Chapter 14: Teaching in India

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

---

Book I: Early Years
Part Three–Adventurer
                                      

He had to steal into the temple after dark. He groped his way to the small stone room where he and Kahjian normally met, hoping his Master would come at dawn as usual.

Kahjian was already there. His face loomed out of the dark when Jesus lit the oil lamp, making Jesus jump.

“I have been waiting,” Kahjian said. His eyes were hooded under his eyelids.

Jesus sat down across from him on the cold stone floor. “I taught in the streets as you instructed me, Master. See what has happened. Have you heard?”

Kahjian nodded. “Did you expect it to happen differently?” he asked Jesus.

Jesus’ lips parted in surprise. “You knew this would happen?”

“I knew,” said Kahjian. “You are a revolutionary.”

Jesus drew back in shock. Was Kahjian against him, too, he wondered?

“A revolutionary,” Kahjian continued, “is one who teaches and lives the truth as if false ways never existed. You don’t understand other ways. Because you believe in your own way totally, you are so convincing as a teacher that people are blinded by the brightness of what you say. Kahjian unhooded his eyes and stared intently at Jesus.

“It’s not wrong to do this, master, not if the truth is obvious!” Jesus’ body was tense.

“Are you ready for me to call the temple guards?” Kahjian asked.

Jesus nodded.

“Relax,” Kahjian said. “You did the right thing.”

Jesus’ face grew red. “But how can you call me a revolutionary!” he exclaimed. “I have only taught what your holy books and mine have said for thousands of years!”

Kahjian smiled. “You live such teachings, my son. There is no greater incitement to violence than to see a man like you living in the very way from which the rest of us have excused ourselves for years, because of our weaknesses. You make people, especially priests, feel guilty and jealous. Some of them honestly believe you are hoaxing everyone, that no one can be as pure and good as you seem”

Jesus shook his head.

“It is true,” Kahjian said. He spoke low. “Most people accept the laws and customs, bad as well as good, of the place in which they are born. If they do teach a different way, it is rare for them to also live it.”

“I don’t want to be a revolutionary, Kahjian!” Jesus exclaimed.

“Most good revolutionaries don’t,” Kahjian told him. “They would rather be farmers or carpenters, or teachers.”

Jesus fumed. “What, he said, “do I do now?”

“You leave Benares,” Kahjian answered. He stroked his chin. “I will go with you. You will continue teaching the poor, for you know what to say to them better than I. I will teach yoga where I can.”

“Won’t the priests follow us, or send messages ahead of us for our arrest?”

“No,” Kahjian told him. “Our religions and governments are not so organized as yours. Like princes in the different Indian states, priests control only their own areas. The further we get from Benares, the safer we will be.”

“Then I can speak in peace,” Jesus said. He flexed the arm that had been whipped. The wounds on it still burned fiercely.

Kahjian smiled once more and flicked his finger. “I doubt there is any peace where you go, Jesus messiah. Your only hope in safety is to have most of the poor people on your side. Then the priests dare not openly oppose you.”

An hour later they were ready, for neither man had many belongings. The two quietly slipped through the black, sewage-lined side streets of Benares to the country.

They roamed the countryside of India, from the valley of the Brahmaputra River in the east to the Indus River in Sind to the west. The old Master had to walk with care, so they journeyed slowly. But their traveling was steady, a good handful of miles each day, so they visited many places. They parted for six months at one point. Kahjian returned to Benares to catch up with his work there, while Jesus hurried on up the Brahmaputra and around the great Himalayan Mountains to visit Lhasa, the religious center of Tibet. There he briefly studied the strange psychic powers and mysteries of the Tibetan yogis, those lamas who could sit naked on the edge of a frozen lake, beside a glacier, and melt the snow within ten feet of them by body heat alone.

But traveling throughout the country and talking with people was what Jesus most enjoyed. He and Kahjian met again, in Kalinga at Prince Ravanna’s palace, and journeyed into India’s south along the Bay of Bengal. They stopped in one dusty fishing village after another next to the warm, roaring sea. Jesus’ pleasure in speaking to people, and his ability, increased quickly. He was a person born to it.

“It is strange, Kahjian,” Jesus said one night. He and Kahjian were no longer student and master. They traveled as equals. At that moment Kahjian was wrapping a tattered skin around himself and propping a widely forked stick against his chest. He did this every night to keep himself sitting upright in a cross-legged position. This allowed him to drift back and forth between meditation and sleep for the four hours he rested nightly. Jesus was learning this form of yoga sleep, too. But most nights he still preferred to lie down, especially when they were in a room with no window covers, as so often happened in these poor villages.

