The Parable Of The Rich Man Makes Much More Sense Now

[Brivido]

Quote

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

In my opinion, the rich man represents the ego because is impossible to experience the Absolute and preserve at the same time your false identity. What do you guys think?

[ajasatya]

the rich man represents a materialist person who's afraid of introspection, looking for happiness where it cannot be found.

[Prabhaker]

9 minutes ago, Brivido said:

it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven

Why is it so difficult? Because the more you possess, the less you can love. And love is the door. Or, the less you can love, the more you start possessing things.

Things become a substitute.

People who can't love will always become misers: possessive, accumulators of things. People who accumulate things can't love, and those who can't love - how can they enter into the kingdom of God? 

Not that Jesus is condemning riches. He is condemning possessiveness. The question is not of riches; the question is of possessiveness. Riches are not blocking the way. Possessiveness is blocking the way.

Everybody is a little rich, more or less. Everybody has something, everybody has accumulated something. Nobody is so poor that he has nothing. And nobody is so rich that he has everything.

Even the poorest has his own clinging, and the richest yet has his own ambitions.

Even a beggar is rich because he has something which he clings to. It may be just a begging-bowl, but it doesn't matter whether it's a kingdom or a begging bowl.

The question is not of the objects you possess; the question is whether you are possessive. You can have a kingdom non-possessively, and you can be a beggar and very possessive.

So when Jesus says that a rich man cannot enter into the kingdom of God, he's talking about the man who is possessive, who is miserly, the man who is closed and cannot share, the man who cannot participate in life - who remains afraid and becomes an island unto himself, who separates himself from the whole and becomes a closed thing, who remains in a cocoon. This man is what Jesus means by a rich man.

  Osho ~ Come Follow To You, Vol 2