THE WAY OF THE TWIN
Rediscovering a Uniquely Jewish school of Buddhism

By John R. Mabry, PhD

Whenever I discover that a new acquaintance is Jewish, I have taken to asking whether they meditate. They are often surprised, and frequently admit to it. "I'm Jewish, but I practice Buddhism," many of them tell me-although I do live in California, it seems like this is true for well over half of the people I ask! The film "The Jew in the Lotus" revealed that a startling 30% of Buddhists practicing today are Jews by birth. If this is accurate then approximately 600,000 of the 2 million practicing Buddhists in the US today are Jewish (1998 Britannica Book of the Year). This rise of "Jubus" in our culture is nothing short of a phenomenon, and most who have one foot in both religious camps see little or no conflict between them.

Few of those I speak to, however, are aware that a school of Buddhism native to Israel arose in the late first and early second century CE. This should come as no surprise, really; Buddhist documents record missionary efforts to several Mediterranean locations (including Greece, Syria, Macedonia, Cyrene and Egypt), so the idea that some of this teaching might actually have taken root in Israel and resulted in a sangha, a religious community, is not so remote (Batchelor, p. 9). This Jewish-Buddhist hybrid has been largely ignored by Jews throughout the succeeding ages, however, largely because the figure at its center has always been anathema to faithful Jews: Yehoshiva ben Yosef, otherwise known as Jesus of Nazareth.

The Enigma of the Jewish Christians
The very first followers of Jesus were Jews, of course. Jesus was an itinerate rabbi, probably a Pharisee, who never intended to start a new religion. He was instead a reformer who railed against hypocrisy, taught a radical egalitarianism, and tried to redirect his pupils' apocalyptic focus from the future to the here-and-now (see Crossan, 54­74). After his death and disappearance, his followers continued to practice Judaism, and continued to think of themselves as Jews, worshipping in the temple, and holding positions of responsibility in the synagogues (Acts 2:46­47).

The largest community of followers was based in Jerusalem, and was headed over by Jesus' brother, James. For them, Jesus was not divine. Their community has no memory of a virgin birth (led as they were by Jesus' flesh and blood family, they should know). Instead, they taught that Jesus was a prophet-the new Moses-who came to complete the law (Schoeps, 74). According to their writings, when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, God demanded that they put a stop to the abominable practice of animal sacrifice. Moses interceded, however, and insisted that sacrifice was the only way his people knew how to worship. He begged God not to take it away from them, and suggested a temporary compromise: "permit them to sacrifice, but only to you!" (Schoeps, 82).

God agreed that it was an acceptable compromise-for the time being-and instituted very strict instructions for how it was to happen. But an end to it was coming. For Jewish Christians, Jesus was the new Moses that was to complete Moses' mission, and put an end to the animal sacrifices God found so repellent.

Christianity as we are familiar with it arose with Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee who believed the Jewish Christians to be dangerous heretics, and actively sought to destroy them. According to Saul's own account, it was while on just such a mission to stamp out the "Jesus" heresy that he was struck from his horse by a blinding light, and in a vision heard the voice of Jesus, saying, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Saul became an instant convert-of sorts-and changed his name to Paul.

A creative theologian, Paul instantly started preaching, making converts, and working out a grand cosmology for the "new faith" he had stumbled into-much to the chagrin of those already belonging to Jesus' school. Paul needed the Jerusalem Christian's approval to lend his own communities legitimacy, and thus he was constantly trying to raise money to send to Jerusalem. This did not buy him the favor he sought, however, as the Jerusalem Christians called him "Paul the Apostate" rather than "Paul the Apostle" (as he called himself).

The Jerusalem Christians were very distressed by Paul's teaching, for the Jesus of Paul's vision and subsequent preaching was a very different from the Jesus they had grown up with and followed for so many years. While Jesus had pointed only to God, and claimed no special status for himself, Paul insisted that Jesus was himself God-an untenable heresy that the Jerusalem Christians could not tolerate.

