Eid

Today, Sept 1st, is Eid al-Adha also called the "Sacrifice Feast". It is the second of two Muslim holidays celebrated worldwide each year, and considered the holier of the two. It honors the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son Ismaeel, as an act of obedience to God's command. Before he sacrificed his son God intervened by sending his angel Jibra'il (Gabriel), who then put a lamb in his son's place. In commemoration of this, an animal is sacrificed and divided into three parts: one third of the share is given to the poor and needy; another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors; and the remaining third is retained by the family."
- Wikipedia

Orthodox Way

“Judaism conceives of the universe as a vastly integrated system… The Torah insists that all the mechanisms of daily life are the hinges of holiness. So there is a vast system of sanctification of food, concerned with what is kosher and what is not. The Torah is also very concerned with the sanctification of time… Judaism has it worked out to a dance. And thirdly, it is concerned with the holiness of various kinds of actions and functions and objects of daily life. The whole purpose behind it is that a person must deal with the world as it is, and out of that can be distilled a true religiosity. Among the common people, it will produce an extremely high level of ethical sensitivity. For this, in Yiddish — Ehrlich-Keit — a high level integrity. That means a kind of purity…

Judaism is very concerned with the natural realities of life, like crying children, and the pulse of family life. It insists on family life… The Torah as a system compels one to do the exercises and guarantees the results. Guarantees it. And the result truly authenticates its nature as a religion; it produces a truly religious awareness that doesn’t force one out of the context of reality. 

Kabbala is the esoteric side, while Torah, is the exoteric… Judaism, is an Oriental tradition — not from the Far East, but Oriental… The Hebraic mind understood truth as essentially the face of God that is truly One presence in all knowledge and meaning — which we may have come to see in a fragmented form. We should not lose sight of the fact that this is only a spark in a bigger fire. We release the sparks of holiness. Meaning that holiness is inevitably hidden, in the kabbalistic frame of things, under the appearance of non-holiness… There is an abundance of texts in kabbala but they are really discussing something that can only be known in a direct, existential mode. It is only knowable in an inspirited, intuitive mode. The other things can stoke the engine, or turn up the gas, but they can’t light the fire. The fire can only be lit by the intuitive spark. All the rest is to bring the rational mind into gear and to disperse the process throughout the corridors of the being.

It uses practices that are deeply meditative in character. It has a vast array of meditative practices that are the equal of practices in the Far East. They are of all different sorts, different hues and colors, and there are a vast array of different steps in the process… True entry has to come gradually but with genuine commitment to the path of the Torah… A true teacher is necessary for the whole process — one who can contain and reflect the material and who is solidly and soberly linked to the tradition he represents…

The number of illuminated ones in any tradition — the people who really know what it’s all about — is a very minute minority… You cannot divorce kabbala from normative Jewish practice… To depart from the norms of the tradition is to do violence to its fabric. It is a bit of an arrogance. I don’t say that of the people, but of the intrinsic posture of a culture that empowers people to sit in relatively uninformed judgment on any great, venerable spiritual system… Now to cut away part of it, like Shabbos [the Sabbath], is simply the influence of contemporary America, which is afraid of commitment and discipline, and has justified that as an alternative position in a tradition that is obviously rich, profound, and has been created by many generations… If you’ve ever spent Shabbos in a religious atmosphere, then you’ve seen that Shabbos doesn’t have at all the restrictive character that people would suppose it does when they hear that you can’t do this and you can’t do that. You really don’t notice what you can’t do… The colors of the tapestry are much more important than the pegs holding the threads of it.

Judaism creates this space. It understands space and time as the sacraments of God in the universe. Now, what happens when a person enters Shabbos? Everything stops in terms of the feeling that I can hide from who I am or who God is becoming in me. And the next thing is that I am released. I am released from the necessity to do anything, and I’m therefore released from anxiety, because I know the character of the next 25 hours. It is simply whatever is. There’s no compulsion to do this or that; everything just is. This is the essential posture of a meditative stance. Judaism always wishes to understand that a meditative practice can never leave behind the physical component… The body must also be trained in the path of spirituality to contribute whatever it has to the process of meditation or contemplation. And that’s magnified many times over in the Shabbos, which is repeated week after week… For the common people that is a basic transformation of consciousness — at a level they are able to digest.

