The First Beatitude

Nirvana

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

This is the first of Jesus’s Beatitudes, in which he identifies those to whom his good news is addressed.

Who are the poor in spirit?

The word “nirvana” the goal of all Buddhists, literally means the snuffing out of a candle. The flame of the candle represents desires. The whole program of Buddhism is to overcome your desires. Your coveting, your lusts.

The Buddhist “Four Noble Truths” are equivalent to the Christian Beatitudes. The proper title is “The Four Truths of the Noble Ones.”

1. Existence is full of suffering.

2. This is caused by desire.

3. Eliminating desire eliminates suffering.

4. There is a path to eliminate desire.

St. Paul uses the same fire image when he says “It is better to marry than to burn.” Fire here = lust, desire.

A bad person is perhaps, at base, someone who cannot control their desires, but must always indulge them. Both we and the Buddhists refer to this as “selfishness”; the “self” is the thing that desires. Self=desires. We use the pseudo-scientific term “narcissism” to express the same thing.

And this, a general inability to control desires, may condemn the narcissist therefore to “the eternal flames.”

It may be an image similar to the classical one of Tantalus, who always sees a banquet just beyond his reach.

The Buddha uses the image of a house on fire.

It is the curse of the bad man, the narcissist, to always have unsatisfied desires, for in the end, the world cannot be enough. And so he surrenders himself to the flames.

Luke’s begin more plainly, “Blessed are the poor.” In speaking of the “poor in spirit,” we cannot therefore drift too far from the image of literal poverty. It cannot simply mean, for example, the humble. That is covered elsewhere—“blessed are the meek.” It cannot mean the sad; that is covered by “blessed are those who mourn.”

Surely it means, to live as though you were poor, regardless of your actual wealth. Which is to say, to restrain and control your desires, as the literally poor are obliged to do.

The literal poor are blessed, perhaps, because they are forced to learn how to do this.