There’s a story in the Talmud about the great sage and healer, Rabbi Yohanan, that once Rabbi Hiya bar Abba became ill and was suffering greatly. Rabbi Yohanan came to visit and asked him, “Are these afflictions dear to you?”
Rabbi Hiya mustered the strength to answer: “Neither they nor their reward!” Rabbi Yohanan said, “Give me your hand.” Rabbi Hiya gave him his hand, and instantly he stood up and was revived. Another time, Rabbi Yohanan himself became deathly ill, and Rabbi Hanina went to visit him. Rabbi Hanina asked him, “Are these afflictions dear to you?” to which Rabbi Yohanan replied, “Neither they nor their reward!” Rabbi Hanina said to him, “Give me your hand.” Rabbi Yohanan gave him his hand, and instantly he too was revived. The Gemara then asks, “Why would Rabbi Yohanan need someone else to heal him? Let him heal himself!” It then answers its own question: אֵין חָבוּשׁ מַתִּיר עַצְמוֹ מִבֵּית הָאֲסוּרִים – Ayn havush matir atzmo mibeit ha’asurim A prisoner cannot free oneself from a prison! What is this enigmatic story talking about? When the rabbis say that they want neither the afflictions “nor their reward,” it brings to mind the Jewish doctrine that whatever happens to us is the result of our own deeds, that there is an ethical balance in the universe, a kind of “karma” that makes us responsible for whatever we experience. But if this is true, that our experience of suffering comes from our own misdeeds, why would these holy sages be suffering? And second, why does the story emphasize that R. Yohanan can’t heal himself? Let’s look at the first question – does our suffering come from our misdeeds? The story of Noah and the great flood seems to say so: וַיֹּ֨אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְנֹ֗חַ קֵ֤ץ כָּל־בָּשָׂר֙ בָּ֣א לְפָנַ֔י כִּֽי־מָלְאָ֥ה הָאָ֛רֶץ חָמָ֖ס מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם וְהִנְנִ֥י מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ Elohim said to Noah, “The end of all humans has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of the humans; behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth!
The story of the great flood is among the earliest examples of the Jewish idea of Divine justice. At the same time, the tradition has also always understood that suffering cannot possibly be caused only by one’s misdeeds. After all, there are countless examples of innocent and even holy people suffering, such as the martyrdom of Rabbi Akiva who, while having his skin raked off his body by the Romans, calmly chanted the Sh’ma, not to mention the case of the holocaust and countless other examples in history and in our own experience. In fact, for some of our teachers, the idea of “karma” or Divine justice is outright denied: בֶּן עַזַּאי אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי רָץ לְמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְבַחֲמוּרָה, וּבוֹרֵחַ מִן הָעֲבֵרָה. שֶׁמִּצְוָה גּוֹרֶרֶת מִצְוָה, וַעֲבֵרָה גוֹרֶרֶת עֲבֵרָה. שֶׁשְּׂכַר מִצְוָה, מִצְוָה. וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה, עֲבֵרָה Ben Azzai said: Run to do a minor mitzvah (commandment, good deed) even as you would a major one, and distance yourself from an aveirah (misdeed, sin). For one mitzvah leads to another mitzvah, and an aveirah leads to another aveirah. For the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the consequence of an aveirah is an aveirah.
In this mishna, the author is clear: the reason to cultivate right behavior is because it leads to more right behavior, and the reason to avoid misbehavior is because it leads to more of the same. Life is its own purpose; we don’t live a certain way to bring about some other result, we live for its own sake. Another mishna says it in a different way: אַנְטִיגְנוֹס אִישׁ סוֹכוֹ קִבֵּל מִשִּׁמְעוֹן הַצַּדִּיק. הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אַל תִּהְיוּ כַעֲבָדִים הַמְשַׁמְּשִׁין אֶת הָרַב עַל מְנָת לְקַבֵּל פְּרָס, אֶלָּא הֱווּ כַעֲבָדִים הַמְשַׁמְּשִׁין אֶת הָרַב שֶׁלֹּא עַל מְנָת לְקַבֵּל פְּרָס, וִיהִי מוֹרָא שָׁמַיִם עֲלֵיכֶם Antigonus, leader of Sokho, received [the tradition] from Shimon the Righteous. He used to say: Don’t be like servants who serve the master for the sake of receiving a reward; rather, be like servants who serve the master not for the sake of receiving a reward, and let the fear of Heaven (Mora Shamayim) be upon you.
These two opposing views – that we should (1) be motivated by the consequences of our actions, on one hand, or that we should (2) not be concerned with the future, but rather we should live with integrity for its own sake, on the other – are brought together by this teaching from the Talmud: אָמַר רָבָא, וְאִיתֵּימָא רַב חִסְדָּא: אִם רוֹאֶה אָדָם שֶׁיִּסּוּרִין בָּאִין עָלָיו — יְפַשְׁפֵּשׁ בְּמַעֲשָׂיו, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״נַחְפְּשָׂה דְרָכֵינוּ וְנַחְקֹרָה וְנָשׁוּבָה עַד ה׳״. פִּשְׁפֵּשׁ וְלֹא מָצָא — יִתְלֶה בְּבִטּוּל תּוֹרָה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אַשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר תְּיַסְּרֶנּוּ יָּהּ וּמִתּוֹרָתְךָ תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ״ וְאִם תָּלָה וְלֹא מָצָא — בְּיָדוּעַ שֶׁיִּסּוּרִין שֶׁל אַהֲבָה הֵם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״כִּי אֶת אֲשֶׁר יֶאֱהַב ה׳ יוֹכִיחַ״ Rava, and some say Rav Ḥisda, said: If a one sees that suffering has come, one should examine their actions. As it is stated: “We will search and examine our ways, and return to God” (Lamentations 3:40). If one examined and did not find, attribute it to the emptying of Torah, as it says: “Happy is the person whom You afflict, Yah, and from Your Torah you teach (Psalm 94:12). And if one doesn’t find it there either, then you know they are “Afflictions of Love” – as it says, “For those who are loved by the Divine are rebuked…”
This almost humorous yet incredibly useful teaching seems to be saying – you might be suffering because you did something bad, OR you might be suffering because you are so very good! In other words, to put it bluntly, suffering happens. We cannot escape it, but we can relate to it in a way that is either spiritually helpful or not. The real questions is not why suffering happens; the question to each of us is: can we use our suffering in a way that brings about positive transformation? This Talmudic teaching gives us three possibilities for using our suffering in this way: First, is suggests looking at our ethical behavior. Regardless of whether our suffering was really caused by a lack in our ethical behavior or not, we can use the suffering as a signal to ourselves to become more conscious of our actions, to become more awake to our responsibility toward others. Second, it suggests looking at how we spend our time. The idiom “yitlei b’vitul Torah – let him attribute it to the emptying of Torah,” means neglecting one’s Torah study. To the ancient rabbis, studying Torah was the highest value, and today as well, a committed spiritual life should include a regular practice of learning. But, we also might expand this idea to include any worthwhile use of our time; the deficiency, then, would be the wasting of time, the squandering of these few precious moments of life we have in these bodies on this earth. Seen this way, while the first part has to do with responsibility toward others, the second has to do with responsibility toward ourselves. But the last is the most remarkable: וְאִם תָּלָה וְלֹא מָצָא — בְּיָדוּעַ שֶׁיִּסּוּרִין שֶׁל אַהֲבָה הֵם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״כִּי אֶת אֲשֶׁר יֶאֱהַב ה׳ יוֹכִיחַ״ And if one doesn’t find it there either, then you know they are yisurin shel ahavah – “Afflictions of Love” – as it says, “For those who are loved by the Divine are rebuked…” While the first two suggestions are to improve our behavior in some way, the last suggests the suffering itself can have a transformative effect, if we receive it “with love” – meaning, bringing our hearts and attentiveness into connection with the experience of the suffering – in other words, be present with the suffering. Because when we relax our natural impulse to resist that which is unpleasant or painful, and instead bring our awareness deep into the actual feeling of suffering, the pain becomes food for consciousness. And as we persist in this challenging but simple practice of presence with pain, we are liberated from identification with the pain; the pain subsides in time, and in its place there is a greater ease and sense of spaciousness, a knowing of ourselves as the limitless space of consciousness within which the pain and all experience comes and goes. From here, we can begin to understand the Talmudic aphorism: אֵין חָבוּשׁ מַתִּיר עַצְמוֹ מִבֵּית הָאֲסוּרִים – Ayn havush matir atzmo mibeit ha’asurim A prisoner cannot free oneself from a prison! It is ironic, because on the surface, it is talking about Rabbi Yohanan’s desire to be set free from his suffering. But on a deeper level, this teaching points to being set free by the suffering. Seen this way, his taking of Rabbi Hanina’s hand represents the embrace of the suffering, the allowing of its fire to liberate him from the prison of narrow identification with pain; in other words, it represents getting free from ego. There is a beautiful verse in Psalms which also expresses these two ways of relating to suffering –first as consequence of actions, and second, as a path of liberation: רֵ֘אשִׁ֤ית חָכְמָ֨ה יִרְאַ֬ת יְהוָ֗ה שֵׂ֣כֶל ט֭וֹב לְכָל־עֹשֵׂיהֶ֑ם תְּ֝הִלָּת֗וֹ עֹמֶ֥דֶת לָעַֽד׃ The beginning (Reisheet) of Wisdom (Hokhmah) is fear of God (Yirat Hashem); good intelligence to all who practice – Its praises stand forever!
On the surface, this verse is simply saying that if we want to act wisely, we should have a healthy fear of the consequences of our actions. But a deeper level emerges when we understand the richness of some of the words:
Seen this way, we can read: Reisheet Hokhmah – The beginning of transcendent, spacious consciousness is Yirat Hashem – Awe of Existence; wise understanding comes to all who practice this – Praises to That which stands forever! The medieval Kabbalah text, the Bahir, takes it a step further. First, it equates רֵאשִׁית Reisheet with חָכְמָה Hokhmah, understanding “the beginning of wisdom” to mean that “beginning” is an aspect of “wisdom”: רֵאשִׁית Reisheet, “Beginning” = חָכְמָה Hokhmah, “Wisdom” or “Consciousness” It then goes on to retranslate the first verse of the Torah with this is mind: בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ BeReisheet Bara Elohim Et Hashamayim V’et Ha’aretz… With Hokhmah, (Transcendent Spacious Awareness, called Reisheet), The Divine creates the heavens and the earth…
Why is it interesting to connect Hokhmah, spacious awareness, with creation? Because it hints about the key to being creative – if we wish to create, we must make space within ourselves for the creative idea to emerge; this is meditation, the cultivation of Hokhmah, of inner space. The sefirah of Hokhmah is traditionally connected in Kabbalah to the “Second Saying of Creation,” which also expresses this idea of making space: וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים יְהִ֥י רָקִ֖יעַ בְּת֣וֹךְ הַמָּ֑יִם וִיהִ֣י מַבְדִּ֔יל בֵּ֥ין מַ֖יִם לָמָֽיִם׃ Elohim said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.”
רָקִיעַ בְּתוֹךְ הַמָּיִם – “Sky in the midst of the Waters” Both “Water” and “Air” are metaphors for consciousness/Hokhmah, functioning in different ways: “Air” is the quality of open space, the field of awareness from which all thought and creativity emerges. “Water” is the power of awareness to “dissolve” and “purify” us from inner negativity, the practice of Presence with pain. These two metaphors for consciousness are embodied in the traditional daily practice of waking up in the morning – the prayer of gratitude for the breath of life (air) and the cleansing ritual of washing the hands. There is a hint for these practices in the second verse of the Torah: וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃ And the earth was unformed and void, with darkness over the face of the deep, and the spirit/wind of Elohim hovered over the face of the waters…
First it mentions the “wind,” then the “water” – hinting at the order of the traditional daily practice – first gratitude for the breath of life, then the ritual washing of the hands. The ritual handwashing has its roots in another Torah passage: וְעָשִׂ֜יתָ כִּיּ֥וֹר נְחֹ֛שֶׁת וְכַנּ֥וֹ נְחֹ֖שֶׁת לְרָחְצָ֑ה וְנָתַתָּ֣ אֹת֗וֹ בֵּֽין־אֹ֤הֶל מוֹעֵד֙ וּבֵ֣ין הַמִּזְבֵּ֔חַ וְנָתַתָּ֥ שָׁ֖מָּה מָֽיִם׃ Make a basin of copper and a stand of copper for it for washing, and place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and place water there. וְרָחֲצ֛וּ אַהֲרֹ֥ן וּבָנָ֖יו מִמֶּ֑נּוּ אֶת־יְדֵיהֶ֖ם וְאֶת־רַגְלֵיהֶֽם׃ And let Aaron and his sons wash their hands and feet from it…
This passage originally instructed the ancient kohanim, the priests, to engage in a water purification ritual before performing their priestly duties. But the ancient rabbis saw in these verses the pattern a daily practice of external cleansing for the sake of awakening an inner cleansing. The practice of washing the hands is traditionally done for the following three situations: 1. upon waking from sleep, 2. before eating bread, and 3. before each of the three daily prayers. Here is the prayer for chanting upon awakening: מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ מֶֽלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם שֶׁהֶחֱזַֽרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶֽךָ: Modeh/Modah Ani Lifanekha, Melekh Hai v’Kayam She’hekhezarta Bi Nishmati B’khemla Rabah Emunatekha! I give thanks before You, Living and Enduring King, for You have restored my soul/breath with Compassion – Great is Your faithfulness! This is followed by the purification ritual of pouring water from a vessel three times over each hand, focusing mind and heart on receiving purification from any negativity or inner burden that blocks the peace and wholeness of Hokhmah, our essence as spacious awareness… Here is a summary of the KETER and HOKHMAH practices thus far:
שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד׃ Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ekhad! Hear, O Israel – Existence is our God, Existence is One!
מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ מֶֽלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם שֶׁהֶחֱזַֽרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶֽךָ: Modeh/Modah Ani Lifanekha, Melekh Hai v’Kayam She’hekhezarta Bi Nishmati B’khemla Rabah Emunatekha! I give thanks before You, Living and Enduring King, for You have restored my soul/breath with mercy – Great is Your faithfulness!
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Walking with the Divine – Parshat Noakh
10/28/2019 0 Comments אֵ֚לֶּה תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת נֹ֔חַ נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֖ים הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ These are the offspring of Noah; Noah was a righteous person; he was perfect in his generation; Noah walked with the Divine. The word for “perfect” is tamim, which comes from tam, meaning “simple,” as in the “simple son” of the Passover Seder. In that context, tam doesn’t seem to be a positive thing, at least on the surface; the tam is normally thought of as someone without much intelligence. But in his commentary on Deuteronomy 17:13, Rashi says, Kol mah sheyavo eilekha – all that comes to you – kabel b’timimut – accept with simplicity. This “simple acceptance of whatever comes to you” is the deeper level of being tamim. On the surface, it resembles being unintelligent – isn’t it stupid to “simply accept” bad things? But this misunderstanding of acceptance makes the common mistake of forgetting to include oneself in “what happens.” Of course, “what happens” includes what we do; it’s not only “what happens” outside ourselves. So, being tamim doesn’t mean passively resigned to whatever happens; it means being present with what happens. There is a hint of this in the word טעם which has the same sound as תם – tam, and means “taste” – to be tamim means to “fully taste” the present moment, to be intimately connected with whatever is present. And, this connection with our situation includes what we do about the situation. For example, if we accept and “fully taste” a situation that is causing suffering, then that naturally leads us to a response aimed at relieving the suffering. That’s why this pasuk doesn’t only say that Noakh was tamim, it also says he was an ish tzaddik – a “righteous person.” Presence is Acceptance and Love in One. Another hint of the this comes from the unusual form of the pasuk: אֵ֚לֶּה תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת נֹ֔חַ – Eleh toldot Noakh, Noakh – These are the offspring of Noah, Noah… The name Noakh actually means “comfort” or “ease.” The fact that the word Noakh is repeated hints at two kinds of ease: ease within oneself (accepting what happens with simplicity, being tamim), and bringing easefulness to others (love, righteousness, being a tzaddik). There’s a wonderful mishna that expresses this idea: הֵם אָמְרוּ שְׁלשָׁה דְבָרִים. רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר אוֹמֵר, יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרְךָ חָבִיב עָלֶיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְאַל תְּהִי נוֹחַ לִכְעֹס. וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתְךָ They said three things: Rabbi Eliezer said: Let the honor of your friend be as dear to you as your own, and don’t easily become angry. And, return one day before your death. (Pirkei Avot 2:15) These three aphorisms are all connected: if you want to make the honor of your friend be as dear to you as your own honor, you’ve got to get free from your own anger, because it is anger that causes us to be callous toward others. Furthermore, there is a funny play on words here: v’al t’hi noakh likh’os – don’t be easeful/comfortable (noakh) to get angry. If we want to be like Noakh, if we want to be easeful, accepting what is (tamim) and we also want to be a helpful person to others (ish tzaddik), then we should not be noakh likh’os – easy to anger. But how do we do this? וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתְךָ – V’shuv yom ekhad lifnei mitatkha – Return one day before your death. On the surface it’s saying we should “repent” every day, because we don’t know what day we will die. But on a deeper level, this is the “death” of everything extraneous to this moment; it is the death of anger, of worry, of overthinking. We achieve this “death” through shuv yom ekhad – returning to this one day – meaning, returning to this moment. But to do this means learning to distinguish between being Present and being lost; between the truth of this moment and the mental projections we impose on this moment. This is a constant effort of discernment: אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֖ים הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ Noah walked with the Divine. The Divine Name here is Elohim, the Name associated with discernment. Our natural tendency is to become absorbed into our own thinking and then see the world through the lens of our minds. To counter this, we must constantly “walk ourselves back” to the truth of our actual experience, into the Divine Presence that is always present… Snake and Scorpion – Parshat Noakh and Rosh Hodesh Heshvan 10/9/2018 0 Comments The Amidah is the central prayer of Jewish practice. It is believed to be so sacred that, traditionally speaking, one should not allow oneself to be interrupted while praying the Amidah. However, there are certain circumstances under which one must interrupt one’s Amidah prayer for specific reasons. In the Talmud (Berakhot 33a), there’s a discussion about when it is permissible and even mandatory to interrupt one’s praying of the Amidah: אפילו נחש כרוך על עקבו לא יפסיק: אמר רב ששת לא שנו אלא נחש אבל עקרב פוסק We learned in the mishna that even if a snake is wrapped around one’s heel, one may not interrupt one’s prayer. In limiting application of this principle, Rav Sheshet said: They only taught this mishna with regard to a snake, as if one does not attack the snake it will not bite him. But if a scorpion approaches an individual while one is praying, one stops, as the scorpion is liable to sting even if it is not disturbed. There is a Hassidic teaching that the “snake” and the “scorpion” are actually metaphors: The snake represents desire and passion, while the scorpion represents the opposite: lifeless apathy. So, when it says that the “snake is wrapped around one’s heel,” this alludes to one being disturbed by thoughts and feelings of desire. For example, you’re trying to focus on the holy words of the prayer, and suddenly you’re salivating for a cheeseburger. In this case, there’s no need to stop davening, because the desire you feel for the cheeseburger isn’t a bad thing; all you have to do is redirect its energy into the prayer. In fact, the desire is actually a wonderful gift, because it is raw energy that you can use to bring the prayer to life. On the other hand, if a scorpion starts crawling on you, this means the opposite of passion; you are simply saying meaningless words with no life in them. In that case, you should stop the prayer, do something to awaken your passion, and start over again. But how do you awaken your passion? Of course, there are many ways, but here is one that I find helpful: do something to create beauty and order in the world. Paint something. Make some art. Organize your closet. Vacuum the rug. Do the dishes. When you do, you will feel empowered by the force of blessing can comes through you, and you can direct the energy of that blessing into your practice – into your prayer, chanting, or meditation. The reason this is so powerful is because beauty and order are actually qualities of Presence. When consciousness is cluttered, the radiant beauty Being can get covered up somewhat. But the more you come to this moment with openness, the more your consciousness becomes more and more expansive and free. Then, your inner beauty begins to glow its own brightness. Sometimes, however, the ambient chaos (and sometimes trauma) of life can keep that beauty stifled on the inside, even when you attempt to become present through meditation or prayer. Then we need an extra boost from the outside; we need to take some physical action. This is the secret of how art becomes ritual – do something on theouter level to create an effect on the inner level. There’s a hint of the power of beautification in this week’s reading, Parshat Noakh: יַ֤פְתְּ אֱלֹהִים֙ לְיֶ֔פֶת וְיִשְׁכֹּ֖ן בְּאָֽהֳלֵי־שֵׁ֑ם … May God expand Yaphet, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem… Bereisheet/Genesis 9:27) This verse is part of a blessing that Noakh gives his son Yafet after the famous flood. The name Yafet means beauty, or expansiveness. The words are: Yaft Elohim l’Yafet –meaning, May the Divine expand Expansiveness, or May the Divine beautify Beauty. This hints at the secret of how beauty becomes revealed: Consciousness contains the quality of beauty, but this inner beauty is easily obscured from itself. So, consciousness externalizes its beauty through action, and this outer beauty reflects the nature of consciousness back to itself, freeing it from its constraining clutter: The Divine expands Its Expansiveness… This week begins the new moon of Heshvan, the eighth month. Heshvan is associated with water and rain, since the traditional prayers for rain began a week ago. Heshvan is also the month in which the flood began, according to this week’s Torah reading. In Kabbalah, water is often associated with awakening passion and desire, since water causes seemingly dead things to sprout and grow. Heshvan is also associated with the