One gradually comes to see that there is a richer texture to events that otherwise would seem ordinary. And once that is seen, the next step is wondering what is giving them this greater depth. What is it but the presence of something supernal within? Then it is the question of growing with and nurturing that basic insight in moments of stress, using it even in times where it would suit the shortness of spirit to avoid it. That is hard work, but the supportive structure of the lifestyle does that for you. It doesn’t release you from responsibility, but it provides the oars for the boat by insisting on the sanctity of everything. Sanctity not because the thing possesses anything outside of itself, but because it is what it is. Since it doesn’t possess anything outside of itself, it can’t frustrate you; it can’t tantalize you with a vision of things being other than they are and then let you down when you see that’s not so. It insists that what is, is, but is deeper than it looks. You must invest the effort to seek that further, and when you do that, it in turn will support you. The frame of that is the lifestyle — the rhythm of prayer and observance and holiday. All of which are saying, “This is not just one more ordinary time after another. This is this moment and this particular enrichment, which even if you do it in a non-enriching way, still affects you.”

Gradually, as the spiritual process unfolds, a totally new dimension of being and awareness emerges. The truth is that this is a new metaphysical perspective: the prior state of the being was one in which the self formed the lens of perception. The self was perceived to be the subtle focus of reality and meaning. Now the being has been transformed by turning outward toward the cosmos and the divine presence. It cannot be adequately emphasized that this is not a romantic vision, but the description of a precise metaphysical process of transition.

I was born to Jewish parents, but I came to it myself… I knew Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach well, at a formative time, and Rabbi Zalman Schacter also. I don’t want to say that the formative time is over, but my position differs from that of some of my companions and teachers in that they have taken liberties with the ritual and orthodox belief structures. My own path is clearly aligned with a very traditional position. This is because I feel the Torah is oracular in nature. The path that I have chosen and teach my students seeks to restore the traditional patterns of belief and practice to the levels of their full and pristine integrity. This infers clearly, then, the problem with traditional orthopractic structures; they have maintained the forms but have fallen short of being able to sustain the deep inner spiritual content.

Nevertheless, the apparently secondary vessels of a secondary societal nature which characterize traditional Jewish lifestyles shouldn’t be dismissed; they have successfully translated the profound values of the spiritual inner core to the group as a whole. And they have passed the tests of cultural endurance, sustaining profundity of vision and context over centuries of remarkable adversity and difficulty.

I have many weaknesses of many kinds, but I have one strength — a very strong spiritual focus that is central, and it seems to always percolate…

The Ari, a very great kabbalistic master of the sixteenth century, taught that in the proverbial beginning, there was something like a tremendous explosion of Godness that at once created the universe and filled it; it sort of created it one moment before it filled it. Now, looked at one way this was a disintegration — as the language of the text says, “a descent of sparks of holiness into the outer darkness.” Looked at another way it was the expansion of holiness to enlighten the darkness. The difference between these two ways of looking at this is that one way it’s as if you are in the mind of the darkness; what you see is that the light is being fragmented. Now if you think it out calmly, and are patient with what’s going on, then you see that it’s not necessarily that the light is being fragmented; it is that the light is spreading, in order to redeem and reintegrate the darkness.

Now again we have to keep in mind the vast difference in cultures. The Ari was not really erecting some kind of quasi-scientific explanation of things, but it is perhaps the closest we can come to describing it. This was his grasp of a vastly intuitive mythos — a mythos that is a truth in cosmology, in sociology, in philosophy, in psychology. It was an attempt to locate the centrifugal process of meaning. In this way the Ari understood one of the mysteries of the presence of the Jews in the world as the presence of meaning in the universe. In one sense they have been scattered and dispersed and exiled; that’s the plain history of the thing. In the other sense, it’s only from the perspective of history that it is a tragedy; from a more ultimate transcendent perspective it is a redemption. What appears to be moving away is in fact gaining momentum in order to return.

