In my thoughts, Jesus, this person, was  much similar and related to the zen buddhist monk.  Except that there were no such monasteries or houses of teachings and learning, in his own time and place, such that he had to be involved with--and this is quite interesting--the locale, the locals, the public, the society such as it was at the time, even the particular people, people who actually existed.


Of course, people don't know what to make of him!  So, they say to themselves, uhhh, he's a...  he's a...  uhh...  he... his friends are publicans and sinful people, he likes to eat and drink, as far as we can tell, sitting round at his old communal table sort of a thing... telling stories...  That's who is, that's what he does...

So, you know... think of it.  The people around him had no formal concept, no school of cultural understanding that readily included the great high understandings of things beyond words such as a Buddha could give.  They were going about there business.  They had no idea, the limitations of words, of thought, of dualistic individualization of phenomena, such as a thinker steeped in understanding the true nature of reality, of That Which Is, they just weren't at all familiar, or used to, such discussions and the inevitable Zen character of these discussions.  They, in their normal lives, did not wish to find the verily, verily, I say unto you, the perfect conundrums of the "sound of one hand clapping," the unfixable nature of even all great personal problems, to perfect clash of "move, or stay, here or there, that job, or this job, this path or that path, these friends, or those friends,"  all of which, in some way, might be seen as to make not much of a difference, to the water steadily coming over downhill through a stream bed on its own way of time and natural paths...

Jesus, the Zen Scholar, who has no way of showing to his societal participants that he is to be a thinker of some greater context, one respected for its truth, its applicability to reality...

Jesus the Doctor, the Physician, the clear-thinking one.

Thus, his Sermons.  Which, of course, are full of Zen, full of that sense we get from the Lankavatara Sutra, the limit of words themselves... 

Do we literally take?  Or rather aren't we forced to think...  "Rich are the poor in spirit..."