Zodiac sign of Scorpio – the sign of the scorpion. Thus, Heshvan is a time to shift from the inner beauty accessed during Tishrei (through the prayers of the High Holy Days and Sukkot) to outer beauty through action, in order to reveal the inner beauty externally. This in turn further awakens the inner beauty, creating a positive pulsation between the inner and the outer… The Ark- Parshat Noakh 11/3/2016 1 Comment The world is a river; you cannot hold a river. The world is a wave, but we see it as particles. Forever the mind is building arks to float upon the churning ocean of Truth, Holding frames of changing being above the morph so as to discern a narrative- The arks- words! The tzaddik’s naming of beings saves them from dissolution in God; The tzaddik gives full attention to the being beheld, while all else drowns (for now) in the One. Two by two- one being beholds another- But when the ark is beached on the dry wasteland of things and agendas, the tzaddik cannot function! S/he must plant a vineyard in the midst of the wreckage and take refuge in the wine of ecstasy- That is, withdrawal from time into the Place where prayer erupts. To others s/he looks naked and dysfunctional- useless. “Let’s cover up this embarrassment!” People are more comfortable with the building of great towers so they can say, “Look what we have done!” Not content with the warmth (Ham) of life, they must make a name (Shem) for themselves, claiming authorship of beauty (Yafet). Have you forgotten how to let go? To behold the one who stands before you and let all else drown in the One? Don’t grasp for the spotlight, you will find everyone speaking gibberish. But relax and take a walk with God~ God will show you how to construct your words, and illuminate them from above… The Window- Parshat Noakh 10/15/2015 8 Comments Recently a friend of mine posted a tragic news story on Facebook, in which some horrible violence was done in the name of religion. My friend was so disturbed by it, he said that religion should be destroyed. The Torah might agree- This week’s reading begins with the story of Noah’s ark, and how nearly all life was destroyed in the Great Flood due to the corruption and violence of humanity: “Vatimalei ha’aretz hamas- “The earth was filled with violence…” (Gen. 6:11) But is religion really the source of the corruption and violence today? Or is there something deeper that infects and corrupts religion? One thing is for sure: All premeditated violence springs from a particular story that the perpetrator buys into. Without the story of how the “other” deserves punishment for being immoral, or is guilty of various crimes, is less than human, or whatever, would it be possible for premeditated violence to exist? Of course, there are many wonderful things created by the narrative-making mind as well. In fact, without the fiction of mental narrative, you would not know what to do when you wake up in the morning. You would not even know your own name. The problem is not narrative, but the confusion between narrative about reality and actual Reality. That confusion happens because most of us are almost completely unaware of what Reality actually is. Without awareness of Reality, you are bound to look for Truth in your stories. But your stories, though they may be more or less accurate, are not the same as Truth. What is Truth? Truth is simply this moment. It’s your reading of these words right now. It’s the breathing movement of your body, right now. A feeling arising, a thought occurring- it’s the ever-evolving fact of this moment. “Vay’hi khol ha’aretz safa ekhat ud’varim akhadim- “And the whole earth was of one language and unity between all things…” (Gen. 11:1) In the present moment, before the mind splits Reality into pieces, there is only one this, and we are all here in this Oneness. In the present, there is no that. But in our thirst for purpose and understanding, we tend to multiply our thoughts and ignore Reality. Not content with the Mystery, we want to feel like we know something, like we’re getting somewhere, like we have meaning: “They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and burn them in fire.’ And the bricks were like stone…” The word for “brick”- “L’veinah”- shares three letters with the verb “to build” (Bet-Nun-Heh). The first two letters, Lamed-Bet, spell Lev, which means “heart”, or “mind”. The “Bricks”, then, are not just physical bricks. They are the building blocks for the stories we hold in our hearts and minds- namely, our thoughts and words. Our thoughts and words are the most precious expression of our inner life. They form the landscape of who we are. But when they substitute for Reality rather than point to it, when we become enflamed with a passion for being “right” rather than being open, they burn like fire and are dense like stone. Exiled from the present moment by our multiplying of thoughts and words, we hope to find security by building our thoughts and words into towers of narrative: “Come, let us build a tower with it’s top in the heavens, and let’s make a name for ourselves…” The word for “top” here is “rosh” which also means “head”. The word for tower is “migdol” which comes from the root that means “great”. We try to capture the Ineffable Greatness with our heads! But there is a problem: there is no limit to the number of different and conflicting stories we create. Sometimes I listen to people debate. I will listen to the conservatives and the progressives. I will listen to the theists and the atheists. Almost invariably, there is an unwillingness to hear the valid points of the other. Real communication is rare; it’s all just opposing stories, babbling at one another. “Hashem said, ‘Let us confuse their language’... that is why it was called Babel…” But there is another way. In the beginning of our parshah, we are introduced to the savior of all life: “Et HaElokim Hit’halekh Noakh- “Noah walked with the Divine…” The name Noakh comes from the root that means “rest”. It has a passive quality. And yet, this kind of rest is in motion; it “walks”. The mind grasps after something solid, something static and secure, but the Divine (Truth, Reality) is not something static. The present moment is ever flowing, ever in motion. It cannot be made into a tower, an idol, or an edifice. So to “walk with the Divine” is actually to rest the grasping of the mind and relax into the movement of the present. After all, as soon as your mind tries to grasp this moment as something solid, the moment is already being washed away. The flood is constantly coming. What will save us? Only the quality of Noakh- the one who can rest into the flow of Reality. “Make an ark of gopher wood…” The word for “ark” is “teva”, which also means “word”. A word is a representation of something; it’s not the thing itself. So to rest in the flow of Reality, make your words of wood, not stone. Let them be alive, supple. “A window you shall make from above…” Let your words be open to the heavens, rather than trying to reach the heavens. Your mind cannot capture the infinity of the heavens! But relax your mind open to this moment, and let the inspiration flow downward. Like the rains of the flood, inspiration washes away the old and dead towers of thought, but gives life to the mind that is open like a window. The Kotzker Rebbe once surprised a group of learned men with the question- "Where is God present?" They laughed at him, assuming that he must be thinking of God as a limited being that would exist in once place and not in others. "Of course, God's Presence is everywhere! As it says, 'm'lo kol ha'aretz k'vodo- The whole world is filled with It's glory!'" (Isaiah 6:3) "No," replied the Kotzker, "God's Presence is wherever you let It in." My friends- on this Shabbat Noakh, the Sabbath of Rest, may we relax free from the narratives that trap and divide us. May our thoughts and words be like open windows, permeable to the Presence of the Ineffable Present. May our species speedily grow into this wisdom and remake our world in the image of love, care and respect for all life. Good Shabbos! love, brian yosef
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There is a story in the Talmud (Taanit 25a) about the great sage Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa. Rabbi Hanina was a miracle worker, and whatever he prayed for would immediately manifest. Yet, despite his miraculous powers, he was extremely poor.
One day, his wife got fed up with living a life of such deprivation. “You have the power!” she said to him, “Why don’t you pray for mercy and get us out of this wretched life?” So, Rabbi Hanina prayed, and immediately an angelic hand appeared out of thin air and handed him a golden table leg. “Barukh Hashem, we are rich!” But, that night, his wife had a nightmare. In the dream, she was in olam haba, the future world. She looked around and saw all the other sages sitting and feasting at tables which were all supported by three legs. But, when she saw her husband, his table had only two legs! She awoke in a cold sweat. “My husband, I saw a disturbing vision in my dream!” She explained what she saw, to which he responded, “How do you feel about your husband having a deficient table in the World to Come? “Not good!” she exclaimed. “Please, once again, pray for mercy!” He did, and immediately the hand appeared again out of nowhere and took the golden table leg back. The Talmud then relates a quote by an unknown source: גדול היה נס אחרון יותר מן הראשון דגמירי דמיהב יהבי מישקל לא שקלי The last miracle is greater than the first, for we have a tradition that what is given is not taken back… It is a strange story – what does it mean? Is it saying that riches are bad and that poverty is good? There is a passage in Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, that seems to confirm this idea: מְתוּקָה֙ שְׁנַ֣ת הָעֹבֵ֔ד אִם־מְעַ֥ט וְאִם־הַרְבֵּ֖ה יֹאכֵ֑ל וְהַשָּׂבָע֙ לֶֽעָשִׁ֔יר אֵינֶ֛נּוּ מַנִּ֥יחַֽ ל֖וֹ לִישֽׁוֹן׃ A worker’s sleep is sweet, whether he has much or little to eat; but the rich man’s abundance doesn’t let him sleep.
Both this passage and the Talmudic story seem to be saying that wealth is more trouble than it’s worth. They say it in different ways, but both seem to be linking the acquisition of wealth with worry about the future. (And disturbed sleep!) But, there is another passage in Kohelet that clarifies: הִנֵּ֞ה אֲשֶׁר־רָאִ֣יתִי אָ֗נִי ט֣וֹב אֲשֶׁר־יָפֶ֣ה לֶֽאֶכוֹל־וְ֠לִשְׁתּוֹת וְלִרְא֨וֹת טוֹבָ֜ה בְּכָל־עֲמָל֣וֹ ׀ שֶׁיַּעֲמֹ֣ל תַּֽחַת־הַשֶּׁ֗מֶשׁ מִסְפַּ֧ר יְמֵי־חַיָּ֛יו אֲשֶׁר־נָֽתַן־ל֥וֹ הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים כִּי־ה֥וּא חֶלְקֽוֹ׃ Behold that which I have seen is good – that one should eat and drink and experience the goodness from all the work that one toils under the sun, during the numbered days of life that the Divine has given; for that is one’s portion… a gift from the Divine.
Here we can see – it’s not saying that wealth and enjoyment are bad. Rather, King Solomon is saying that it’s good to enjoy things; eat and drink lir’ot tovah – so that you can experience goodness! But, here is the caution – receive the enjoyment as a gift. It is not something you can hold onto; it does not have permanence, you cannot rely on it beyond the moment: מִסְפַּ֧ר יְמֵי־חַיָּ֛יו אֲשֶׁר־נָֽתַן־ל֥וֹ – from the numbered days of one’s life that is given… All things, all forms, all experiences, all phenomena come to an end, and so the idea here is not to push good things away, but also it is not to try and hold on to them. Instead, enjoy them as a gift, in this moment; in other words, be present. But, you might say, doesn’t Rabbi Hanina pray to get rid of his gold? Why wouldn’t he simply enjoy it as a gift too? When we see miracle stories, there is usually a hidden meaning. Why is it a golden table leg, rather than just a pile of gold? Why does it appear out of thin air? There is something in our experience, right now, that also magically appears a disappears: thought. Our thoughts are constantly manifesting out of nowhere, and they can dissipate just as quickly. Furthermore, a “table leg” supports the top of the table upon which we eat; the “table leg” represents support for what we need to survive. So, the magical appearance of the golden table leg doesn’t mean actual physical gold, it means a way of relating to gold; it means seeing the gold (wealth, possessions, or good experiences in general) as something solid that we can rely upon, like a table leg. And it is this kind of thinking that brings about the nightmare of the two-legged table: when we try to rely upon passing phenomena as solid and enduring, this only creates insecurity and worry: הַשָּׂבָע֙ לֶֽעָשִׁ֔יר אֵינֶ֛נּוּ מַנִּ֥יחַֽ ל֖וֹ לִישֽׁוֹן – But the rich man’s abundance doesn’t let him sleep… And not only our possession, but more importantly, our very lives eventually come to an end: One must depart just as one came. As one came out of their mother’s womb, so must they depart, naked as they came. They can take nothing of their wealth with them; so what is the good of one’s toiling after the wind?
Ultimately, everything is hevel, impermanent. But, not to worry! There is, nevertheless, something we can rely on. Because when we become present, when we receive this moment as a gift and let go of thoughts about the future, there is a Wholeness and a Wholesomeness inherent in simply being… בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ In the Beginning of Elohim creating the heavens and the earth…
Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, taught on this first verse of the Torah that existence itself is a greater miracle than any of the well-known miracles. The splitting of the sea, the water from the rock, the manna from heaven – these are all based on phenomena that already existed, but which only behaved a little differently than what we would expect. But existence itself is a much greater miracle than all of those, because – why should there be anything at all? How it is that anything comes to be anyway, seemingly Yesh me’Ayin, Something from Nothing? And yet, when we recognize the miracle of existence, when we receive this moment, as it is, as a supreme miracle – there then arises another possibility: we can actually move from the Something back to the Nothing! Meaning: when we let go of the movement of the mind and its preoccupation with the future, with its seeking the “golden table-leg” of security in time, we can simultaneously become aware of the great No-Thing within which this moment appears – the vast field of awareness within which all experience lives. And this, said the Maggid, is an even greater miracle – not the bringing forth of Something from Nothing in creation, but of returning the Something back to the No-Thing in our spiritual work. As the Talmud says: …גדול היה נס אחרון יותר מן הראשון Gadol hayah nes akharon yoter min harishon – The last miracle is greater than the first! In Kabbalah, this Ayin, or No-Thingness, the essential Being-ness behind all things, is represented by the first sefirah on the Tree of Life, called Keter, which means “Crown.” It is the crown because just as an actual crown adorns the head of royalty and reminds us of our relationship with the one who bears it, so too we are reminded to offer our attention and reverence toward Being Itself, the miraculous No-Thing that is ever-present in and as all things. Crowns are also circular, reminding us not to try to derive security through the persistence of things in linear time, but rather to “circle back” our awareness into the Truth of this moment, back into the boundless circle of our awareness within which all experience comes and goes. This is the beginning and the end of the spiritual path, also symbolized by the circle – be present, enjoy this moment in recognition of the Oneness of Being, the One Reality Who gives this moment to you as a gift, right now. That’s why the fundamental Jewish practice is the chanting of the Sh’ma, six words that point us toward this recognition: שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד׃ Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ekhad! Hear, O Israel! Existence Itself is our God, Existence is One!
This is the invitation: In the morning and at night, after the break of dawn and the falling of darkness, take a moment to become present, to reconnect with the Oneness: שְׁמַע – Sh’ma – “Listen” meaning be aware, become present to this moment as it is. יִשְׂרָאֵל – Yisrael – “Israel,” coming from sarita-El, one who “strives for” the Divine. יְהוָה – Vocalized as Adonai, this unpronounceable Divine Name comes from the root היה hayah, “to be,” and thus means Existence, Reality or Being-ness. אֱלֹהֵינו – Eloheinu – “Our God” – reminding us to “Crown” Existence, to recognize Reality Itself as God, through the devotion of the heart and attentiveness of the mind, and to know that this Divinity is not separate from who are at the deepest level… יְהוָה אֶחָֽד – Adonai Ekhad – “Existence is One.” This basic Oneness of Reality, the macrocosmic Mystery of Being, is reflected in the microcosmic field of awareness; just as there is only One Reality, so too there is only ever One experience, happening now. And while the ever coming-and-going content of our experience may be bitter or sweet, painful or pleasurable, the field of awareness within which experience happens is always Whole; it is the goodness that is ever available to us, at any moment, always in this moment: …וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָא֖וֹר כִּי־ט֑וֹב וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃ Elohim said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And Elohim saw that the light was good…
This “light” that is “good” is the basic goodness of simply being, the goodness inherent in consciousness itself, within and beyond all particular experiences, positive or negative. This light is Keter, the Oneness of Being, ever-present and therefore easily ignored. But it is also easily invoked; meaning: it must be invoked with easefulness. Therefore, take a moment, twice each day, become easeful, let go of the “golden table legs” of life in time, and chant: שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד׃ Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ekhad
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The Refrigerator – Parshat Bereisheet
10/23/2019 0 Comments Sometimes it happens that a jar of something spills in the refrigerator. It is rare, in our home, for the refrigerator to be totally clean; usually it shows the signs of being well used. But when something spills, it crosses over from acceptable shmootz to a genuine crisis of muck. The spilled mess pushes me over the edge of complacency and drives me to clean not just the spilled stuff, but also the dirtiness in general. It is then, ironically, that more dirtiness leads to more cleanliness. And so it is with the spiritual life. When things are going well, there is a low level of discomfort that is easily tolerated without much effort. We can become lazy in our attentiveness. But when the “jar” of our expected routine “breaks,” when some crisis disrupts our sense of normalcy, causing the mind to rush and the emotions to flare more than usual, we are driven from the comfort of our ordinary laziness. It is then that we are again motivated to find our way back to the true peace within, the peace that lies not in the external and temporal, but in the Eternal Present within which all experience arises. This sense of being driven out from our comfort, a universal experience fundamental to the human condition, is appropriately expressed in this first parsha, in the story of the expulsion from Eden: וַֽיְשַׁלְּחֵ֛הוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים מִגַּן־עֵ֑דֶן לַֽעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֻקַּ֖ח מִשָּֽׁם׃ The Divine sent them from the Garden of Eden, to work the soil from which they were taken. (Bereisheet 3:23) Adam and Eve are sent out of Eden because they “ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad.” In other words, they became conscious of the possibility of crisis. Rather than passively and unconsciously receive the moment as it unfolds, the way a fetus would in the womb, this daat/knowledge is imagining how things might go wrong; we might say this is the beginning of worry. It is also the beginning of ego, of the attempt to control our experience. וַיְגָ֖רֶשׁ אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּשְׁכֵּן֩ מִקֶּ֨דֶם לְגַן־עֵ֜דֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִ֗ים וְאֵ֨ת לַ֤הַט הַחֶ֙רֶב֙ הַמִּתְהַפֶּ֔כֶת לִשְׁמֹ֕ר אֶת־דֶּ֖רֶךְ עֵ֥ץ הַֽחַיִּֽים׃ He drove the Adam out, and stationed east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and the fiery sword, ever-turning, to guard the way to the Tree of Life. (Bereisheet 3:24) When our awareness of crisis triggers the turning movement of the mind and the enflames the fire of the heart, driving us from our peace to “work the soil” and deal with our situation, our worry can eventually become compulsive, and we may come to feel as though we have been exiled forever (or worse, lose all memory of peace altogether). The plain meaning of the text seems to support this: “…the fiery sword, ever-turning, to guard (lishmor) the way to the Tree of Life.” This is the bitterly pessimistic view of human life that we sometimes see in Biblically based perspectives – that the Way back to The Garden, the derekh eitz hahayim, is completely blocked to us in this life by the “fiery turning sword” that guards it. But we can understand this word for “guard” – lishmor – in a different way by looking at some other passages: שָׁמ֣֛וֹר אֶת־י֥וֹם֩ הַשַׁבָּ֖֨ת לְקַדְּשׁ֑֜וֹ כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר צִוְּךָ֖֣ ׀ יְהוָ֥֣ה אֱלֹהֶֽ֗יךָ Guard (shamor) the Sabbath Day and keep it holy, as the Divine has commanded you. (Devarim 5:12) This passage from the Ten Commandments says to “guard” the Sabbath. Does that mean that we are kept away from the Sabbath? Of course not! To “guard” doesn’t mean we are blocked from it; it means that we should not take it for granted, that we should recognize its sacredness so that we can enter into it more deeply. Or how about this passage: וְהָיָ֣ה עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֤ת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים֙ הָאֵ֔לֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם And it will follow if you listen to these rules and guard (ushmartem) them… (Devarim 7:12) Does it mean to guard the rules so as to keep away from them? Of course not – it means the opposite. And this reveals the deeper dimension of the “fiery turning sword” – yes, the movement of the mind and the triggering of emotion drives us out from our peace, but it also serves as a beacon to bring us back, showing us exactly where to find the Path to the Tree of Life! More dirtiness leads to more cleanliness. That is why the “guardian” of the Path is not just movement and fire, not just thought and emotion, but is also a sword. This is the sword of intention that directs us into awareness of thought and emotion, so that we need not be caught by them. And more than that, as we intensify our awareness of the movement of the mind and the fire of the heart, the quality of awareness itself comes to the foreground, showing us not only the Way Back to the Garden, but also revealing that the Garden is who we really are, beneath and beyond the mind and heart. The Tree of Life is not external; it is our own nervous system. וַיַּשְׁכֵּן֩ מִקֶּ֨דֶם לְגַן־עֵ֜דֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִ֗ים – and caused to dwell east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim… The “east” is the place of the rising sun, the place of the dawn, reminding us: when we awaken in the morning and the mind is moving and the heart is agitated, let that “fiery turning sword” show you