Jews are a people of light — not by what they know, but what they are… Jews are a very spiritually conscious people… At the time of the Second World War, Judaism in Europe, just at the point when it might have produced an Aquarian Age of Judaism, was obliterated. So who was left on the scene? There were no Jews practically except in America… The generation that came after that wanted the deep things, but it did not possess the depths to search out its own storehouses. That I think is the practical answer…

Everything in nature is chosen… Everything is chosen to its purpose… Judaism says the same — Judaism is for the Jews. It’s not for anybody else. Not that we would throw people out, but we’re not coercing anybody to come in. Judaism is emphatic in saying that all men have a path to God. It will affirm and protect the right of others to go to God in their way. It doesn’t discount the other venerable traditions of mankind; it respects them. Judaism affirms that the Torah is the clearest focus on God… Judaism is adamant, almost fanatical, in its insistence on monotheism… The Torah is, however, adamant in its condemnation of idolatry because it senses that the idol is a projection of the “self” of man — sometimes a very dark or questionable aspect of his nature — and thus is a perversion of the religious process completely…

All the practices in Judaism are designed to take the person out of the arena of self-concern, into another arena. If not carefully understood this could also seem a platitude. It doesn’t simply mean that I shouldn’t be concerned with the self. The Torah understands that the implicit, unconscious illusion under which man operates is that he is the measure of the universe. It is an illusion on the existential, philosophical, metaphysical levels. I feel that I am the universe and therefore everything goes inward. I walk around my whole life thinking that’s how things are — “me” cars to drive, “me” food to eat, “me” things to do. The system comes and forces everything outward, which means that the unity that Judaism is looking for is the point at which, without losing this brain, a corridor of correspondence is opened between this brain — the individual identity — and the transcendent identity. But it isn’t that I become annihilated and flow into the great river; it’s that I am maintained in a scale model relationship to the transcendent. I stay here, but I grow outward. I stay here, but I use my here only to be positioned onto there. So I become that without ceasing to be this, and that becomes this without ceasing to be that. This sets up a perpetual interflow; both are the same and yet they are not…

Today, the only “Thou shalt not” is “Thou shalt not say no.” Everything is good, everything is cool, everything is wonderful, everything is fine — except don’t hurt the other guy, and even that sometimes. Why is it good? Because I want to do it, and my primary task is the fulfillment of my individuality. What that means is that we gear everything to the fulfillment of the individual self, and therefore we interpret and align all experience and all the inner workings of reality toward that unspoken end.

Following that, the danger would be that I would conceive of my spiritual practice as a means of achieving fulfillment. It sounds wonderful and just as it should he, but the truth is that it’s a tremendously false position. I would go around arranging my spirituality so that I get a charge from it all the time, so that I know that I’m being “fulfilled…” The deep essential truth of spirituality is present in the folds of other levels of reality — the cognitive and functional modes — which don’t seem at all as glamorous…

It’s to align me with God. That mode that I induce for myself, which could be made to sound very good, matches the kabbala’s essential understanding of evil, which is illusion. Illusion is the root of evil. The world is illusion, but it is, so to speak, a necessary illusion. It’s true, but it is ultimately not true. It is a functional necessity… Let’s say — God forbid — that someone kills someone else. In the moment that they pull the trigger, they have to be saying that this is good. In their twisted mind they are saying it is good that this person should be dead, and it’s such a good that I’ll do it. Now that is a very vast illusion…