The Jewish Christians flourished in Jerusalem for some time. Then, the unthinkable happened: The Romans sacked Jerusalem, in 70CE and laid waste to the temple. For the Jewish Christians, this was evidence that their beliefs about Jesus were true. Jesus had called his countrymen to stop sacrificing, which they had refused to do. God had therefore acted through the intervention of the Romans, and forced an end to it. Like many Judeans, the Jewish Christian community fled into exile, mostly to Eastern Syria. Jewish Christianity survived there for many centuries, and was the predominate form of Christianity in that area.

Ironically, were it not for the Pauline church, we may only have remembered Jesus as a footnote in history. Yet there is one school of Jewish Christianity that probably would not have been accounted for, the memory of which has barely survived to this day: the school of Thomas.

Who is Thomas?
Didymous Judas Thomas is well accounted for in the "official" writings of the Christian church. He is listed among the original twelve apostles, and immortalized in the popular imagination as "doubting Thomas." He may also be the author of the canonical epistle of Jude. When we meet him in the Pauline gospels he is often referred to as "the twin." In fact, "Didymous" means "twin" in Greek, just as "Thomas" derives from "twin" in Hebrew (T'omit). But since the text does not say whose twin it is, why mention that he is a twin at all? Perhaps because it is assumed that the person to whom Thomas is twin is known to all and does not need identifying.

The answer is found in the literature of the Thomas school, all of which states quite clearly that Thomas is the twin brother of Jesus himself. The Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas the Contender, and the Acts of Thomas all identify Thomas and Jesus as twins. Although the Pauline canon mentions Thomas the Twin, and also lists a "Judas" amongst Jesus' brothers, it does not connect the two.

According to the memory of the Thomas school, Thomas preached in Eastern Syria after Jesus' death. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is also the place where his school took root and flourished following the destruction of Jerusalem. From there tradition tells us that he journeyed to India, where he met great success until he was martyred by a Indian King. The Mar Thoma Christians in India trace their beginnings to this missionary journey of Thomas.

It seems strange that a form of Christianity should have found such fertile ground in a religious environment so alien to it, but this is where the Thomas school had a great advantage. Unlike other Christianities competing for survival, the St. Thomas school seems tailor made for survival in India, since its core doctrines, its method of salvation, and its ascetic sensibilities are nearly identical to those preached by a native Indian religious reformer: the Buddha.

Teachings of the Thomas school
The Gospel of Thomas is entirely comprised of short quotations from Jesus, often with little or no contextual information. Like koans, they often appear nonsensical at first, but their function is to shock one into a state of greater awareness-even enlightenment. As with the Buddha, the Thomas school did not regard Jesus as divine, but as an ordinary person who was enlightened-who had glimpsed the essential oneness of all things and whose life was thus transformed. In the Thomas school, the goal is not to worship Jesus, but to be like him-to have the same unitive consciousness he has. Just as Thomas is Jesus' twin, we are likewise called to be Jesus' "twin," to share his awareness and mystical perspective.

Egalitarianism. Both Thomas and Buddha were religious reformers and social critics. Both preached a release from a caste system. Buddha preached-and in his community, practiced-an end to the social caste system that dominated his society. In the India of his day Brahmins were at the top of the pile, living lives of relative comfort, while the "untouchables" were at the bottom, and largely dwelt in abject poverty. Within Buddha's order, caste was left behind as soon as one was received as a monk. The Buddha ended the Brahmin's stranglehold on salvation-through the Buddha's teaching and example, salvation was now available to all.

Like his predecessor the Buddha, Jesus also found himself at odds with a religious caste system. The two main "sects" in Jewish society in his day were the Sadduccees who operated the Temple cult, and the Pharisees, who emphasized adherence to the Law. The Sadduccees were "the establishment," collaborating with Rome, and liberal in their theological speculations (they didn't believe in the physical resurrection of the body, for instance). They felt that a person was "right with God'" so long as the proper rituals were performed. The Pharisees arose in opposition to the Sadduccees, preaching that it was not simply mindless rituals that God wanted, but heartfelt devotion to the Law. Their zeal led them to honor over 613 different laws which they discerned in the Torah. Theirs was a rabbinical system-meaning one with teachers-and, not surprisingly, one had to be literate in order to follow the Pharisee path.

