A Response to a Question About a Vision: Or, What to do When You Meet Jesus on the Road

The other day I received a note from someone practicing at a Zen center. This is my response, slightly modified…

Dear One,

Thanks for the note sharing your vision.

Many years ago I had a similar experience. Deep in retreat I had a reverie, a vision, a makyo, pick your term in which Jesus appeared to me. He was more or less a blending of the Warner Sallman chestnut haired Jesus with that middle distance gaze and the much rougher image from the Shroud of Turin. He was wearing a thin off-white robe and he stood before me.

My immediate sense was a wave of peace. I thought of that ancient phrase of a peace that passes all understanding.

Quite gently he said, “I have a great gift to share.”

My heart leapt.

Then he held up his hands, which were dripping blood. Before I could react he reached out and grabbed my hands and as our palms touched I was nearly knocked over with the pain of it all. The pain of the world seemed to shoot through my hands and take over my body.

Eternity? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Somewhere in the mystery of time and space it was over. And I was alone.

My hands were sore for several days after.

I’ve seen my name included on some lists of Christian Zen practitioners, but mostly that comes from people misunderstanding what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist today. By any reasonable assertion I’m no Christian.

I’m not even a theist. Not by most constructions of that word…

But there it is.

So, what’s the take away? Particularly for a Buddhist? A Zen Buddhist? A Unitarian Universalist Zen Buddhist? For a person with more than a passing taste for the rational.

And, for you?

Of course our standard counsel within our Zen traditions when confronted with such things is “Don’t worry, it will pass.”

I find this very good advice. I’ve repeated it any number of times.

I’ve said it to myself about this, as well.

And, I repeat it to you now.

And.

And there are things about that experience that have seeped into my heart and are part of who I am and inform decisions I make about dealings with others.

Which things, as you certainly know, are considered a mark of a “genuine” experience.

Transformation. Metanoia. Kensho. Awakening.

Or, as Joko Beck liked to say, a small intimation.

Now, as I said, I have a rational streak running through me that’s a mile wide. So, I will ask why and what and from where? Did it come from some place other than my own heart and mind? Maybe. But, not very likely. Certainly Occam turns the first direction to look, should one want to understand that where question, inward.

And from that perspective I think of the image of Jesus I saw and while I would prefer my visions to be more authentically Middle Eastern Semitic such as the image in the Shroud (knowing, yes, it is a late thirteenth, early fourteenth century forgery…) But, the chestnut haired Jesus, what my hip Christian friends call the candy ass Jesus, well, he’s the image I grew up with, was in every church I ever attended until my adolescence. So, of course, he would be part of anything that projected out of the stew that is my inner being. And, some of that Shroud image, while not as prominent, should be there, as well. And both were.

But that’s sort of tracking the mechanisms of it. Like following the firing of synapsis that allow an arm to flex. True stuff. But the deal is the arm flexing.

The deal is what I encountered. The important thing is what I encountered.

And what you encountered.

You want some advice.

I wouldn’t pack up and take off to a Christian convent.

I wouldn’t make lots of judgments at all.

You might think a little however of the three bodies teaching. In the Zen realm we tend to focus on the dharmakaya, the world empty, boundless. And we tend to think about the nirmanakaya, the world of history and choices and divisions.

We tend to forget the third realm, the sambhokyaka the world of dream and magic, of mental illness and divine ecstasy, the body of bliss.

There’s that world, too.

We live in them all, sometimes one at a time, sometimes two at a time, sometimes all three at a time.

So, a bit of magic erupted into your life.

And, yes, don’t worry, it will pass.

But, don’t turn away from what you experienced, either.

Counsel?

I suggest holding what happened in your heart, but lightly. Don’t make anything special of it. And don’t pretend it didn’t happen.

The proof of it, the use of it, will become apparent in its own good time.

Of that I’m confident.