the way back to the Garden. Before you go out to “work the soil,” spend some time first with meditation, using the “sword” of intention to cast off the bonds of the temporal, dip into the spacious freedom of the Eternal Present, and nourish yourself with the Tree of Life. It is a new year – let us recommit and deepen our practice – the Garden is waiting for you. I’ll be there with you tomorrow morning! The Garden- Parshat Bereisheet 10/27/2016 3 Comments “Bereisheet Bara Elohim Et Hashamayim v’Et Ha’aretz- "In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth…” What Is My Purpose? When you awaken from sleep, is it because you’ve decided to awaken? Or, do you simply wake up when your body is finished sleeping? In sleep, there’s no deciding. Once you are awake, you are faced with the question: What shall I do? What is my purpose? Waking up itself solves nothing- There was no problem to begin with. But once awake, life becomes a problem. The universe springs into being- Does creation have a purpose? But “purpose” is itself something that’s created! “Purpose” is a thought; “purpose” is a thing. There cannot be a purpose for creation until after creation. Before, there is no problem. The universe comes into being because: Why not? Sometimes, after many months, I clean my car. My wife asks, “Why did you have to clean it now all of a sudden?” But the only answer is: Why Not? Before creation, there is no problem. After, all the problems. What is the solution to all the problems? Go back to before the problems! “Hinei Tov Me’od- Behold it was very good!” That is the Shabbat- the remembering that there were no problems before we got involved; In fact, there are still no problems. The “Before” never went anywhere, because it is not a thing. It is always right here. The Shabbat, the Garden- they were Here before Anything. From within the Garden, there is no problem with moving back into problems. From within Shabbat, there is no problem with moving back into time. Seeing from within the Garden, even outside the Garden is really still inside the Garden- For where can the Garden not be? Seeing from outside the Garden, even inside the Garden is just more of the same: “How can we manage to get back in?” “Once we get in, how can we make sure that we stay there?” But- The Garden is not “there.” Thought springs into being from No-Thought; in No-Thought, there is no problem. From No-Thought, why not think? “Eitz Hada’at Tov v’Ra- The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad…” Here we are amidst the trees of the Garden- Why not take a bite of the good and the bad? Of the This and the That? Of the Before and the After? But once you leave the Timeless, the Sword of Fire blocks your way back. What is the Sword of Fire? Nothing but thought! You can't decide to awaken- You can’t think your way back into the Garden- The Garden never went anywhere. But let thought cease, and you will see for yourself: The “Purpose” is to come back to No-Purpose- To the Place from which the Universe springs: “Y’hi Or- Let there be light!” To return to No-Purpose requires living with Great Purpose- The Purpose of Being Present. From There (which is always Here) We can create something beautiful- You, Me, and Others. The world is waiting! Do you not believe me? Don’t worry- it’s Friday afternoon! The Pool- Parshat Bereisheet 10/8/2015 1 Comment When I was about two or three years old, my parents took me on vacation. I have a memory of a boy playing by the pool, filling his plastic bucket with water and splashing it on people. As I walked by him, he made an angry growling noise and threw some water on me. Without a thought, I just pushed him into the pool and watched him slowly sink to the bottom. Immediately, a barrage of adults surged all around me. Men in suits threw off their jackets and dove into the water. In a moment he was safe, and I stood there watching in astonishment. He coughed a bit, looked at me and said, “Next time I’ll push you in the pool!” I wonder sometimes what my life would have been like if I had accidentally killed that boy, and I am so grateful that he was saved from my innocent but deadly push. At that age, I had no idea what the consequence of pushing him into the water would be. It was just an impulse. As adults, we know that we can’t breathe underwater, and that we must constantly breathe to stay alive. And yet, there is a different kind of breathing that many people are barely aware of at all- not a physical breathing, but a kind of inner breathing, without which you can “drown” in your own life. Meaning, you can “drown” in the “water” of your roles, your desires, your opinions, your memories, everything that seems to make up your life. This “water”, however, actually exists only in only your mind. This “water” is nothing but thought! The more continuous your stream of thinking, the less space there is to “breathe”- meaning, the less you can feel the openness and ease that is available when simply living in the present. This continuous stream of thinking is not malicious or evil; it is just an impulse. But it's an incredibly strong impulse. Most people function on very little “breathing”. Their minds “come up for air” only occasionally, take a “breath”, then dive back into the waters of thought. Some people, unfortunately, lose the ability to come up at all, and end up drowning in the stresses and pressures of life, all created by thought. For these people, there is no longer any ability to differentiate between thought and reality. Everything is seen as a projection of the mind. Who will save them? Is it possible to awaken from the dream of your own mind, to come up and breathe the life-giving air of the present? It is possible, but to do it, you have to make the background the foreground. For most, the present moment glows faintly in the background, while the foreground is filled with the noisy waters of thought. But when the background becomes the foreground, the texture of this moment becomes bright, alive and new, as if seen for the first time. This is hinted at in the very first verse of the Torah. This week’s reading begins: “Bereisheet bara Elokim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz- “In the beginning, the Divine created the heavens and the earth.“ The 12th century Kabbalistic text known as “The Bahir” equates the word “Reisheet”, which means “Beginning”, with the word “Hokhma”, which means “Wisdom” or “Consciousness”, by means of a verse that connects the two: “Reisheet hokhmah yirat Hashem- “The beginning of consciousness is awe of the Divinity of Existence…” (Psalm 111:10) When your own awareness (Hokhmah) meets this moment, it has the quality of brightness, of newness (Reisheet). This is also hinted at by the duality of “heavens and “earth”- When the “heavens” of your awareness meet the “earth” of all of your sense perceptions- then everything is be-reisheet- with (be) the quality of beginning-ness (reisheet). We’ve all known this newness at the very beginning of our lives. As an infant, you didn’t know your name. The infant has no story. Just like a cat rolling in the sun, like a bird flying in the sky, like a worm tunneling through the earth- the newborn is fresh and alive in this moment. But then the story begins. The child learns its name, its roles, its story, and the confusing mix between direct perception and all these mental narratives starts to obscure the present moment. As it says: “V’ha’aretz hayta tohu vavohu, v’hoshekh al p’nai tahom- “And the earth was confusion and chaos, with darkness on the face of the depths…” But fortunately, there is a path out of this confusion: “V’ruakh Elohim merakhefet al p’nai hamayim- “And the Divine hovered over the face of the waters-“ Rather than drown in the waters of your mind, you can “hover” over it simply by consciously noticing what your mind is doing. In deciding to notice your own thoughts, you can command your inner “light” into the darkness: “Vayomer Elohim ‘y’hi ohr’ “And the Divine said, ‘let there be light!’” Simply notice what’s going on in your own mind: “There is a thought about such-and such.” And when notice it, what happens? You may find your mind becomes quiet all by itself, revealing an experience of Reality without the burden of mind, without the burden of time. Practice this often, and eventually a new light will be revealed: “Vay’hi ohr! “And there was light!” This “light” is the dawning of the brightness that was there when you were a newborn, before you were a “someone”. It hasn’t changed! It was overlaid with narrative, but it never went anywhere. This goodness of life in the present in not something you have to believe in. It’s not about philosophy. It’s something you can see directly: “Vayar Elohim et ha’ohr ki tov- “The Divine saw that the light was good!” And so the Torah opens not merely with a cosmology or a mythology, but with a description of awakening- a Torah of Awakening. Of all the Hassidic rebbes, Reb Zushia of Hanipole was particularly known for his simple wisdom that transcended the intellectual complexity characterizing so much of Jewish teaching. According to one story, when asked to reveal his core teaching on what’s most important, he replied, “To me, the most important thing is whatever I happen to be doing in the moment.” Again, none of this is to put down or devalue the mind and thinking. After all, you wouldn’t denigrate your clothing for not being your body! You wouldn’t insult a menu for not being food! It’s only that when we confuse thought for reality, we tend to lose reality. Then we are literally living in a dream, and dreams can become nightmares. Of course, bringing the power of awakening into its full potential for your life takes training and practice. Soon I’ll be launching a new opportunity for you to get that training and practice in this new year. Stay tuned! As we enter the gates of Autumn and this Shabbat of Beginnings, may these opening words of Torah inspire us to not forget the inherent goodness, newness and freedom that is our birthright and nature- -the ever-available, ever-flowing present moment. Good Shabbos! -b yosef
Rabbi Shmelke and his brother came to their master, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, with a problem:
“Our sages teach that we should praise and thank God for our suffering and pain just as much as for the blessings we receive. How is this possible? We can understand accepting suffering, but how is it possible give thanks for it?” “Go ask Reb Zusha,” the Maggid replied, “He sits in the Beit Midrash smoking his pipe.” So, they went and found Reb Zusha and put the question to him. Zusha just laughed – “I don’t think you are asking the right person,” he said, “because I have never experienced suffering – how should I know how to give thanks for it when I’ve never had it?” But the brothers knew that Zusha’s life had been a web of poverty and anguish, and they understood: the answer is to receive suffering with love… This story points to a way by which we might relate to our suffering. But what does this mean, to “receive suffering with love?” The festival of Sukkot provides some hints: בַּסֻּכֹּ֥ת תֵּשְׁב֖וּ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים כָּל־הָֽאֶזְרָח֙ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל יֵשְׁב֖וּ בַּסֻּכֹּֽת׃ לְמַעַן֮ יֵדְע֣וּ דֹרֹֽתֵיכֶם֒ כִּ֣י בַסֻּכּ֗וֹת הוֹשַׁ֙בְתִּי֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּהוֹצִיאִ֥י אוֹתָ֖ם מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲנִ֖י יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם׃ In sukkot you shall dwell for seven days; all citizens in Israel shall dwell in sukkot, so that your future generations may know that I caused the Children of Israel to dwell in Sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I Hashem, your Divinity.
This passage gives the reason for the festival – it is so that future generations should know: בַסֻּכּ֗וֹת הוֹשַׁ֙בְתִּי֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּהוֹצִיאִ֥י אוֹתָ֖ם מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם I caused the Children of Israel to dwell in Sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt… The movement from bondage to freedom involves dwelling in a sukkah. But what is a sukkah? There was a disagreement in the Talmud: דתניא כי בסוכות הושבתי את בני ישראל ענני כבוד היו דברי ר' אליעזר ר"ע אומר סוכות ממש עשו להם We have learned: “I caused the children of Israel to dwell in sukkot”; (these booths were the) Clouds of the Divine Presence, these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Akiva says: They made for themselves actual sukkot/huts.
Rabbi Eliezer believed that the original sukkot were Ananei Kavod – “Clouds of the Divine Presence” that protected the Children of Israel on their journeys. Rabbi Akiva, on the other hand, disagreed; he said no, they were sukkot mamash – actual, physical huts. But either way, both of these interpretations are insubstantial; a temporary hut couldn’t provide much protection, and certainly a “cloud” is the most insubstantial thing there is. Why would these phenomena be celebrated as protection? Let’s look a little deeper at the symbolism of the “Clouds of the Divine Presence” through this passage in the Talmud: ר' יוסי בר' יהודה אומר שלשה פרנסים טובים עמדו לישראל אלו הן משה ואהרן ומרים וג' מתנות טובות ניתנו על ידם ואלו הן באר וענן ומן באר בזכות מרים עמוד ענן בזכות אהרן מן בזכות משה Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Yehuda, says: Three good sustainers rose up for Israel, and they are: Moses, Aaron and Miriam. And three good gifts were given by their hands, and these are they: The well of water, the pillar of cloud, and the manna. He elaborates: The well was given to the Jewish people in the merit of Miriam; the pillar of cloud was in the merit of Aaron; and the manna in the merit of Moses…
Moses, Aaron, and Miriam are three siblings who play major roles in the Exodus story. But in Kabbalah, Biblical personalities are not merely characters, they are archetypes, embodiments of specific spiritual qualities. Since the “pillar of cloud” is connected to Aaron, we might ask – what is Aaron’s special quality? הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה Hillel used to say: be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving mankind and drawing them close to the Torah.
Aaron is, according to this mishna, the embodiment of Peace, of Shalom, and according to a midrash, his role in the Exodus was to help others make peace. There is a story that when two Israelites would be in an argument, Aaron would come to each one privately and tell them that the other wishes to apologize, but that they are too embarrassed to come themselves. In this way, he would stand in for egoless-ness, and when each person perceived the other as being egoless, they would drop their own egos. There are two major qualities of egoless-ness: willingness to be wrong, and gratitude. The egoic opposites of these, of course, are the psychological need to be right and kvetchiness! Both of these qualities, the ability to concede an argument and as gratitude, are both embodied in the word modeh: מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ מֶֽלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם שֶׁהֶחֱזַֽרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶֽךָ Modeh/modah ani lifanekha – I give thanks before You, living and everlasting King, for You have restored my soul with mercy; great is Your faithfulness!
With this prayer, modeh (m.) or modah (f.) becomes the first spoken word of the day, giving thanks for waking up in the morning. The plain meaning is gratitude, but on a deeper level it also includes the other meaning as well, for just as one surrenders being right when conceding an argument, so too the attitude of thankfulness to be alive involves a surrender to the truth of our situation, an embrace of the reality of the moment, as the prayer says a little later in the morning blessings: יְהֵא אָדָם יְרֵא שָׁמַֽיִם וּמוֹדֶה עַל־הָאֱמֶת וְדוֹבֵר אֱמֶת בִּלְבָבוֹ לְעוֹלָם Always a person should be in awe of heaven (the space of awareness within which this moment happens), and surrender to the Truth, and speak Truth in their heart…
The Kabbalists associated these qualities of modeh/modah with the sefirah of Hod, whose plain meaning is “Glory.” And yet, “Glory” would seem to be to opposite of the egoless-ness of modeh! Which brings us back to Reb Zusha, who said that he never experienced suffering – meaning not that his life was only pleasure and abundance, but that he received his suffering in such a way that he no longer experienced it as suffering; he received it with love, with humility and gratitude, and this allowed his deeper essence to shine forth with laughter as he sat with his pipe and studied Torah – this is his Glory! In actual practice, receiving suffering with love may not feel very glorious. It is helpful to understand that while we have the choice to practice receiving this moment as it is, with love and gratitude, transformation is not instantaneous; transformation is a process that takes time, though the decision to practice now takes no time at all. So, there is a dimension of practice that is time-bound, the dimension of spiritual development and the movement toward “Glory,” and there is a dimension that is not time-bound at all, that we can and must engage only in the Eternal Present. These two dimensions are the first and final Hebrew letters, Alef and Tav. א – ת Tav, which means “sign,” is the final letter in emet, “Truth.” As the final letter, it represents the final truth of things, the fact of this moment, as it is. The essence of our practice is this basic opening to the Truth of this moment, the fullness of experience as it arises, in its full spectrum, from joy to pain, from bitterness to sweetness. This is the practice of Alef – being the oneness of awareness within which the dualities of experience arises. Through this practice, which is always in the present, there evolves over time a sincerity of embracing Truth; over time, with practice, we can reach that state of Reb Zusha, of no longer seeing our suffering as suffering. At that point, the practice is no longer even a practice, it is simply who we are; it becomes truly sincere, and that is the Tav. Tav comes at the end of all the letters, reminding us – the process takes time. There is a hint in our final parshah… וְזֹ֣את הַבְּרָכָ֗ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר בֵּרַ֥ךְ מֹשֶׁ֛ה אִ֥ישׁ הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל לִפְנֵ֖י מוֹתֽוֹ׃ This is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the Children of Israel before his death…
As Moses stands lifnei moto, “before his death,” he becomes Ish HaElohim – the “God-Man.” Meaning, he fully acknowledges his mortality, the fleeting nature of all forms, and in doing so identifies with That which is not fleeting – the Eternal Being-ness which incarnates as all forms. In other words, he becomes like the sukkah – temporary huts, insubstantial clouds; but clouds of the Divine Presence. And this is why that which is insubstantial and fleeting is the supreme protection on our journey from mitzrayim, from slavery to freedom – because it “protects” us from ourselves, from the illusory sense of solidity that ego rests upon. And in this realization, in the death of the man and the birth of the God-Man, there can be the realization that there is only This… וְזֹ֣את הַבְּרָכָ֗ה V’Zot HaBrakhah And THIS (and this, and also this) is the Blessing! Hazak hazak v’nitkhazek! Be Strong, Be Strong, and May We be Strengthened!
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The Stranger – V'Zot HaBrakha
10/4/2018 0 Comments Rabbi Barukh of Mezbizh said, “Imagine you come to a strange country, where you know neither the language nor the customs. You feel like an alien, disconnected from others around you. But then you meet another traveler from your own country. Under normal circumstances, you may never have been interested in this person; but since you are both strangers, you have something in common in the strange land, and you become great friends…” Rabbi Barukh’s “strange country” is really all of life, and the “companion” is really the Divine Itself. There is no experience which is not completely Divine; still, we are inclined to never notice this, until we begin to feel the pain of alienation. Motivated by feelings of disconnection or being “out of sync,” we become seekers of wholeness and peace, and it is then that the possibility of finding the Divine appears. But to do that, our estranged self (ego) must “die” into intimacy. The “me” that seeks can motivate us, but it can never “get there” itself; it must be surrendered into the vast space of awareness that is already not separate from anything you perceive, that is already the Divine in the form of you and everything else that exists. This past week we completed the Torah reading cycle. In the final parshah, V’Zot HaBrakha, Moses is not allowed to reap the fruits of his years of leadership; he must die just outside the Promised Land. Immediately, we go right back to the very beginning and start the reading cycle anew: Bereisheet bara Elohim – In the beginning, the Divine created the heavens and the earth… Maybe it seems harsh and unfair that Moses couldn’t enter the land. But if we see the inner dimension of the story, there is a pointer to our own experience: the seeker of the “Promised Land” must die if you wish to truly “enter.” Stop seeing the Garden of Eden as something to get to, and connect with your actual experience now, in the present. The “Garden” is all there is, the Divine is all there is; relax the “me” and know: you are the Garden, you are the Divine…  The Mishna discusses the five (or six, depending on how you count!) restrictive practices of Yom Kippur:
יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים אָסוּר בַּאֲכִילָה וּבִשְׁתִיָּה וּבִרְחִיצָה וּבְסִיכָה וּבִנְעִילַת הַסַּנְדָּל וּבְתַשְׁמִישׁ הַמִּטָּה. וְהַמֶּלֶךְ וְהַכַּלָּה יִרְחֲצוּ אֶת פְּנֵיהֶם, וְהֶחָיָה תִנְעֹל אֶת הַסַּנְדָּל, דִּבְרֵי רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר, וַחֲכָמִים אוֹסְרִין [On] Yom HaKippurim it is forbidden to eat, to drink, to wash, to anoint oneself, to put on sandals, or to have sexual intimacy. A king or bride may wash their face, and a woman after childbirth may put on sandals, the words of Rabbi Eliezer. But the sages forbid it.
עִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם – initem et nafsheikhem – (you shall) afflict your souls…
The Talmud then asks the question on the Mishna – where do these practices come from, since the Torah does not mention them? אסור באכילה הני חמשה ענויין כנגד מי אמר רב חסדא כנגד ה' ענויין שבתורה ובעשור ואך בעשור שבת שבתון ושבת שבתון והיתה לכם The mishna taught that as per the five prohibited activities on Yom Kippur it is prohibited to engage in eating and in drinking, and in bathing, and in smearing the body with oil, and in wearing shoes, and in sexual intimacy. The Gemara asks: These five afflictions of Yom Kippur, to what do they correspond? Where is the Torah source or allusion to them? Rav Ḥisda said: They are based on the five times that the afflictions of Yom Kippur are mentioned in the Torah. It is stated: (1) “And on the tenth of this seventh month you shall have a holy convocation, and you shall afflict your souls” (Numbers 29:7); (2) “But on the tenth of this seventh month is the day of atonement, it shall be a holy convocation for you and you shall afflict your souls” (Leviticus 23:27); (3) “It shall be for you a Shabbat of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls (Leviticus 23:32); (4) “It is a Shabbat of solemn rest [shabbaton] for you, and you shall afflict your souls” (Leviticus 16:31); (5) “And it shall be a statute for you forever, in the seventh month on the tenth of the month, you shall afflict your souls” (Leviticus 16:29).
