*This article was first published on the spiritual blog, Rainbows, Potholes & Nuggets of Gold, featuring writing exploring spirituality, faith, and the spiritual journey. You can read the original publication here: Article
Imagine a great garden stretching further than the eye can see.
Across the garden stand countless trees. Their trunks are different. Their branches twist in different directions. Their leaves are different shapes and colours. Some bear sweet fruit. Others offer welcome shade.
If you judged them only by what stood above the ground, you might think they have little in common.
Yet beneath the soil, their roots reach into the same living water.
Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, and Krishna each spoke in their own voice, within their own culture, using their own stories, symbols, and language.
Those who gathered around them came to understand life by the nature of those trees. They were fed by their fruit, rested in their shade, and gradually shaped by the wisdom that flowed through their branches.
Over time, these communities became what we now know as the world’s great religious traditions. Most came to know the tree that had given them life, but few paused to wonder whether its roots reached into the same hidden waters that nourished every other tree in the garden.
Why did figures such as Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, Krishna, and so many others become the living centres around which these religions grew? Why did millions come to hear, through their words and lives, the voice of something greater than themselves?
It’s because each, in their own way, drank deeply from the same living water. They became conduits through which an unseen reality found expression in the world, inviting others into a spiritual reality that cannot be seen with the eyes, yet can be recognised by the soul.
When we look beyond the particular ethos that later grew around them, we begin to notice the living water itself. Each teacher points beyond themselves toward a reality that is eternal, transformative, and profoundly life-giving.
We often admire the tree and forget the water that gives it life. But the purpose of the tree is not for it to be admired in itself. It’s for the life that exists within it to flow through to others.
For those of us living today, we find ourselves in an extraordinary moment in history.
Never before have so many of the great trees stood within our sight. We can sit beneath Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, Krishna, and others. We can taste their fruit, rest in their shade, and listen to the wisdom carried upon their branches. What was once separated by continents and centuries now stands before us like a single great garden.
Faced with such abundance, we might wander from tree to tree, sampling a little fruit from each, collecting ideas as though spirituality were a buffet. Or we might choose one tree, declare it the only true tree in the garden, and dismiss all the others without ever considering that their roots, too, reach into the same living water.
Neither path reaches the heart of the matter.
The invitation of the great teachers was never simply to admire the tree, nor to compare one tree with another. It was to discover the living water from which their own lives drew strength. Their teachings are not the destination. They are cisterns pointing downward to hidden waters, inviting us to drink for ourselves from the same source that gave them life.
Every one of us stands somewhere in the garden. Every one of us has roots reaching into the same soil. The living water that nourished the great trees has never ceased to flow. Jesus declared that “the Kingdom of God is within you,” reminding us that the deepest source of spiritual life is not merely something we observe from a distance, but something to which we ourselves have been given access.
So what was it that set the great teachers apart? It was not that they were born beneath a different sky or planted in a different garden. It was that they trusted the living water more deeply than the surface of the world. They allowed their roots to reach down into it until every word they spoke and every act they performed became an expression of that hidden life.
Perhaps that is what Jesus meant when he said, “Follow me.” Not simply, “Admire my tree,” but, “Walk the path I have walked. Let your own roots reach the living water. Allow the life of God to rise within you as it rose within me.”
The purpose of the great teachers was never merely to gather followers around themselves. It was to awaken others to the same eternal source from which they themselves had drunk.
When I read the words of Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, and Krishna, I don’t hear competing voices. I hear different trees describing what life looks like after drinking from the same living water. Perhaps that’s why their voices so often harmonise, even when their languages differ.