Those who were poor or uneducated would have struggled to fit in with either of these two major sects-especially the Sadduccees. Jesus had little patience with such exclusion and to those of the Sadducee persuasion preached that God's presence was not limited to the temple grounds, but everywhere. To his own school, the Pharisees, Jesus was particularly harsh, saying, "Damn the Pharisees! For they are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger: the dog neither eats nor allows the cattle to eat" (Thomas 102). He apparently felt that many of his co-religionists had erected a nearly unscalable wall of laws around the spiritual life, prohibiting the common people from enjoying communion with God, and in their fervor neglecting such communion themselves.

The "Kingdom of God." One of Jesus' favorite metaphors was "the Kingdom of God." This was a notion that came with a lot of baggage in Jesus' own day. The Jews of the first century suffered terribly under Roman rule, and they expected God to act dramatically and decisively in their favor. Drawing from imagery in the book of Daniel and many of the prophets, they expected a new king ("the anointed one" or "messiah") who would lead a military revolt against Rome, and set up Jerusalem as capitol of the world, where the King/Messiah would rule the nations with justice. This new reign would be known as "The Kingdom of God," and many were actively seeking the King/Messiah. Apocryphal apocalypses such as the Similitudes of Enoch and the Sibylline Oracles explicated and expanded these expectations (Collins, 209). By the time Jesus was born, apocalyptic fervor was running high.

Tradition tells us that at least one of Jesus' own followers-Judas Iscariot-hoped Jesus would turn out to be this King/Messiah, but Jesus disappointed him. Jesus radically re-mythologized the "Kingdom of God," removing it from the future to the present, taking a political ideal and refashioning it as a spiritual reality. The Kingdom-where God dwells among human beings and makes peace and justice available to all-is not coming, it is here, now. In Thomas, Jesus tells us that the Kingdom "will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's Kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it." The Kingdom is not an external government, but an interior reality that no government can superceded or overthrow.

Thomas' Jesus does not make elaborate promises about the future or an afterlife, instead, he encourages his students to find the Kingdom in their midst and inside themselves. "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the Father's Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you." (3) This is echoed by the words of the Buddha in the Dhammapada: "There is no path in the sky-a monk must find the inner path." (D 255)

All Things Have Buddha Nature. Just as Buddhism teaches that all things have "Buddha Nature," so Thomas' Jesus teaches that all things are filled with divinity. Heaven and earth are not separate, nor is there any real distinction between Creator and creature. In this way, it can be said that Jesus is divine, but no more divine than the rest of us, or even more divine than your dog or your canary. In Thomas' universe, even rocks and plants are brimming with divinity. Jesus is making no exclusive claims for himself when he says, in logion 77, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained" for in the very next sentence he gives us the key that unlocks this exalted rhetoric: "Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." The "me" in Jesus' saying isn't the historical person, the rabbi Jesus, instead he is speaking from the perspective of the all-encompassing divinity, which is found even in firewood, even under rocks. Jesus' awareness presages later mystical Judaism as well, for as Joseph Gakatila would say in the thirteenth century, "[The Holy One] fills everything and He is everything." (Sholem, p. 222).

Unitive Consciousness. The great question in Buddhism is not whether all things have Buddha nature (this is a given), but how to gain awareness of Buddha nature. We can believe the Buddha's words, but how do we perceive the divine reality for ourselves? The Buddha meditated for three days and three nights beneath the bodhi tree until satori-enlightenment-overcame him. After much striving, he broke through and beheld the universe as one thing, or as he put it, "not two." This unitive consciousness is the key to seeing things "as they are," but because of our socialization-and perhaps due to human nature-this awareness is difficult to obtain.

Similar to the Buddha's doctrine of distinction without division, Jesus taught that when we believe the illusion that we are separate beings we are divided from the wholeness that is our true nature. Jesus wants us to be whole, to see ourselves as one with all things. In logion 61 he tells us, "if one is whole, one will be filled with light, but if one is divided, one will be filled with darkness."

