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of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, he struck somethingunderground. M oments later he unearthed a sealedearthenware jar, six feet high, and inside were thirteenancient codices, bound in tooled gazelle leather. Thecollection included an astonishing number of ancientChristian gospels and other writings, includingdialogues, conversation, and visions attributed to Jesusand His disciples. One of these was the Gospel ofThomas, which Helmut Koester, Professor of NewTestament at Harvard University, dates to c.50 C.E.—some twenty years before any of the New Testamentgospels were written. Others were the Gospel of Philip,the Dialogue of the Savior, the Secret Book of John, andthe Apocalypse of Paul—some fifty-two texts in all.The books apparently were salvaged from the library ofthe earliest Christian monastery in Egypt after thearchbishop of Alexandria ordered the monks to destroyall books he deemed “heretical” —that is, Christiansources not endorsed by the clerical authorities.Voyaging from these gnostic Christian texts to thework of Thich Nhat Hanh, I feel I am in familiarterritory. During the formative era of the Christianmovement (50-150 C.E.), many Christians spoke from aperspective similar to his, seeing Jesus as one throughwhom the divine was manifested, and through whose

example and teaching they could hope for similarenlightenment. But the majority of Christian churchleaders rejected such teaching not only for the“blasphemy” of inviting each disciple to identify withChrist Himself but also for teaching what could proveconfusing or destabilizing to many church members.By investigating these long-hidden sources, wediscover that the early Christian movement containedenormously more diversity of viewpoint and practicethan most Christians later acknowledged or evenimagined. One need only listen to the words of theGospel of Thomas to hear how it resonates with theBuddhist tradition:Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you,‘Look, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birdsof the sky will get there first. If they say, ‘It is inthe sea,’ then the fish will get there first. Rather,the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside ofyou. When you come to know yourselves, thenyou will become known, and you will realize that itis you who are the children of the living Father.But if you will not know yourselves, then youdwell in poverty, and it is you who are thatpoverty” (emphasis added).

According to the Gospel of Thomas, that “livingJesus” indeed offers access to God, but instead ofclaiming to be the “only begotten Son of God” (as theNew Testament Gospel of John will later insist), Hereveals that “it is you who are the children of God.”This gospel is attributed to “Thomas the twin.” Thename Thomas in Hebrew literature means “twin.” DidJesus, then, have a twin brother? I suggest instead thatthe attribution, meant symbolically, directs the reader todiscover that he—or she—is, indeed, at a deep level,Jesus’ “twin”—and fellow child of God. As the gospelcloses, Jesus goes on to speak directly to Thomas:Whosoever drinks from my mouth will become as Iam; and I will become that person; and themysteries will be revealed to him (emphasisadded).According to The Book of Thomas the Contender,another text from the same discovery, Jesus speaks toThomas—that is, to the reader—in these words:

Since it has been said that you are my twin and mytrue companion, it is not fitting for you to beignorant of yourself. So while you accompany me,although you do not yet understand it, you havealready come to know, and you will be called “theone who knows himself.” For whoever has notknown himself knows nothing, but he who hasknown himself has already understood the depthof all things.While the New Testament gospels speak of Jesus asthe only door to salvation, the only path (“I am theway . no one come to the Father except through me”[John 14:6]), another of these texts, The Teaching ofSilvanus, speaks quite differently:Knock upon yourself as upon a door, and walkupon yourself as on a straight road. For if youwalk on that path, you cannot go astray; and whenyou knock on that door, what you open foryourself shall open.

These ancient gospels tend to point beyond faithtoward a path of solitary searching to findunderstanding, or gnosis. The Gospel of Thomasacknowledges that such exploration is simultaneouslyfrustrating, troubling, and surprising:Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until hefinds. When he finds, he shall be troubled. When hebecomes troubled, he will be amazed, and shallcome to transcend all things.This gospel warns, too, that what is at stake is one’sdeepest well-being, or else one’s destruction:Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you,what you bring forth will save you. If you do notbring forth what is within you, what you do notbring forth will destroy you.”Although church leaders also charged gnosticChristians with spiritual elitism and with solipsism, thesources discovered at the Nag Hammadi, like Buddhist

sources, direct the disciple toward loving compassionfor others: According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesussays, “Love your brother as the apple of your eye.”The gnostic Gospel of Truth exhorts the hearer toSpeak of the truth with those who search for it,and of knowledge to those who have committed asin in their error. M ake firm the foot of those whohave stumbled; give rest to those who are weary,and raise up those who wish to rise, and awakenthose who sleep.As I read Living Buddha, Living Christ, I wondered:Does Thich Nhat Hanh know the Gospel of Thomasand other gnostic sources or did he choose the term“living Christ”—a term more characteristic of gnostictexts than of the New Testament—by a kind ofspiritual intuition? In either case, those who are morefamiliar than I am with Buddhist tradition, andespecially those more experienced in meditation andcontemplation, will surely notice in these ancientChristian sources many more resonances than I canmention here. Comparative study of Buddhism andearly (gnostic) Christianity has barely begun. The

publication of Living Buddha, Living Christ presents anopportune moment to deepen our understanding.—Elaine PagelsPrinceton, New JerseyJune 23, 1995

