gospel of Thomas 101

[Jesus said,] "Whoever does not hate his father and his mother as I do cannot become a disciple to me. And whoever does not love his father and his mother as I do cannot become a disciple to me. For my mother [...], but my true mother gave me life."

This is an interesting verse from the Gospel of Thomas; unfortunately, with a little part missing. But nevertheless, I feel we can understand what Jesus was getting at here. And it may be rather challenging.

Jesus is saying, if you are to be his disciple, you have to hate your mother and father as he does. And here he is talking about his biological mother and father. He hates them. And because of that, he does not feel attached to them and dependent upon them. He has broken free psychologically, except in the sense that he is carrying some hate, some negative attachment.

But if we are still a little mummy's boy, or perhaps daddy's princess, and we have a strong attachment to our parents, then it is going to hinder us on our spiritual journey. Because that attachment is putting one or both of these two individuals in a special place in our life. They are our kin. And when we put one person above another, we are already setting up an obstacle to our spiritual development.

Our buddha nature does not discriminate in this way. At the core of our being, we are interconnected with everybody and everything, and equally connected to all that is. So we do not have particular attachment to one form and not to another. It is this attachment to parents or other family members – or even lovers – this particular attachment which Jesus understands to be a hinderance.

So he is saying, if you want to be his disciple, you have to be free of attachment to your parents. And another thing is that we tend to develop spiritually when we realise that the more mundane things in life cannot really satisfy us. So if you have had the apparently good fortune of being very much loved by your parents, and loving them, having a close knit family situation, then you will not feel the need to develop spiritually. You will be content enough as you are.

Whereas if, like Jesus, you hate your parents, then you will be looking, earnestly, for a more reliable source of nourishment. It gives you the impetus to seek, to search, to look for truth elsewhere.

But then, paradoxically, Jesus goes on, if you do not love your mother and father as I do, you cannot be my disciple. Here, he may be talking about his biological parents still. For whilst we are living in the world of human emotions, the opposites are always there: human love for a specific person, also implies a hatred. It may be suppressed. You may not even be consciously aware of it. But it will be there. This is the nature of conditional love.

But I think here Jesus was talking about God: his mother and father. God is neither male nor female – or both, if you prefer. And because the parable ends with Jesus saying, my true mother gave me life, it seems to me he must be talking about God. The source of life.

I prefer the word life to the word God. We have come from life. We are an integral part of life. If we reach to our essence, we are indistinguishable from life itself. And the way to realise this, the route, is to love life. Love everything about life. The mere fact that life exists and that we are part of it, is so amazing, such a gift – unimaginable, and yet here it is.

This is the love that Jesus is talking about at the end of this verse. If you love life – existence, God – if you love in this way, then you can be Jesus' disciple. You are on the same wavelength as him. His teachings will touch you.

But if you do not love in this way, if you are not appreciative of life, if you have no gratitude for everything that is given to you – every breath that you take, every heartbeat – if you have no gratitude for this great gift, then you will not get far on the spiritual journey.

So open your eyes, and see what an amazing life this is. This way, we can be the disciples of Jesus. This way, we can understand his teachings. This way, we, too, can come to realise that we are life. We are existence. We are God.