Jesus & Buddha Go To The Well

Josh Reeves gives a short talk and compares two parallel stories of Jesus and Buddha interacting with women at a well. This illustrates a spiritual rebirth acknowledging that we all drink from the same well of truth.

Transcript

Did you know that the Bible could be funny?

Take the exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus.

Jesus is a rabbi who is teaching some revolutionary ideas and Nicodemus,

From all accounts,

Is a well-respected teacher himself.

Nicodemus asks Jesus how to be one with the Spirit,

And Jesus tells him,

You must be born anew.

Nicodemus answers,

What am I supposed to do,

Climb back into my mother's womb?

No,

Jesus says,

You must be reborn of the Spirit.

I don't know about you,

But that's comedic to me.

Nicodemus is being funny,

And Jesus is playing the straight man.

And yet,

For thousands of years now,

Fundamentalists have used this interaction to demand that people become baptized and that if they don't,

They'll never have any spirit at all when they die to be with the Lord.

To me,

It conveys nothing of the sort.

The idea is that a spiritual birth is not the same as a physical birth.

It is a birth of choice,

Of inner awakening and inner realization.

The greatest symbol of spiritual rebirth is that of water.

Water symbolizes the Spirit.

There is much of it,

And it usually is transparent,

And going under it can feel like going within,

And it cleanses,

And it gives life.

So water symbolizes rebirth.

I don't know about you,

But I always feel that way when I dive into a pool and come back up from underneath the water.

That's a kind of prayer all by itself.

In holy writings everywhere,

We can often view water as a symbol for spirit,

And it's good to remember that we all need water,

And that water doesn't belong to any one religion.

That's another reason it is such an important symbol.

We all need it,

And in that it makes us all one.

Probably the biggest difference between teachers like Jesus and the Buddha and their followers is that the followers are often fundamentalists and exclusivists when the teachers are not.

Jesus,

A Jew,

Sought to evolve Jewish teachings.

Buddha,

A Hindu,

Sought to give new and updated teachings.

And although both proclaim their teachings truth,

That doesn't mean someone couldn't find it in some other way.

My belief is that Jesus and Buddha taught about the same truth in different ways.

Our culture and our tastes may draw us to one more than the other,

And I can't imagine either of those great teachers becoming jealous because of that.

Both of these great teachers and incarnations of the great spirit do teach many similar things,

Especially when it comes to inclusivity.

There are stories about both Jesus and the Buddha having encounters with women by wells.

Again in a well,

We have the symbol of water and of life.

Everyone goes to the well to draw from the same spirit.

The woman,

I believe,

Also represents that presence which gives life.

It is the woman who gives physical birth,

And at a deeper level we might say we must connect with a feminine energy to go through a spiritual rebirth as well.

In both of the stories,

The great teachers are anointing a spiritual power in the feminine.

The woman perhaps also represents the everyone,

The common person.

Here is the story about Jesus.

And there came a woman from Samaria to draw water.

And Jesus said to her,

Give me water to drink.

His disciples had entered into the city to buy food for themselves.

The Samaritan woman said to him,

How is it?

You are a Jew,

And yet you ask me for a drink,

Who am a Samaritan woman?

Jesus answered,

Saying to her,

If you only knew the gift of God,

And who is the man who said to you,

Give me a drink,

You would have asked him,

And he would have given you living water.

The woman said to him,

My Lord,

You have no leather bucket and no deep well.

Where do you get the living water?

What,

Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well?

And he drank from it himself,

And his sons,

And his sheep.

Jesus answered,

Saying to her,

Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,

But whoever drinks of the water which I give him shall never thirst,

But the same water which I give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to life everlasting.

Samaritans were seen as not Jewish enough and were often persecuted by Jews.

The story is certainly meant to convey that the water of spirit and the teachings of Jesus were not just for some,

But for all.

It's up to each of us to interpret whether Jesus was saying that his teaching could bring everlasting life,

Or if he was saying that to have everlasting life you must take him in your heart and make him your Savior.

For me it's the former,

Not the latter.

Here is the story of the Buddha at the well.

The Buddha was once said to pass a young woman by a well and asked her for a drink of water.

O awakened one,

I am unworthy to give you a drink of water as I am part of a lowly caste in this village,

And it would cause you impurity.

I did not ask you for your caste,

Said the Buddha,

But for a drink of water.

What is the message here?

It doesn't matter what caste you are in,

Or what religion,

Or what your gender is,

The teaching is for everyone.

We all drink from the same well of truth,

Even the Buddha.

Our flesh and our culture and our backgrounds may separate us,

But the water always connects us.

In the Chinese Tao Te Ching it says,

The supreme good is like water,

Which nourishes all things without trying to.

It is content with the low places that people disdain.

Thus it is like the Tao.

The water doesn't care about your social class.

It doesn't care if you're Christian or Buddhist or atheist.

It doesn't care if you are a white nationalist or wearing a pussy hat.

It doesn't care what you've done or what you're about to do.

It gives itself entirely to those of us who drink.

And when we drink it,

It certainly makes itself as us,

But to me,

The spiritual awakening comes when we seek to consciously make ourselves more like it.

To be good,

To seek to nourish all things we contact,

To be content even in the low places.

Certainly all spiritual traditions teach that in one way or another,

Living by flesh alone leads to death,

But learning to live by the Spirit,

Like the water,

Can lead to an experience of eternal life.

Move or stagnate.

Flow or stagnate.

Moisten or stagnate.

Stream or stagnate.

Even though we may find the truth in the stillness,

The truth never stays still.

Move with it and see where it moves you.

And when we will Cyberclear the Truth and paces with it,

It will stay square.

Moines and Forsyth will be there.

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Very interesting

Thank you

Love the connections you made between spirit and water and the similarities between stories!

Awesome! I’ve been looking for comparisons between the teachings of Jesus and Hindu traditions and theis short illustration is a lovely comparison. Thank you!

Wow, Josh, what a fantastic and thought provoking message! Thank you so much for sharing your insight with us. I found your open-minded yet well - educated perspective really helpful. 😊🙏

Absolutly beautiful and I love water and it is so true!!! Definitely sharing this!

Enjoyed. Thank you.