“Don’t think. Feel. It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
That was Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. He was echoing the well-known Zen analogy that all instruction (doctrine?) is like a finger pointing at the moon. It should not be confused with the moon itself.
Jesus, the man — the human side of Jesus — did a lot of pointing in his day. But a lot of people back then and after him and today are too busy staring at his finger to see what he was pointing to. They see him pointing at his literal life, his literal work, his literal death, his literal resurrection. But those are all the finger!
The moon was Jesus’ other side — his non-human side. The side that is identified with God. The perfect, immortal, numinous side that is in us all — and has been in us all from the very beginning.
Jesus said, “I am the way,” but that “I” was not Jesus, son of Joseph, prophet, leader, healer, etc. When I say, “I love you,” to my wife and daughter, that “I” has absolutely nothing to do with what I am or what I do or what I look like. That “I” is the “I” that is my real essence. It’s the unseen part of me that, if I were to die right now, would remain and still love as much as it does now.
The next part of Lee’s quote is even better. “… or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” If you stare at the finger, you miss the heavenly glory. Now, just imagine what you are missing by staring too hard at the external, literal Jesus! If Jesus is pointing us to God, to glory, and we only look at him and do not follow his pointing to see God, we are missing out on a lot!
As proof of this, compare the writings of any mystical Christian to any dogmatic, literalist, fundamentalist Christian. There is a world of difference. The mystic sees things so far above and beyond and below. They are following the pointing finger of Jesus and truly seeing God.
To go even further, pointing is far from an exact science. When you point, you often have to qualify with words what you are pointing at or the other person misses the point, so to speak. I think there are Christians who do follow Jesus’ finger and look at the “moon.” But some of them then become fixated on “the moon” and become dogmatic that it was “the moon” Jesus pointed to.
Someone else comes along and, looking up to follow Jesus’ pointing finger, sees a star. But looking more intently, they begin to make out the breathtaking Crab Nebula. Another looks up and initially sees a few tiny stars but, looking more intently, sees the Pleiades. They are both taking in the wonders of God and the glories of the heavens when the “moon Christian” starts berating them for missing the whole point and being heretics and idolaters because clearly Jesus was pointing at the moon and at only the moon.
I’ve said this before on this blog: I think that a literalistic view of Jesus as The Way robs you of the true glories and wonders that are available to you. Putting Jesus and God “out there,” perhaps touchable but distinct from yourself, is to miss your Self. Jesus was not pointing to God by holding his arm in the air. He was pointing to God by pointing at himself — his essence of which we all are a part. He was pointing inside at the God inside us all. He was pointing inside you.
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