I’m reading a book by the Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, whose work I continually return to. It’s called The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. He makes the point that individual consciousness is inseparable from collective consciousness and that collective consciousness is comprised of individual consciousnesses. To me what this implies is that one person who liberates themselves is contributing to the liberation of the collective. Thus, the salvation of a single person is as though the whole of humanity were saved.

In the Catholic religion, it’s said that we are saved by the atoning action of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, that by accepting him as Lord and avoiding sin we will “go to heaven” and be united to God. I have a different understanding of salvation.

Yeshua spoke of the kingdom of God as a present reality, not a faraway place that we will someday enter if we do life correctly. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he said, or other translations say, “The kingdom of God is in your midst.” Salvation is the realization of this kingdom, which is the reality of Oneness that can be experienced in the here and now.

I call Yeshua Lord and Master because he is my teacher. I worship that in him which is the unbroken oneness of all things, the Infinite Intelligence of the cosmos. I consider him a savior in that he has helped me realize that I am what he is, that there is no separation between myself and God except for those that I construct in my own mind.

I am yet to fully realize the unbroken oneness of reality as an abiding experience in my life. I still make errors, do things mindlessly, and worry about my finances. But I am confident after having started The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching that the Buddha and Yeshua were pointing to the same experience, and that this experience is the saving grace of humanity.

Without a sense of oneness, humanity will destroy itself. But once we see ourselves in the people around us, when we realize there is no us versus them and that all are us, there will be massive change. It starts with me. It starts with you.

Awakening doesn’t happen by force. It’s a natural process. The Buddha gave us practices for the waiting period before we finally “wake up.” Mindfulness, meditation, and right living are all good things to practice while we await the breaking down of all barriers to ultimate reality. Yeshua also teaches mindfulness (“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”), meditation (he often went off by himself to commune with the Father), and right living (“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”). So while you await your salvation, live in the present moment. Sit in communion with God. And do unto others as you would have them do unto you.