Notice that the crossing point there is between what is good and what gives me pleasure; that’s the hitch in the train. When we want our mind-frame to be the universal mind-frame, we prevent ourselves from being at rest in who we are by nature, from seeing that we have to open to alignment. To avoid that we people our illusion with all kinds of things that will convince us that we are everything. It’s easy to extend yourself and say that the world should run according to what you say, but to return to the truth of one’s being in which one is at rest and therefore aligned is more difficult…”

~ Reb Dovid Din Dovid Din was born in 1941 in northern England to Jewish but non-religious parents. Over the years he carved his own path into the Jewish tradition, and eventually studied in yeshivas [religious schools] both in Israel and America. Seven years ago, he brought his family to this Brooklyn community. Beyond that scant outline, Rabbi Din prefers to be none too specific about his past. While he draws great inspiration from the Chassidic master Reb Nachman of Bratzlav, he claims no allegiance to any specific Chassidic branch. At first, he had been a student of R. Shlomo Carlebach, living for a while in the House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco. Afterward, he studied at Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld’s yeshiva Sh’or Yoshuv in Far Rockaway. He was also a student and friend of Rabbi Zalman Schachter, though he differed with Reb Zalman regarding Orthodox practice and commitment. After leaving Sh’or Yoshuv, he moved to Boro Park and gathered a small cadre of talmidim around him. There are almost no essays of his that remain. There were, at one point, hundreds or recorded lectures. (A number of his students are attempting to track down any remaining tapes and digitalize them. If anyone has tapes of R. Dovid, they should please be in touch Reb Shore.)

Reb Ari

"Behold that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created,
The Upper Simple Light had filled the whole existence.
And there was no vacancy, such as an empty air, a hollow,
But all was filled with that Simple, Boundless Light.
And there was no such part as head, or end,
But everything was One, Simple Light, balanced evenly and equally,
And it was called “the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity).”
And when upon His simple will, came the desire to create the worlds and emanate the emanations,
To bring to light the perfection of His deeds, His names, His appellations,
Which was the cause of the creation of the worlds,
Then the Ein Sof restricted Himself, in His middle point, precisely at the center,
And He restricted that Light, and drew far off to the sides around that middle point.
And there remained an empty space, an empty air, a vacuum
Precisely from the middle point.
And that restriction was equally around that empty, middle point,
So that the space was evenly circled around it.
And after the restriction, when the vacant space remained empty
Precisely in the middle of the Light of Ein Sof,
A place was formed, where the Emanations, Creations, Formations, and Actions might reside.
Then from the Light of Ein Sof, a single line hung down from Above, lowered into that space.
And through that line, He emanated, created, formed, and made all the worlds.
Prior to these four worlds, there was one Light of Ein Sof, whose Name is One, in wondrous, hidden unity,
And even in the angels closest to Him
There is no force and no attainment in The Ein Sof,
As there is no mind of a created that could attain Him,
For He has no place, no boundary, no name."

~ Ari, The Tree of Life
Rabbi Isaac Luria -- Yitzchak (1534-1572) who was known as the "Ari', an acronym for Adoneinu Rabbeinu Issac [our master, our rabbi, Issac], was the greatest Kabbalist in 16th century Zephath (Safed), a city in northern Israel famed for its Kabbalist population. He was also one of the most influential individuals in the history and evolution of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Kabbalists kept the wisdom of Kabbalah hidden for 1,500 years prior to the Ari. Kabbalists were reluctant to publicize their work because they feared it would be misinterpreted. "The generation," they said, "is not yet ready."

Humanity had been waiting for many centuries for the right guide to open the gates of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the public. Finally, with the arrival of the Ari in Zephath and the public's subsequent exposure to The Book of Zohar, it appeared that it was now time to introduce the secrets of Kabbalah to the masses.

Isaac Luria refused to commit his seminal teachings to written form. When his disciples pleaded him to do so, he replied: "It is impossible because all things are interrelated. I can hardly open my mouth to speak without feeling as though the sea burst its dams and overflowed. How than shall I express what my soul had received, and how can I put it down in a book?''

