Love

In the tradition of Judaism, there were so many rules and the so-called law and so many things that had to be followed that Jesus had to come and simplify. Because it seems there were 600 and something things that you had to follow, so he said what you have to do is love God with all your mind, body, spirit—whatever you have—love God with all your mind. And then he said, and love your neighbor the same way. Who could have imagined that all those complex-sounding laws could be simplified to this? To love God with all that you have and to love your brothers and sisters in the world the same way.

How to do it? We cannot do it by our will because our will consists of right and wrong, and there will always come a brother or sister who will have a different view, an opposing view of what is right and what is wrong. And then when we are faced with that, then all our love seems to go out the window. So our commitment must be to try and follow His will every moment. And when we fail, we must be contrite and return to Him. Until we have self-will, all the talk of loving God with all our might is lip service. All the talk of loving our brothers and sisters in the world with all our might is lip service. But at least let's move it from being lip service into a true intention.

So when Jesus said that, 'Love God, love your neighbor,' we all say these things. But like a parent will say to their children—in India we say, 'Whatever has afflicted you, may it be my affliction instead.' Jesus actually took that in the most literal way. He said that for all of your foolishness, if in God's justice there is a price to pay, let all that—like in India it's called the karmic kosha—may all that burden be mine. And he proved that love by enduring that pain of crucifixion. So in a way, it is saying that the slate was wiped clean for us by the coming of Jesus. But now we must also reciprocate that love by handing over our entire life to Him.

If you try to intellectualize what are objects of faith, then you may make yourself right in your head, but you lose the whole design. You lose the whole plot. If you start to say, 'No, no, but actually I don't think that it happened,' then you're doing yourself a disservice. You're doing yourself a disservice because we need these objects of faith. We need the crucifixion. I don't know how to say in words—a sacrifice like that needs an immensity of love which our intellect cannot fathom. To be betrayed by one of your closest, to endure the pain, the insult, people spitting on him while he's made to carry the cross, being called a thief, and all of this happening while your biological mother is still alive.

If you give this to your rational mind, it's not going to be helpful to you. And it doesn't matter at all what you think is true or not, but if you can meet it somewhere in your heart, then that one single symbol of Jesus on the cross can become your anchor for life. Here is one who is showing us how to love. For that love, he has given up on everything, although he was the Son of God himself. That is what the imitation or the emulation means. To stand there—and in those days it was a common way of punishment, and in fact, he was not alone—but he said, 'If I was to ask my Father, He would send an army of angels to rescue me.' But no. To willingly be subjected to that, that's going to be one episode at least of 'The Chosen' which I don't know how we're going to watch, or I'm going to watch it.