Where was Jesus before he was born? Over the years I have asked many of my Christian friends this question. If we want to look into this question deeply, we must explore the life and the death of Jesus in terms of manifestation. Jesus Christ was not no one before his birth. It was not in Bethlehem that Jesus came into being. The event of the nativity was only an occasion of manifestation; Jesus did exist before the moment of so-called birth or nativity. So we should not really call it a birth. It’s not really the nativity. It’s really only a manifestation. By looking with the insight of manifestation, we have an opportunity to see deeply into the person of Jesus. We can discover the truth of his immortality. We can discover the truth of our own nature of no birth and no death.
It is said by Christians that God sent his only son, Jesus, to earth. Since God was there, and Jesus is a part of God, and Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus was already there. The day of Christ’s birth, Christmas, is a manifestation day, not a nativity day. This day was only the time when the manifestation took place.
Jesus Christ is still manifesting himself in many thousands of ways. He is manifesting himself all around you. We need to be alert in order to recognize his manifestations. If you are not mindful or attentive, you will miss him because you will miss his manifestations. In the morning when you practice walking meditation, you may recognize his manifestation as a flower, as a drop of water, as a bird song or as a child playing in the grass. We have to be very careful not to miss these things.
In the teaching and understanding of the Buddha, we all share the nature of no birth and no death. Not only humans, but also animals, plants and minerals share the nature of no birth and no death. A leaf and a flower share the same ground of no birth and no death. There is a manifestation of a flower or a leaf or a cloud. During the winter we do not see any sunflowers or dragonflies, and we do not hear the cuckoo bird sing. It seems that they do not exist in winter, but we know that this idea is wrong. In the beginning of spring, all of these beings will manifest themselves again. They have just been somewhere else during the winter, in another manifestation, waiting until conditions are favorable in order to manifest themselves again. To qualify them as non-existing in winter is a wrong perception.
“Passed Away” Does Not Mean “Gone”
We must also ask the question, If Jesus was not born then how could he die? Though he was crucified, did he cease to exist? And did Jesus need to be resurrected?
Is it possible that his crucifixion was not a death? Is it possible it was a hiding? His true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. This is true not just of Jesus. In this sense a cloud is the same, a sunflower is the same, and you and I are the same. We are not born and we do not die. And since Jesus Christ is not affected by birth and death, we call him the Living Christ.
It is real and deep wisdom to learn to look at things in terms of manifestation. If someone who is very close to you has passed away and you define him or her as non-existing, you are mistaken. From nothing cannot be born something. From no one cannot be born someone. From something you cannot become nothing. From someone you cannot become no one. That is the truth. If the person who is close to you does not manifest in the form that you are used to seeing or perceiving, that does not mean that he is non-existing. It does not mean that he is no longer there. If you look deeply, you can touch his or her presence in other forms of manifestation.
One day I took the hand of a young father who had just buried his little son. I invited him to walk with me to discover his son in other forms.
His son had come to Plum Village when he was very young and learned to enjoy vegetarian food. He gave me his allowance and extra pocket money and asked me to buy a plum tree and plant it for him. He wanted to participate in the work of supporting hungry children in the world by planting a fruit tree in Plum Village. He knew that a plum tree gives a lot of fruit. He knew that we could sell the fruit and send the money to hungry children in the third world. He learned to do walking and sitting meditation, and he practiced the dharma very well. When he was sick I went to Bordeaux and visited him in the hospital. He said to me, “Grandpa monk, I will do walking meditation for you.” He got down from his bed, although he was quite weak, and walked beautifully for me. Shortly after my visit, he died. The day of his cremation, I sprinkled the consecrated water and chanted the Heart Sutra for him. A week later I took the hand of his father during a walking meditation and showed him many other manifestations of his little boy. Together we visited the plum tree I planted for his son, and as we sat in the afternoon light, we saw his little boy waving to us from every bud and branch.
Looking deeply into reality, you can discover many things. You can surmount so much suffering and counter many wrong perceptions. If we can abide peacefully in the ultimate dimension, we will not drown in the ocean of suffering, grief, fear and despair.
Re-Manifesting Ourselves
In the ultimate dimension, we have never been born and we will never die. In the historical dimension, we live in forgetfulness and we are rarely truly alive. We live like dead people.
In Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger, the main character, out of despair and rage, shoots and kills someone. He receives the death sentence for his crime. One day, while lying on the bed in his prison cell, he looks up at the square-shaped skylight over him. Suddenly he becomes aware of and deeply in touch with the blue sky above. He has never seen the sky in that way before. Camus called this a moment of consciousness, which is a moment of awareness or of mindfulness. For the condemned man, it was the first time in his life that he really came into touch with the sky and realized what a miracle it was.
