Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah opens with Sarah’s death at the age of 127, after which Abraham buries her in the Cave of Makhpelah in Hebron, which he purchases from Ephron the Hittite for four hundred silver shekels.
Next, Abraham sends his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac in Haran. At the village well, Eliezer asks God for a specific sign: that when the maidens come to the well, he will request water from them. If one of the women gives him water and offers to water his camels as well, then she should be the one destined for his master’s son. Rebecca, the daughter of Abraham’s nephew Bethuel, appears at the well and passes the test. Eliezer is invited to their home, where he tells her family everything that has happened. Rebecca returns with Eliezer to the land of Canaan, where they encounter Isaac meditating in the field. Isaac marries Rebecca and is comforted over the loss of his mother. Abraham marries another woman named Keturah, and they have six more sons. When the sons grow up, Abraham “sends them off to the east with gifts.” Abraham dies at age of 175 and is buried beside Sarah by his two eldest sons, Isaac and Ishmael.
Torah of Awakening
There’s a story that in the late 1700s, when Reb Shneur Zalman was incarcerated in a Russian prison, a guard noticed the great presence of the rabbi and went to ask him a question: “You are a holy man. There is a question that has been bothering me about the scriptures. When Adam was in the Garden of Eden and he ate from the forbidden fruit, it says that God asked him where he was. How is it possible that God didn’t already know where he was?”
Reb Shneur Zalman answered- “It’s like this. At every moment and at every time, God is asking you- where are you? Right now you are twenty-seven years old. Are you fulfilling the purpose of your life?” When he heard this, the guard almost fell over, because the rabbi had said his actual age, and there was no way he could have known. At that moment, a deep knowing awakened within the guard and the course of his life began to change. Once I saw a video of some children being shown an old rotary telephone from the 1970s. “What is it?” they wondered. When they were told it was a phone and how it worked, how you physically dial the numbers by putting your finger in the hole and cranking the wheel around, they said, “Wait, you mean all this phone does is call people?” For many of us, it’s hard to imagine a time when our calendar, internet, email and a million other functions weren’t instantly available on our phones. Convenient, yes. But whenever I take out my phone, I notice a slight pain in my stomach, because I don’t want all those functions to distract me from the reason I took out the phone in the first place. And this is the shadow side of the smart phone – with all its reminders and notifications, it actually tends to make us forget what we were doing. In the Haftarah for Parshat Hayei Sara, King David is old and lying on his deathbed. Meanwhile, his son Adoniyahu has taken power against King David’s will, throwing a big party and inviting all his supporters, while excluding those close to David. So, the prophet Nathan and King David’s wife Bat-sheva go to King David’s bed chamber to inform him about what’s going on. The king rouses himself and swears that Adoniyahu will not be successful, and that his son Solomon will succeed him instead. Every intention that arises within the mind and heart arises within a particular kind of situation. As time goes on, situations change; in fact, “time” and “change” are not two separate things. Like King David’s desire for Solomon to succeed his kingship, the moments of our original intentions can become old and dim, while new moments and new desires arise. Like the thousands of apps, reminders, alerts, and emails, we sometimes find ourselves thinking: “Wait, what was I doing?” But stand back for a moment, stand back from all the different intentions and priorities of life. Before you had relationships, before you had values, before you had goals- can you go back before any of that and ask, “What was I doing? Why did I come into this life in the first place?” Before you wanted anything, before you had an opinion, there was consciousness- this miracle of perception somehow awakened within your body-mind and began meeting the world as it appeared. The world- sometimes nurturing, sometimes beautiful, sometimes loving, sometimes painful, sometimes horrific. But whatever the form the world happens to takes in any given moment, behind it all is this simple awareness: the awakening of Reality to Itself. Or, we might say, the awakening of God in the world. And this awakening is happening, right now, as the Presence that you are. And on this deepest level, awareness comes into existence simply to be aware. And behind all the complexity of life is this simple truth - you are aware - which is to say, you are awareness. Know yourself as this Presence- behind your thinking, behind your words, behind your actions- and you become like the air we breathe: ever-present, completely surrounding us from without and also nourishing us from within, yet essentially beyond all the drama of our existence- intimate and transcendent in one. That’s why when we become aware of our breathing, when we become aware of the ever-present nourishment which is our breathing in and out, we can also begin to notice this deepest dimension of who we are - the noticing Itself- our ever-present consciousness within which all experience arises. And, paradoxically, it is through the awakening of this transcendence beyond the world that we can awaken our potential for blessing within the world, because the openness of this transcendence allows benevolence can flow. How would the world be different if everyone practiced this transcendent benevolence? If everyone practiced meditation? In our tradition, King David is the symbol of Moshiakh- the awakening of all humanity out of the dream of separation. This dream is so powerful- it creates all the suffering we inflict on ourselves and others. His rightful heir is Solomon- the symbol of wisdom. We come into this world to awaken as that wisdom- to embody consciousness in form and thereby heal the world. We humans have become so lost in form, so caught within its web. The rogue son has taken over and usurped the throne. But any moment, and that means this moment, is the potential to remember – to rouse King David from his slumber and remember why we are here. This middah of remembering and focusing, of piercing through the noise to the Essence, is represented by the letter ז zayin. The letterז zayin begins the word zekher, memory, and zikaron, remembrance. The meaning of zayin is weapon, and particularly the sword, cutting through distractions and falsehoods. This is the practice of meditation – remembering moment to moment to cut through the seductiveness of thought, the virtual reality of the mind, and focus on being the awareness of whatever is present.
Read past teachings on Hayei Sarah HERE
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