Society thrives on this illusion of separateness-there are holy people and untouchables, the haves and the have-nots. Jesus attempts in his teaching to shatter this illusion, often through contemplation of sayings that appear on the surface ridiculous. For instance, Jesus tells us, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live" (4). As the Buddha might point out, the infant has "beginner's mind," and has not been corrupted by society. The baby has not yet learned to arbitrarily stratify reality, but still experiences the world as an undivided whole.

Mindfulness & One's "True Face." Both Buddha and the Jesus of Thomas agree that one's awareness must be transformed, and they also agree on the method: through mindfulness. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha tells us, "The wise man who by mindfulness conquers thoughtlessness is as one who, free from sorrows, ascends the palace of wisdom and there, from its high terrace, sees those in sorrow below; even as a wise strong man on the holy mountain might behold the many unwise far down below on the plain (D 28)." Jesus' echo of this teaching is both pithy and poignant: "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed (5)."

Meditation is very important in the Jewish spiritual tradition, as shown by the groundbreaking work of Aryeh Kaplan. Kaplan identified varieties of contemplative practice in the Tanakh (Meditation and the Bible) and documents the development of meditative schools through the middle ages (Meditation and Kabbalah). Through his efforts, many Jews today and reclaiming the contemplative elements of their tradition. Though Jesus never mentions meditation in the Gospel of Thomas, per se, he is very clear that it is mindfulness, attention to one's immediate surroundings that will aid the seeker in his or her quest. When his students said to him, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you," he replied, "You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine the present moment" (91).

The goal, then, is to learn how to "examine the present moment," which sounds an awful lot like meditation. Through this practice one can come to know "the one who is in your presence." In other words, if one can truly apprehend one's true self-one's true face, in Buddhist terms-proper knowledge of the rest of the universe will fall into place. This is, of course, because there is no division between the universe and one's self. Jesus says, "When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty" (3).

Non-attachment. Just as the Buddha taught that one must be detached from the world, Jesus follows suit, and warns his students not to become overly involved in the affairs of this world. "Be passersby," Jesus tells them succinctly in logion 42. Jesus wants them to be aware that this life is not permanent-we are simply passing through, and thus we should not become too attached to anything here. This advice echoes the Buddha's teaching, when he said, "Leave the past behind; leave the future behind; leave the present behind. Thou art then ready to go to the other shore. Never more shalt thou return to a life that ends in death" (D 348).

For the Buddha, this meant that one should eschew the householder's path, divest oneself of all material things, and be content with what one finds along the path. "He who wanders without a home in this world, leaving behind the desires of the world, and the desires never return," the Buddha says, "call that one a holy person (Brahman)" (D 417). Jesus instructs his own students to be likewise peripatetic: "Foxes have their dens and birds have their nests," he says, "but human beings have no place to lay down and rest" (86).

This brief comparison of Jesus' teachings and their similarities to the Buddha's is only the tip of the iceberg. As one reads Thomas, one is practically flooded with images and connections between the two schools, and a lengthier treatment is needed. Nonetheless, what I have outlined above will serve to whet the appetite for those interested in the similarities between the two teachers. It is only the beginning.

The Jewishness of the Thomas School
Although Jesus' goal and means are nearly identical to Buddhism, his teaching takes place in an entirely Jewish context, and appeals to both the Torah and the prophets for his authority. Jesus does not seek to supplant the Torah, nor does he intend to start a new religion. It seems rather, from a close reading of Thomas, that he intends only to supplement and critique his native faith, and never sees himself as outside of it. In fact, it may be that Jesus sees the seeds of his teaching in the Tanakh, and is simply pointing out what others have missed.

Importance of the Torah. Jesus' teaching in the Gospel of Thomas respects the Torah, and advocates true observance. He reiterates traditional teaching on the importance of the Sabbath, saying, "If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom. If you do not observe the Sabbath as a Sabbath you will not see the Father" (27).

Indeed, Jesus' teaching never denigrates or invalidates the Law of Moses. Instead, he insists that people claim their tradition as their own, and do not simply parrot back what the religious authorities say. When, in logion 88, Jesus tells his students, "The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you," he is speaking to them of their own tradition.-it belongs to them, the common people-not to the priests, not to the rabbis, not to the Essene ascetics. The Jewish tradition belongs in its entirety to every child of Israel, from the most powerful to the most humble of persons.

