Shepherds & Dharma Gates

John 10:1-18 (CJB)

¹“Yes, indeed! I tell you, the person who doesn’t enter the sheep-pen through the door, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. ² But the one who goes in through the gate is the sheep’s own shepherd.

⁷ So Yeshua said to them again, “Yes, indeed! I tell you that I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All those who have come before me have been thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them. ⁹ I am the gate; if someone enters through me, he will be safe and will go in and out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only in order to steal, kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, life in its fullest measure.

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand, since he isn’t a shepherd and the sheep aren’t his own, sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf drags them off and scatters them. ¹³ The hired worker behaves like this because that’s all he is, a hired worker; so it doesn’t matter to him what happens to the sheep. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me — ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father — and I lay down my life on behalf of the sheep.



From  Zechariah 11 (CJB)

⁴ Adonai my God says this: “Shepherd the flock for slaughter. ⁵ Their buyers kill them and go unpunished; while those who sell them say, ‘Barukh Adonai! Now I’m rich!’ Even their own shepherds show them no pity. ⁶ I will no longer show pity to the inhabitants of the land,” says Adonai. “No, I will hand every one of them over to the power of a neighbor and to the power of his king; they will crush the land; and I won’t rescue them from their power.”⁹ So I said, “I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die; what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let those that are left devour the flesh of one another.”

¹⁵ Adonai said to me, “This time, take the equipment of a worthless shepherd. ¹⁶ For I am going to raise up a shepherd in the land “who won’t bother about the ones who have been destroyed, won’t seek out the young, won’t heal the broken and won’t feed those standing still; on the contrary, he will eat the meat of the fat ones and break their hoofs in pieces.”

Today’s Gospel in the lectionary is from John: the famous “Good Shepherd” one.

Shepherds. I never liked the associations that the term “good shepherd” raised in my mind. Mostly because I didn’t like being compared to a sheep.

The various passages in which Jesus compares himself to a shepherd always connect in my mind with the passage in Zechariah about the Bad Shepherd. I first made that connection way back in 1989 or ’90 in the course of doing Lectio Divina.

(Funny, I hadn’t realized that my practice of Lectio Divina was so long-term and established; but I just spent a half-hour or so going through my old journals trying to find the entry where I first made that connection — and it struck me hard— that was 30 years ago!)

I recently ran across the notion that shepherds; particularly hired shepherds who were not the owners of the flock; had a bad reputation in first century Palestine. Philo, a contemporary Hellenistic Jew, wrote that the occupation of a shepherd was “mean and inglorious.” Later on, rabbis added to their bad reputation by prohibiting them from testifying in court, and warning people not to buy anything from them because the goods were likely to have been stolen. This appears to be consistent with the distinction John’s gospel makes, between the hired-hand shepherd, and the owner-of-the-flock shepherd.

I only understood about the good shepherd after reading the brutal description of the bad one:  “who won’t bother about the ones who have been destroyed, won’t seek out the young, won’t heal the broken and won’t feed those standing still; on the contrary, he will eat the meat of the fat ones and break their hoofs in pieces.” (CJB) The RSV says, “who does not care for the perishing, or seek the wandering, or heal the maimed, or nourish the sound, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.”

Today, the other thing that struck me was that Jesus calls himself “the gate.” That reminded me of the Bodhisattva Vow: 

“Living beings are infinite, I vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to cut through them.
Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it.”

Understanding Christ as the boundless Dharma gates gave me a little bit of a thrill: To see every single one of those endless Dharma gates as the same as the Boundless Christ. It made me happy.

I can’t waste time trying to climb over the walls…. I’ve got to find those gates of universal truth and go in and out that way. No shortcuts here; no option for sneaking in the back way and stealing a bleating piece of wisdom, or courage, or integrity. It just won’t work!

If I enter by those gates, then there won’t be fear and confusion, and the sheep won’t run away.

Pushing the metaphor to its metaphysical limit: Jesus claims to be both the gate and the shepherd— so does that mean that he enters through himself? But, if we take ourselves to be the sheep, with Jesus our kind, friendly shepherd, the analogy falls apart.

No, I think we are the shepherds; and the sheep are all of our silly, flighty thoughts and feelings. If we climb over the wall intending to steal some of the meaning-of-life, without going to the trouble of treating ourselves right; without taking responsibility for ourselves; without doing the hard work of self-awareness; well then, our sheep-thoughts will run away from us and scatter in all directions, because they don’t recognize us, and are afraid that we will butcher them for our own profit, and eat them all up right down to the hooves.



Old Man Zen says, “I think your metaphor just broke. Have you had lunch yet? Done the laundry? The dishes? Changed the sheets? Swept the dojo? Baaah! Save those damn metaphorical sheep for when you’re trying to go to sleep!”