From that moment on, he wants to maintain that kind of shining awareness. He believes this was the only kind of energy that can keep him alive. He has only three days left before his execution. He practices all alone in the prison to maintain that awareness, to keep his mindfulness alive. He vows to live every minute of the three days left to him fully and in mindfulness. On his final day a priest comes to visit him to perform the last rites. The condemned man does not want to waste his time of awareness in receiving the sacrament. At first he resists, but finally he opens the door for the priest to come in. When the priest departs, the prisoner remarks to himself that the priest lives like a dead person. He has seen no qualities of awareness or mindfulness in the priest.
If you live without awareness it is the same as being dead. You cannot call that kind of existence being alive. Many of us live like dead people because we live without awareness. We carry our dead bodies with us and circulate throughout the world. We are pulled into the past or we are pulled forward into the future or we are caught by our projects or our despair and anger. We are not truly alive; we are not inhabited by awareness of the miracle of being alive. Albert Camus never studied Buddhism, but in his novel he speaks about a core practice of Buddhism, the “moment de conscience,” the moment of deep awareness or awakening.
The practice of resurrection, or re-manifestation, is possible for all of us. Our practice is always to resurrect our selves, going back to the mind and the body with the help of mindful breathing and walking. This will produce our true presence in the here and the now. Then we can become alive again. We will be like dead people reborn. We are free from the past, we are free from the future, we are capable of establishing ourselves in the here and now. We are fully present in the here and now, and we are truly alive. That is the basic practice of Buddhism. Whether you eat or drink or breathe or walk or sit, you can practice resurrection. Always allow yourself to be established in the here and now—fully present, fully alive. That is the real practice of resurrection.
The Only Moment We Can Be Alive
I have arrived, I am home
In the here, In the now
I am solid, I am free
In the ultimate, I dwell
We cannot enjoy life if we spend a lot of time worrying about what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow. We worry about tomorrow because we are afraid. If we are afraid all the time, we cannot appreciate that we are alive and can be happy now.
In our daily life, we tend to believe that happiness is only possible in the future. We are always looking for better things, the right conditions to make us happy. We run away from what is happening right in front of us. We try to find things that make us feel more solid, more safe and secure. But we are afraid all the time of what the future will bring. We are afraid we’ll lose our jobs, our possessions, the people around us whom we love. So we wait for the magical moment—sometime in the future—when everything will be as we like, as we want it to be.
But life is available only in the present moment. The Buddha said, “It is possible to live happily in the present moment. It is the only moment we have.”
When you come back to the here and the now, you will recognize the many conditions of happiness that already exist. The practice of mindfulness is the practice of coming back to the here and the now to be in touch deeply with ourselves, with life. We have to train ourselves in order to do this. Even if we are very intelligent and we understand it right away, we still have to train ourselves to live this way. We have to train ourselves to recognize that the conditions for happiness are already here.
True Home
Our true home is in the here and the now. The past is already gone and the future is not yet here. “I have arrived, I am home, in the here, in the now.” This is our practice.
You can recite this gatha, or poem, during walking meditation or sitting meditation. You can practice this poem when you drive to your office. You may not have arrived at your office, but even while driving you have already arrived at your true home, the present moment. And when you arrive at your office, this is also your true home. When you are in your office, you are also in the here and the now.
Just practicing the first line of the poem “I have arrived, I am home” can make you very happy. Whether you are sitting, whether you are walking, whether you are watering the vegetables in the garden, or whether you are feeding your child, it is always possible to practice “I have arrived, I am home.” I am not running anymore; I have run all my life; now I am determined to stop and to really live my life.
What Are You Waiting For?
The French have a song called: “Qu’est-ce qu’on Attend Pour Etre Heureux?” (What are you waiting for to be happy?). When I practice breathing in and I say, “I have arrived,” that is an achievement. Now I am fully present, one hundred percent alive. The present moment has become my true home.
When I breathe out I say, “I am home.” If you do not feel you are home, you will continue to run. And you will continue to be afraid. But if you feel you are already home, then you do not need to run anymore. This is the secret of the practice. When we live in the present moment, it is possible to live in true happiness.
Appreciating Earth
For many years I have told this story. Suppose two astronauts go to the moon. When they arrive, they have an accident and find out that they have only enough oxygen for two days. There is no hope of someone coming from Earth in time to rescue them. They have only two days to live. If you asked them at that moment, “What is your deepest wish?” they would answer, “To be back home walking on the beautiful planet Earth.” That would be enough for them; they would not want anything else. They would not want to be the head of a large corporation, a big celebrity or president of the United States. They would not want anything except to be back on Earth—to be walking on Earth, enjoying every step, listening to the sounds of nature and holding the hand of their beloved while contemplating the moon.
We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon. We are on Earth now, and we need to enjoy walking on this precious, beautiful planet. The Zen master Lin Chi said, “The miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the Earth.” I cherish that teaching. I enjoy just walking, even in busy places like airports and railway stations. In walking like that, with each step caressing our Mother Earth, we can inspire other people to do the same. We can enjoy every minute of our lives.