Comments on these gospel verses

I am not a Christian, but I do believe that Jesus had quite a few good things to say. Of course it's not clear how much of what has been attributed to him was actually said by him, but if one can recognize truth in the words or teachings of any being, then their particular origin should not be an obstruction.

Two of the quoted passages underscore the idea for me that Jesus, at least sometimes, when he referred to the Kingdom of God (or heaven) was not referring to a glorious future, or a sublime afterlife, but was in fact referring to a spiritual state of mind right now. The Kingdom of God is within you, and can be received as a little child. This mental state, here compared to that of a little child, to me is the same as Buddha nature, the state of awareness and lack of mental-narrative that occurs with practice and meditation.

Interestingly, in that same passage of Luke above, Jesus goes on to describe a more traditional view of the coming of the Kingdom of God, but only to his disciples. But hey, dharma teachings are like rafts, and this second part of Jesus's teaching is a raft unsuitable for me.

The second passage below, about how nothing going into a person can make them unclean, just what comes out. There is a subtext of the idea of sin and its corollary guilt here, but I want to concentrate more on the positive side of it. Nothing coming into us has the intrinsic power to harm us. I'd like to expand that a bit and say that even objects in our own mental landscape do not have the intrinsic power to harm us. This includes emotions, thoughts, fantasies, etc. It is what we do with them that causes harm. It is what comes out of us. Moreover, when what comes out of us is tainted by inner problems, it harms those we come in contact with, but I would venture to say that it harms us even more. By maintaining a peaceful, detached, aware mental landscape, we can experience things with calm and equanimity, and can ourselves generate more good in the world.

The other passage quoted below i like because it emphasizes humility, a concept very close to egolessness. I do not have any special place in the world. I am part of the world, and of the human organism, and I am not intrinsically better or worse than anyone else.