"There are not enough words to measure his holy work in our favor. The doors of attainment were locked and bolted, and he came and opened them for us. Thus, all who wish to enter the King's palace need only purity and sanctity, and to go and bathe and shave their hair and wear clean clothes, to properly stand before the sublime Kingship..."

- Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), "Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,"

~ The Ashkenazi Ari Synagogue was built in the sixteenth century on the northern fringes of the Sephardic neighborhood in the Old City of Safed. It is named after Rabbi Issac (Yitzchak) Luria. He died at age 38, three years after he arrived in Safed.

I Am Benedicta

“I wasn’t there during her last moment. Nobody was. The nursing home said she died at 1:45 PM, which is when the nursing-home attendants — underpaid women in practical shoes, with pictures of toddlers in their pockets — had gone about their routine bed checks, entered her room, and found she was no longer breathing. They called the family. We called the funeral home, who said they’d send someone over to collect the body. I went to be with her until the funeral-home workers showed up. I sat in a chair next to her bed and stroked her hair, which had always been expansive and gauzy. Until a few months earlier, the in-house beautician had regularly fluffed and poufed it, then misted it with hair spray, so it had resembled a dandelion puff ball before a gust of wind. But now it was straight, thin, and pretty. I liked it this way.

I waited in the room with its dark TV, flowers in a plain vase, and unplugged radio. In the corner a simple pressboard wardrobe contained clothes she’d never again wear, pastel knits from the Presidents’ Day sale at JCPenney. Through venetian blinds I saw the concrete courtyard two stories down, its empty lounge chairs and fountain, one spout of water shooting lazily from its center. It was too much to bear — the silence, the sterile room, my grandmother dead in her bed with the inflatable mattress designed to prevent bedsores. I decided to take a walk down the hall. She would have wanted me to take a walk, I thought.

As I approached the nurses’ station, I nodded to the women working there, then turned the corner and discovered a row of geriatric men and women in wheelchairs. They were lined up in the direction of the nurses’ station, each facing the back of another’s head, like a halted parade. There was low chatter from the nurses; otherwise no one spoke. I was walking by this row of silent elderly people toward the lounge at the end of the hall, thinking about how much longer I’d have to stay here and how I’d never have to come back again, when I felt a hand on my wrist.

The woman looking up at me from her wheelchair had pale, translucent skin, a delicate chin, and fine cheekbones. You could tell she’d been pretty when she was younger. “Hello,” she said, gripping my wrist. Her expression didn’t belong here; it belonged to a woman at a card game in a sunroom among friends, a tall drink set before her, a winning hand. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but do you know where I am?” She spoke the way a well-heeled person asks for the time, with no urgency. I said, “This is St. Joseph’s Home.” “A nursing home? Am I in a nursing home?” “Yes,” I said. “Say it again, please? The name of this place?” I said it. “A nursing home, correct?” “Correct.”

She nodded again and smiled, revealing excellent dentures, a golden fuzz over her lip. Her genteel air persisted, even as her questions became more pointed. Only her grip on my arm communicated anything like anxiety. “And where is this place, may I ask?” I told her the name of the town. The state. “I see. Yes. And the date? Do you know the date?” I told her the day of the week, the month, and the year. She gasped. “Really?” A flash of distress in her eyes made me wonder why I’d said it. “Oh, my! Are you sure?” She pressed a hand to her mouth. Then, her words slow, faintly giddy, astonished: “Why, I must be an old woman now!” I said I supposed she was. “Oh,” she murmured. “I must be old.”

