Before we can share the light, we have to find it. When we embody it, we can’t help sharing it, because it has no limits. In these verses, Jesus’ instinctive generosity makes itself deeply felt.
“No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
No one lights a lamp: Matthew’s version of a metaphor that I have already included in Mark’s version. Like every spiritual teacher, Jesus must have repeated his essential teachings many times, emphasizing different aspects on different occasions. (When someone once complained to my old Zen Master, “You always say the same thing,” he said, “That’s because you never hear it.”)
The lamp this metaphor points to isn’t a lamp we can light. It is already lit; it was shining before the universe began.
Of this light, which our Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture calls God and Buddhists call Mind, the ninth-century Zen Master Huang-po said:
This pure Mind, which is the source of all things, shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. But most people are not aware of it, and think that Mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they don’t perceive the radiance of the source. If they could eliminate all conceptual thinking, this source would appear, like the sun rising through the empty sky and illuminating the whole universe.
it gives light to everyone in the house: Even if they can’t see it; even if they are in the attic or the cellar.
let your light shine before men: Ramana Maharshi said:
If the mind is happy, not only the body but the whole world will be happy. So one must find out how to become happy oneself. Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.
source: Matthew 5:15f.