Pabbajja (pravrajana) in Christianity キリスト教における出家 - Reflection of the Scripture Reading on the 13th Sunday Ordinary Time Year C

Following the Gospel reading of the 12^th Sunday (Luke 9:18-24), the 13^th Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 9:57-62) is about the serious cost of the Christian discipleship. When God, through Jesus, calls us to become disciples of Christ and to follow Jesus’ path, we must make a total commitment, without any reservation that could pull us back to our past.  God in Jesus want us our perfect dedication to His mission. In a way, the level of commitment God want from us mirrors that of commitment, which both a husband and a wife make to each other in their Sacrament of Matrimony. Luke 9:59-62 may invoke Genesis 2:24, in this regard.

As a marriage between a man and a woman is a manifestation of God’s desire (Genesis 2:18) - it is in God’s desire to have a husband and a wife make each other’s total commitment to one another,  it is, indeed, God’s desire for us to totally commit ourselves to His will and mission. Our full commitment to God reflects God’s commandment to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind (Deuteronomy 6:5; Luke 10:27).  

The 13^th Sunday’s Gospel reading describes how Jesus wants us to incorporate Luke 10:27 into our discipleship. It is also his invitation for us to the perfect freedom and peace. The freedom and peace is like Nirvana in Buddhism concept, the psychospritual state completely fee from what Buddhists call klelshas (煩悩) – worldly and carnal desires, anxiety, insecurity, doubts and bewilderment. 

Psychologically, kleshas indicates insecure heart, brittle ego. The psychospiritual state of ultimate freedom and peace  offers a taste of the Kingdom of God, as it is what salvation attains. Such a psychospiritual state is also what Buddhists strive to attain, Nirvana. 

On his path toward glorification, Jesus suffered tremendously and had to overcome all of his sufferings, while Shakamuni (historical Buddha) had to overcome his sufferings in order to attain enlightenment and awakening before entering into Nirvana. In a way, the sufferings of Jesus can be understood though a possibility of him having kleshas (i.e. Luke 22:39-46, Mark 15:34), even though he was a spiritually and psychologically strong man (i.e. Luke 4:1-13), while it is possible to see that Jesus entered into Nirvana with his last seven words, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”(Luke 23:46). Now, Jesus is calling us and inviting us to attain this perfect freedom – the Kingdom of God, or Nirvana to put it in the Buddhist context, the psychospiritual state perfectly free from suffering. 

Whether we are Christian or Buddhist, as humans, we all want to be free from suffering, which is believed to be caused by kleshas .  Both Christian teaching and Buddhist teaching guide us to purify our souls from kleshas so that we may overcome suffering and attain Nirvana.  For Christians, the teaching of Jesus offers practical steps to overcome kleshas as he demonstrates these steps himself all the way to the Cross. For Buddhists, Shakamuni, upon becoming Buddha, attaining awakening to the Dharma, taught the way to dissolve kleshas, based on his own struggles toward attaining the awakening, upon overcoming series of temptations. That is why Christians seek Jesus’ teaching, Gospels, while Buddhists pursue Shakamuni’s teaching, the Dharma.

The genuinely peaceful state, which is the Kingdom of God in Christianity, and Nirvana in Buddhism, free from anxiety and suffering, is what everyone desires. But, not everyone can necessarily attain this perfect freedom and peace, because the path to reach it is challenging enough to disillusion our naïve assumption and fantasy of attaining this perfect state. The Jesus’ words in the Gospel narrative for the 13^th Sunday remind this truth. 

In a strict sense, we really need to leave our own families in order to fully commit ourselves to our serious pursuits of the perfect state – whether you are Christian or Buddhist. It is because our families are considered as a worldly factor and a potentially distracting factor in our discipleship.  This also reflects God’s desire for a husband to leave his parents in order to become one flesh with his wife (Genesis 2:24). 

That is why Catholic priests, monks and nuns leave their families and totally commit themselves to the service for Christ practicing celibacy and living in their religious communities or parish rectories, rather than living with their families. They take the three-fold vow of poverty, chastity and obesity, for this reason. Likewise, Buddhist monks leave their families in order to enter into their rigorous formation processes, remaining celibate, so that they can fully dedicate themselves to the service of the Dharma, the truth in Buddha’s teaching. 