Kahjian rested his intense eyes on Jesus. “What is strange, my son?”

Jesus held out his hand, palm up. “Here I am a teacher,” he said, “and yet I am even further from being a scholar than ever. Before I came to India, I thought the two things were one.”

Kahjian tapped himself on the chest. “You have learned to teach from the heart,” He told Jesus.

“Have I?” Jesus said. He became excited. “When I was in Egypt, I wished to live by my heart, by concentrating on it.

Kahjian nodded. “You have concentrated on it for so long that you no longer need to do it on purpose most of the time. It is a part of your normal living, like thinking and sleeping.”

Then I am in the heart of God,” Jesus said.

Kahjian shook his head. “You are not in anyone’s heart except your own. Remember that.”

Jesus smiled. “Yet when I am in my heart, it seems to me that God is speaking through me. Sometimes I speak effortlessly, as if my mouth knows exactly what words to say without my thoughts aiding it.”

Kahjian nodded and pushed the forked branch firmly against his chest. “That is why you are the speaker, not I,” he said. “Now lie down and sleep. Tomorrow we reach the mouth of the Krishna River, where there is the great stone Buddhist temple built by King Anoka three hundred years ago. The priests will want to hear you. They may not like you, so you need all the rest you can get.”

“Will there be danger this time?” Jesus asked Kahjian.

“Yes,” the older man answered. “You and priests do not get along.”

The next morning at dawn, they each ate a bowl of rice with fish, thanked the young couple in whose house they had stayed, and walked the ten miles to the Krishna. One hour later, Jesus was in the midst of a crowd of priests and common people, speaking.

He spoke from the steps of the great temple that rose high behind him in simple stone splendor. Small wooden carvings of Buddha, gilded with gold paint, rested in little niches at spaced intervals around the outer walls. Inside the temple stood a large sandstone pillar, like the one King Anoka had also ordered to be built in Benares. On top of the pillar was a carved lion holding the great wheel of the Laws, a visible stone symbol of the ways all natural and spirit levels of the universe operate.

Many common people–farmers, fishermen, and Trash–had come to hear him speak. Some were followers from villages in which he had already spoken. They wished to hear him again. Others had come from miles around on the dusty roads, for news of good speakers’ visits always traveled far ahead of the speakers themselves.

The priests from the temple, barefooted and wearing orange and blue linen robes, also were gathered in force. They stayed to themselves, at one side of the crowd. They were curious about this great speaker, this tall, red-haired foreigner whose reputation traveled before him. It was said he spoke like Buddha himself.

Jesus started with a simple story as he looked out over the shifting, restless crowd.

“A poor man,” he began, “once had a bowl of rice. A rich man saw him and said, ‘That rice is from my fields that you have farmed. Therefore you must share it with me, half and half.’

“The poor man replied, ‘Sir, only a fourth of the food you see in this bowl is the rice that I picked from your fields. The largest portion is the water that I added to cook the rice. The water is not yours, but comes from the community well.’

“The rich man scowled.” Jesus made a face. “’Then take your rice and eat it!’ the rich man said, ‘for I will have nothing to do with community water used by beggars and Trash!’

“The poor man went his way in peace,” Jesus said, “and ate his rice.”

Jesus lifted his hand. “In this way, you people, priests provide fields of holy wisdom that you farm. But it is the water of your own experience, drawn from everyone, that makes holy words real. Therefore do not be fooled when priests demand that you pay them with half of your life in service to the temple. Give the larger part of your life, instead, to your community that has supported you. Then only will everyone be fed by truth.”

Most of the common people looked on Jesus with surprise. A few nodded their heads knowingly. Many of these people were tired of constant demands from Buddhist priests to leave behind husbands or wives and jobs to become Buddhist students who sought nothing. Buddhists, many people thought, preferred too much to escape from the world rather than live in it happily.

The Buddhist priests at one side of the crowd shifted uneasily. They looked at each other, and then at the crowd.

“Are you accusing us of unfairly influencing people?” a priest shouted?

“No, I am not,” Jesus said, turning to the priest. “I am a priest, too, or at least a teacher. I wish for people to learn from our words, but live their own lives.”

