gospel of Thomas 110

Jesus said, "Whoever finds the world and becomes rich, let him renounce the world."

I'm taking this teaching from the Gospel of Thomas at face value.

In Hinduism, traditionally, a man would go through different phases of life. After being a child, growing up, he would enter a stage where he made a living. He earned money, had a job or a business. And when he had sufficient income, he would marry and have children. And of course, these stages of life would last many years. But eventually, his children would be grown up, his wife would no longer be fertile, and that stage would pass away. And at that point, only at that point, would the man renounce these aspects of life. And leaving his wife financially provided for, he would go off and become a seeker, and pursue the spiritual side of life with the hope of finding moksha – liberation.

And I feel that this teaching from Jesus is along the same lines. If you find the world and become rich – and I think he means it in a straightforward way – if you become wealthy, if you are successful in the material side of life, in the mundane things. At that point, having made a success of that human side of life, then Jesus is suggesting that we renounce it. We just turn our backs on the material side of life. And we become a seeker. We become interested in the spiritual side.

And this is the way it should be. It was the same story with Gautam Buddha. Until the age of 29, he lived a very materialistic life. He was wealthy – he came from a wealthy family. He had a beautiful wife and son. He had dancing girls, banquets, all the pleasures that life has to offer. But in the end, he realised that even that wasn't going to save him from sickness and old age and death. So he renounced it all, and became a seeker.

And my feeling is it really should be this way. First of all, explore what the simple material side of life has to offer. Because if we don't, if more like a young Buddhist monk we are put into the spiritual path at an early age, we will never know for ourself, from our own experience, whether materialistic living can offer us true happiness. Maybe it can. It seems a possibility, at least to be tried.

And although the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus and others may indicate that true happiness is not to be found in the materialistic life, we can't really learn this from someone else's experience. It's always best to learn from our own direct experience. Otherwise, there'll be a doubt. Somewhere in the body, or somewhere deep in the unconscious, will be the feeling, well maybe, maybe it could have been different. Maybe if only I'd pursued that materialistic life a bit further, perhaps I could have found true happiness from materialistic life. Actually it can't be done. But until we've tried it for ourself, we can't know that for sure.

And that's why we should follow this teaching from Jesus, and make a success of ourself in the material world first, and then renounce it. And that way we will see for ourself the limit, the extent to which it can bring us happiness, and the extent to which suffering remains. And having seen that for ourself, we will naturally renounce it, and turn to the spiritual.