Like Luke 9:23-24, Luke 9:57-62 is another difficult yet powerful paradoxical teaching of Jesus. On the surface, it appears to go against the teaching of filial piety – if Luke 9:59-62 were interpreted literally. But, Jesus sure did not mean to go against God’s commandment, “Honor your father and your mother”(Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16) when he did not allow a man, who is interested in following him, to wait until he can bury his father and when he did not allow another man to bid farewell to his family (Luke 9:59-62).

Just as Jesus’command to leave every personal and family matter completely and immediately to follow him (Luke 9:59-62) can be viewed as antagonistic to the God’s commandment to honor(care for)  our fathers and mothers (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16), the concept of  pabbajja was at first criticized in China because it was believe to counter the Confucius’ moral teaching of filial piety (孝).

Growing up in the Buddhist cultural context of Japan, what comes to my mind in thinking of Luke 9:59-62 is pabbajja (pravrajana) in Buddhism. Pabbajja,which is an act of denunciation of the worldly (lay)  life to enter into a sacred life, literally means “going forth”.  Our attachment to a worldly life, lay life, which includes our families, can compromise our commitment to the mission. 

In Jesus’ words, what holds us back from “going forth” is the plow to keep one’s hand on in Luke 9:62. To follow Jesus on his mission, we do not need the “plow” which represents our worries to survive in this worldly life. Likewise, in Buddhist pabbajja, monk’s life is totally dependent upon the alms from upasaka (upasika), those who practice Buddhism without leaving their homes and families.

Pabbajja is required, in a strict sense of Buddhism, to become a bodhissatva (菩薩), which literally means one who strives for enlightenment. Through pabbajja, we can become authentic seekers of enlightenment, as bodhissatva. Being  bodhissatva through pabbajja is the way of attaining Nirvana by becoming Buddha and gaining prajna (wisdom) of Dharma. To put this into the Christian context, becoming Buddha corresponds to attaining a sainthood or Sainthood, while becoming bodhissatva through pabbajja parallels becoming a fully committed disciple of Christ by following Jesus’ command of denouncing all worldly attachments, as described in Luke 9:59-62.

Speaking of pabbajja, both Jesus and Shakamuni left their respective families. In Shakamuni’s case, he left and completely abandoned his comfortable life in the royal palace and his status of prince. In Jesus’ case, he left his mother, Mary, who was a widow then, when he began his mission for the God the Father, at around age 30, while Shakamuni denounced all his worldly prestige as the prince of his father’s loyal palace, as well as his wife and child at age 29. 

If you have to worry about your own family while following Christ, then, it is like having an  extra-marital affair. Just as a husband who has an affair cannot fully commit to his wife as he is supposed to, we cannot make our total commitment to Christ if we did not leave our families immediately upon being called. 

The importance of our total commitment is already found in the  Book of Genesis – when God called Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  Of course, God really did not want Abraham to kill Isaac, but He asked him to sacrifice Isaac to test the level of his commitment to Him. God assessed if Abraham would let his concern for Isaac get in the way of his commitment to Him. By faithfully following God’s order to sacrifice Isaac, God noticed that Abraham’s level of commitment and judged worthy of His covenant with him.

If we interpret Luke 9:57-62 as antagonistic to filial piety, if we interpret Luke 9;23-24 as trivialization of life, then, this logic would view Genesis 22:1-18 that God solicited Abraham to murder Isaac.

Jesus wanted to make sure that those who are interested in his mission will not follow him out of impulse and whim but they rather know another set of cost of discipleship – in addition to self-denial and embracing a possibility of martyrdom.  This is why Jesus had to say things like,” Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head”(Luke 9:58), “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”(Luke 9:60), and “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God”(Luke 9:62). 

When Jesus said ,” Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head”(Luke 9:58), to a man who wanted to follow him, he meant to teach that there is no security or stability in life on the discipleship. A life of a disciple means living a life on the edge and on the move, never to have a settled-in life. But, in a worldly life, we all desire to have a secured life – especially financial security (aren’t we all crazed about our retirement savings, 401K, pension, Social Security benefit, etc?) – something to rest our head on, something to rest our anxious heart on. But, to have a life on the discipleship, a life of pabbajja, we are to find a sense of security in the kind of insecure life. This is a paradoxical aspect of this Jesus’ teaching. To find a sense of security and peace in a life on the edge, we must find ourselves in God for Christians and in Dharma prajna for Buddhists. 

By saying “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”(Luke 9:60) to another man who wanted to follow him, Jesus wanted him to understand the urgency in the discipleship. It means that we cannot wait until our parents die or that we cannot wait until we become free from family obligation, in order to become Jesus’ disciple. We must follow Jesus immediately upon receiving a call – if we desire a secure life in God, the perfect Nirvana-like freedom and peace. 

