Get Thee Behind Me Satan
James Tissot, ~1890

My dear friends,

In Matthew 16:21-28, Jesus reveals that the path of divine love leads through suffering, self-surrender, and transformation. From the viewpoint of the Bodhisattva path, his words describe the movement from self-protective grasping toward bodhicitta, the Awakening Mind that willingly bears hardship for the liberation of others. The "mind of Christ" and the Bodhisattva’s compassionate resolve meet here in a single spiritual demand: relinquish the narrow self and entrust one’s life to boundless love and wisdom.

Peter’s protest is deeply human: he loves Jesus and recoils from the thought of suffering and death. Yet Jesus recognizes in this resistance the ancient temptation to preserve the self at any cost. On the Bodhisattva path, attachment to comfort, reputation, security, and even one’s own life can become a hindrance when it closes the heart to compassionate action. To set the mind on "divine things" is to orient it toward wisdom and universal love, seeing that a life devoted to others may require entering suffering rather than fleeing it. Jesus’ rebuke thus becomes a sharp form of spiritual training, exposing the self-protective mind so that a greater mind of compassion may arise.

To "deny" oneself need not mean despising oneself. It means loosening the grasping that treats the separate ego as the center of reality. The Bodhisattva likewise trains to release self-cherishing and exchange concern for self with concern for others. Taking up the cross is then a practice of willingness: carrying the difficulties that accompany love, truthfulness, forgiveness, and service. Jesus’ paradox that life is found by losing it echoes the Bodhisattva insight that clinging contracts the heart, while self-giving opens it into a larger life. When we surrender the demand to possess life on our own terms, we begin to discover the freedom of a life lived for all beings.

Jesus’ promise that each person will be repaid according to what has been done resonates with the Buddhist teaching of karma: intentional actions shape experience and character, bearing consequences in this life and beyond. Yet the purpose of such teaching is deeper than reward and punishment. It summons us to ethical vigilance, compassion, and responsibility. Every act of patience, generosity, forgiveness, and courage plants conditions for awakening; every act rooted in hatred, greed, or delusion strengthens the habits that bind us. To follow Christ and to walk the Bodhisattva path is therefore to cultivate causes consonant with the kingdom of God: causes of mercy, wisdom, and liberating love.

Matthew immediately follows this saying with the Transfiguration, where the disciples Peter, James, and John behold Jesus radiant with glory. Read in that light, the "coming" of the Son of Man is already glimpsed before death as a revelation of awakened reality. The Bodhisattva tradition likewise teaches that the luminous nature of mind can be directly known when obscurations fall away. Such a vision is neither escape from the world nor private spiritual possession. It strengthens the disciple for compassionate service, just as Jesus descends from the mountain and continues toward Jerusalem.

The invitation of Matthew 16:21-28 is therefore severe and gracious. We are asked to place the welfare of others above the compulsions of the ego, to accept the cost of compassion, and to trust that self-giving love participates in a life deeper than death. In Christian language, this is to take up the cross and follow Christ; in the Bodhisattva path, it is to generate bodhicitta and dedicate body, speech, and mind to the awakening of all beings. May we learn to recognize whatever tempts us away from this path, set our minds on divine things, and walk with courage toward the freedom that is discovered in love.