What Jesus Christ and The Buddha Unearthed within Themselves
An astounding excerpt from Bernadette Roberts. A beautiful description of the ever-blissful, No-self nature.
The following is an excerpt from Bernadette Roberts, a former Carmelite nun and author of “The Experience of No-Self”.
Topics include — the divine realization unearthed by Christ and Buddha, the manner in which each references the given realization, and how individuals may unearth it themselves.
While reading, try to set aside the analytical and conceptual aspect of your mind. Instead, intuitively feel the frequency of her words.
Enjoy!
“Both Christ and Buddha saw the passage as one of suffering, and basically found identical ways out. What they discovered and revealed to us was that each of us has within himself or herself a “stillpoint” — comparable, perhaps to the eye of a cyclone, a spot or center of calm, imperturbability, and non-movement.
Buddha articulated this central eye in negative terms as “emptiness” or “void”, a refuge from the swirling cyclone of endless suffering. Christ articulated the eye in more positive terms as the “Kingdom of God” or the “Spirit within”, a place of refuge and salvation from a suffering self.
For both of them, the easy out was first to find that still point and then, by attaching ourselves to it, by becoming one with it, to find a stabilizing, balanced anchor in our lives. After that, the cyclone is gradually drawn into the eye, and the suffering self comes to an end. And when there is no longer a cyclone, there is also no longer an eye.
As a Christian, I saw the no-self experience as the true nature of Christ’s death; the movement beyond even his oneness with the divine, the movement from God to Godhead. Though not articulated in contemplative literature, Christ dramatized this experience on the cross for all ages to see and ponder. Where Buddha described the experience, Christ manifested it without words; yet they both make the same statement and reveal the same truth — that ultimately, eternal life is beyond self or consciousness. After one has seen it manifested or heard it said, the only thing left is to experience it.
It is far more than the discovery of life without a self. The immediate, inevitable result is an emergence into a new dimension of knowing and being that entails a difficult and prolonged readjustment. The reflexive mechanism of the mind -or whatever it is that allows us to be self-conscious — is cut off or permanently suspended so the mind is ever after held in a fixed now moment out of which it cannot move in its uninterrupted gaze upon the Unknown.
A point is reached where the self is so completely aligned with the still-point that it can no longer be moved, even in its first movements, from this center. It can no longer be tested by any force or trial, nor moved by the winds of change, and at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it. We are ready to move on, to go beyond the self, beyond even its most intimate union with God, and this is where we enter yet another new life- a life best categorized, perhaps, as a life without a self.
The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication. In some ways, all our experiences of God are beyond belief, because all conceptual beliefs pale when compared to the experiential reality. Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know this, for that in us which knows God, is God.”
Disclaimer: This specific article is NOT monetized. The entire body of this piece is an excerpt from Bernadette Roberts. The sole intent is an educational purpose of deepening one’s wisdom.
-My name is Tyler C. Newman,
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