“That is all very well!” shouted another priest. His head was so closely shaved that his skull gleamed in the noontime light. “But by what authority do you speak? The story you have told us comes from no ancient teacher such as Buddha, or even Krishna!”

“The story is from a living teacher,” Jesus calmly said. “Myself. My authority comes from the one God.”

“There are many gods!” shouted the priest with the shaved head. “And Buddhists should not bother with any of them! A good Buddhist does not entertain such ideas. His only concern is to escape this life!”

A tall, dark-skinned fisherman waved a long knife in the dry, shimmering air. “Here, priest,” he yelled. “You want to leave this life? Here is the instrument for doing it!”

Jesus held up his hands. “Be quiet,” he commanded. “The laws are for living. Buddha did not counsel escape, except that through it we may find love.”

The priests spoke angrily among themselves.

Jesus started to tell another story.

“Wait,” a thick-set priest commanded. He gave Jesus a wily look. “To find perfect love, a man must go through many lifetimes, being reborn over and over, even as animals and clouds, if necessary. Do you accept this?”

Jesus answered carefully, for now he was on thin ground. The idea of reincarnation into animal form was popular in India.

“Men in my country,” he told them, “known as Pharisees, teach that a person may be reborn, but only into human shape. These Pharisees say that a human can never become an animal.”

“What do you say?” the priest asked.

Jesus paused. He looked upriver at the sparkling, dancing waters as he searched in his mind for the right answer. Suddenly something almost like a muscular spasm twitched in the center of his chest. He found himself speaking without knowing what is words would be. “I say that humans have been humans from the days of the first man and woman and may never be less, though someday on earth we will all be more.”

Everyone, priest and common person alike, gasped. Not only had Jesus spoken against rebirth in unhuman shape, but he also had suggested that there was more to everyone’s future than some far-off Buddhist heaven.

Jesus was dismayed. He had never so openly gone against common Buddhist teachings. He thought that Buddha and most other Indian saints also had believed what he had just said. But he had no proof.

He tried to let his worries go and trust in God. He concentrated on the center of his chest. He found his mouth opening again with a will of its own. “All are equal in their own way of life in God’s eyes,” he said. “Cow, bird, priests, poor man and Trash, each is equal to the other in love.”

The crowd of common people understood this. They pressed forward for more.

“Are you saying the Trash are as good as us?” a little priest yelled. He waved his fist.

Jesus drew back in surprise. “But didn’t Buddha himself say it?” he asked the little priest.

“Yes!” screamed the priest. “But we need more time! You can’t get rid of the different classes in just afew years, or even a hundred!”

“Listen, you priests.” Jesus looked at the little man. “Do you not know that if it is within your power to truly help someone, even the Trash, and you do not, then you have stolen from them what even Buddha would have given them? You are thieves to refuse people what they need.”

The small pirest drew back, eyes wide and face working. Jesus saw that he was frightened.

“Go to your room, brother,” Jesus told him, “and meditate. Perhaps there you can find the wisdom you seek.”

The little priest turned and stamped away. Most of the priests went with him.

The thickset priest turned back briefly and shouted at Jesus. “You’re no holy man!” he yelled. “You’re a foreign troublemaker! Go back to your miserable unenlightened countries of the West. Go back, you nonbeliever!”

Jesus took several deep breaths. The crowd, which was pressing around him now, needed him. He began to talk with them, touching them from time to time and telling more stories.

The high noon sun quickly swung to the inland west as Jesus worked. Now and then he noticed Kahjian a short distance away on a small, grassy rise, teaching methods of yoga to some of the people who desired it. Kahjian had several rows of cross-legged farmers, fishermen, and Trash lined up before him with their eyes closed, as he spoke to them.

Later, as the evening sun laid a pale bronze on the faces all around him, Jesus felt Kahjian at his elbow.

“It is time to stop,” Kahjian whispered.

Jesus turned his head to the side. “But Kahjian. Normally we work until well past nightfall.” He laid his hand on an old woman’s check and nodded to her that she could go.

“This time we don’t,” said Kahjian. “I overheard several priests. They are plotting to kill you.”

“Buddhist priests? Kahjian, surely there is no sense in that. Didn’t you hear them, instead, saying they would whip me or something like that? He smiled down on the old man. He was tired but happy. Hi peace, he felt, was helping others find peace.

Kahjian looked small and bent under the tall young man’s gaze. He seemed not to notice this, though. He stared up at Jesus intently. “Have you ever seen the long ritual knives made of dead men’s bones that the worshippers of Shiva the Destroyer use?” he asked.

