Elijah the Bodhisattva: An Interspiritual Exploration

This is an interspiritual commentary --¦ largely though not exclusively Buddhist-inspired --¦ on the life of Elijah as recounted in the Bible. It treats the externals of his life as metaphors for internal mind-states, his story as a labyrinth-like journey toward enlightenment, an unfolding realization of the non-duality of himself and God. Elijah begins with a henotheistic conception of God as a national deity connected to the land of Israel and progresses to a realization of God as the ground of being, being-itself, the God of those who struggle with God, which is the deeper meaning of the name Israel. While the inner dimension is emphasized, there is also a focus on the political dimension of the story, which liberation theologians call God’s preferential option for the poor, and here it is called the politics of anatta¦ --¦ the core Buddhist principle of not-self.