It was like a scene from a Disney movie unfolding before my eyes: the sweet young heroine transformed to crone, waking in a shriveled body, astonished by her whiskered lip and rheumy gaze in the mirror. Where are those beautiful breasts? Where have the apple cheeks gone? The woman was probably ninety. She said softly, “I’m old,” but did not seem to fully believe it. Finally she said, “Just one more thing, sweetheart, since you’ve been so kind. Would you mind telling me where I am?” She was living in a sixty-second loop that kept erasing itself. I replied, “St. Joseph’s Home,” and felt the urge to reassure her, so I added, “It’s a particularly nice nursing home.” “Is it?” “Oh, yes.” This was not a lie. Row of wheelchairs notwithstanding, it was a well-kept facility, and the staff had taken good care of my grandmother. “And where is this nursing home?” Again I told her. “And today’s date?” Again the startled, wondrous response.

We repeated this sequence once more. Her tone was patient, and I tried to match it. Four, five times. It was oddly soothing, this pattern. I remember thinking I could do this all day. “And my name,” she said finally. “Do you know my name?” I said I didn’t. “I can’t remember it.” She shook her head, the mildest sadness passing over her face. “Are you sure you don’t know my name?” I told her I didn’t, then offered to find out. Glad to have a chore, I unwrapped her fingers from my wrist.

At the nurses’ station I found an aide busily writing reports. I pointed to the woman, last in the line, and explained that she was having trouble remembering her name. The aide squinted down the hall. “Her? Oh, that sweet lady be Jean,” she answered in a Caribbean accent. “Jean Peterson.” “Jean?” “Jean,” the nurse confirmed. I returned to Jean, who smiled at me. Reporting her name was a small favor, but it felt nonetheless like charity, something a less decent person wouldn’t bother to do. Next to grief and whatever assembly of feelings swamped me in the company of my grandmother’s body, this was preferable.

“Your name is Jean,” I said. I expected relief on her part. “Jean?” She looked truly distressed. “Jean Peterson.” “Jean, you say?” I said it louder. Then I said, “It’s a very pretty name.” She scrunched her nose. “You think so?” She repeated it several times. Finally she sighed. For the first time I saw fear in her eyes. “No, I’m afraid it does not ring a bell.” Her voice was fraught, an octave higher. “And where am I? What is this place?” I told her everything I knew. “And you say my name is — what is my name? What on earth is my name?” She grabbed my wrist once again. “Jean,” I said, then, more cheerfully: “Jean!”

She shook her head, her eyes damp. “That name doesn’t mean a thing to me.” She seemed unsure what else to say. I wanted to console her, but how? Besides, it wouldn’t last, neither the injury nor the solace. I said, helplessly but grandly, as if it were wisdom, “Well, Jean, we are more than our names.” She seemed to consider this, then frowned. I stood with her, this woman whose own name meant nothing to her.

Consciousness eventually leaves us all. It goes in a burst or it goes slowly, it sinks, it clogs, it vanishes, it departs however it wants with no regard to will or hope. Why are some relegated to this terrible purgatory of no-one-ness? Or does it seem terrible only when seen from the vantage point of someone so sure of their someone-ness? I wanted to step away, but Jean was still holding my arm. I would never again see my grandmother smile, I thought. My grandmother would never again touch my cheek.

Jean asked, “Where are we?” I told her again and again. Each time I answered, I felt as if I were launching a paper airplane, and each time it immediately crashed to the ground. “And what is the year?” The staggering year, the name she did not know — they left her stunned. I had tried to soothe an old woman and failed. I told her I was sorry she didn’t recognize her name. I told her she was a lovely woman in a high-quality nursing home. I told her I wished her all the best. She said again, almost pleading, “It just doesn’t ring a bell.” I wanted to go back to my grandmother. “I’d better be going,” I said. She looked sadder. I reminded her once more of the place and the date. Then I said goodbye. She repeated, “It just doesn’t ring a bell.” I couldn’t help but think there was no bell to be rung.

That’s when the Caribbean aide, in a voice both musical and antic, cried out over the heads of the residents, “Oh! That lady? That lady not Jean! That be Benedicta.” At the sound of this other name — Benedicta — the old woman raised her head. Her eyes brightened. “I believe my name is Benedicta!” she cried. The aide came to us and explained that she’d thought I’d meant the resident in front of Benedicta. Benedicta! I crouched down and told her how sorry I was to have confused her, how awful that must have felt. But she didn’t want to hear any of it. She gripped my wrist tighter, so tight it almost hurt, and said, “I am Benedicta.”