The Medieval Rabbi, Yaakov ben Asher (known as the Baal Haturim (Master of the Columns) – further interpreted that these five restrictive practices correspond to five times that “soul” is mentioned in the single passage about Yom Kippur, Levitcus 23:26-32: וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ The Divine spoke to Moses, saying: אַ֡ךְ בֶּעָשׂ֣וֹר לַחֹדֶשׁ֩ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֨י הַזֶּ֜ה י֧וֹם הַכִּפֻּרִ֣ים ה֗וּא מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם וְהִקְרַבְתֶּ֥ם אִשֶּׁ֖ה לַיהוָֽה׃ Mark, the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be a sacred occasion for you: you shall afflict your souls/nafshoteikhem, and you shall bring an offering by fire to the Divine; וְכָל־מְלָאכָה֙ לֹ֣א תַעֲשׂ֔וּ בְּעֶ֖צֶם הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה כִּ֣י י֤וֹם כִּפֻּרִים֙ ה֔וּא לְכַפֵּ֣ר עֲלֵיכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם׃ You shall do no work throughout that day, for it is a Day of Atonement, on which expiation is made on your behalf before the Divine your God. כִּ֤י כָל־הַנֶּ֙פֶשׁ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹֽא־תְעֻנֶּ֔ה בְּעֶ֖צֶם הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְנִכְרְתָ֖ה מֵֽעַמֶּֽיהָ׃ Indeed, any soul/nefesh who does not practice self-denial throughout that day shall be cut off from their kin; וְכָל־הַנֶּ֗פֶשׁ אֲשֶׁ֤ר תַּעֲשֶׂה֙ כָּל־מְלָאכָ֔ה בְּעֶ֖צֶם הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְהַֽאֲבַדְתִּ֛י אֶת־הַנֶּ֥פֶשׁ הַהִ֖וא מִקֶּ֥רֶב עַמָּֽהּ׃ And any soul/nefesh who does any work throughout that day, I will cause that soul/nefesh to perish from among their people. כָּל־מְלָאכָ֖ה לֹ֣א תַעֲשׂ֑וּ חֻקַּ֤ת עוֹלָם֙ לְדֹרֹ֣תֵיכֶ֔ם בְּכֹ֖ל מֹֽשְׁבֹֽתֵיכֶֽם׃ Do no work; it is a law for all time, throughout the ages in all your settlements. שַׁבַּ֨ת שַׁבָּת֥וֹן הוּא֙ לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם בְּתִשְׁעָ֤ה לַחֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ בָּעֶ֔רֶב מֵעֶ֣רֶב עַד־עֶ֔רֶב תִּשְׁבְּת֖וּ שַׁבַּתְּכֶֽם׃ (פ) It shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls/nafshoteikhem; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall observe this your Sabbath.. The 16th century kabbalist, the Maharal of Prague, expanded on this idea even more by discussing the five different levels of the soul in Kabbalah, and how each level is made uncomfortable through one of the restrictive practices. This discomfort allows for a proactive disidentification from ego. נפש Nefesh – “Soul” – dimension of our being that remains pure, as in the prayer Elohai Neshamah shenatati bi, tehorah hi – My God, the soul You place within me is pure. It is made uncomfortable through refraining from anointing. רוחRuakh – “Wind” – lightness, lifting off the ground – made uncomfortable through not wearing shoes. נשמהNeshamah – “Spirit-Breath” – known as the “Divine Lamp” (Proverbs 20:27). The “light” cannot shine through a dull vessel, and so is made uncomfortable through not bathing. חיהHayah – “Life Force” – made uncomfortable through not eating and drinking. יחידהYekhidah – “Oneness” – made uncomfortable through social refraining from sexual intimacy, as intimacy is “becoming one” with another. These five levels of the soul correspond to five levels of experience: נפש Nefesh – “Soul” – Sensory awareness רוחRuakh – “Wind” – Emotion, mood נשמהNeshamah – “Spirit-Breath” – Thought חיהHayah – “Life” – Simple Aliveness יחידהYekhidah – “Oneness” – Unity of Spacious Awareness with Form Here is an example of how awareness of the five levels can be included in the Three Portals Practice: Five Levels of Soul in the Three Portals: רוח Ruakh – “Wind” – Emotion, Mood (Bring right hand to heart, offering awareness as a gift) לְךָ L’kha___________ (“For You”) נפש Nefesh – “Soul” – Sensory awareness (Bring left hand to belly, bringing awareness into body) נַעֲשֶׂה Na’aseh___________ (“We will do”) נשמה Neshamah – “Spirit-Breath” – Thought (Bring right hand to forehead, bring to mind awareness as field beyond the body) חיה Hayah – “Life” – Simple Aliveness (Notice that everything is perceived by this Simple Aliveness that you are) יחידה Yekhidah – “Oneness” – Unity of Spacious Awareness with Form (Notice that everything you perceive is also nothing but consciousness) וְנִשְׁמָֽע V’Nishmah_______ (“We will hear”)
The 18th century Hassidic master, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, said:
“Nowadays, in this time of exile and great suffering of our people, the Divine Presence is felt much more easily than when the Holy Temple was still standing. How is this possible? “Once there was a king whose realm was conquered by an invading army. The king left the palace and disguised himself as a wayfarer, wandering from place to place in secrecy. In the course of his wanderings, he was recognized by a poor family, still loyal to the king. They invited him into their modest dwelling gave him whatever food they could offer. His heart grew light in their company, and he sat and spoke with them as intimately as he had once done with his inner court. “Now that the Divine Presence is also in exile, She does the same!” Judaism tends to glorify the past and the future; the past was the golden age when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, and the future is the ultimate Messianic redemption to come. This view may have been helpful psychologically during times of great difficulty, boosting self-esteem with stories about the glorious past and giving hope for a better tomorrow. But in the above teaching, the Maggid has taken the opposite approach by telling his students the truth – that the Unbroken Light of Being we call the Divine Presence comes to us most vividly and intimately in the Now. It is true – Judaism tends to emphasize the more normative, time-bound view, but the simple truth of fulfillment in the present is hidden just below the surface. We can see this in the texts of both Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Yom Kippur is considered the holiest day of the year, a time we can become free from all accumulations of past negativity, a time of supreme presence before the One. And yet, on this holiest day of the year, we say this: אֱלֹהַי עַד שֶׁלֹּא נוֹצַֽרְתִּי אֵינִי כְדַאי, וְעַכְשָׁו שֶׁנּוֹצַֽרְתִּי כְּאִלּוּ לֹא נוֹצַֽרְתִּי. עָפָר אֲנִי בְּחַיָּי. קַל וָחֹֽמֶר בְּמִיתָתִי. הֲרֵי אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ כִּכְלִי מָלֵא בוּשָׁה וּכְלִמָּה. My God, before I was formed, I was unworthy, and now that I have been formed, it is as if I had not been formed. I am like dust while I live, how much more so when I am dead. Here I am before You like a vessel filled with shame.
Sukkot, which comes as the fruit of the freedom and presence attained on Yom Kippur, is z’man simkhateinu – a time of supreme joy and celebration. Like the king’s hosts in the Maggid’s parable, the practice is to dwell in the humble, make-shift hut of the sukkah, within which the Supreme Guest – the Divine Presence Herself – is felt most closely on this harvest festival. And yet, on this most sacred time of fulfillment, we chant this: הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל׃ Vanity of vanities! – said Koheleth – Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! מַה־יִּתְר֖וֹן לָֽאָדָ֑ם בְּכָל־עֲמָל֔וֹ שֶֽׁיַּעֲמֹ֖ל תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ׃ What profit is there for a person in all their toil beneath the sun? רָאִ֙יתִי֙ אֶת־כָּל־הַֽמַּעֲשִׂ֔ים שֶֽׁנַּעֲשׂ֖וּ תַּ֣חַת הַשָּׁ֑מֶשׁ וְהִנֵּ֥ה הַכֹּ֛ל הֶ֖בֶל וּרְע֥וּת רֽוּחַ׃ I observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is vanity and striving after wind…
In other words, our individual existence is characterized by imperfection, and the world in which we live is ephemeral, non-substantial, passing. And yet, when we dive fully into this truth without avoidance and without embellishment, we can discover the other side of the equation: the comings and goings of time and the successes and failures of human life dance against the background of Wholeness. That Wholeness is the consciousness that we are, the consciousness that perceives the brokenness; we are the sukkah – the simple open space of this moment, intimate yet infinitely vast and transcendent, the space of welcome to whatever is now arising… וּפְרוש עָלֵינוּ סֻכַּת שלומֶךָ Ufros Aleinu Sukkat Sh’lomekha! Spread over us the Shelter of Your Peace!
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The Dog – Shabbat Sukkot
10/16/2019 0 Comments ה֤וֹרֵ֥נִי יְהוָ֗ה דַּ֫רְכֶּ֥ךָ וּ֭נְחֵנִי בְּאֹ֣רַח מִישׁ֑וֹר לְ֝מַ֗עַן שׁוֹרְרָֽי Reveal to me, Hashem, Your way, and guide me on a straight path, because of my watchful foes. (Psalm 27) In this psalm that is chanted during this holiday season, King David prays to be in alignment with the Divine so that he might merit salvation from his enemies. But this and many other psalms are so universally relevant because they point not only to external foes, but to our inner reality. I once saw a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t believe everything you think.” What a beautifully succinct and useful piece of wisdom! We know that believing in absurdly distorted thoughts is called insanity; we can see when a person is insane, because the reality they describe is completely different from what most normal people would consider to be true. And yet, there is some degree of insanity for most people; when our minds make automatic judgments, we tend to believe our thoughts without question, especially if there is an emotional charge attached to them. In this way, it is our own thoughts that lead us onto a crooked path; it is our own thoughts that become the enemy. וְאַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרְךָ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ Don’t judge your friend until you have reached his place… (Pirkei Avot 2:5) Until you have the same perspective as your friend, says the sage Hillel, you should refrain from judging them… which is really the same as saying that we should never judge anyone, because it is impossible to ever see from someone else’s perspective. This is an amazing statement for a text that is mostly directed toward actual judges! The message is: we must sometimes make judgments, but don’t believe in them as absolute truth. Be open. Let your thoughts be translucent to the light that Reality continuously reveals, and be conscious of the infinite complexity that is not revealed. But if the function of the mind is thought, how can we possibly transcend thought? Rabbi Yitzhak Mer of Ger was once talking to a hasid of Rabbi Simcha Bunam. The hasid said his master once remarked he was amazed that a person wouldn’t become spiritually perfected by merely saying birkat hamazon, the grace after meals. Rabbi Yitzhak thought for a moment and then replied, “I think differently. I am amazed that a person isn’t spiritually perfected merely by eating! After all, a donkey knows its owner.” We may not have so much experience with donkeys, but many of us have experience with dogs – how a dog will run to its owner with love and enthusiasm the moment they walk through the door. How does the dog know the owner is there? Usually all it takes is the sound of the door opening, or the sound of the voice, and the dog comes running. The dog doesn’t want the door or the voice, the dog wants the person; but the sounds are the cue. ה֤וֹרֵ֥נִי יְהוָ֗ה דַּ֫רְכֶּ֥ךָ וּ֭נְחֵנִי בְּאֹ֣רַח מִישׁ֑וֹר לְ֝מַ֗עַן שׁוֹרְרָֽי Reveal to me, Hashem, Your way, and guide me on a straight path, because of my watchful foes. There is profound lesson here for us as well: if we want to run into the arms of the Divine, we too can listen for the cues to tell us which direction to go. Only with us it is even more simple – all we need do is pay attention to whatever is present, to whatever presents itself. And this is the deeper lesson of Reb Yitzhak’s spiritual perfection through eating: it is the realm of the senses that brings us into the arms of the Master, not the realm of language and thinking (though, paradoxically, language and thinking is certainly needed to tell us this!) There is a hint in this week’s reading for Shabbat Sukkot: וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶל־יְהוָ֗ה רְ֠אֵה אַתָּ֞ה אֹמֵ֤ר אֵלַי֙ הַ֚עַל אֶת־הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה וְאַתָּה֙ לֹ֣א הֽוֹדַעְתַּ֔נִי אֵ֥ת אֲשֶׁר־תִּשְׁלַ֖ח עִמִּ֑י Moses said to Hashem, “See, You say to me, ‘Lead this people forward,’ but You have not made known to me whom You will send with me….” (Exodus 33:12) Moses is asking, who and where are You, God? How can I know You? God responds by putting Moses in a cleft of rock and then passes by Moses while shielding Moses’ eyes from seeing the Divine directly. After God passes by, the shielding is removed, and Moses sees God’s “back.” וַהֲסִרֹתִי֙ אֶת־כַּפִּ֔י וְרָאִ֖יתָ אֶת־אֲחֹרָ֑י וּפָנַ֖י לֹ֥א יֵרָאֽוּ Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back; but My face must not be seen.” (Exodus 33:23) What is this “back” of God that Moses sees? It is nothing but the world of the senses, the presence of whatever is present. This is the deeper wisdom of Rabbi Yitzhak’s teaching: this moment is grace. You need not even wait until the next time you eat; every moment we are “eating” the air around us. Every moment is grace. But we can only really see this if we come fully to the moment, if we come into the senses, into the body, into our breathing, and out from the world of thought. In this way, our thoughts become like the sukkah – not a solid edifice of assertion, but a framing of a tiny space in the world, a translucent embellishment of the Mystery… The Mouse- Shabbat Sukkot 10/21/2016 4 Comments Once, during the days after Yom Kippur, we suspected that there was a mouse in the house. First, the strange little pieces of refuse that would show up on the floor when we knew we had already swept. Then, the little mysterious scratchy sounds I would hear when I knew everyone else was asleep. But we knew for sure when we found that a bag of leftover hallah had been chewed through. Not knowing how the mouse got in and out, we quickly became much more disciplined about putting all our food away! We could tell the mouse was still coming in, but most of the time there was nothing for it to steal. It wasn’t until Sukkot began, however, that I actually saw it. We were eating in the sukkah, when I went back into the house to get the main course. As soon as entered the back door of our house, I saw the little mouse scurry across the floor and squeeze right through a little opening below a sliding door that goes into the wall. I took some plastic bags and pushed them into the opening to block it, then used duct tape to seal it up. A temporary measure, but the mouse seems to have not returned, leaving the sanctuary of our home free from it for now. But there is another kind of sanctuary- a space in which the heart is free and the mind is clear. That space is a sanctuary from all stress, from all problems, from all tzures. That space is the present moment. It is ever available, and always right here. And yet, the ordinary human mind is unaware of this space. Living life almost entirely through the screen of thinking, this sanctuary is overrun with the “rodents” of thought. Craving some peace, one attempts to put life in order so that the rodents won’t disturb anything too much. Unaware of where the rodents are coming from, all you can do is put the food away so as not to attract them. By “putting the food away” I mean arranging your life to your liking- organizing things so that stress and chaos are kept at bay. This is a wonderful thing. I’ll tell you, our kitchen was never so consistently clean as when that mouse forced us to develop better habits! But once you see where the mouse is coming from, you can seal up the hole at its source. Meaning- once you see that the source of all chaos and worry is your own mind, you can “close the hole” through which chaos and misery enter. Then, you can still clean your kitchen if you want to, but you’re not dependant on it. Meaning- you can organize your life to maximum benefit, but even when life is chaotic externally, even when there is loss, failure and uncertainty, the Sanctuary of the Present is not lost. Your mind can be free from those “rodents” of excess thinking, and in that clarity the Sanctuary reveals itself. And yet, this is still a big secret, even for long-time spiritual practitioners! Many people enter the Sanctuary in their moments of avodah, of meditation, ritual, chanting and so on, but cannot seem to stay connected in the midst of life. In this week’s special reading for Shabbat Sukkot, Moses seems to have this very problem. Moses- the one who speaks to Hashem face-to-face, is afraid that the Divine Presence will not accompany him on his journey of leading the people (Exodus 33:12): “Re’eh Atah omer eilai, ha’al et ha’am hazeh- "See, You say to me, ‘take this people onward’, but You did not reveal whom You will send with me!” Moses is afraid that the One who sends him on his mission will abandon him. What is Hashem’s response? “Panai yelekhu v’hanikhoti lakh- "My Presence will go and give you rest!” The Presence “goes” wherever you go! That’s because the “Presence” is not something separate from your own presence, from your awareness when it is actually present. And when your awareness is present, there is “rest”. The word here for “I will give rest”, hanikhoti, has the same root as the name Noakh, the fellow who built the ark for the great flood. Whether the metaphor is rodents or destructive floodwaters, the idea is the same- there is an ark that floats above the raging waters in which you can find refuge. In the case of Moses and the Israelites, they lived in temporary dwellings on their journeys- the sukkot in which Jews everywhere are now dwelling for this holiday that commemorates the ancient dwellings of the Israelites. The sukkah is a sanctuary, yet it is hardly a solid thing. Open to the sky, vulnerable to the elements, it is really just a frame, not secure at all. And that’s the paradox- that “sealing the hole” and securing your mind from the “rodents” of thought does not mean something hard or effortful. No plastic and duct tape! It means relaxing the mind, allowing the mind to be open to the fullness of what is already present. But still, to do this constantly takes a special kind of effort that eludes most people. So much of the language of prayer is longing for the fruit of this effort! As King David says in Psalm 27: “Akhat Sha’alti me’eit Hashem- "Only one thing I ask of You, Hashem, that I should dwell in Your house and meditate in Your sanctuary all the days of my life!” The Sanctuary of Presence is ever-present, yet it is so easy to block it. Think of this- the sun is 864,938 miles in diameter, yet you can block its view entirely with just your little hand. And yet, even while you are blocking the Presence, the blocking is itself happening in the present! The only thing blocking God, ultimately, is God- as God tells Moses a few verses later (Exodus 33:22): “It will be when My Glory passes, I shall place you in a cleft in the rock and shield you with My hand…” When our fleeting and immaterial thoughts hide the “Glory” of this passing moment, hardening the openness of the present into what feels like a narrow cleft of rock on all sides, remember: Your thoughts themselves are also part of this moment. Accept them with openness and let them pass as well. In accepting and releasing your thoughts, they can dissolve, revealing the open space once again, as Hashem says next: “Then I will remove My hand and you will see my ‘back’…” Meaning, you will see in retrospect that your thoughts blocking the Sanctuary are themselves part of the Sanctuary. They are part of the reality of the present moment. But the more simple and direct path is simply to bring your attention to literally anything physical that is already present. The more you train yourself to do this, the more you will become aware of the space behind whatever is present- the ineffable openness that is the present moment. There is a story of Reb Shneur Zalman of Liadi, that once he asked his son what he “prays with”. The boy answered that he inspires himself with the verse, “Every form shall prostrate itself before You.” The boy then asked the rebbe, “What do you pray with, Abba?” The rebbe answered, “I pray with the bench and the floor.” On this Shabbat Sukkot, may we commit our attention ever more deeply to the bench on which we sit and the floor on which we stand, that we might open ever more deeply to the Sukkat Shalom- the Space of Peace that is this moment in which we now live. Good Shabbos!
Once, when the Baal Shem Tov was about to enter the synagogue, he stopped at the threshold. Those behind him waited patiently, but after some time passed, one of them politely asked him if he was going to go in.
“I can’t go in,” replied the Baal Shem, “there is no room for me – the entire space is crowded with teachings and prayers. How can anyone enter when there is no space?” They looked at him dumbfounded. Then he continued, “When prayers and teachings don’t come from the heart, but are merely repeated mechanically, they don’t rise to heaven, but rather they fill up the room from floor to ceiling. That is why there is no room for me to enter!” This is the great challenge of any formal spiritual practice, especially Jewish prayer and teaching – that there is a tendency towards verbosity without kavanah, without sacred intention. The approach of the Baal Shem, along with much of the Hassidic teaching that came after him, was to emphasize simplicity and sincerity. While not outright reforming Jewish common practice, the Hassidic teachings and stories counterbalanced it with teachings about simple sincerity over scholarship and formal comformity to the order and texts of the prayers. No time is this problem more apparent than on the High Holy days, when the sheer immensity of the liturgy makes depth and sincerity a profound challenge. There are many external approaches that can be employed to help avoid this pitfall, such as simplifying the liturgy, the use of music and verbal guidance into the inner dimensions of the prayers, and so on. But the one who prays need not be dependent on any of these things; it is within our own power to bring forth the depths of sincerity from our hearts so that our prayers “ascend to heaven,” so to speak. There is a hint in the parshah: כְּנֶ֙שֶׁר֙ יָעִ֣יר קִנּ֔וֹ עַל־גּוֹזָלָ֖יו יְרַחֵ֑ף יִפְרֹ֤שׂ כְּנָפָיו֙ יִקָּחֵ֔הוּ יִשָּׂאֵ֖הוּ עַל־אֶבְרָתֽוֹ׃ Like an eagle who rouses its nest, hovering over its eaglets, spreading its wings and taking them, elevating them on its pinions…
This verse describes the Divine as an eagle, and we as the eaglets; we are lifted up out of our inner bondage by the Divine power. But this Divine power is not only something we may sense gracing us from beyond; it is also the power of our own awareness from within, elevating the “eaglets” of our feelings, our impulses, our longings. According to Hassidic teaching, this happens through the primal emotional energies of ahavah and yirah, love and awe. In fact, these two qualities are imagined as the two wings of a bird; prayer is the bird, and in order for the bird to fly, in order for prayer to ascend, it needs to have both of these qualities. How to we bring forth these qualities from within? There is a message encoded within the Hebrew word for “wing” or “pinion” used in this verse – aver, which is alef – bet – reish. אבר Alef א represents feeling fully; we embody the alef when we decide to unflinchingly experience whatever is present. Be it pleasure or pain, we can be the Oneness behind whatever experience is arising. Bet ב, which means “house,” represents hospitality; it is “inviting the Divine” into whatever feelings are present, recognizing that we can direct our energy toward the Divine, and that the feelings themselves are essentially Divine. Reish ר, which means “head” and also “beginning,” represents That which is beyond thought. We can think about and understand how things work in the world of form, but the “beginning” of all things, the ultimate Reality of Being, is beyond the “head” – it transcends the thinking mind. In the same way, our ordinary, natural feelings can lead us into transcendence of the ordinary, into the Supreme Mystery of ר reish, which is embodied in the word ירא yirah, meaning “awe” or “transcendence.” This happens when when we feel them fully (represented by א alef), and and then direct them toward the Divine (inviting the Divine in, represented by ב bet). Alef and bet, together with ה hei which represents authentic self-expression, form the word אהבה ahavah, “love.” How do we begin? Simple: עַל־גּוֹזָלָ֖יו יְרַחֵ֑ף – hovering over its eaglets… יְרַחֵף – y’rakhef – “hovering” means simply being with experience as it is. Just as an eagle “hovers” – neither landing on the eaglets, which would crush them, nor flying away, which would be abandoning them, but simply hovering, patiently waiting for them to fly on their own. Meaning – waiting for the love and awe to emege in their own time, in their own way. This combination of the two poles of simple, patient waiting on one hand, and aiming toward a goal in time on the other hand, is also the inner meaning of Kaveh, which means both “wait” and “hope.” The last line of Psalm 27 reads: קַוּ֗ה אֶל־יְה֫וָ֥ה חֲ֭זַק וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְהוָֽה Kaveh el Hashem, hazak v’ya’ameitz libekha; kaveh el Hashem! Wait/Hope for the Divine, be strong and your heart will have courage; have hope/wait for the Divine!