When Elijah called Elisha to be his attendant companion to carry on God’s mission, Elisha was allowed to bid farewell to his parents and cleared his earthly belonging by slaughtering all his lives stocks and treating his people with them to make a closure on his worldly life (1 Kings 19:19-21). However, Jesus did not allow even such a time to anyone who wants to follow him and whom he asked to follow him. This also teaches that we must be ready, at any moment in life, to follow him, dropping every worldly things – objects of our worldly attachment, whenever Jesus asks us to follow him, in the manner of pabbajja. That is why Jesus does not want to see our hand holding the plow when he calls us, by saying, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God”(Luke 9:62), though Elija let Elisha use the plow one last time before he left his worldly life. 

Following Luke 9:18-24 from the 12^th Sunday (last Sunday), reading Luke 9:51-62 on the 13^th Sunday makes it clearer about what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls “costly grace”, required as the “cost of the discipleship”.  By contrasting with Buddhism tradition of pabbajja, we can also associate Jesus’ teaching on the discipleship to Buddhism, while deepening our understanding and appreciation of the Christian discipleship. 

Of course, it is not all about the “costly grace” to be disciples of Christ in the pabbajja-like way. The second reading of this Sunday, 13^th Sunday, Galatians 5:1, 13-18, describes the benefit of paying the “costly grace” in our discipleship, and the benefit is the freedom set by Christ for us. But, Paul warns us not to abuse this freedom by giving into the fleshly and worldly temptations. Of course, as we continue to grow in our discipleship, we can handle this freedom better, as we gain stronger abilities to detach ourselves from our worldly desires and carnal temptations for the sake of the  Nirvana-like ultimate and perfect freedom and peace, with joy.

Costly Grace in Bushido-like the Christian Discipleship - A Reflection of the Scripture Reading on the 12th Sunday Year C

Out of this Sunday (12^th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C), Zechariah 12:10-11;13:1; Galatians 3:26-29, and Luke 9:18-24, what sticks most to me is found in Luke 9:23-24.

 “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it”(Luke 9:23-24) said Jesus to his disciples upon Peter confessed that Jesus is the Messiah. Here, “cross” means death. 

Being a descendant of samurai, these words of Jesus on self-denial and carrying our own crosses as the way to follow him strike home with the essence of my psyche, passed from my samurai ancestors.  These strong commanding words of Jesus really strike a chord with the Cord of Samurai, known as Bushido. In particular, I find these words of Jesus echoing the essence of Bushido, as described in the Book of Hagakure (葉隠). 

Let’s take a closer look at the corresponding portion of the Book of Bushido to better appreciate the words of Jesus on the discipleship.

“武士道といふは､死ぬ事と見付けたり。二つ二つの場にて､早く死ぬ方に片付くばかりなり。別に仔細なし。胸すわって進むなり。図に当らぬは犬死などといふ事は､上方風の打ち上りたる武道なるべし。二つ二つの場にて､図に当るやうにすることは､及ばざることなり。

我人､生くる方が好きなり。多分好きの方に理が付くべし。若し図に外れて生きたらば､腰抜けなり。この境危うきなり。図に外れて死にたらば､犬死気違なり。恥にはならず。これが武道に丈夫なり。毎朝毎夕､改めては死に改めては死に､常住死身になりて居る時は､武道に自由を得､一生落度なく､家職を仕果すべきなり”。（聞書第一）。

William Scott Wilson (Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai, 2012, Shambhala Publication) translates this portion from the first chapter as below:

“The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only a quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one’s aim is to die a dog’s death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one’s aim.

We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one’s aim is a dog’s death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.”

These words from Hagakure by Tsunetomo Yamamoto, a samurai in Saga, Kyushu, Japan, in the early 18^th century, teach the samurai to intuitively choose to sacrifice their own lives on their mission for their lords, whom they serve with their absolute loyalty.  Samurai (侍) literally means a person who serves (his lord). To the samurai, it is their respective warrior lords, who govern provinces in Japan, while these lords serve their lord, Shogun, who rule all the provinces in Japan, during the Japan’s feudalistic era (1192-1868). 

To the followers of Jesus, the Christ, according to Jesus, it takes the samurai-like absolute resolution for loyalty, which may cost our own lives. This samurai-like self-sacrifice determination for the one whom we serve, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the essence of being Christian. 