I returned to my grandmother’s room and sat with her body. I stroked her cheek. I spoke aloud all that I remembered about our lives together: the long days at the beach; cornstarch powder on clean, hot skin; raspberry-lime sodas; her bright coral lipstick; the extravagance of her cookie cabinet, with its Mallomars, Lorna Doones, and cardboardy zwiebacks — all those memories that felt like they might be permanent if I kept saying them. And then the workers from the funeral home arrived and took her away, my grandmother. Her name was Norma.”

~ Sarah Braunstein is the author of the novel The Sweet Relief of Missing Children and was selected as one of “5 Under 35” fiction writers by the National Book Foundation in 2010. She lives in Portland, Maine, where she teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine and is raising a four-year-old son.

Stop and Rest

"One of the best ways to avoid awakening is to let the idea of awakening be co-opted by the mind and then projected onto a future event: something that’s going to happen outside of this moment. Of course, something may happen in the next moment — something’s always happening in the next moment — but the truth lies right here and right now; it is right here and right now. This looking to the future isn’t really the fault of the spiritual practices themselves; it’s the attitude with which the mind engages in the practices — an attitude that is seeking a future end and seeing that end as somehow inherently different from what already exists here and now.

The role of the spiritual practice is basically to exhaust the seeker. If the practice does what it’s supposed to do, it exhausts our energy for seeking, and then reality has a chance to present itself. In that sense, spiritual practices can help lead to awakening. But that’s different from saying that the practice produces the awakening.

The spiritual practitioner is like someone who’s running and is really tired and wants to rest. You could say, “Well, just stop, then.” But they have this idea that they have to cross a finish line before they can stop. If you can convince them that they can just stop, they’ll be amazed. They’ll say, “I didn’t know I could stop and rest.” Or maybe they won’t hear what you’re telling them, and they’ll have to go all the way to their finish line. And after they cross it, then they’ll stop and say, “Wow! It feels really good to rest.” So awakening can come after you cross the finish line in the future, but it’s also possible to find it at any point along the way if you stop for just a moment.

As I see it, reality is always looking for that moment of vulnerability, when we let our guard down. It’s not looking for good people or bad people. Clearly some real scoundrels have had amazing experiences of reality, right? Some are transformed by them, and some aren’t. Reality is not operating on any moral principle. It’s looking for a moment when the seeker is exhausted. It can be prompted by some tragic event: an illness, or the death of a loved one, or a divorce. Reality rushes into the crack and presents itself...

I’m always trying to unsettle the seeker in people, instead of give it something it can feel comfortable engaging in. I’m not saying that my way is right, and the other way is wrong. But what I have found is that spiritual seekers will fall into the routine of the practice, and if it happens to resonate with their deepest yearning, their deepest passion, then that’s great. But often it doesn’t. That’s why I like to connect first with a student’s passion.

People will ask me, “How often should I meditate?” I’ll say, “You know what, I have no idea. What are you here for? What do you want? Can you connect with the part of you that will let you know? And then will you follow it?” Most people are so disconnected from their deepest intentions that it takes them a while to find out what they are. They’re afraid to let go of routine and find out what’s really important to them. They’re not sure they’re allowed.

Spiritual awakening doesn’t happen because you master some spiritual technique. There are lots of skillful meditators who are not awake. Awakening happens when you stop bullshitting yourself into continual nonawakening. It’s very easy to use disciplines to avoid reality rather than to encounter it. A true spirituality will have you continually facing your illusions and all the ways you avoid reality. Spiritual practice may be an important means of confronting yourself, or it may be a means of avoiding yourself; it all depends on your attitude and intention...