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No Inside or Outside – Sukkot and Parshat Ha'azinu
9/27/2018 0 Comments The realization of your essential nature as simple openness is represented nicely by the sukkah. The sukkah is a structure that has an inside and an outside, and yet the inside really doesn’t feel very different from the outside; it is open and permeable. Similarly, when you recognize yourself as the open space of awareness, your thoughts and feelings come to reflect that openness, becoming permeable like the leaves and branches atop the sukkah. Normally, we tend to feel ourselves as being “inside” our bodies, with the rest of the world on the “outside.” But as we recognize that both “inside” and “outside” appear within awareness, this duality becomes less pronounced, and we can know ourselves as the simple open space within which all opposites arise. How do we do that? There is a beautiful hint in this week’s reading: Parshat Ha’azinu records a song that Moses teaches the children of Israel, so that they may sing it and remember their connection with the Divine. Appearing in the middle of the song are the following words: יְסֹֽבְבֶ֙נְהוּ֙ יְבֹ֣ונְנֵ֔הוּ יִצְּרֶ֖נְהוּ כְּאִישֹׁ֥ון עֵינֹֽו It surrounded him, imbued him with understanding and preserved him like the pupil of Its eye… (Deut. 32:10) Here is the coded instruction for becoming present and awakening to your essential being: יְסֹֽבְבֶ֙נְהוּ֙ – Y’sovevenhu – It surrounded: Surround the fullness of your experience right now with consciousness; let your awareness connect with everything that arises in your field of perception, without pushing anything away. יְבֹ֣ונְנֵ֔הו – Y’vonenehu – imbued him with understanding: Understand that everything you perceive – from sensory impressions, to emotional feelings, to thoughts – are all literally different forms of consciousness. Everything you experience happens within consciousness, and is therefore made out of consciousness, at least within your experience. יִצְּרֶ֖נְהוּ כְּאִישֹׁ֥ון עֵינֹֽו – Yitzrenhu k’ishon eino – and preserved him like the pupil of Its eye:Return yourself repeatedly to knowing that you are consciousness, that you are essentially an open space of awareness, beyond all thoughts and feelings. Just as the pupil of an eye is a simple opening through which light can flow, so too the full spectrum of Reality as you experience it flows through and as the open field of awareness that you are. In this joyful time of Sukkot, may we become like a sukkah; may we invite in the ushpizin(guests) of everything that arises, that we may discover anew and live our nature as the openness of hospitality... Good Shabbos! The Salad- Parshat Ha'azinu 10/13/2016 1 Comment Once, my son told me about a show he saw on food waste. He learned that in our country alone, every person wastes a staggering twenty pounds of food per month! And yet, with a little more consciousness and care, much of the wasted food could be put to good use. To illustrate the point, they assembled a group of folks and served them a gourmet salad. They asked the group to rate the salad, and everyone loved it. Then, they revealed the truth: the salad was made entirely out of food waste! A gourmet chef was given food that is normally considered waste- peelings, stems, stalks and other items that are usually discarded. The food scraps were cut, peeled, marinated, pounded and transformed into something the group perceived to be not only edible, but a unique and delicious gourmet dish. It’s a good thing that the human mind can differentiate between food and garbage, between “wheat and chaff”, between nourishment and poison. But the shadow side to this dualistic thinking is that we tend to develop a rigid narrative about what is good and usable, and what needs to be thrown away. Or, sometimes the opposite happens- Out of fear that something valuable might be lost, some people become hoarders, surrounding themselves with far more junk than they could ever use. But what if the human mind could be flexible enough to fully use whatever is present? Not hoard for another day, and not look at a fridge partially filled with odds and ends and decide, “there’s nothing to eat!” One time, I was away with my son and my wife Lisa was home alone for a few days with our daughter. Lisa thought, “I wonder if I can avoid going shopping and just live off whatever is in the house?” Guess what- she did! No shopping that week. They were fine. When the mind is full of rigid preconceptions, it’s impossible to see the full potential of what is present. But get some space around your thoughts (like send the boys to Arizona!), connect with what is really here in this moment, and new possibilities open up. There are little miracles waiting to happen. But to open up this space and become present, you need to bring together the two opposite poles of your being- consciousness and flesh. Ordinarily, human consciousness tends to congeal into a constant stream of thinking, taking the thinker into all kinds of imagined realities, while the body is left to deal with the here and now. The eyes are looking in the fridge, but the mind is thinking about something else! This week’s reading begins with Moses’ words to the Israelites: “Ha’azinu hashamyaim va’adabeirah- Give ear, O Heavens, and I shall speak- “V’tishma Ha’aretz imrei fi- And listen, O Earth, to the words of my mouth.” The “Heavens” and the “Earth” are metaphors for these opposite polls of our being. When mind is extricated from the relentless narratives of thought and brought into intimate connection with the body, then the mind and body can “listen” together as one. When that happens, the “secrets” that are hidden in plain sight can be revealed. These “secrets” are ever-present, as it goes on to say- “Let my teaching fall like rain, let my utterance flow like dew, like storm winds on vegetation, like raindrops on blades of grass…” Torah is everywhere, soaking everything like rain, blowing through everything as the air we breathe. But to see it, to hear it, you have to open to it. Opening means: there must be an opening in your thoughts, so that your awareness and your body can fully join together. When that happens, there is no more sense of “me” as the thinker and “my body” that “I” inhabit. That separate “I” drops away. There is a hint of this in the concluding verses of the parshah: “Aley el har… ur’eh et eretz… umoot b’har… Ascend the mountain… see the land… and die on the mountain…” “Ascend the mountain” means to rise above your thinking mind. “See the land” means to really see what is right here before you, now. “Die on the mountain” means that when you rise above your mind and yet connect fully with your body, your ordinary thought-bound self can drop away. This is the deepest freedom- freedom from the sense of “me” as a separate entity that is living in “my” body. And when there is no more separate "me", what is left? This can’t really be described, because language itself is rooted in thought, which is the basis for separateness. But there is a hint in this parshah: “He is suckled with honey from a stone, and oil from the hardness of a rock…” In other words, what seemed to be dead is bursting with life. Everything is miraculous, everything is nourishing. Rabbi Moshe Hayim Efraim, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, told a story in the name of his grandfather: “Once there was a fiddler who played so sweetly that no one who heard the music could resist dancing. One time, a man walked by a house where the fiddler played and he saw people dancing through the window. He couldn’t hear the music they heard, and so he thought they were madmen, flailing their bodies about tastelessly.” As we approach the joyful and celebratory days of Sukkot, may we hear the music of Existence that plays all around us and within us. May we be like the sukkah- an open form, a beautiful frame, without much differentiation between “inside” and “outside”. And as we leave behind the day of fasting, may we take care to fully use and share what we have, nourishing each other and minimizing our food waste. If you haven’t already, make the fast of Yom Kippur real by donating to your local food bank or other relief organization. Take a moment and give tzeddaka now! Moadim L’Simkha! Good times! love, -brian yosef The Mouse- Shabbat Sukkot 10/21/2016 4 Comments Once, during the days after Yom Kippur, we suspected that there was a mouse in the house. First, the strange little pieces of refuse that would show up on the floor when we knew we had already swept. Then, the little mysterious scratchy sounds I would hear when I knew everyone else was asleep. But we knew for sure when we found that a bag of leftover hallah had been chewed through. Not knowing how the mouse got in and out, we quickly became much more disciplined about putting all our food away! We could tell the mouse was still coming in, but most of the time there was nothing for it to steal. It wasn’t until Sukkot began, however, that I actually saw it. We were eating in the sukkah, when I went back into the house to get the main course. As soon as entered the back door of our house, I saw the little mouse scurry across the floor and squeeze right through a little opening below a sliding door that goes into the wall. I took some plastic bags and pushed them into the opening to block it, then used duct tape to seal it up. A temporary measure, but the mouse seems to have not returned, leaving the sanctuary of our home free from it for now. But there is another kind of sanctuary- a space in which the heart is free and the mind is clear. That space is a sanctuary from all stress, from all problems, from all tzures. That space is the present moment. It is ever available, and always right here. And yet, the ordinary human mind is unaware of this space. Living life almost entirely through the screen of thinking, this sanctuary is overrun with the “rodents” of thought. Craving some peace, one attempts to put life in order so that the rodents won’t disturb anything too much. Unaware of where the rodents are coming from, all you can do is put the food away so as not to attract them. By “putting the food away” I mean arranging your life to your liking- organizing things so that stress and chaos are kept at bay. This is a wonderful thing. I’ll tell you, our kitchen was never so consistently clean as when that mouse forced us to develop better habits! But once you see where the mouse is coming from, you can seal up the hole at its source. Meaning- once you see that the source of all chaos and worry is your own mind, you can “close the hole” through which chaos and misery enter. Then, you can still clean your kitchen if you want to, but you’re not dependant on it. Meaning- you can organize your life to maximum benefit, but even when life is chaotic externally, even when there is loss, failure and uncertainty, the Sanctuary of the Present is not lost. Your mind can be free from those “rodents” of excess thinking, and in that clarity the Sanctuary reveals itself. And yet, this is still a big secret, even for long-time spiritual practitioners! Many people enter the Sanctuary in their moments of avodah, of meditation, ritual, chanting and so on, but cannot seem to stay connected in the midst of life. In this week’s special reading for Shabbat Sukkot, Moses seems to have this very problem. Moses- the one who speaks to Hashem face-to-face, is afraid that the Divine Presence will not accompany him on his journey of leading the people (Exodus 33:12): “Re’eh Atah omer eilai, ha’al et ha’am hazeh- "See, You say to me, ‘take this people onward’, but You did not reveal whom You will send with me!” Moses is afraid that the One who sends him on his mission will abandon him. What is Hashem’s response? “Panai yelekhu v’hanikhoti lakh- "My Presence will go and give you rest!” The Presence “goes” wherever you go! That’s because the “Presence” is not something separate from your own presence, from your awareness when it is actually present. And when your awareness is present, there is “rest”. The word here for “I will give rest”, hanikhoti, has the same root as the name Noakh, the fellow who built the ark for the great flood. Whether the metaphor is rodents or destructive floodwaters, the idea is the same- there is an ark that floats above the raging waters in which you can find refuge. In the case of Moses and the Israelites, they lived in temporary dwellings on their journeys- the sukkot in which Jews everywhere are now dwelling for this holiday that commemorates the ancient dwellings of the Israelites. The sukkah is a sanctuary, yet it is hardly a solid thing. Open to the sky, vulnerable to the elements, it is really just a frame, not secure at all. And that’s the paradox- that “sealing the hole” and securing your mind from the “rodents” of thought does not mean something hard or effortful. No plastic and duct tape! It means relaxing the mind, allowing the mind to be open to the fullness of what is already present. But still, to do this constantly takes a special kind of effort that eludes most people. So much of the language of prayer is longing for the fruit of this effort! As King David says in Psalm 27: “Akhat Sha’alti me’eit Hashem- "Only one thing I ask of You, Hashem, that I should dwell in Your house and meditate in Your sanctuary all the days of my life!” The Sanctuary of Presence is ever-present, yet it is so easy to block it. Think of this- the sun is 864,938 miles in diameter, yet you can block its view entirely with just your little hand. And yet, even while you are blocking the Presence, the blocking is itself happening in the present! The only thing blocking God, ultimately, is God- as God tells Moses a few verses later (Exodus 33:22): “It will be when My Glory passes, I shall place you in a cleft in the rock and shield you with My hand…” When our fleeting and immaterial thoughts hide the “Glory” of this passing moment, hardening the openness of the present into what feels like a narrow cleft of rock on all sides, remember: Your thoughts themselves are also part of this moment. Accept them with openness and let them pass as well. In accepting and releasing your thoughts, they can dissolve, revealing the open space once again, as Hashem says next: “Then I will remove My hand and you will see my ‘back’…” Meaning, you will see in retrospect that your thoughts blocking the Sanctuary are themselves part of the Sanctuary. They are part of the reality of the present moment. But the more simple and direct path is simply to bring your attention to literally anything physical that is already present. The more you train yourself to do this, the more you will become aware of the space behind whatever is present- the ineffable openness that is the present moment. There is a story of Reb Shneur Zalman of Liadi, that once he asked his son what he “prays with”. The boy answered that he inspires himself with the verse, “Every form shall prostrate itself before You.” The boy then asked the rebbe, “What do you pray with, Abba?” The rebbe answered, “I pray with the bench and the floor.” On this Shabbat Sukkot, may we commit our attention ever more deeply to the bench on which we sit and the floor on which we stand, that we might open ever more deeply to the Sukkat Shalom- the Space of Peace that is this moment in which we now live. Good Shabbos!
Integral Kabbalah for the Days of Awe
Class #10: HESED – Lovingkindness Adon HaSlikhot
אָ֠נֹכִי עֹמֵ֨ד בֵּין־יְהוָ֤ה וּבֵֽינֵיכֶם֙
I stood between the Divine and you…
In this verse, Moses is recounting to the Israelites how, when they all stood at Sinai, he mediated between the Divine and the people. But the early Hassidic master, Rabbi Yekhiel Mikhal of Zlotchov, had a novel interpretation of this verse: he taught that the “I” is what “stands” between us and the Divine! In other words, it is the sense of “me” as a separate entity, and particularly the asserting of the “I” that acts as a barrier, preventing connection with the Divine Oneness. On the other hand, for one who offers their “I” to the Divine, there is no barrier; as the verse from Shir Hashirim says: אֲנִ֤י לְדוֹדִי֙ ודוֹדִ֣י לִי I am my Beloved’s and Beloved is mine…
This “offering” of the “I” is an aspect of meditation. In our practice, we begin by offering our awareness to the Divine as It manifests in and as this moment, invoking the quality of Hesed (Lovingkindness) from within as a quality of Presence. The verse above is also associated with the month of Elul leading up to Rosh Hashanah, as the initials of the verse spell Elul: אֲנִ֤י לְדוֹדִי֙ ודוֹדִ֣י לִי אלול This framing of Elul (the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah) as a time of intimate connection with the Divine as “Beloved” forms a counterpoint to the traditional imagery of Rosh Hashanah, which describes the Divine as a lofty king who sits in judgement. The Hassidic teaching bridges these two opposite images; when we offer ourselves to the Divine in attentive surrender to the present moment as it is, relating to Reality as “king” and “dethroning” our own “I” (ego), there can then arise a sense of intimacy with the Presence that is ever-present, and Being Itself becomes the Beloved. Then, from this sense of Divine intimacy, there can also arise the realization of reciprocity: Not only do we offer our “I” to the Divine, but the Divine has already offered Its “I” to us! Meaning – this consciousness that we are is nothing but the “I” of Existence Itself, awake in this body, as our own awareness. In this way, our expression of Hesed toward the Divine leads to our realization that we have been the recipients of God’s Hesed all along. This realization is expressed in the mishna: הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, חָבִיב אָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְצֶלֶם. חִבָּה יְתֵרָה נוֹדַעַת לוֹ שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְצֶלֶם, כִּי בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר He (Rabbi Akiva) used to say: “Beloved are human beings for they were created in the Divine image. Extra beloved that it was made known to them that they are created in the Divine image! As it is said: ‘for in the image of ELOHIM, humanity was made.’”
בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים – Betzelem Elohim – in the image of God – meaning not that God looks like a person, because God is by definition beyond form, but rather that we give an image to Divine, because we are not separate from the Divine; the Divine manifests as us. This is the great Hesed of simply being that we are constantly being blessed with. But it an even greater Hesed that we can realize and appreciate this simple fact! There is a hint about this in the parshah: וַיֵּ֖לֶךְ מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֛ר אֶת־הַדְּבָרִ֥ים הָאֵ֖לֶּה אֶל־כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ Moses went and spoke these things to all Israel…
In Kabbalah, the Divine Name associated with Hesed is the Name EL: אל EL is such an interesting Name because it has several different meanings. In this opening verse of Parshat Vayelekh, EL happens three times. First, it appears as part of the word eleh, which means “these.” Second, it appears as its own word, meaning “to.” Third, it appears as part of the word YisraEL, Israel, meaning “one who strives for/wrestles with EL/God.” אֵ֖לֶּה – eleh – “these” אֶל – El – “to,” but also “God” יִשְׂרָאֵֽל – Yisrael – one who “strives for/wrestles with God” This, then, is Moses’ hidden esoteric message, embedded in the language itself: “All of these (Eleh) beings who strive for God (Yisrael), are already not separate at all from God (El)!” In this time of Elul, may we come to recognize and know ever more deeply the Beloved Presence as our own Essence, and see that Essence in every being that we encounter in this coming year… Amein.