As Yamamoto says in Hagakure, it is not vain to die but rather honorable to die on mission, even if the mission is not completely accomplished, Jesus finds it commendable that Christians die on our respective missions, in our faithful pursuant of callings. It is because such a death means following Christ all the way to the Cross he died. 

Because some people believe that the above excerpts from the Book of Hagakure contribute to the fact of higher suicide rate in Japan. They seem to think that the Japanese find it honorable to commit suicide rather than to live in shame and disgrace, influenced by Hagakure philosophy. But, I must say that this is a gross misunderstanding, often promulgated by Western interpreters. What Hagakure teaches is to live an earthly life meaningfully.

In Bushido, according to Hagakure, a meaningful life is a life of service for a lord. Suicide is far from a form of having a meaningful life. This has been made evident by Viktor Frankl as he promoted his fellow Nazi death camp inmates to survive by overcoming their recurring suicidal temptations by discerning meaning –amidst seemingly meaningless and hopeless hellish reality. Thus, it is absolutely false to link Hagakure’s teaching of “The Way of the Samurai is found in death” with an encouragement of suicide or any form of trivialization of life. 

Neither Jesus nor the author of the Book of Hagakure, Tsunemoto Yamamoto, devalue human life at all. They do not prompt their disciples to commit “sacred suicide”, either. But, it is rather to inspire the disciples/followers/servants to choose the honor of martyrdom if it would cost their own lives in keeping their missions – rather than giving up/abandoning their missions to preserve their own lives. If  Hagakure were to promote suicide, then, it would give the same logic that Jesus, through his words in Luke 9:23-24, had promoted his disciples’ suicides. It is not to be confuse martyrdom, which is honorable, with suicide, which is to be avoided by all means – though we should not blame and shame on those who have committed suicide. 

Now, the words of Jesus in Luke 9:24, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it”, are paradoxical.  It makes no sense to say that losing life, namely, dying, means saving life, in our common sense. But, it is what Jesus teaches, and we must appreciate this as his paradoxical teaching. 

It is also possible to understand that Jesus was reiterating his teaching on self-denial in Luke 9:23 in this paradoxical teaching in Luke 24. In other words, denying our own ego (self-serving tendency) in Luke 23 means and enables  not clinging to life when we are called to let go of our own lives for the greater purpose (meaning) of life, which is our service for the Lord.  

This paradoxical teaching of Jesus on denying our own lives and saving our own lives in Luke 9:24 for our discipleship reflects Zen teaching’s paradoxical character, especially with Zen Koan riddles. This paradoxical aspect of Zen is also found in the above-excerpts from Hagakure, as it actually teaches the value of life by encouraging to choose a meaningful life by finding its essence in death. 

To indicate Zen element in Hagakure, William Scott Wilson puts these Zen wisdom words (禅林句集):  To preserve your life you must kill it.  Kill it off completely, and you will be at peace for the first time.( 護生須是殺 , 殺尽始安居) , succinctly reflecting  the essence of Bushido. But, I believe that this Zen wisdom also sums up the paradoxical words of Jesus from Luke 9:24, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it”.  Jesus actually repeats this Zen wisdom in his teaching, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it”(Luke 17:33). 

This Zen aspect in Jesus’ teaching is one of aspects in Christianity that make me wonder if Jesus had been influenced by the teaching of Shakamuni (Gautama )Buddha, who had taught the virtue of non-attachment about 500 years before the time of Jesus. Another element of common wisdom found in Jesus’ teaching to Buddhism teaching is self-denial in Luke 9:23. Jesus puts self-denial as a prerequisite for the discipleship because we cannot carry our respective crosses unless we discipline ourselves to be free from our ego’s influences. As long as we allow our ego to influence our decisions, we cannot carry our respective crosses because of unbearable fears. This  psychological insights on the ego-fear hindering factor to our full engagement in our missions, which can require us to sacrifice our own lives, is also the essence of Bushido, as Hagakure teaches.  In fact, according to Morita Therapy’s clinical theory, what is in the undercurrent of fears is undisciplined desire for our own lives, called “seinoyokubou/生の欲望”. To put in this context, what Morita Therapy sees as the root of fear, “seinoyokubou/生の欲望”is  what inhibits us from practicing the Jesus’ teaching in Luke 9:23-24 and Yamamoto’s teaching on Bushido in the Book of Hagakure. 