Jesus nodded. The knives, though used only for animal sacrifices, were crafted of human thigh bones.

“And,” Kahjian continued, “have you not seen the temple guards who protect each of Buddha’s temples?”

Jesus nodded again. These guards were the largest Indian men in each locale. They often were as tall as Jesus and weighed at least a third more than he did. Two were standing in front of the nearby temple that minute.

Kahjian’s stare held steadily on Jesus’ eyes. “A temple guard,” said Kahjian, “is being instructed to watch you. At the first opportunity he will plunge a bone knife into your body here.” Kahjian reach up and lightly touched Jesus’ throat.

Jes drew back. His throat tingled.

“They will blame it on the Shiva worshippers,” Kahjian said.

“But why?” Jesus exclaimed. “The Shiva worshippers are as close in actual practice to what I teach as anyone. Who would believe a Shaivite had done it?”

“Everyone,” Kahjian answered. “It is appearances that count. Those Shaivite priests with their blood-red robes who silently plunge their bone knives into doves seem dangerous to most people.”

Jesus looked around him.

“See,” Kahjian said. “A temple guard is coming toward us now. From the side of the temple over there.”

Jesus looked at the people around him and Kahjian, who were watching him with respect. “Won’t we be safe as long as we are here in the crowd?” he asked.

“We have to leave the crowd sometime,” Kahjian replied.

Jesus bent down and grabbed his pack of belongings. “I am ready,” he said. “Are you?”

Kahjian nodded. “My things are inside my robe.”

with a quick wave and a smile to the people gathered around them, they strode off. At first the people were surprised. But they were used to holy ones having strange way. The people began calling their thanks and good wishes to both men as they headed toward the main road further along the Krishna River where it met the coast.

As soon as the two men were well along the sea road heading south, Jesus turned and looked behind him. He spied a moving shadow.

“The guard is behind us,” he told Kahjian. “Why doesn’t he run and catch up?”

“The further away from the temple we are,” Kahjian answered, “the better for them.” The old man walked faster.

“We are walking too fast for you,” Jesus said.

Kahjian looked up and frowned. “It is for a short time only,” he said.

Jesus looked up at the sky. “It is growing dark.”

Kahjian nodded. “The man will strike when it is completely dark.”

“Maybe the moon’s light will protect us.” Jesus pulled his robes more closely around him. The cool night wind from the sea was coming in. They could spot the restless waves now and then through the trees and hilly rises.

“There is no moon tonight,” Kahjian told him. The old man suddenly wheezed. He straightened his back and calmly began doing rhythmic breathing exercises.

Jesus glanced at him quickly. When he saw what Kahjian was doing, he, too, started breathing rhythmically. It was a breath-for-walking exercise Kahjian had taught him. It also happened to be an exercise that could be used to fight fear.

“Look,” Jesus said. He pointed ahead.

The road before them plunged into a forest of tall, wide-leaved trees similar to the palm trees he was used to at home. Underneath the trees everything was hidden in black shadows.

Kahjian shook his head. “We must be ready,” the old man whispered.

They entered the trees. It was so dark they could hardly see each other. The edge of the narrow road was a shadowy blur fading off into complete darkness.

They heard running footsteps behind them.

Kahjian turned. Jesus turned with him.

They saw a leaping orange figure jumping at them out of the dark. In almost the same instant, the figure ran into them, knocking them down. Jesus saw a flash of white descending in an arc toward his face. It was the knife of human bone. He automatically kicked out with his foot and deflected the blow. The knife plunged into the ground beside his face, a few inches away.

The big guard scowled and grunted. His wide face was sweating and red. He pulled the knife out and stood up quickly.

“Would you kill a god!” Kahjian shouted out.

Jesus looked over at him. The old man was standing.

The sweating guard paused. His rasping breath came in gasps through the darkness.

“Would you consign yourself and your mother to ten thousand lives as a snake!” Kahjian shouted. His face was a stern mask of dignified fury.

The guard looked at him with rounded eyes. Above the eyes, the eyebrows had been shaved off.

“You fool!” Kahjian yelled. “You are trying to kill the son of a god, and a foreign god at that! This foreign god is as strong as Brahman, the All-god, the Everywhere-seeing. Do you want this foreign god to come and seek you out for destroying his son?”