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Land of Life – Parshat Vayelekh
לולא הֶ֭אֱמַנְתִּי לִרְא֥וֹת בְּֽטוּב־יְהוָ֗ה בְּאֶ֣רֶץ חַיִּֽים Had I not trusted that I could see the Divine Goodness in the land of the living… (Psalm 27:13) Once, Rabbi Yitzhak Mer of Ger was riding in a carriage with one of his hasidim. As the carriage crested over a steep hill, the horses were spooked by something and took off wildly down the dangerous slope. The hasid was terrified for his life, and as the carriage raced toward certain destruction, he nearly fainted with fear. In the frenzy, he happened to look over at his rebbe, who seemed completely calm and undisturbed in the midst of it all. Barukh Hashem, as they came to the bottom of the hill, the driver got control of the horses and slowed them back down to a safe speed. After some time had passed and the hasid recovered from his shock, he asked his rebbe: “How is it possible that you seemed to be not the slightest bit scared back there??” Rabbi Yitzhak replied, “One who is aware of the Constant Danger is not disturbed by the many dangers of the moment…” What is this “Constant Danger” that renders all other dangers powerless? It is simply the ordinary condition of mind that makes possible the perception of danger in the first place: the sense of “me” that prefers this over that, that prefers a nice gentle ride in the carriage over getting hurled around by reckless horses. In moments of inner stillness, the ego can relax, leaving only the fullness of Presence without that sense of “me” as something separate from that fullness. This is the טוּב־יְהוָ֗ה Tuv Hashem – Divine Goodness; we can partake of this Goodness right now, in the חַיִּֽים אֶ֣רֶץ eretz hayim – the land of the living – it is not in some afterlife, but available now! At first, transcendence comes at particular moments, after which you return to a more ego-based state. But with time, the practice will bear fruit, and the “going out” and “coming back” becomes more and more slight. There’s a hint of this in the parshah: וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֗ם בֶּן־מֵאָה֩ וְעֶשְׂרִ֨ים שָׁנָ֤ה אָנֹכִי֙ הַיּ֔וֹם לֹא־אוּכַ֥ל ע֖וֹד לָצֵ֣את וְלָב֑וֹא He said to them: One hundred and twenty years I am today; it is not possible anymore to go out and come back… (Deuteronomy 31:2) Moses is speaking to the people, telling them that he is old; he must step down from leadership and prepare for death. But the deeper hint is the death of the ego after many years of practice – לֹא־אוּכַ֥ל ע֖וֹד לָצֵ֣את וְלָב֑וֹא lo ukhal od latzeit v’lavo – it is no longer possible to go out and come back. That’s the state of Reb Yitzhak Mer. This may seem like an unattainable goal, but the truth is that if we’re concerned about ourselves reaching that goal, we are only reinforcing that “me” that wants to achieve something. Rather, practice out of love for the teaching and the possibility; practice because it is a privilege to practice. Know: Presence is what you are; practice being with this moment as it is, even if the coming and going seems to have no end in sight: אָנֹכִי֙ הַיּ֔וֹם – Anokhi Hayom – I am, today! Don’t be concerned about “getting there” but also don’t give up trying to get there! That’s the paradox: “surrender” and “will” in one. “Surrender” without “will” simply destroys the path, but “will” without “surrender” prevents it from ever beginning. But, when they come together, transformation is not only possibly, it is guaranteed. This is hinted at in the final line of Psalm 27, by the word kaveh. Kaveh can mean “hope” but it can also mean “wait.” These are, in a sense, the opposite of each other: To hope means to reach after the future, to base your existence in the present on something that you wish will come later – this is “will.” Waiting, on the other hand, has the connotation of patience, of being here with this, content to allow the future to come when it comes – this is “surrender.” When you’ve got them both, you have an aim, but the aim is the dropping of the “me” that has the aim. In this way, ego becomes your ally in transcending yourself… קַוּ֗ה אֶל־יְה֫וָ֥ה חֲ֭זַק וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְהוָֽה Kaveh el Hashem, hazak v’ya’ameitz libekha; kaveh el Hashem! Wait for the Divine, be strong and your heart will have courage; have hope for the Divine! Our Loss is Our Gain – Parshat Vayelekh 9/13/2018 0 Comments I spoke to a woman once who had recently lost her husband. In her grief she confided in me that the most painful part was not that her husband had died – he had lived a good life and death is natural, after all – but that she didn’t fully appreciate him while he was alive. In his death, she was finally appreciating him so deeply, but now he was gone. Why don’t we appreciate what is here now? Why does it take death to open our hearts? The irony is that the past is always dead, but we hold on to it, and the holding on itself is what creates this separation from the preciousness that’s here now. But, if we bring ourselves to realize that the past is dead, that the only preciousness there is resides now in this moment, we can use the power of death to awaken. This week’s reading, Parshat Vayelekh, begins with Moses telling the Israelites before he dies: הַיֹּ֔ום לֹא־אוּכַ֥ל עֹ֖וד לָצֵ֣את וְלָבֹ֑וא Today it is no longer possible for me to go out and come back… For many, connection with Reality, with the Divine, with the Space of this moment, is something one visits occasionally, perhaps only by accident. But for a few, the Divine becomes the central guiding Reality, the Place one returns frequently every day. For these few practitioners, the drama of “going out” and “coming back” can feel very pronounced, since one really wishes to stay there all the time. But there is a later stage where the going out and coming back ceases. This is NOT because one simply stays in some static Divine consciousness all the time, which is impossible, but rather because one is no longer so concerned about the “me” that comes and goes. The Divine becomes one’s center of attention, so that even when one’s attention wanders from the Divine and then returns, it is the Divine that matters – not the “me” that wandered and returned. This is similar to death, in that the attachment to one’s self and life drama comes to an end: Today, meaning in the Reality of the Present, it is no longer possible to be concerned about the “me” that “goes out” and “comes back”… The Maggid of Metzrich taught that this opportunity of these High Holy Days: to consciously let the “me” die, and let the force of this death blast our hearts open like the shofar to receive the fulness that is always present, and also to open to the full potential for the future, unburdened by any clinging to the past. That’s why we have to forgive each other, and even more importantly, forgive ourselves. In this way, our loss is our gain. Rather than be in regret that we didn’t appreciate something or someone enough in the past, we consciously feel both the pain and the relief of letting go, and come now to arrive in the present. On these Days of Return, may we all be helped to make the Divine our center, so that the going out and coming back starts to pale in comparison… Live From Your Depths- Parshat Vayelekh 10/6/2016 6 Comments Once, my wife and mother-in-law were giving a bath to our three-year-old daughter. A few minutes after she got in the water, she looked up and said, “Um, could you guys please put some toys in here so I don’t have to play with my feet?” The mind loves things to play with. As children we call those play objects toys. As adults, we have different names for them, but they are essentially the same. They are stimulation. They are external content that we become fascinated with. We don’t want to just “play with our feet,” or even worse, have nothing to play with at all. What could be worse for a child than to have to sit still, be quiet and do nothing? The mind craves and needs stimulation. For children, this stimulation is essential for the healthy growth of their brains, and so stimulation must be almost constant. But at some point, that changes. At some point, you might notice: all the stimulation, all the thinking, all the experiencing, wonderful and essential as they are, can be like the flaming sword of the keruvim, guarding the entrance to Gan Eden- the entrance to paradise. At some moment, and maybe that moment is now, you notice: There is an inner depth so vast, so beautiful, so alive, if you would only put down your toys and open to it. That vastness is your own inner Divinity- Eloheikhem- it is awareness meeting the truth of the present moment- Eloheikhem Emet. But many people never discover this, and remain identified and entangled in the noise of mental toys, in the mind’s perpetual narratives. This creates an experience of separateness, of craving for the wholeness that is actually there all along, beneath the mind. That craving can lead to great inner disturbance, and ultimately, all of the horrors that still plague humanity. What is the remedy? In the Talmud, Rabbi Levi Bar Chama says in the name of Rabbi Shimon Ben Lakish that when you feel yourself gripped by unwholesome motives, you should study some Torah (Berakhot 5a). In other words, study some spiritual teaching that puts you in touch with your inner Divinity, just like you are doing right now. For the aim of spiritual teaching is not just to convey information, it’s to awaken your higher potential. But, if that doesn’t work, he says to chant this verse: “Sh’ma Yisrael Hashem Eloheinu, Hashem Ekhad- "Listen Israel, Existence Itself is your own inner Divinity; there is only One Existence.” In other words, stop and become aware that God is not something “out there” or separate. All you need do is “listen” because this moment is nothing but God, if your thinking mind would relax. And if that doesn’t work, there’s one more trick: Think of your own death. The irony of children is that, on one hand, they are such bright little explosions of life, free and unencumbered by the heaviness that so many adults carry around with them. And, at the same time, they are so utterly obsessed with things that are really trivial, as anyone knows who has had to negotiate “sharing toys” with three-year-olds. But as adults, despite the years of psychic crust we accumulate in our nervous system, there is this tremendous opportunity for depth when we let go of everything. That is the contemplation of death. We will all die, but we can die before we die, surrendering into the reality of this moment, letting go of the story of “me”. This week’s reading begins shortly before Moses’ death: “Vayelekh Moshe- "Moses went and spoke these words... ‘Hayom lo ukhal…’- ‘today it is no longer possible for me to go out and come in…’” When you live on the surface, in the mind’s narratives, there is this sense of “me” going here and there, doing this and that. But in hayom- in the “today”- there is no longer a “me” coming and going. In the present, you live from your depths that are far beyond your personal story. This is the death before you die. It is said that a heavenly voice told the Baal Shem Tov he would be denied life in the World to Come for some small sin he committed. When he heard this news, he jumped for joy and danced. “Why are you so happy?” said the heavenly voice. “Because now I can serve God for its own sake, without ulterior motive.” In these days of teshuvah, leading to Yom Kippur- The Day of At-One-ment, may our commitment to live from our depths become ever more deep, and may that depth be revealed in our thoughts, words and actions. May we speedily see a day when all of humanity lives and loves from its true depth and potential! Good Shabbos, and g’mar hatimah tovah- May you be inscribed for all good things! -b yosef
Integral Kabbalah for the Days of Awe
Class #9: Gevurah – Strength Unetaneh Tokef
There are many Names of the Divine, but in the Torah, there are two that are most prominent. The first is Elohim, and the second is Yod – Hei – Vav – Hei, or Hashem:
י–ה–ו–ה ,אלהימ The Name Elohim is often associated with nature and Divine Might. We see this at the very beginning of the Torah, in the act of creation: בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ In the beginning of Elohim creating the heavens and the earth… - Genesis 1:1 Ancient peoples saw the forces of nature as powerful gods, also called elohim, and they rightly saw themselves as at the mercy of these gods. This is probably the origin of ritual sacrifice – the desire to appease the nature gods and gain their favor through sacrificial offerings. Corresponding to these two Names, there were two major theological innovations the Torah brought into the world. The first was to use the word for these nature gods, elohim, to address the singular God, Elohim. The genius was that by using a plural word to describe the singular God, it expresses the idea that the One God is not the only god or even the most powerful god, but rather that the One God includes all the other gods; the One God is One because It includes everything – no thing is separate from It. The second innovation was that unlike the nature gods who were appeased by sacrifices, this singular God is “appeased” by kindness. This new vision of the Divine as having a core ethical dimension is expressed in the Torah through the second Name, Hashem. We can see this in the story of Noah’s flood: וַיַּ֣רְא יְהוָ֔ה כִּ֥י רַבָּ֛ה רָעַ֥ת הָאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וְכָל־יֵ֙צֶר֙ מַחְשְׁבֹ֣ת לִבּ֔וֹ רַ֥ק רַ֖ע כָּל־הַיּֽוֹם׃ Hashem saw how great was human wickedness on earth, and how every desire of the thoughts of his heart nothing but evil, all day long. וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם יְהוָ֔ה כִּֽי־עָשָׂ֥ה אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וַיִּתְעַצֵּ֖ב אֶל־לִבּֽוֹ׃ And Hashem regretted making the human on the earth, and His heart was saddened. - Genesis 6:5-6 Not only is Hashem concerned with ethics, but Hashem has a heart that can be sad! But then, when the Divine carries out the destruction of humanity through the power of nature as the “great flood,” the Name switches back to Elohim: וַיֹּ֨אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְנֹ֗חַ קֵ֤ץ כָּל־בָּשָׂר֙ בָּ֣א לְפָנַ֔י כִּֽי־מָלְאָ֥ה הָאָ֛רֶץ חָמָ֖ס מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם וְהִנְנִ֥י מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ Elohim said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. - Genesis 6:13 So, while Elohim is associated with nature and might, Hashem is associated with the heart, with goodness, and compassion. Eventually, after the flood relents and Noah builds an altar, Hashem reappears: וַיָּ֣רַח יְהוָה֮ אֶת־רֵ֣יחַ הַנִּיחֹחַ֒ וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהוָ֜ה אֶל־לִבּ֗וֹ לֹֽא־אֹ֠סִף לְקַלֵּ֨ל ע֤וֹד אֶת־הָֽאֲדָמָה֙ בַּעֲב֣וּר הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֠י יֵ֣צֶר לֵ֧ב הָאָדָ֛ם רַ֖ע מִנְּעֻרָ֑יו וְלֹֽא־אֹסִ֥ף ע֛וֹד לְהַכּ֥וֹת אֶת־כָּל־חַ֖י כַּֽאֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשִֽׂיתִי׃ Hashem smelled the pleasing aroma, and Hashem said in His Heart, “Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the desires of the human heart mind are evil from their youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done. - Genesis 8:21 In Kabbalah, Elohim is associated with the sefirah of Gevurah, Strength, and Hashem is associated with Tiferet, Beauty, which is itself associated with Rakhamim, Compassion, as well as Emet, Truth. Of course, these two Names are aspects of One Reality. We can see this most clearly in what happens next in the Noah story, because the promise that Hashem makes requires the power of Elohim to carry it out: וַאֲנִ֕י הִנְנִ֥י מֵקִ֛ים אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֖י אִתְּכֶ֑ם וְאֶֽת־זַרְעֲכֶ֖ם אַֽחֲרֵיכֶֽם׃ “I now establish My covenant/brit with you and your offspring to come… וְלֹֽא־יִכָּרֵ֧ת כָּל־בָּשָׂ֛ר ע֖וֹד מִמֵּ֣י הַמַּבּ֑וּל וְלֹֽא־יִהְיֶ֥ה ע֛וֹד מַבּ֖וּל לְשַׁחֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ … … never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” אֶת־קַשְׁתִּ֕י נָתַ֖תִּי בֶּֽעָנָ֑ן וְהָֽיְתָה֙ לְא֣וֹת בְּרִ֔ית בֵּינִ֖י וּבֵ֥ין הָאָֽרֶץ׃ I have set My rainbow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant/brit between Me and the earth. So, in order for the Rakhamim, the Compassion of Hashem to manifest, it needs to be allied with the Gevurah, the Strength of Elohim, through the concept of brit – covenant, commitment, promise, oath, or pact. Applied practically to ourselves, this means we need the inner strength of Gevurah, the commitment not to be taken over by reactive forces within ourselves, to channel the Rakhamim/Compassion of Tiferet. The pure reactive Gevurah energy can be powerfully destructive, as in the story of the flood. But we can use that energy against itself, through the aid of making a brit – making a commitment to bring forth our potential for Rakhamim. There is a hint in the parshah: אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם רָאשֵׁיכֶ֣ם שִׁבְטֵיכֶ֗ם זִקְנֵיכֶם֙ וְשֹׁ֣טְרֵיכֶ֔ם כֹּ֖ל אִ֥ישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ You stand this day, all of you, before the Hashem your Divinity—your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel… לְעָבְרְךָ֗ בִּבְרִ֛ית יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ וּבְאָלָת֑וֹ אֲשֶׁר֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ כֹּרֵ֥ת עִמְּךָ֖ הַיּֽוֹם׃ …to enter into the covenant (BRIT) of Hashem your Divinity, and with its oaths (ALAH) which Hashem your Divinity seals with you this day… אלה – ALAH is an interesting word; it can mean “oath,” but also “curse,” as well as “to lament” or “mourn.” (As in the curse that will come if you violate the oath, causing you to lament and mourn!) But, it also means “goddess,” as well as “club/bat/cudgel,” hinting again at the old and mighty nature deities. Lastly, it also means “these” – eleh. The Zohar says that eleh (“these”) refers to the sefirot, which can be incorrectly interpreted to be separate deities. As a remedy to this dualistic view, the Zohar recommends a practice of inquiry in which one asks the question, mi? meaning, “who?” Through the asking of “who,” we can come to realize the inner identity of all “these” different forces – eleh combines with mi, and becomes Elohim – “these” is revealed as One Reality. This is the essence of the brit of the Torah, to know the One, and not see Reality as merely a collection of separate entities. But what does this really mean for us? It means not living from ego, which is psychological identification with separateness. It means accepting Reality as it happens and living in loving service of the One, which is present manifest in and as all beings. But to do this, we need to be committed to it; we need to tap our inner Gevurah in order to overcome the forces of ego. How do we do that? First and foremost, we have to be committed to it. We have to make an inner brit (covenant), an inner alah (oath), to be conscious and not be taken over by the forces of separateness. Then, we must constantly remember our ALAH (oath) to know that ELEH (these) are really ELOHIM (One Reality that includes all plurality), and that if we forget this and worship the ELEH instead, this will only create ALAH (suffering) for ourselves. This is teshuvah, returning to the One that is ever-present, returning to the Divine Compassion of our heart and the Divine Strength of our will to bring It forth…
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Repairing the Road – Parshat Nitzavim
9/25/2019 0 Comments This past Sunday, my son and I drove up from Tucson to the Bay Area – about twelve hours of driving. Toward the end of the journey, it was getting late – I wasn’t sure if I could make it. It was around 12:00 am, and I wanted to push through. But the next thing I knew, the 75-mph traffic began getting slower and slower, eventually came to a complete stop before resuming at a barely moving pace. After nearly an hour we came to the reason – workers were repairing the road. Of course, like all things, the road wears out; the pavement chips, breaks, and becomes dangerous. Like everything, it needs to be repaired. And so it is with us as well. It’s inconvenient to the pace that we’re accustomed to; we have deadlines, we have places to go. Oh the places we want to go! Our consciousness becomes accustomed to pointing toward the future; our thoughts and feelings tend to be directed at where we are going. This is natural and necessary to a degree, but if we are always barreling forward at 75 mph, we miss out on the actual nature of our consciousness; we miss out on the depths of who we are, beneath all those directional thoughts and feelings. We may sometimes have a temporary sense of “arrival,” but then it’s back to moving again, back to the next imagined end-point. One problem with this is that over time, the road breaks down! Meaning, the movement of life leaves us injured and scarred. This too is fine and natural – but we need to slow down regularly, and even come to a complete standstill, so that the “workers” can make the tikun in our souls and bring us back to the Wholeness that we are, beneath all experience. אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם You stand today, all of you, before Existence, your Divinity… Atem nitzavim hayom – You stand today – that is, come to a “standstill,” today – meaning, in the present… Kulkhem – all of you – that is, with your whole being; it’s not about merely sitting and be still physically. “All of you” means bring thought itself to a standstill… Lifnei Hashem Eloheikhem – before Existence, your Divinity – that is, become aware of the underlying Being-ness before you, and know that it is not separate from the Divine consciousness that you are… This Rosh Hashanah, may we renew our commitment to our avodah, to being nitzavim and coming to a “standstill” hayom – today and everyday. Let us make space for the Divine healer inherent within our own Being-ness to repair the “pavement” of our nervous systems, so that we can experience and embody the Wholeness that are beneath it all– amein. Listen and Reveal – Parshat Nitzavim 9/6/2018 1 Comment This week’s reading is Parshat Nitzavim, which means “standing.” It begins with Moses telling the Children of Israel about all the blessings that will come from following the right path, as well as the curses that will come from following the wrong path, and that in fact they will follow both right and wrong paths. But eventually, after all these ups and downs, this beautiful line describes what will happen next: וְשַׁבְתָּ֞ עַד־יְהוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ וְשָׁמַעְתָּ֣ בְקֹלֹ֔ו You will return to Existence, which is not separate from your own inner Divinity, and you will begin to listen to Its Voice… This prediction applies to each one of us; we can ask ourselves right now: Ad matai? How long will I remain preoccupied with the dramas of life with all its ups and downs, before I Return? Behind all spiritual practices lies this one simple move– return to Reality, return to this moment. If you want to be free, if you want to realize your nature as wholeness, as peace, as joy, then be as the nitzavim – take your stand in your actual experience as it is, right now, being the space of awareness within which life unfolds. Be Present. But if it’s so simple, why doesn’t everyone realize this right away? Because the vast and infinitely superior reward that comes from Return to Presence is not always readily apparent. For many people, a whole lot of suffering has to come first before one is really motivated to find another way. Before that, Presence is meaningless. So the real question is, have you suffered enough yet? How long until you Return? And that’s where faith comes in. Return now; listen to the Voice of Reality as it speaks in this moment, and you may not feel anything special. Awakening comes when it comes, as an act of Grace. That’s why it says a few verses later: וּמָ֨ל יְהוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ אֶת־לְבָבְךָ֖ And Existence, which is your own inner Divinity, will circumcise your heart… We don’t “circumcise” our own hearts; the dropping away of all separation and the realization of peace and wholeness as your own nature comes to us by Grace. But we canprepare ourselves for it, we can open ourselves to it. And that’s what Teshuvah, Return to Presence, is all about. But if you need a dramatic experience to convince you, you might give up before your practice bears fruit. So please, have faith and keep at it! A disciple of Reb Mordechai of Lekhovitz had a business partner who was a mitnagid, an opponent of the Hassidic way. The disciple kept urging his partner to come see his master, Reb Mordechai, but his partner obstinately refused again and again. One day, when they happened to be in Lekhovitz on business, the partner allowed himself to be persuaded and agreed to go to the rebbe’s house for a Shabbat meal. During the meal, the disciple saw his partner’s face light up with joy. When he asked him about it later, his partner said, “When the rebbe ate, he looked as holy and radiant as theKohen Gadol – the High Priest – must have looked, making offerings in the ancient Temple!” Later, the disciple went to his master, troubled in spirit, and asked his rebbe why his friend who hated the hasidim had such a wonderful experience on the first encounter, while he had not. The master replied, “The mitnagid must see, but the hasid must have faith! May we have the strength and faith to keep at our teshuvah, to return more deeply and frequently to Presence, and may this year bring new and unique opportunities to craft the vessels of our lives into conduits for the Divine Grace that yearns to get our attention.Amein, Good Shabbos! Can't Stand It? Parshat Nitzavim 9/28/2016 6 Comments What happens when you can't stand something? Ordinarily, there is a sense of "me" and the thing or person you "can't stand." Reality is split in two, and there is tension, contraction, stress. How do you rise above this tension? The Parshah begins: "Atem nitzavim hayom kulkhem... "You all stand together today... from your hewer of wood to your carrier of water... to pass into the covenant...״ What is a covenant? A covenant is a special, intentional connection between two beings- a coming together of two, rather than a separation and tension. How do you connect with the Divine? Nitzavim Hayom- Stand today- meaning, take your stand in this moment. When you "stand" your head is raised up- meaning, you can see all that is below- your body, your feelings, your thoughts. Use your head to be aware of yourself in this moment, rather than spinning off into judgments, fantasies, and opinions about what you can't stand! Instead, take your stand in this moment. From your hewer of wood to your carrier of water- It doesn't matter what your identity is, what roles you play, what your opinions are. On the level of awareness, we are all the same transcendent presence. Then it says: "L'ma'an hakim ot'kha hayom- "In order to establish you today..." That is, establish yourself in the present moment! Make Presence a way of living, not merely a technique or occasional practice. When your presence burns brightly like the sun, far above your opinions and yet intimately aware of them, then the One Being looks through your eyes, seeing Itself everywhere. Then there is no longer "you" connecting with "God," but there is simply Being, shining forth from everything. From that state, the love and wisdom to make peace and "stand with others" becomes available... Watch Me Ney Ney?? Parshat Nitzavim 9/9/2015 8 Comments Last week I took my 3-year-old girl and nine-year-old boy out for dinner, along with my son’s nine-year-old friend. As we sat in the vegan Japanese restaurant waiting for noodle soups and avocado rolls, the friend was singing some popular song, trying to get my daughter to sing along and do the dance moves that apparently went with it. “Watch me whip! Watch me ney-ney!” he sang, showing her how to wave her arm in a certain way that I assume is from a video he saw. I had never heard the song before, and something about the way he was doing the arm wave and singing “watch me ney-ney” seemed a little off to me. I don’t want to say it sounded obscene, but not knowing what “ney-ney” meant, I was suspicious. Was this appropriate for a three year old? I wasn’t comfortable with it, so I told him to please stop. The next day, I went to pick up my daughter from her Jewish preschool. When I got there, all the kids were being led in a dance by their teacher. What was the dance? “Watch me whip! Watch me ney-ney!” The song blasted from the stereo and all the kids were doing the moves. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently her teacher thought the song was perfect for preschoolers! Later on, I told my wife the story and we laughed so hard. The next day, she told the whole story to the teacher, who also laughed and said, “Yeah I thought the song was a little strange too, but I learned it from the Rebbetzen- the rabbi’s wife!” Our narratives about reality are not the same as actual reality. Was the song appropriate or inappropriate? We had different narratives about it, but I still have no idea what "nay nay" means. Similarly, we have all kinds of narratives about who we are and who other people are, but ultimately they are just stories, mental fabrications. The roles we play, the scripts we run, the functions we fulfill, are not what we actually are. So what are we? This week’s reading opens with Moses’ words to the Children of Israel: “Atem nitzavim hayom- You are standing today…” He then goes on to describe all the different identities of the people who are “standing”: the heads of the tribes, the elders, the officers, the men, the women, the children and the stranger, ending with the sweepingly inclusive description- “…meikhoteiv eitzekha ad sho’eiv meimekha- From the hewer of your wood to the carrier of your water.” In other words, all the different identities are standing together. What does it mean to “stand today”? It means to take your stand in the present. When you stand in the present- awake, still, and attentive- all of your identities and roles are temporarily suspended. When you stand in the present, you are pure potential, pure aliveness, a field of awareness encompassing a human form. Why are they standing today? It goes on to say, “L’ovrekha bivrit Hashem Elohekha- To cross over into the covenant of Being, which is your own Divinity…” All identities, in the end, are just roles, just stories. It doesn’t matter if you are a hewer of wood or a carrier of water. When you simply stand, you stand as Being, as the Divine Being that you are. I remember one time a visiting rabbi came to our shul and gave a talk for a Shabbat service. When he stood up to talk, he first stood in silence. He looked around the room, making eye contact with everyone. The silence was powerful, and lasted about 3 or 4 minutes. Finally, he began to talk. His teaching was very good, but the truth is, it was nothing compared to his silence. When he stood in silence and connected with everyone in the room one by one, there was a shift. That ineffable quality of being- the quality that some call “Divine”- was palpable. The roles we play, on the other hand, have the potential to divide us. Our roles can create competition. Our stories can become arguments over who is right, over who has the “truth”. The solution? Stand together. We need not get rid of our roles, but we do need to choose roles that express our basic oneness, our inner Divinity. But to do that, we need to be committed to it. That’s the brit, the covenant. Commitment to transformation, to truly embody who you want to be, may seem difficult. But, as the Torah reminds us later in the same parshah, “Ki karov eilekha hadavar me’od- this matter is very near to you- b’fikha uvilvavkha la’asoto- in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.” A shopkeeper once complained to Reb Moshe of Kobrin that his neighbor, who sold exactly the same goods as he did, always made a killing, while customers just passed on by his shop. “I can promise big profits to you, too,” said the tzaddik, “but only on the condition that when you see your neighbor doing well, you must thank Hashem for his success. Something like this- Thank God for the rich livelihood of my neighbor! "It may be difficult to say this wholeheartedly at the beginning, but as you train your mouth to say the words, in time they will find their way into your heart as well- until in fact you will be saying them with all your heart. "For, in the verse- ‘in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it’- we first find ‘in your mouth’, and only after is it written ‘in your heart.’” If you want your life to express your inner Divinity, rather than merely repeat old scripts and narratives, it’s important to consciously construct your narratives- don’t let them construct you! Choose who you want to be, write it down and repeat it often. And, to tap into the transformative power that makes this possible, you must go beyond all narrative, and stand in the silence of pure potential. That’s meditation. As we come into Shabbat Nitzavim, the Sabbath of Standing, and then into the New Year beginning Sunday night, may we renew our connection with the Divinity of Being. May we “crown” Reality as “King” over all our mental narratives. May we know ever more deeply the sweetness and bliss of what we truly are, and the power and potential of what’s possible when we stand together. L’shanah tovah tikatevu- May you be inscribed for a good year- And may you consciously inscribe yourself as an expression of your deepest potential! love, brian yosef
Integral Kabbalah for the Days of Awe
Class #8: Tiferet – Radiant Beauty Avinu Malkeinu
There’s a Hasidic story that the once the Jews of the town of Apt were threatened by a local decree against them and were in great distress, so the rabbi of Apt issued a command for a universal fast in order to call down God’s mercy. But when Rabbi Yisrael of Rizhyn heard of the threat, he called for his favorite klezmorim (musicians) to come and play on his balcony every evening. As the sounds wafted down, a crowd of Hasidim would begin to gather below, and as the gathering grew, they would begin to dance.