Besides the Bushido essence in the Book of Hagakure, what Jesus’ words in Luke 23-24 invoke is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1937 book, “The Cost of Discipleship”, which challenges “cheap grace” in attempts to recover “costly grace” as the essence of Christian discipleship.  Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran theologian, who died in a Nazi concentration camp for his courageous opposition to the Nazi policy, while many Christians in Germany put their conscience to sleep during the Nazi regime so that they would not sent to concentration camps. 

Bonhoeffer sharply criticized modern-day Christians’ tendency to hijack grace by their own self-interest, thus, making “cheap grace” – which is used to serve ego-driven interests under the disguise of grace. He argues that “cheap grace” is what rots the Church. In response to this problem of infestation of “cheap grace”, Bonhoeffer attempted to redeem the real authentic grace, which he calls “costly grace”, rooted in the New Testament. 

In “The Cost of Discipleship”,  Bonhoeffer writes: “Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly  because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and is grace because it gives a man the only true life………. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price”, and what has cost God must cannot be cheap for us.”  And, these passionate words of Bonhoeffer on “costly grace”, which is what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, resembles the powerful words of Jesus in Luke 9:23-24. 

Certainly, there is no place for a coward in the discipleship of the Lord Jesus Christ , just as a faint-heart cannot be a samurai to serve his lord.  Those who lack the courage to overcome fear of dying by denying self cannot carry their respective crosses. In this context, the cross means the fulfilling the mission specifically given to each disciple, with the ultimate self-sacrifice. 

To overcome this fear, Jesus in Luke 9:23 encourages us to deny our ego (self-denial). To put this in the context of Buddhism teaching, which also teaches self-denial, it is about striving for anatman , the state of no ego – the state of no attachment.  To put this in the context of Morita Therapy, anatman is the state in which “seinoyokubou/生の欲望”, the root of fear, like kleshas, is completely overcome with spiritual disciplines.  This is what both the Christian discipleship and the Bushido in Hagakure demands. 

The courage to overcome the fear of losing our own lives – even though we know in our heard that it is noble to have honorable death in martyr, Paul  offers some encouraging thought.

“For through faith you are all children of God – in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendant, hairs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:26-29).

Namely, according to Paul, the Christ we are clothed with – the Christ who covers us and unites us in one – help us overcome the fear of dying – fear of losing life. Christ, who overs us, protects us from this fear so that we will not let the fear of dying prevent us from faithfully pursuing our respective missions of carrying our crosses.  It also helps us fight temptation to cling back to our own lives. 

The courage of San Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila is a good example of  “costly grace” in the Christian discipleship, reflecting the essence of Bushido in Hagakure, as he fended off  a temptation to give up his mission for the Lord Jesus Christ for saving his own life.  San Lorenzo was about to be executed in Nagasaki, Japan, at the height of persecution of Christians in Japan, because he came to Japan on the Christian missionary from the Philippines. A Japanese executioner took pity on young Lorenzo and tried to strike a deal with him to save his life. The executioner told Lorenzo that he could be spared from execution and be sent back to the Philippines if he would denounce his Christian faith.  To this, Lorenzo flatly declined such an offer as he was so determined to die for Christ (invoking the essence of Bushido as noble martyr death in the Book of Hagakure). So, Lorenzo said, “I am a Christian and I will remain a Christian even to the point of death. Only to God will I offer my life. Even if I had a thousand lives, I would still offer them to Him. This is the reason why I came here to Japan, to leave my native land as a Christian and die here as a Christian, offering my life to God alone.”

As the essence of Bushido in the Book of Hagakure is “The Way of the Samurai is found in death”, the essence of Christian discipleship is also put as such: “The Way of the Christian discipleship is found in death”, because, as Bonhoeffer argues, the Christian discipleship is reflecting the “costly grace”, which stems from the price God had paid to redeem us, the sinners.  

Though in Luke 9:18-24, the weight of Jesus’ words in Luke9: 23-24 did not sink into the heart of Peter, who confessed Jesus as the Messiah, in John 21:18-19, Peter must have begun to finally understand what Jesus meant by his words in Luke 9:23-24. 

“‘Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, ‘Follow me’” (John 21:18-19).

And, Peter, indeed, became courageous and did not hesitate to choose death, as taught in the Book of Hagakure, for his Lord Jesus Christ, in Rome.  Being Christian means to follow not only the path of Jesus but also to follow paths of such courageous Saints of martyrdom, such as St. Peter and San Lorenzo - great Christian "samurais".