beauty is 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs IS the kingdom of God.' In other Beatitudes he will say: '... they SHALL inherit the earth.' But in this he says '... for theirs IS the kingdom of God.'
The 'poor in spirit' means exactly what Buddha was saying to Sariputta: nothingness. Ego makes you feel that you are rich, that you are somebody, this and that. When the ego disappears and you are a nobody -- that's what Jesus means by 'poor in spirit'.
Buddha's word is more sophisticated, philosophical.
Therefore, O Sariputta,
Form is nothingness
Nothingness is form.
Jesus' words are simple, unsophisticated. And it is natural. Buddha was the son of a great king, Jesus is the son of a carpenter. For many years he was just working in his father's workshop bringing wood, cutting wood. He knows the ways of the simple people, the woodcutters, the carpenters.
He says: Blessed are the poor in spirit -- those who know that they are nothing, those who know that
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