Word eventually came to the rabbi of Apt of what was happening: “Rabbi! Your decree of a time of fasting has been turned into a time of rejoicing by Rabbi Yisrael!” The rabbi of Apt responded by quoting a pasuk: וְכִֽי־תָבֹ֨אוּ מִלְחָמָ֜ה בְּאַרְצְכֶ֗ם עַל־הַצַּר֙ הַצֹּרֵ֣ר אֶתְכֶ֔ם וַהֲרֵעֹתֶ֖ם בַּחֲצֹצְר֑וֹת וֲנִזְכַּרְתֶּ֗ם לִפְנֵי֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְנוֹשַׁעְתֶּ֖ם מֵאֹיְבֵיכֶֽם׃ “When you come into battle in your land against an aggressor who attacks you, you shall sound the trumpets, that you may be remembered before Hashem your Divinity and be delivered from your enemies… (Numbers 10:9) “How can I judge someone who is taking this command of the Torah to heart?” In this story, the response rabbi of Apt to the impending calamity is to impose austerity. This is a common traditional response; when life brings us danger, the practice is to try to avert the danger through asceticism. In this taking of suffering upon oneself on purpose, the belief is that you can stop the danger from manifesting externally. The logic of this type of approach comes from our ordinary experience of relationships. You may have experienced that when a person realizes they have wronged you, and they come to you with sincere apologies and grief, it is not difficult to forgive them. But there is also another path; instead of being repentant and sorrowful, the offender might do something so delightful that the offense is forgotten. This is often true in the case children! While children might occasionally be sorry, usually their offenses are more often forgiven when they do something adorable. In Kabbalah, the ascetic approach is the path of Gevurah, while the approach of delight is the path of Tiferet. In the story, it is the playing of music that draws down Divine compassion, hence the association of Tiferet with “beauty” and “splendor,” which are straightforward translations of Tiferet, but also with “compassion,” or rakhamim. Another kabbalistic dimension of the story is the description of the scene: the musicians play up on the balcony, and the music wafts downward to the gathering Hasidim below, who begin to dance. This is the transcendent beauty of Tiferet above, arousing Yesod below, which represents the foundational functions of joy and community. In addition to the association of Tiferet with beauty and compassion, Tiferet is also associated with Emet, Truth. …תורָתְךָ אֱמֶת: תִּתֵּן אֱמֶת לְיַעֲקב. חֶסֶד לְאַבְרָהָם Your Torah is Truth; Grant Truth to Jacob, Kindness to Abraham… - Atah Kadosh liturgy, weekday Shakharit, Shabbat Minkha, Motzei Shabbat Maariv In this Talmudic liturgical text, Abraham is associated with Hesed/Kindness, while Jacob is associated with Emet/Truth. In Kabbalah, the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, come to be associated with three sefirot, Hesed, Gevurah and Tiferet; hence the association of Tiferet with Truth. But this is strange – how can Tiferet represent beauty and compassion, and also truth? Beauty and compassion make sense; we experience beauty, and this arouses compassion. But to have compassion, we often have to ignore truth to some degree; we overlook the truth of a person’s guilt in order to respond compassionately. Furthermore, beauty is often an external effect that covers up truth, as when a person puts on makeup or dyes their hair. We can “photoshop” a photo to create a more beautiful image of a person. In music recording, we can digitally “fix” a person’s voice when they sing off key, making the recording more beautiful while hiding the truth of how they actually sang. There is a hint to this riddle in the parshah: אֶת־יְהוָ֥ה הֶאֱמַ֖רְתָּ הַיּ֑וֹם לִהְיוֹת֩ לְךָ֨ לֵֽאלֹהִ֜ים וְלָלֶ֣כֶת בִּדְרָכָ֗יו וְלִשְׁמֹ֨ר חֻקָּ֧יו וּמִצְותָ֛יו וּמִשְׁפָּטָ֖יו וְלִשְׁמֹ֥עַ בְּקֹלֽוֹ׃ You say today that Existence Itself will be for you as God, that you will walk in Its ways, that you will guard Its practices and commandments and ethical rules, and that you will listen to Its Voice. וַֽיהוָ֞ה הֶאֱמִֽירְךָ֣ הַיּ֗וֹם לִהְי֥וֹת לוֹ֙ לְעַ֣ם סְגֻלָּ֔ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֖ר דִּבֶּר־לָ֑ךְ וְלִשְׁמֹ֖ר כָּל־מִצְותָֽיו׃ And Existence Itself affirms today that you are to It a treasured people, as said to you, and to guard all of Its commandments, וּֽלְתִתְּךָ֣ עֶלְי֗וֹן עַ֤ל כָּל־הַגּוֹיִם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֔ה לִתְהִלָּ֖ה וּלְשֵׁ֣ם וּלְתִפְאָ֑רֶת וְלִֽהְיֹתְךָ֧ עַם־קָדֹ֛שׁ לַיהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר דִּבֵּֽר׃ And you will be set far above the nations that were made, for praise and fame and splendor (Tiferet), and you will be a holy people to Hashem your divinity, as said.
This passage describes the benefits that the Children of Israel will receive for living in alignment with the Divine. Each of these qualities are aspects of Tiferet: עֶלְי֗וֹן Elyon – exalted, above, transcendent; this is Tiferet in relation to Malkhut, as Tiferet is symbolized by the sun and Malkhut by the earth. לִתְהִלָּ֖ה Lit’hilah – “for praise” particularly through song. This is the beauty of music, as in the story above. The Psalms, which were sung by the Levites in the temple, are called Tehilim. לְשֵׁ֣ם L’shem – “for name” meaning “famous.” The artists and musicians are the beloved icons of culture, the celebrities that embody the beauty and transcendence of Tiferet. תִפְאָ֑רֶת L’tifaret – for Tiferet! That is, for “beauty” or “splendor.” But how are we to receive all this Tiferet? אֶת־יְהוָ֥ה הֶאֱמַ֖רְתָּ הַיּ֑וֹם לִהְיוֹת֩ לְךָ֨ לֵֽאלֹהִ֜ים You say today that Existence Itself will be for you as God… The qualities of Tiferet arise not merely from doing the mitzvot, but from verbally pledging to do them, and then following through. In other words, they result from being true. This is the underlying message of the Jewish idea of brit, of covenant: On the deepest level, it is not only the commandments in the abstract which are the essence of the teaching, but being true to one’s word, that is, being one within oneself, so that one’s intentions and words and actions become one and thereby express the One. In this way, beauty and compassion come not to cover up truth, but arise as expressions of it. There is another way that truth and beauty can be allies: Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak, the Seer of Lublin, would sometimes take a pinch of snuff right in the middle of davening. One time, a fellow davener saw him do this corrected him: “It is not proper to interrupt prayer.” The Seer responded, “Let me tell you a story. Once there was a great king who, while traveling through his kingdom, heard a ragged old street singer, singing and playing an old harp. The king was moved by the music, so he invited the street musician into the palace, where he enjoyed his music day and night. “The minstrel didn’t want to part with his old harp, and he often had to stop in the middle of playing to tune it up again and again. One day, a courtier snapped at him: ‘You really aught to tune up your instrument beforehand.’ ‘“The king has many musicians in his orchestras and choirs much better than I,’ replied the minstrel, ‘But the king has picked me and my harp, so it is apparently his wish to endure its peculiarities and mine...’”
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Making Friends with the Now – Parshat Ki Tavo
9/17/2019 0 Comments Many common experiences are completely ineffable and inexplicable, yet we take their reality for granted because they are so common. Like the flavor of food, for example. Or music – can you explain the experience of listening to music? Can we even know what music is? Of course not – music is a mystery. Flavor is a mystery. And yet, if someone says, “mmmmm” we understand they’re enjoying food, because we know that experience. If we see someone dancing to the rhythm, we know they are hearing the music. We can’t really explain it, but because we know the experience, we can recognize the outward signs of the experience in someone else. כִּֽי־הִנֵּ֤ה הַחֹ֙שֶׁךְ֙ יְכַסֶּה־אֶ֔רֶץ וַעֲרָפֶ֖ל לְאֻמִּ֑ים וְעָלַ֙יִךְ֙ יִזְרַ֣ח יְהוָ֔ה וּכְבוֹד֖וֹ עָלַ֥יִךְ יֵרָאֶֽה׃ Behold! Darkness shall cover the earth, and thick clouds the peoples; but upon you the Divine will shine, And Its Presence be seen over you. (Isaiah 60:2, Haftora Ki Tavo) What does this mean – that yizrakh Hashem – the Divine will shine and Its Presence will be seen? It sounds like a contradiction – if “darkness covers the earth,” how can the “Presence” be seen? But that’s the point – you cannot “see” the Divine any more than you can “see” the flavor of food, or “smell” the sound of music. The dimension of the sacred is, nevertheless, not an uncommon experience; we know the outward signs of it, just like we recognize the savoring of food or dancing to music. What are the outward signs? הַמַּכִּיר אֶת מְקוֹמוֹ – knowing one’s place (Pirkei Avot, 6:6) In Pirkei Avot, there is a list of qualities one needs to aquire wisdom, and among them is hamakir et m’komo – knowing one’s place. It may sound like a negative thing, like being passive and not speaking up for yourself. But the word for knowing, makir, also means “friend” – so the “knowing” is like the knowing of a friend; it’s a knowing of love, of relationship. The word for “one’s place” – m’komo – is a form of Makom, which is also a Divine Name. So, to be hamakir et m’komo means to “make friends” with the place you are actually in, right now, and thereby connect to the Divine Presence that shines beneath the surface of this moment. When someone does this, we can recognize it – we sense an inner light, a friendly aliveness, a peaceful presence. We may not be able to conceptualize it or explain it – darkness shall cover the earth – but nevertheless there is recognition. From this quality of making friends with the present moment, there naturally arises the next quality mentioned in the mishna: וְהַשָּׂמֵחַ בְּחֶלְקו – and being happy with one’s portion… It is good to appreciate what you’ve got. But to be truly samayakh b’helko – happy with one’s portion – we must realize what we are on the deepest level: וְעָלַ֙יִךְ֙ יִזְרַ֣ח יְהוָ֔ה וּכְבוֹד֖וֹ עָלַ֥יִךְ יֵרָאֶֽה And upon you the Divine will shine, And Its Presence be seen over you. This Presence, this Light, is what we are – it is the awareness that befriends this moment and expresses Itself as radiance and peacefulness on the one who realizes. But, even though we are this Light, it is easily concealed; we must make the effort to realize this Light by coming to this moment as a friend, by being hamakir et m’komo even with our own darkeness, with our own negativity. Because it is through presence with the negativity – with the fear, with the anger, with the resentments, with the irritability – that we can reclaim the consciousness that has temporarily taken a negative form and transmute it back into Light. When that happens, it can then be said: ק֥וּמִי א֖וֹרִי כִּ֣י בָ֣א אוֹרֵ֑ךְ וּכְב֥וֹד יְהוָ֖ה עָלַ֥יִךְ זָרָֽח Arise, shine, for your light has dawned; The Presence of the Divine has shone upon you! (Isaiah 60:1, Haftora Ki Tavo) Only One Thing– Parshat Ki Tavo 8/29/2018 1 Comment There’s a story of Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov, that once while he was absorbed in a mystical ecstasy, he heard a knock at the window. A drunken peasant stood outside and asked to be let in and given a bed for the night. For a moment, the tzaddik’s heart raged with anger and he thought to himself, “How can this drunk have the hutzbah to ask to be let into this house!” But then he said silently in his heart, “And what business does he have to exist at all, when Existence is nothing but the Divine? But if Hashem gets along with this guy and allows him to exist in this world, who am I to reject him?” He opened the door at once and prepared a bed. Everything that appears in our awareness is actually nothing but a form of awareness. So, when we resist something or someone who appears, we are really resisting our own being; we are creating an inner split, an experience of exile, of being not at home. But when we welcome whatever comes, whether it be a person, or a situation, or a feeling – it doesn’t matter – the hospitality we express toward that which appears allows us to be at home ourselves, in this moment. וְהָיָה֙ כִּֽי־תָבֹ֣וא אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָ֑ה וִֽירִשְׁתָּ֖הּ וְיָשַׁ֥בְתָּ בָּֽהּ׃ It will be when you come into the land that Hashem, your Divinity gives to you as an inheritance and you take possession of it and dwell within it… The fullness of this moment, along with these bodies we now inhabit, is like a nakhalah,an inheritance; it comes to us from the boundless past, as an unearned gift. From the infinite possibilities of what could be, here we are, now. But the ordinary activity of the ego is to resist aspects of this moment, and thereby create a sense of dis-ease, of not being at home in our nakhalah. We’re like the Israelites wandering in the desert. But if we want to truly feel the peace of dwelling within our inheritance, we have to actively take possession of it, and that means actively welcoming whatever appears, while resting awareness within our bodies. In that active welcoming, we can come to the state of simply being (hayah) through “coming in” (ki tavo) to the “land” that is this moment (el ha’aretz). This is both the goal and the path of awakening: to continuously dwell in the truth of this moment: אַחַ֤ת ׀ שָׁאַ֣לְתִּי מֵֽאֵת־יְהוָה֮ אֹותָ֪הּ אֲבַ֫קֵּ֥שׁ שִׁבְתִּ֣י בְּבֵית־יְ֭הוָה כָּל־יְמֵ֣י חַיַּ֑י לַחֲזֹ֥ות בְּנֹֽעַם־יְ֝הוָ֗ה וּלְבַקֵּ֥ר בְּהֵיכָלֹֽו Akhat she’alti me’eit Hashem, otah avakeish, shivti b’veit Hashem kol y’mei hayay, lakhazot b’no’am Hashem, ul’vakeir b’heikhalo! Only One Thing I ask of the Divine – this I seek – to dwell in the House of the Divine all the days of my life, to behold the sweetness of the Divine and to meditate in Its Sanctuary! Doing and Being: Parshat Ki Tavo 9/8/2017 1 Comment Parshat Ki Tavo begins, “V’hayah ki tavo el ha’aretz – It will be when you come into the land that the Divine gives you as an inheritance, to possess it, and to dwell within it…” It then goes on to talk about a special ritual of gratitude that involves putting the first fruit of your harvest into a basket, making a pilgrimage to the Temple, and offering the fruit in gratitude for having come out of slavery in Egypt, and into the the "land flowing with milk and honey." On a simple level, this is a farmer’s gratitude ritual for the goodness of the land. But on a deeper level, V’hayah ki tavo el ha’aretz – coming into the land means coming into the place you already are, coming into the full Presence of whatever is present. This is hinted at by V’hayah ki tavo – It will BE when you come in – meaning, coming in to the mode of Being. Our lives consist of both Doing and Being, but we tend to identify with the Doing mode. Doing means, constantly going out– constantly reaching toward a goal we imagine in the future. This is how we create and accomplish things, which is wonderful and necessary. But if it’s not balanced by the mode of Being, if there’s total identification with the mind and with Doing, then there’s no peace, there’s no contentment, there’s no coming in. So, what’s the solution? V’hayah ki tavo el ha’aretz – come into this place that you are, by connecting your awareness with the Presence of the aretz- the earth on which we live, this body through which we live, and with whatever else happens to be present. The mind tends to lurch toward some imagined fruits in the future. Instead, bring your focus to the fruits that are already here, in the basket of this moment. Then you will be able to say as the ancient farmer said, “Vayotzieinu Hashem mimitzrayim – Hashem brought us out of Egypt – meaning, we are brought out of the contracted bundle of mind-identified ego through simply Being, because the Hebrew Name of God actually means, Being. V’samakhta v’khol hatov – and then you will rejoice with all the goodness that you are given, you and the strangers among you. So on this Shabbat Ki Tavo – The Sabbath of Coming In, may we reel in our awareness from the tendrils of thought and time, into deeper connection with the earth, with the body, with our senses, with all the fruits that are just now ripe, giving thanks for this moment of Existence as it is – Good Shabbiss!! Chosen to Choose- Parshat Ki Tavo 9/19/2016 2 Comments As I was making coffee one morning, my almost ten year old son came into the kitchen and sat with me a bit. We started talking about the Sh’ma, the Jewish affirmation of Divine oneness. I asked him if he knew what was the first of the two blessings that come before the Sh’ma. He knew: “Yotzer or uvorei hoshekh- Former of light and Creator of darkness- Oseh shalom uvorei et hakol- Maker of peace, Creator of All.” I told him that these words actually come from the Bible, from the Book of Isaiah. There, Isaiah describes God with the same words- except for one difference. At the end of the verse in Isaiah, it doesn’t say- “… uvorei et haKol- Creator of All." Rather, it says- “… uvorei et haRa- Creator of evil”! Of course, “Creator of all” must include “evil” as well, since evil is part of the “all”, but the rabbis who composed this blessing must have thought Isaiah’s words were just a little too provocative, a little too dangerous. After all, how could a “good God” create evil? It’s the age-old theological dilemma (for those who go for theological dilemmas). Still, they included this verse right before the Sh’ma to emphasize that God is not one side of a polarity. God is Oneness, and that Oneness includes everything. I asked my son, “What do you think about Hashem creating evil?” He said, “There might be evil, but we are not evil, Abba.” And, I would add, sometimes it takes the experience of evil to realize your own inherent goodness. Sometimes it takes the experience of the “bad” to come to a true and simple humility, to a deep gratitude for the blessings that can otherwise go unnoticed. This week’s reading, Ki Tavo, begins by describing a ritual of gratitude and joy that the Israelites are to perform when they come to dwell in the Promised Land: “Ki tavo el ha’aretz- "When you enter the land… "V’lakakhta mereishit kol p’ri ha’adamah- "You shall take from the first fruits of the earth…” It goes on to describe how the celebrant should put the fruit in a basket and bring it to the place where the Divine “chooses” to “make the Holy Name rest”. The celebrant then makes a declaration of having come from slavery to freedom, of having now received the gift of the land, and of now coming to offer its first fruits. The celebrant then “rejoices” with "family" and “stranger” together. There is a fruit that you are reaping right now- That fruit is the fullness of this moment. This, now, is the “fruit” of all that has come before. But what is your “First Fruit?" It is your immediate relationship with this moment. The content of this moment is complex; it often contains both joy and suffering. Your mind may comment with stories and judgments. But before the stories, before the judgments, there is something more immediate. There is simply this life, this consciousness, meeting this moment as it is. When you descend deeply into yourself, when you return from the journeys of the mind into the reality of the present, it can dawn on you: you have the choice to hold this moment in the “basket” of gratitude. This is not a denial of suffering. In fact, it is often thanks to our suffering that we are awakened to those things that truly matter, to the blessings we are constantly receiving but often take for granted. And when you have the choice to relate to this moment with gratitude, is that not grace? It is your choice, but the fact you have become aware of that choice is a gift. It is as if God has chosen "rest Its Presence" in the place of your own awareness. Is there any greater gift than that? Is that not the movement from slavery to freedom? Two disciples of the Hassidic Master known as the “Maggid of Mezritch” came to the Maggid with a question: “We are troubled by the teaching of our sages, that one must bless for the evil one experiences as well as the good (Mishna, Berachot, 9:5). How are we to understand this?” The Maggid replied, “Go to the beit midrash (house of study). There you will find Reb Zusha smoking his pipe. He will give you the answer.” So, they went and found Reb Zusha and put the question to him. Zusha just laughed and said, “I think you’ve come to the wrong man. I have never experienced suffering in my life.” But the two knew that Zusha’s life had been a web of poverty, loss and illness… and they understood. On this Shabbat Ki Tavo, the Sabbath of Entering, and in this month Elul, the month of Return- may we fully enter this place we are already in. May we re-turn evermore in gratitude for the blessing of this “fruit,” and for the suffering that has brought us to this gratitude. May we too rejoice with all who are strange, knowing everyone as expressions of the One... Good Shabbos!! The Basket- Parshat Ki Tavo 9/11/2014 3 Comments Two disciples of the Hassidic Master known as the “Maggid of Mezritch” came to the Maggid with a question: “We are troubled by the teaching of our sages, that one must bless for the evil one experiences as well as the good (Mishna, Berachot, 9:5). How are we to understand this?” The Maggid replied, “Go to the beit midrash (house of study). There you will find Reb Zusha smoking his pipe. He will give you the answer.” So they went and found Reb Zusha and put the question to him. Zusha just laughed and said, “I think you’ve come to the wrong man. I have never experienced suffering in my life.” But the two knew that Zusha’s life had been a web of need and anguish. They understood. When we hear a teaching like this, it can sound as though it is advocating that we play act. Suffering happens and we should pretend that it’s “all good”. We should put on a happy face. But the teaching is much deeper than that. This week’s parshah, Ki Tavo, begins by describing a ritual of gratitude that the Israelites should do when they dwell in the promised Land: “V’lakakhta mereishit kol p’ri ha’adamah- you shall take from the first fruits of the earth”. It goes on to describe how the celebrant should put the fruit in a basket and bring it to the place where the Divine “chooses” to “make the Holy Name rest”. The celebrant then makes a declaration of having come from slavery to freedom, the gift of the land, and of offering the first fruits. The celebrant then “rejoices” with one’s family as well as the “stranger”. This moment, right now, is the “fruit” of all that has come before. What is our “first fruit”? It is our primary relationship with this moment. The content of this moment may be complex; it may have both goodness and suffering. Nevertheless, it is our choice to hold this moment in the “basket” of gratitude. Without pretending away our problems, it is still our choice to give thanks for the gift of this “fruit”. In giving thanks, we also recognize that we are free, because we are not controlled by the “good” and the “bad”. We can remain open. And here is also the recognition that the Divine “rests” in this moment; in choosing to be present and give thanks for this, we receive this moment as G-d’s choice. In this month of return, may we re-turn evermore into the space of freedom that is gratitude for this eternal presence of Being. Amein.
