
If you put aside what you think you know about Jesus & approach the Gospels as though for the first time something remarkable happens: Jesus emerges as a teacher of radical wisdom & compassion whose aim is nothing less than the transformation of human consciousness. His methods are as bold & surprising as a Zen masters. & his aim is to break through our habitual thinking & to effect a complete conversion of our minds & hearts. Cynthia Bourgeault is our guide to rediscovering Jesus as a wisdom master in the tradition of the Buddha & other teachers. She looks to the Gospels to contemplative experience & to recently discovered ancient Christian documents (such as the Nag Hammadi scriptures & the Gospel of Thomas) to reveal a fresh new understanding of Jesus & his teaching. What Jesus experienced she says was a profound understanding of nonduality-the essential oneness of all things-and his aim was to transmit this truth to others experientially. She provides instruction in simple practices from the Christian contemplative tradition that leads to the kind of transformation Jesus taught. These include Centering Prayer a form of Christian meditation & Lectio Divina: Divine reading " a meditative practice unique to Christianity that intersperses slow & deliberate reading of a text with silence contemplation & prayer."