Our religious pathfinders are known, some largely through legend, for the lives they lived and the understandings they shared. What we know about their lives and teachings constitutes our most cherished and enduring expressions of life and its reward.
Moses gave us the Ten Commandments to guide our relationship with the creator of the universe and with each other. We received the key elements of the life and teachings of Confucius in his Analects or “aphorisms.” Siddhartha Gautama, known to us as the Buddha, “the awakened one,” gave us his Four Noble Truths and his Eightfold Path. The teachings of Lao Tzu come to us in the Tao Te Ching (“the way” + “great book”). The life and teachings of Jesus are recorded in the Four Gospels. (Gospel derives from an Old English translation of the Latin word evangelium, meaning “good story”). The five pillars of Islam (an Arabic word with connotations of submission and peace) arose out of Mohammed’s recitations collected in the Quran.
The teachings and lives of these and other pathfinders have captivated different groups of us for centuries: Moses for 3,000 years among Jews, Christians, and Muslims; Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius, and Lao Tzu among Buddhists, Confucianists, and Taoists for 2,500 years; Jesus among Christians and Muslims for 2,000 years; Mohammed among Muslims for 1,500 years.
We know very little about how Lao Tzu came upon his understandings. We know more about Confucius from his Analects. Here is a relevant sampling:
- Book 1, Chapter 1. The Master said, “He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.”
- Book II, Chap. IV. The Master said, “At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right.”
- Book II, Chap. XI. The Master said, “If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others.”
- Book VII, Chap. I. The Master said, “A transmitter and not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients, I venture to compare myself with our old P’ang.”
- Book VII, Chap. XVI. The Master said, “If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yî [I Ching], and then I might come to be without great faults.”1
The first chapter of the second book reads, “The Master said, ‘He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.’” Although I expect some recognized that “north polar star” in Confucius at an early age, unlike many of our pathfinders, he does not point to a time when he was gripped by an overwhelming revelation of who he was and what he was to be about. Contrast that with Siddhartha Gautama’s description of the revelation that overwhelmed him the night that ended his ascetic search for enlightenment.
- I thought: “Suppose I practice entirely cutting off food.” Then deities came to me and said: “Good sir, … If you do so, we shall infuse heavenly food into the pores of your skin.” … So I dismissed the deities, saying: “There is no need.” … So I took very little food, a handful each time … Because of eating so little my limbs became like jointed segments of bamboo stems.
- I thought: “This is the utmost … but by this racking practice … I have not obtained … any distinction in knowledge or vision worthy of the noble ones. Could there be another path to enlightenment?”
- I recalled that … while I [as a young prince] was sitting in the cool shade of a roseapple tree, quite secluded from sensual pleasures … I entered upon the first jhana, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.
- I considered: “It is not easy to attain that pleasure with a body so excessively emaciated. Suppose I eat some solid food—some boiled rice and porridge.” … When I had … regained my strength, then quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, I entered upon and abided in the first jhana.2
During the first watch of that same night, Siddhartha “entered upon and abided in” three higher jhanas (states of mindfulness) after which he “recollected his manifold past lives.” In the second watch of that night, his “divine eye” saw “beings passing away and reappearing … according to their actions.” Here he describes what happened during the third watch of that night:
When my mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady and attained to imperturbability, … I direct knew … “This is suffering.” … “This is the origin of suffering.” … “This is the cessation of suffering.” … “This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering.”3
While Siddhartha was consciously meditating that propitious night, his description suggests that his mind cascaded down a sequence of local mental equilibria before finally settling into a sea of understandings summarized in his Four Noble Truths.
Mohammed (Quran, 96:1–7, 97:1–5) describes an equally gripping experience for the source of his understandings that commenced roughly a thousand years later:
Read in the name of thy Lord who creates— / Creates man from a clot, / Read and thy Lord is most Generous, / Who taught by the pen, / Taught man what he knew not. / Nay, man is surely inordinate, / Because he looks upon himself as self-sufficient.
Surely We revealed it on the Night of Majesty— / And what will make thee comprehend what the Night of Majesty is?
The Night of Majesty is better than a thousand months. / The angels and the Spirit descend in it by the permission of the Lord—for every affair— Peace! It is till the rising of the morning.4
Although Mohammed purportedly could neither read nor write, on that Night of Majesty, his mind, too, settled into a new and lasting understanding of a source of power and peace for which he used the term Lord.
The same term was used in Exodus 3:1–6 for the source of understandings in an equally dramatic revelation given to Moses—but roughly fifteen hundred years earlier:
Moses . . . drove the flock into the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses said, “I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn’t the bush burn up?” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: “Moses, Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” And He said, “Do not come closer. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground. I am” He said, “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
The Judeo-Christian scriptures are filled with revelatory experiences that changed the lives of their recipients. Here are four more:
Isaiah: In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs stood in attendance of Him. . . . One of the seraphs flew to me, with a live coal . . . He touched it to my lips and declared, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt shall depart and your sin be purged away.” Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me.” (Isaiah 6:1–8)
Jeremiah: The word of the Lord came to me: “Before I created you in the womb, I selected you; before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet concerning the nations.” I replied, “Ah, Lord God! I don’t know how to speak, for I am still a boy.” . . . The Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me, “Herewith I put my words into your mouth. See, I appoint you this day over nations and over kingdoms: To uproot and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” (Jeremiah 1:4–10)
Jesus: In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mark 1:9–13)
Paul: Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” (Acts 9:3–6)
How are we to understand these revelations? They are neither philosophical assumptions nor reasoned arguments. Rather, they are figurative descriptions of personal experiences.
Whether materially factual or metaphorical, the descriptions present moments when our pathfinders were touched by an awesome power and understanding that preceded and overwhelmed their prior conscious thoughts. Their descriptions suggest the touch was unexpected and intensely personal. It changed who they were, what they were about, and the world they saw. Out of these revelations flowed our enduring scriptures, scriptures that have spawned and sustained diverse religious identities that have cut across and superseded national, cultural, racial, even political identities.
1 J. Legge, Confucius: Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean (New York: Dover Publications, 1971).
2 B. Nanamoli and B. Bodhi. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 339–340.
3 Ibid., 106.
4 The Holy Qur’ān, trans. Maulana Muhammad Ali, 7th ed. (Columbus: Ahmadiyyah Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore, 1991).
[1]Johnson, M. A., 2018, Questioning God’s Will: Reflections on Pivotal Concerns in My Parents’ Letters, EA Books, Inc., Oviedo, 95-105.