Integral Kabbalah for the Days of Awe
Class #7: Netzakh – Victory and Persistence “Aneinu – Answer Us!”
A disciple of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the Seer of Lublin, had been fasting all week and was traveling to spend Shabbos with his master. On the way, he came upon a well, and was suddenly overcome with an uncontrollable thirst. He thought he might die if he didn’t drink some of that water!
Involuntarily, he drew some water from the well and brought the cup to his lips, when suddenly he realized – “If I drink now, I will have nullified my entire fast! Just a few more hours to go!” And with that, he managed to overcome temptation and walk away from the well. But then he noticed within himself a bit of pride that he had withstood the test. “Better that I drink and nullify my entire fast than have this pride!” He went back to the well and again began to draw some water, when to his astonishment, he realized that his thirst had completely disappeared. So, he returned to his journey without drinking any water. When he arrived at the home of his master, the Seer greeted him harshly, barking at him: “Patchwork!” In Martin Buber’s short book, The Way of Man, he tells this story and talks about his own contemplation of its meaning. “Why was the Seer so harsh with the disciple?” he wondered. He eventually came to understand the meaning of the story by asking the question, “What is the opposite of ‘patchwork?’” The opposite of patchwork, he answers, is “of a piece.” In other words, the Seer scolds the disciple because he was not one within himself; he was second guessing, going back and forth, not deciding on a path and walking it. A common misconception on the spiritual path is that spiritual practices can produce a unity within yourself. While it is true that spiritual practices can help you perceive the unity that is already there, that is, the unity of consciousness itself, beneath all the conflicting forces of our various experiences, we still must forge that unity in how we approach the practices; we must decide on the spiritual path and walk it whole-heartedly. This self-unifying part of the work should be done before we fast, before we sit down to meditate, pray, study, or whatever. We must always unify ourselves in the decision to practice first; our practices will not accomplish this for us. And if we fail to do this, our practices won’t have any lasting endurance; we will give up. This is the quality of Netzakh, which means “Victory” and also “Eternity,” and is associated with the middah of “Endurance” or “Persistence.” Netzakh is Victory in the sense that when we unify ourselves in our decision to practice, we claim victory over the forces of “wishy-washy-ness” and become “of a piece.” But it is also Eternity in the sense that when we practice with this unified intention, we can transcend the decision-making mind and recognize the Eternal dimension of Being, beyond all forms that come and go in experience. This is the fruit of the practice, and it comes to us by Grace; we cannot force it to happen, but it is given to us when we give ourselves completely to the Path. There is a hint in the parshah: כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹֽיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ When you go to battle your enemies, Hashem your Divinity gives them into your hand, and you capture their captivity…
כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹֽיְבֶ֑יךָ – Ki teitzei – When you go out to battle… כי Ki is usually translated as “when” but it can also mean “because.” Meaning, it is because we make the effort to go out from our inertia and conditioning; it is because we engage the inner battle to forge a unity within and fully step onto the spiritual path with commitment; it is because we make that effort that: וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ – Hashem your Divinity gives them into your hand… This is the paradox: The fruit of the path is not something we control with our decisiveness, it is “put in our hand” by the Divine, by Reality Itself. And yet, it is given to us כי ki – because we have made the effort. This is the second meaning of Netzakh as “Eternity” – the realization of the Eternal dimension that blossoms on its own when we achieve “Victory” over our inner divisions. Then, through the meeting of effort with Grace, וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ – and you capture their captivity… Once the inner fruit ripens, there is no longer any effort needed to unify oneself. That’s because, at that point, there is no longer any temptation to waver, no more distraction from the Goal; we experience the benefit for ourselves, and we know. At that point, walking the spiritual path becomes just like breathing, just like eating and sleeping; this is the deeper Netzakh, The Victory of the Eternal over the conflicting pulls of the temporal, accomplished through Persistence…
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Falling from the Roof of the Mind – Parshat Ki Tetzei
9/10/2019 0 Comments Is there a time when failure is actually success? כִּ֤י תִבְנֶה֙ בַּ֣יִת חָדָ֔שׁ וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ מַעֲקֶ֖ה לְגַגֶּ֑ךָ וְלֹֽא־תָשִׂ֤ים דָּמִים֙ בְּבֵיתֶ֔ךָ כִּֽי־יִפֹּ֥ל הַנֹּפֵ֖ל מִמֶּֽנּוּ When you build a new house, make a parapet for the roof, and you won’t bring blood upon your house when one falls from it…
The fact that the Torah talks about preventing a person from falling off the roof by building a protective barrier implies that, indeed, people must have fallen off rooves; it was probably the failure to anticipate this danger that led to the law of making a ma’akeh, or parapet. Similarly, when we become aware of our own misdeeds in the past, we too can build some kind of ma’akeh, some kind of protective fence to prevent the same thing from happening again. There are two main types of misdeeds: mistakes and temporary insanity. A mistake would be: you’re up on the roof and you’re goofing around, not paying attention, or maybe you just miscalculated your footsteps and you fall of the roof, God forbid. Temporary insanity would be: you’re up on the roof with someone, you get into a fight and push them off the roof, God forbid. You didn’t intend to hurt them; you just got angry and lost control. The ma’akeh prevents both types of scenarios. Whether accidental or by temporary insanity, the parapet prevents a person from falling. There’s a hint in the wording of the pasuk: “one who falls” is yipol hanofel – literally, “will fall, the falling.” The repeating of the verb “fall” is an idiom of emphasis, but also hints that the ma’akeh can prevent both the accidental and the impulsive falling crisis. Similarly, we too can take measures to prevent ourselves from repeating our misdeeds, whether they be accidental or impulsive. To do that, we need to see our lives clearly, contemplate, and create our own “parapets.” This is the transformative part of teshuvah, the main practice in this month of Elul, leading to the Days of Awe. There is yet a third kind of misdeed, one that is far more difficult to prevent. This is the misdeed of habit, the misdeed that has become part of one’s personality and lifestyle – such as addiction, relationship dysfunction, abuse, and so on. The more emmeshed we become in the negative behavior, the less likely we are to change it. And yet, we absolutely can change it. This is the deepest and most transformative kind of teshuvah. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev once came upon a wealthy man in the street who was known to be abusive with his money and power. “Oh, I envy you sir!” said Levi Yitzhak. The rasha (evil person) looked proudly at Levi Yitzhak, thinking that the rabbi wished he too could have all that money and power. But then Levi Yitzhak continued, “I envy you, because when you finally return, when you finally do teshuvah, all your sins will be transformed into magnificent lights, and what a brilliant spectacle that will be! Oh sir, I envy you that brilliance!” These three types of misdeeds – accidental, impulsive and intentional, are three main types of “sins” mentioned in the liturgy: het means “missing the mark,” as in shooting an arrow and missing the target. This is the accident. An aveira is crossing over a boundary impulsively; you accept that there is a boundary, but you become possessed by strong feelings and you violate it. Lastly, an avon is a misdeed that is not a mistake and is not impulsive; it has become part of how you operate. The avon cannot be prevented by any kind of ma’akeh; you can’t “trick yourself” out of this kind of misdeed. For the avon, you actually have to choose differently; you have to fully transform. These three kinds of “sin” are different from each other, but for a person who wants to become free from them, a single ingredient is needed. Whether we are merely setting a boundary to prevent mistakes and impulsivity, or we are seeking to overcome a deeply ingrained behavior, the root of all transformation on any level is the application of awareness. The outer teshuvah of returning to intentional action is rooted in the inner teshuvah of bringing our awareness out from its compulsive preoccupation with thought (which ordinarily reinforces our patterns), and into our actual present experience, into our senses, into our bodies. In doing so, acceptance and forgiveness of the past is natural and spontaneous, as the pain we cause ourselves by holding on to the past becomes blatantly obvious. And not only that, but the more we bring our attention to this moment, the more we can see that we are the awareness of this moment. We are openness, we are free, and we are in no way trapped by the past or by habit. In Presence, the power to choose reveals itself. Whenever I travel (and I travel a lot), I am always amazed that I can draw together the clothing, toiletries, books, computer equipment, etc., and pack them all into a single suitcase. It actually seems miraculous to me, that all the disparate items can come together into a single whole. But miraculous as that is, it is nothing compared to the miracle of Presence: that through the simple shift of opening to the immediacy of actual experience, all the disparate chaos comes together in the “suitcase” of the present moment; in Presence, there is no longer “me” and “that” – there is only the fullness of the what is, in all its richness, arising and falling away in the one field of awareness that we are. בְּרֶ֥גַע קָטֹ֖ן עֲזַבְתִּ֑יךְ וּבְרַחֲמִ֥ים גְּדֹלִ֖ים אֲקַבְּצֵֽךְ For a tiny moment I forsook you, but with a vast compassion I will gather you together…-- Isaiah 54:7 When we “gather together” our awareness into the fullness of the present, there is paradoxically a vastness and a benevolence – a rakhamim gedolim that is our own nature, revealing all past misdeeds for what they really are: tiny moments of forgetfulness arising and disappearing into the vastness of Being… The Price for Freedom – Parshat Ki Teitzei 8/21/2018 0 Comments There’s a story of Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov, that once he travelled through many villages trying to collect funds so that he could liberate the poor Jews who were incarcerated in the Ukrainian debtor’s prison. Day after day, he went from door to door pleading the case of those poor souls rotting away in the dungeon, but no one would contribute anything. After weeks of failure, feeling dejected and frustrated, he gave up and set out to return home, regretting having wasted all that time he could have spent learning and praying. But just as he approached his house, a woman ran up to him in a panic: “Rabbi, my husband was caught stealing a piece of clothing and was viciously beaten by the police and thrown in jail!” Without hesitation, the rabbi turned around and went to intercede with the judge. After much effort, he was able to get the prisoner released. When he went to fetch the prisoner from jail, he sternly warned him: “Remember the beating they gave you and don’t ever do anything like that again!” “Why not?” replied the thief, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” Upon hearing his words, the rabbi resolved to return to his task of raising money to ransom prisoners, and eventually was highly successful in liberating many. There is a debt to be paid for our spiritual freedom as well. We too must not give up “raising the funds,” moving from one situation to the next, bringing our consciousness fully to each moment, to each feeling, to each reaction, to each thought. Again and again – we might get caught, absorbed and coopted by whatever is arising in our experience, but don’t give up! The real danger is never failure. The real danger is allowing our failures to develop into the belief that freedom is impossible. The phenomena of our experience have a certain gravity; they tend to draw us in, to capture us. But if you don’t give up, if you keep at it, you will eventually capture their captivating power. After all, you are far more vast than any impulse, than any experience. You are the open space within which the experience unfolds. But how can you access this truth? This week’s reading begins: כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹֽיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ When you go to battle your enemies, Hashem your Divinity gives them into your hand, and you capture their captivity… Life is, in a sense, like a battle ground. If you want spiritual freedom, you have to be one pointed and relentless, like a warrior. And yet, וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ – Hashem your Divinity gives them into your hand – the victory is a gift placed in your hands by the Divine; it is not something you win through effort. So, there’s this paradox – on one hand, you’ve got to have unshakable will, and on the other, total surrender. In fact, there’s no contradiction, because the unconscious impulse is to struggle, to fight with Reality. The impulse to fight is oyevekha– your enemies– and to conquer that kind of enemy requires surrender to the “is-ness” of this moment. אַחַ֤ת שָׁאַ֣לְתִּי מֵֽאֵת־יְהוָה֮ אֹותָ֪הּ אֲבַ֫קֵּ֥שׁ שִׁבְתִּ֣י בְּבֵית־יְ֭הוָה כָּל־יְמֵ֣י חַיַּ֑י לַחֲזֹ֥ות בְּנֹֽעַם־יְ֝הוָ֗ה וּלְבַקֵּ֥ר בְּהֵיכָלֹֽו Only One Thing I ask of the Divine, this I seek: to dwell in the House of the Divine all the days of my life and meditate in Its Sanctuary… These words from Psalm 27 are an invocation for this Kavanah, this heart direction, for the inner freedom that must be ransomed through the consciousness-funds collected in every moment, every situation, every feeling, every thought: Above every goal, above every desire, there must be Only One Thing. קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְה֫וָ֥ה חֲ֭זַק וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְהוָֽה Kaveh el Hashem, hazak v’ya’ameitz libekha, v’kaveh el Hashem – Hope to the Divine, be strong and your heart will be courageous, hope to the Divine! In this time of Elul, let us remember and practice ever more deeply this one-pointed surrender… Good Shabbos! Effortless Battle: Parshat Ki Teitzei 8/31/2017 2 Comments On the surface, this parshah begins by talking about laws of battle. But on a deeper level, what are your enemies? They’re the intense experiences that we tend to get caught in. You get angry, and you project the blame on something out there, struggling, maybe yelling, or judging, all of which are all about trying to force reality into conforming to your will, or maybe punishing it for not conforming. Or, you have a wonderful experience, and you get disappointed or even depressed when it’s over, because you’re psychologically clinging to the past. But this verse is saying, untano Hashem Elohekha b’yadekha – and Hashem puts them in your hands. In other words, you can have victory over your enemies, but it doesn’t come through fighting or struggling. Your victory is put right in your hand, if you open your hand. Meaning, don’t struggle with your experiences. Fully let them be as they are, without clinging to good things or blaming anyone for bad things, and then let them go when they want to go. It’s really effortless, because it’s not about controlling things, but about relaxing the impulse to control things. That’s why it says, shavita shivyo – you capture their captivity. Meaning, our experiences are constantly trying to capture us, to draw us in to their dream and sometimes nightmare, but if you remember: simply be with this moment as it is, and let it go when it goes, then you easily “capture its captivity” – you can control your impulse to control, and be victorious over your own mind. This is also totally relevant in dealing with other people that may be possessed by collective ego, such as what we are seeing today with neo-nazis and so on. When you see others that are hateful or angry or demeaning, and you get dragged into their drama, judging and hating them back, you only reinforce the context that creates people like that. So even as you stand up for justice, even as you say "no" to ideologies of hate and the people who promote them, remember that you have a tremendous power to make a difference in the world on a very deep level if you can stay conscious and not get dragged into the drama. Because ultimately, it’s only when there’s a profound change in consciousness, only when enough people learn to see through their own egos, only then will the plug get pulled on the destructive forms of collective ego that we see today. And to help make that change in consciousness, there’s ultimately only one way, and that’s to see through your own ego. You’re never going to get someone else to see through their ego by judging and yelling at them, right? You can only see through your own, and in so doing, create a ripple of awakening that will join with other ripples of awakening, until enough people wake up. It doesn’t have to be everyone, it just has to be enough to tip the balance. So on this Shabbat Ki Teitzei, the Sabbath of Going Out, let’s remember that to engage the enemy of resistance, of ego, don’t “go out” into battle, because that only creates more ego, more resistance. Instead, know that untano Hashem Elohekha b’yadekha – Victory is being put right in your hand, if only you open your hand, if you open yourself to the experience of this moment. Then you can "go out" and do battle, but it's not a battle of resistance and struggle, it's a battle of overcoming darkness with light, of overcoming resistance with love. Good Shabbos! The Security of Anger- Parshat Ki Teitzei 9/12/2016 6 Comments Once I was in the Oakland Airport with my family. After checking our suitcases, we arrived at security to find an incredibly long line, winding around rope dividers and culminating with a tiny funnel into only two security gates. There were several more gates that could have been opened to move things along, but for whatever reason, they were not staffed and were closed. Right in front of us, a middle-aged man started cursing angrily. “What the %$^$ is going on here? Why don’t they ^%&$*# open the other gates??” He started verbally abusing the security person looking at IDs and checking tickets. He demanded to speak to a supervisor. When the supervisor arrived, he cursed him out too. The supervisor said, “You just hold that thought, and I’ll go get someone for you to speak to.” I was sorry my three-year-old girl had to hear that language. I was bracing myself for some police to come and wrestle this guy to the ground. Strangely, no police showed up. Instead, he just kept on cursing and venting all the way through the line. When it was time to remove our shoes and put our laptops in separate bins, I didn’t want to aggravate him more with our clumsy family choreography, so I offered to him that he go ahead of us. “Nah, that’s okay,” he said, “I have plenty of time, I’m just mad about how they’re running this place.” He had plenty of time! I saw an interview once with an Indian spiritual teacher who had a novel way of explaining the spiritual path that I had never heard before. He said that the “self” is like a cow in a pasture. The cow always wants to wander outside the field and into the town or woods, but when she does, she gets attacked by wild animals, kids throw rocks, people shoot guns. Eventually, she figures out she’s better off to just stay in her own field. The “field” is the inner heart. When the “self” dwells in the inner heart, according to this teacher, it enjoys union with the Divine. When it gets tempted and wanders outside the heart, it always ends up in suffering. So, in this teaching, the aim is to learn to keep yourself in the cave of your heart. That’s it. To me, this was a wonderful description of Presence. To “wander outside the heart” means to lose connection with this moment by getting lost in the mental narratives that our minds are constantly superimposing on Reality. The mind can dream up something wonderful one moment, but then change to a nightmare in the next. I thought of this teaching when I saw this guy in the airport. Even if he were to miss his flight and his plans would be disrupted, what is really creating his suffering, and hence the suffering of those around him? Nothing but his mind! The mind creates stories and gets all excited about them. It was even more telling to learn that he wasn’t even going to be late. He was just out to make some enemies, to do some warfare. As this week’s reading begins- “Ki teitze la-milkhama al oyvekha- "When you go out to battle against your enemies…” When you leave the sacred place of the heart, when you leave your connection with the present as it is and travel the labyrinth of the mind and its necessarily self-centered stories, you create your enemies and battles. But then the rest of the verse says, “Untano Hashem Elohekha b’yadekha v’shavita shivyo- "And Existence- your Divinity- puts it in your hand, and you capture its captivity.” It’s a strange construction- “shavita shivyo- capture its captivity.” But if you understand that it is you who are captured by seeing the world as your enemy “out there”, then you need to “capture your captivity”- meaning, you need to be bigger than those ensnaring mental narratives. How do you do it? You can do it by understanding- Untano Hashem Elohekha b’yadekha - Existence, which is your own Divine nature, is giving this moment to you. This is both surrender and empowerment: Surrender to the truth of what is, rather than fighting with your idea of what is, and also empowerment to create a narrative that allows you to dwell in the cave of your heart, that allows you to respond not from ego, but from the Divinity that you are… It once happened that a large group of hassidim went to visit Reb Yitzhak of Vorki in a village near Warsaw. In their enthusiasm to get to their rebbe more quickly, they cut through a field and damaged the grain crops with their trampling. One of the employees responsible for the damaged field was himself a hassid by the name of Reb Moshe. Seeing the damage the hassidim caused, Reb Moshe stormed into the rebbe’s room and cried, “Look what these idiots have done! They should be beaten for this! It would be a mitzvah to beat them!”- for this was the custom among wealthy land owners of that time. Reb Yitzhak gave no answer. Assuming that the rebbe agreed with his view, the angry man strode out to have the hassidim beaten. But the tzaddik called him back and said, “When you perform a mitzvah, you must articulate your holy intention by first contemplating and pronouncing the evocation that begins, ‘L’shem yikhud- for the sake of the Unification.’ Since you are a hassid, you should also purify yourself for the holy act by immersing yourself in the waters of a mikveh (ritual bath). So, after you go to the mikveh, and devoutly chant l’shem yikhud, then you can go ahead and perform your mitzvah…” Of course, the thought of performing those rituals to sanctify his "mitzvah" made him realize his own unconsciousness. Embarrassed, he left the rebbe's presence. My friends, before going out against our “enemies”, may we enter the mikveh of the present and connect with our deepest heart-intention for unity and peace. And, may we have the strength of commitment to remember to remember, even as life circumstance and reactive forces try to pull us into the battlefield! Good Shabbos! |
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