The big guard began trembling. “A proof,” he mumbled. “Give me a sign.”

“I’ll give you a sign!” Kahjian shouted. He stepped in front of Jesus and, facing the guard, he crouched.

“In a past life, you fool,” Kahjian told him, “I was a tiger who killed you when you were a swamp deer. I will kill you again!”

In awe Jesus watched the little man leap, snarling, at the much bigger guard.

The guard shouted in fear and ran. “A shape changer, a shape changer!” He screamed and disappeared.

Kahjian turned quickly to Jesus.

Jesus was already rising when he saw Kahjian’s face. It was the face of a huge Bengalese tiger. Jesus leaped back in fear. Suddenly Kahjian’s face looked normal. The little old man bent to where Jesus was kneeling, tensed and on one knee, and offered Jesus his hand.

Jesus took it reluctantly and rose.

They stood side by side for a few minutes, catching their breath. Jesus felt himself beginning to tremble, now that the danger was over.

“Did I really see what I thought I saw?” he asked Kahjian.

The old man stared at him. “What did you see, Jesus messiah?”

“I, uh, the face of a tiger,” Jesus said.

The old man just nodded.

“Is that what the guard saw?” Jesus asked. a cool tongue of wind from the sea whipped around his head, stirring his hair.

“He probably saw the whole tiger,” Kahjian said. He stroked his chin.

“How did you do that?” Jesus asked.

Kahjian waved the question aside. “A simple trick,” he said. “The man was afraid. I concentrated on his mind to make him see me as a tiger. The man’s own fear and superstition did the rest.”

“I saw it, too,” Jesus reminded him.

Kahjian chuckled. “You were also afraid. You are sensitive to other people’s thoughts and you were nearby. Now you know one of the secrets of India’s magicians. Shall I teach it to you?”

Jesus shuddered. “No. I wish to appear only as I am.”

“It is just as well,” said Kahjian. “You did a good job of defending yourself from the first blow.”

“It is not time for me to die, yet,” Jesus said.

Kahjian peered at him. “Not yet,” the old man agreed.

“Kahjian, it is time for me to leave India.”

Kahjian raised his head in surprise. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

“Right now I am,” Jesus answered. He shivered. “But that is not why I must leave. A certain time was set aside for my journeys here. That time is nearly ended. I feel drawn toward my home.”

“We will cut through the interior to the west coast and travel north from there,” Kahjian said.

Jesus shook his head. “We will wait here several days,” he told Kahjian, “then return by night on the road by which we came. I wish to see Prince Ravanna before I go. Then I shall visit Persia on my way home.”

Kahjian closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. In the silence, the roaring of the sea breakers on the nearby shore shared the old man’s breathing sounds. The smell of damp jungle, humid and dank, rose around them.

“I will not travel back with you,” he told Jesus. “My road lies south, now that we have come this far already. A group of men and women, a community of yoga followers whom I haven’t seen for a generation, will be glad to see me.”

Jesus trembled in the cold wind. He looked down quietly in the dark on the old man. “Then we part company here,” Jesus said. “I will miss you, Master.”

Kahjian shook his head firmly. “Do not call me ‘Master,’ Jesus. You have grown.”

“I am taller now,” Jesus agreed.

“Do not worm your way out of it.” Kahjian smiled. “You have become my superior in knowing how to work with God. All other things I have, they are skills, nothing but skills that you have already begun to learn well. You, Jesus–you are the Master.” He bowed low.

Jesus stepped to him and raised him up. He embraced him. “For your gift of yourself to me, I will never forget you,” he told Kahjian.

Kahjian shook his head. “Forget the teaching. Forget the teachings. Remember only the greater self you have learned to live with, inside yourself. It is that self that is connected to your God, and is in every human. Use that, Messiah. Remember that.”

Jesus nodded. “Come,” he said. “Let us start a fire and make rice. We will tell each other stories of our homelands. We have only a few days with each other and there still are many things I want to learn from you.”

Kahjian chuckled. “You will never stop learning, will you?” He took the younger man’s arm. “You have never learned how to widen the dark center of your eyes, and thus see like a cat in the dark. I will teach you while we walk here through the woods.”

The two yogis left the road and ambled through the trees in the moonless night. The younger one stumbled several times as the older one mumbled instructions. Then, suddenly, they were both striding confidently beneath the trees, in search of a campsite for the night.

---

---
Most recent revision of text: 1 Aug. 2020.