March 06, 2022

01

In 635 of the Common Era, a Christian mission to China, probably from the church in Persia, arrived in Chang-an (Now Xian), the capital of the Tang Dynasty. This was likely a mission of the Church of the East, whose beginnings can be traced back to Thomas called "The Twin, one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus.

The theology of the Church of the East would have developed apart from the influence of Ignatius, St. Augustine, Dante, Thomas Aquinas and the Roman Catholic Church--all of whom bestowed Christianity as we know it upon the churches of the West.

A link to the Church of the East was discovered near the end of the eighteenth century by a Taoist priest who opened a room cut into a mountain range along the Silk Road. The room was a storage vault for sacred writings and had been sealed with a type of brick that suggests it had been shut up around 1005 CE.

The writings included texts of a Christian nature and refer to themselves as "The Jesus Sutras," and have been collected in a volume with the same title by Martin Palmer and others. Palmer is a distinguished translator of Taoist works, and published The Jesus Sutras in 2001. It is currently out of print, but copies are available through used book stores on the internet.

The Sutras are a fascinating collection of teachings, rituals, sermons and reflections from priests and leaders of an early Christian church in a culture of Taoists, Buddhists, and followers of Confucius, and reflects the work of those who blended the religions of the day into a united whole that remains amazingly contemporary in many of the things it says.

For instance, here are passages Palmer and his collaborators translated from what they call "The Sutra of Returning to Your Original Nature":

Detach yourself from what disturbs and distracts you,
and be as pure as one who breathes in purity and emptiness.
This state is the gateway to enlightenment--it is the way to peace and happiness.

If anyone wants to follow the way of Triumph,
They must clear their minds 
and set aside all wanting and striving.
To be pure and still means to be open to purity and stillness.
As a result, you can intuit the truth.
This means that the light can shine,
revealing the workings of cause and effect,
and leading to the place of happiness.

Those who trust in their own heart's guidance,
can go beyond wanting 
and trust in direct spiritual realization.

In being free of the Western emphasis on original sin,
the Christian church in China could make use of the Taoist 
concept of our original nature,
permitting Jesus to become the guide leading people
back to the person they are capable of being
and to the qualities/virtues/gifts that are theirs from birth.

The Jesus Sutras is a remarkable book suggesting possibilities
that are still open to us to imagine and serve by transforming our relationship with ourselves and with one another,
and finding in the wonder of that engagement
the foundation of enlightenment itself,
and a life that knows no bounds
(Free of the theology that has been so burdensome
through the years)!

–0–

02

We live to explore our lives,
to find the things that resonate with us
and investigate the source of our responses
to everything that happens to us.

Striving to have our way,
living in the service of our will
and desire,
forcing what we want to happen
at the expense of what needs to happen,
refusing to bear the legitimate pain of living,
loosing ourselves in trivial pursuits
and the constant addiction to
diversion, distraction, denial,
prevent us from seeing what we look at,
knowing what we know,
responding appropriately to
what's what and what needs to be done about it
with the gifts of our original nature
in appreciation and gratitude for
the radiance and wonder
of the beauty and grace
available to us
in the time and place of our living.

–0–