Jesus expands on this when he tells his students, "When you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom," he is saying that one cannot use what one is simply given. One must work it through for oneself, and thereby truly "own" it before it will be useful to her/him. One cannot rely on a religious tradition handed to one on a silver platter. Each person must struggle with their religion, must remake it in terms of their own history and experience, must make it truly his or her own before it can be of any real use.

Critiquing Tradition. Jesus' support of tradition honors the Torah and the prophets, but is very critical of the way in which his tradition is being interpreted and lived. He is particularly critical of his fellow Pharisees and what he perceived to be their emphasis on the letter over the spirit of the Law. While this was certainly not true of all Pharisees of Jesus' time, it is simply human nature that some will veer into fundamentalism rather than assume the responsibility of a critical approach to religion. Jesus repeatedly confronts the fundamentalist obsession with following every perceived jot and tittle of the Law, saying, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits After all, what goes into your mouth will not defile you; rather, it's what comes out of your mouth that will defile you."

Jesus is not invalidating the Torah, instead he invites his followers to a right interpretation of it, and in doing so, a return to authentic Judaism. He asks them to see as God sees, to perceive people's "true face" in other words, not their circumstances. He wants them to view a person's intentions, not their actions, as the standard of holiness. Holiness isn't about staying "pure," but how people treat one another, what they say to one another. In this, Jesus stands in the Talmudic tradition of condemning rote observance, and emphasizing the state of the heart.

The Thomas school, then, adds Buddhist mindfulness practice and enlightenment to Jewish observance in a seamless way, foreshadowing the mindfulness practices that would later manifest in mystical schools of Judaism. Mindfulness and a knowledge of one's true face do not invalidate or supplant the Torah, but instead support and illuminate it's true prophetic spirit.

Following the Way of the Twin today
Jesus said, "No prophet is welcome on his home turf; doctors don't cure those who know them." This was certainly true in Jesus' own time-his teachings did not enjoy widespread success in Israel. And it is true today: though the Gospel of Thomas was discovered in a cave in Egypt over fifty years ago now, the church has taken little notice of what scholars agree is the most reliable source of his original teaching. This is not surprising, since the Jesus of Thomas often stands in direct opposition with the fictional Jesus of Paul.

Though Christians seem to be missing the boat, the rediscovery of the Thomas school presents a unique opportunity for Jews. For it is within their power to reclaim one of the Jewish tradition's greatest rabbis as their own. And for Jews who follow the Buddhist path there is another, even more startling revelation: a two-thousand year-old tradition marrying Jewish observance with Buddhist insight.

One does not need to be a wandering ascetic to follow the Way of the Twin; we must only remember, as the prophets tell us, that the people are as grass which will soon wither and blow away-we are only passersby. One need not eschew the Torah, but instead embrace it utterly, observing the spirit over the letter of the Law. One need not worship Jesus as a god, but only as a way-shower, the brother of Moses and the Buddha, the twin image of one's own soul in all its native glory. This article only skims the surface of this long-lost tradition. Those who follow in its way must explore and rediscover its treasure for themselves.

Bibliography and Further Reading
Stephen Batchelor, The Awakening of the West. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1994.
Marcus J. Borg. Jesus: A New Vision. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1984.
John J. Collins. The Apocalyptic Imagination. New York: Crossroad, 1984.
John Dominic Crossan. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989.
Robert W. Funk. Honest to Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisc, 1996.
Aryeh Kaplan. Meditation and the Bible. York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1988.
Aryeh Kaplan. Meditation and Kabbalah. York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1982.
Aryeh Kaplan. Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide. New York: Shocken Books, 1985.
Bently Layton. The Gnostic Scriptures. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987.
Gerd Lüdemann. Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995.
Gerd Lüdemann. Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.
Hyman Maccoby. The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.
Stephen J. Patterson. The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1993.
Stephen J. Patterson, et al. The Fifth Gospel. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998.
Hans-Joachim Schoeps. Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969.