The Wisdom Jesus

If you put aside what you think you know about Jesus and approach the Gospels as though for the first time, something remarkable happens: Jesus emerges as a teacher of radical wisdom and compassion, whose aim is nothing less than the transformation of human consciousness. His methods are as bold and surprising as a Zen master's. And his aim is to break through our habitual thinking and to effect a complete conversion of our minds and hearts. Cynthia Bourgeault is our guide to rediscovering Jesus as a wisdom master in the tradition of the Buddha and other teachers. She looks to the Gospels, to contemplative experience, and to recently discovered ancient Christian documents (such as the Nag Hammadi scriptures and the Gospel of Thomas) to reveal a fresh new understanding of Jesus and his teaching. What Jesus experienced, she says, was a profound understanding of nonduality-the essential oneness of all things-and his aim was to transmit this truth to others experientially. She provides instruction in simple practices from the Christian contemplative tradition that leads to the kind of transformation Jesus taught.These include Centering Prayer, a form of Christian meditation, and Lectio Divina: "Divine reading," a meditative practice unique to Christianity that intersperses slow and deliberate reading of a text with silence, contemplation, and prayer.