Consider The Lilies in the Field

Alex Nuttall Sleeping

Consider the lilies in the field they neither toil nor spin.

-- Matthew 6:28, Luke 12:27

I've read the Christian Bible, various translations, several times. The above is from two different New Testament books. I like what the message is. 

The message is to let you, the reader or listener know that it's not necessary to struggle because God has it all under control.

As a Buddhist I am not concerned with the glory of God. At the same time I'm also not concerned with deprecated other people's faith. In fact if you do a bit of research you'll find that Christians have uncovered many other faiths and practices because their own learning is based on research, discovery and contemplation. Many early Hindu, Chinese and Buddhist texts were brought to the Western world by Christian missionaries. 

As the missionaries were salesman (women) their job was to convert as many people as possible. It also was to understand who the people were who they wanted to convert. The very clever messengers assimilated culture and introduced Christianity. The ignoble ones would use extortion or even torture.

The message of the passage in Luke and Matthew is a simple one. It's a meditative statement. My Buddhist interpretation is this: 

Consider the Mind Formations (Samskaras) of the Lilies, They neither Toil nor Spin (Produce negative Karma because their natural karma is without blame). It's a message about dependant co-arising and the Dhamma (Dharma - The law of this Universe). The punch line is the the lilies beauty is greater than anything manufactured by Man(kind). 

We can attempt to connect a consciousness to Dhamma but it's not going to help us. We can negate the consciousness and debate it but that will not help us either. It's a lot of toil. Instead we can find our natural rhythms with each other and the world. We can introspect and inspect our minds. This is how we find that our minds in the natural state are like lilies.