ONEBE STILL AND KNOW

RELIGIOUS LIFE IS LIFETwenty years ago at a conference I attended oftheologians and professors of religion, an IndianChristian friend told the assembly, “We are going tohear about the beauties of several traditions, but thatdoes not mean that we are going to make a fruit salad.”When it came my turn to speak, I said, “Fruit salad canbe delicious! I have shared the Eucharist with FatherDaniel Berrigan, and our worship became possiblebecause of the sufferings we Vietnamese and Americansshared over many years.” Some of the Buddhistspresent were shocked to hear I had participated in theEucharist, and many Christians seemed truly horrified.To me, religious life is life. I do not see any reason tospend one’s whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. Wehuman beings can be nourished by the best values ofmany traditions.Professor Hans Küng has said, “Until there is peacebetween religions, there can be no peace in the world.”People kill and are killed because they cling too tightlyto their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe

that ours is the only faith that contains the truth,violence and suffering will surely be the result. Thesecond precept of the Order of Interbeing, foundedwithin the Zen Buddhist tradition during the war inVietnam, is about letting go of views: “Do not think theknowledge you presently possess is changeless,absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and boundto present views. Learn and practice nonattachmentfrom views in order to be open to receive others’viewpoints.” To me, this is the most essential practiceof peace.

DIALOGUE: THE KEY TO PEACEI have been engaged in peace work for more thanthirty years: combating poverty, ignorance, and disease;going to sea to help rescue boat people; evacuating thewounded from combat zones; resettling refugees;helping hungry children and orphans; opposing wars;producing and disseminating peace literature; trainingpeace and social workers; and rebuilding villagesdestroyed by bombs. It is because of the practice ofmeditation—stopping, calming, and looking deeply—that I have been able to nourish and protect the sourcesof my spiritual energy and continue this work.During the war in Vietnam, I saw communists andanti-communists killing and destroying each otherbecause each side believed they had a monopoly on thetruth. M any Christians and Buddhists in our countrywere fighting each other instead of working together tostop the war. I wrote a booklet entitled “Dialogue: TheKey to Peace,” but my voice was drowned out by thebombs, mortars, and shouting. An American soldier

standing on the back of a military truck spit on the headof my disciple, a young monk named Nhât Tri. Thesoldier must have thought we Buddhists wereundermining America’s war effort or that my disciplewas a communist in disguise. Brother Nhat Tri becameso angry that he thought about leaving the monasteryand joining the National Liberation Front. Because I hadbeen practicing meditation, I was able to see thateveryone in the war was a victim, that the Americansoldiers who had been sent to Vietnam to bomb, kill,and destroy were also being killed and maimed. I urgedBrother Nhât Tri to remember that the G.I. was also awar victim, the victim of a wrong view and a wrongpolicy, and I urged him to continue his work for peaceas a monk. He was able to see that, and he became oneof the most active workers in the Buddhist School ofYouth for Social Service.In 1966, I came to North America to try to helpdissolve some of the wrong views that were at the rootof the war. I met with hundreds of individuals and smallgroups, and also with members of Congress andSecretary of Defense Robert M cNamara. The visit wasorganized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, aninterfaith peace organization, and many activeChristians helped me in these efforts, among them Dr.

M artin Luther King, Jr., Father Thomas M erton, andFather Daniel Berrigan. These were, in fact, theAmericans I found it easiest to communicate with.

TOUCHING JESUSBut my path to discovering Jesus as one of myspiritual ancestors was not easy. The colonization ofmy country by the French was deeply connected withthe efforts of the Christian missionaries. In the lateseventeenth century, Alexandre de Rhodes, one of themost active of the missionaries, wrote in hisCathechismus in Octo Dies Divisus: “Just as when acursed, barren tree is cut down, the branches that arestill on it will also fall, when the sinister and deceitfulSakya [Buddha] is defeated, the idolatrous fabricationsthat proceed from him will also be destroyed.” Later, inthe late 1950s and early 1960s, Catholic ArchbishopNgo Dinh Thuc, in his efforts to evangelize Vietnam,leaned heavily on the political power of his brother,President Ngo Dinh Diêm. President Diêm’s 1963decree prohibiting the celebration of Wesak, the mostimportant Buddhist national holiday, was the straw thatbroke our back. Tens of thousands of lay and ordainedBuddhists demonstrated for religious freedom, leadingto a coup d’état and the overthrow of the Diêm regime.In such an atmosphere of discrimination and injustice

against non-Christians, it was difficult for me todiscover the beauty of Jesus’ teachings.It was only later, through friendships with Christianmen and women who truly embody the spirit ofunderstanding and compassion of Jesus, that I havebeen able to touch the depths of Christianity. Themoment I met M artin Luther King, Jr., I knewI was in the presence of a holy person. Not just hisgood work but his very being was a source of greatinspiration for me. And others, less well known, havemade me feel that Lord Jesus is still here with us. HebeKohlbrugge, a beautiful Dutch woman who saved thelives of thousands of Jews during World War II, was socommitted to helping Vietnamese orphans and otherdesperately needy children during the war that when hergovernment refused to support this work, she gavethem back her World War II medals. Reverend HeinzKloppenburg, General Secretary of the GermanFellowship of Reconciliation, also supported ourhumanitarian work. He was so kind and so open, I onlyneeded to say a few words to him and he understoodeverything right away. Through men and women likethese, I feel I have been able to touch Jesus Christ and

His tradition.

REAL COMMUNICATIONOn the altar in my hermitage in France are images ofBuddha and Jesus, and every time I light incense, Itouch both of them as my spiritual ancestors. I can dothis because of contact with these real Christians. Whenyou touch someone who authentically represents atradition, you not only touch his or her tradition, youalso touch your own. This quality is essential fordialogue. When participants are willing to learn fromeach other, dialogue takes place just by their beingtogether. When those who represent a spiritual traditionembody the essence of their tradition, just the way theywalk, sit, and smile speaks volumes about the tradition.In fact, sometimes it is more difficult to have adialogue with people in our own tradition than withthose of another tradition. M ost of us have sufferedfrom feeling misunderstood or even betrayed by thoseof our own tradition. But if brothers and sisters in thesame tradition cannot understand and communicate witheach other, how can they communicate with thoseoutside their tradition? For dialogue to be fruitful, we

need to live deeply our own tradition and, at the sametime, listen deeply to others. Through the practice ofdeep looking and deep listening, we become free, able tosee the beauty and values in our own and others’tradition.M any years ago, I recognized that by understandingyour own tradition better, you also develop increasedrespect, consideration, and understanding for others. Ihad had a naive thought, a kind of prejudice inheritedfrom my ancestors. I thought that because Buddha hadtaught for forty-five years and Jesus for only two orthree, that Buddha must have been a more accomplishedteacher. I had that thought because I did not know theteachings of the Buddha well enough.One day when he was thirty-eight years old, theBuddha met King Prasenajit of Kosala. The king said,“Reverend, you are young, yet people call you ‘TheHighest Enlightened One.’ There are holy men in ourcountry eighty and ninety years old, venerated by manypeople, yet none of them claims to be the highestenlightened one. How can a young man like you makesuch a claim?”

The Buddha replied, “Your majesty, enlightenment isnot a matter of age. A tiny spark of fire has the powerto burn down a whole city. A small poisonous snakecan kill you in an instant. A baby prince has thepotentiality of a king. And a young monk has thecapacity of becoming enlightened and changing theworld.” We can learn about others by studyingourselves.For any dialogue between traditions to be deep, wehave to be aware of both the positive and negativeaspects of our own tradition. In Buddhism, for example,there have been many schisms. One hundred years afterthe passing of the Buddha, the community of hisdisciples divided into two parts; within four hundredyears, there were twenty schools; and since then, therehave been many more. Fortunately, these separationshave, for the most part, not been too painful, and thegarden of Buddhism is now filled with many beautifulflowers, each school representing an attempt to keepthe Buddha’s teachings alive under new circumstances.Living organisms need to change and grow. Byrespecting the differences within our own church andseeing how these differences enrich one another, we aremore open to appreciating the richness and diversity ofother traditions.

In a true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.We have to appreciate that truth can be received fromoutside of—not only within—our own group. If we donot believe that, entering into dialogue would be a wasteof time. If we think we monopolize the truth and westill organize a dialogue, it is not authentic. We have tobelieve that by engaging in dialogue with the otherperson, we have the possibility of making a changewithin ourselves, that we can become deeper. Dialogueis not a means for assimilation in the sense that one sideexpands and incorporates the other into its “self.”Dialogue must be practiced on the basis of “non-self.”We have to allow what is good, beautiful, andmeaningful in the other’s tradition to transform us.But the most basic principle of interfaith dialogue isthat the dialogue must begin, first of all, within oneself.Our capacity to make peace with another person andwith the world depends very much on our capacity tomake peace with ourselves. If we are at war with ourparents, our family, our society, or our church, there isprobably a war going on inside us also, so the mostbasic work for peace is to return to ourselves and createharmony among the elements within us—our feelings,

our perceptions, and our mental states. That is why thepractice of meditation, looking deeply, is so important.We must recognize and accept the conflicting elementsthat are within us and their underlying causes. It takestime, but the effort always bears fruit. When we havepeace within, real dialogue with others is possible.

INTERBEINGIn the Psalms, it says, “Be still and know that I amGod.” “Be still” means to become peaceful andconcentrated. The Buddhist term is samatha (stopping,calming, concentrating). “Know” means to acquirewisdom, insight, or understanding. The Buddhist term isvipasyana (insight, or looking deeply). “Lookingdeeply” means observing something or someone with somuch concentration that the distinction betweenobserver and observed disappears. The result is insightinto the true nature of the object. When we look into theheart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals,time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it.Without clouds, there could be no rain, and there wouldbe no flower. Without time, the flower could not bloom.In fact, the flower is made entirely of non-flowerelements; it has no indep

living Buddha, the living Christ—some of them world-famous, others completely unknown; it makes no difference. Their very presence awakens us and challenges our complacency. Reading Living Buddha, Living Christ, I felt the same challenge. I am not referring to the few passages that