Years ago a woman wrote to me and said her mother was dying of Alzheimer’s, and it was tearing her up. The mother she knew wasn’t there anymore. I wrote her back and said, “Why don’t you sit down next to the bed where your mother is and just reflect on the fact that the person you knew is gone. Her mothering function is gone. The way she used to interact with you is gone. Her personality is gone. It’s all gone. Just sit there for a moment and allow all that to be gone, and see if there’s not anything else. Maybe that wasn’t all there was to your mother.” The woman wrote me back about a week later and said she’d sat next to her mother and let her disappear and thought, Is there anything left? All of a sudden, she knew there was an amazing presence that only took the form of her mother. And she knew that’s what her mother was; that’s what she’d always been. It brought this woman great relief.

Then she took it to the next level and thought, If that’s what my mom is, I wonder about me. And she found she wasn’t the person she’d been pretending to be. She was the same presence. Death is like that: it takes away appearances. It’s OK to grieve the loss of appearances, but it helps to recognize the presence that’s beyond those appearances."
 
~ Adyashanti, Interview in The Sun 2007

Beautiful Hearts

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. ~ Thomas Merton

Embodiment

"A participant writes: I am a 56-year-old black woman, and a particular feeling of unworthiness appears in the form of internalized “racism.” It is often/mostly subtle these days.  For example, going into predominantly “white” spaces and relationships (which in the Pacific Northwest is pretty much everywhere), I find myself going out of my way to present myself as nonthreatening to make others feel comfortable with my presence.  You spoke about unconscious choices in the exercise. I don’t know how to look at this because in some way it feels like “whiteness” and “otherness” in the form of culture, institutions, and people are to blame for this particular feeling of unworthiness.

Adyashanti: Thank you for your question. It brings to mind an incident I had many years ago in my early twenties. I was traveling out of town with a friend of mine to compete in a bicycle race. Late at night we pulled into a roadside motel hoping to get a room. I went in and booked a room from an elderly white woman who was working at the desk. Just as I was about to leave, my friend came in and asked if I was able to book a room. As soon as the woman behind the desk saw that my friend was African American she suddenly looked very disturbed and claimed that she had made a mistake with the booking. She claimed that actually there were no rooms available and tore up the paperwork that I had just given her.

I was so shocked and dumbfounded that I didn’t know how to respond. It was the first time that I had encountered such overt racism first hand. It was deeply disturbing. We ended up leaving and driving to another motel where we booked a room without incident. I was enraged at the woman’s racist behavior and when I talked to my friend about what had happened, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “When you’re black you encounter this sort of behavior all the time. It’s part of what it is to be black in this culture.” I wanted to go back and confront the woman, but my friend convinced me to let it go and go to bed -- we did, after all, have to get up early the next morning to drive out to the race. This was my first personal encounter with a form of overt racism that shook me to my core.

I can only dimly imagine what it is like to be so defined by the color of one’s skin and the effect that has on one’s sense of self-worth. To internalize such a painful and destructive cultural shadow is painful indeed. It does however seem as though anyone’s experience of unworthiness, whatever the color of their skin, begins in great part as an internalization of outward influences that are sustained by identifying with the images in one’s own mind of an unworthy self. In this sense, at least, we are dealing with a universal phenomena of incorrect self-identification.

If in fact our true identity originated in some outer influence, we would all be destined to be unavoidably impoverished by the limitations of perspective and love of those around us. Fortunately this is not the case. And because this is not the case, it is up to each of us to seize upon the fierce power of discernment and love, and begin to bear the dark light of our solitude where we encounter the unformed nature of our presence. For as long as we choose to remain defined by either inner or outer images, no matter what our race, upbringing, or gender, we end up only imprisoning ourselves within the profound limitations of our own internalized self-image.

That is why it is up to us, and only us, to cast aside everything that is false, painful, and limiting, by facing into the profound mystery of our being. We must take that one profound step beyond everything that we think we are (no matter where it came from), begin to face the formlessness of our presence, and open once again to the invisible and silent ground of our being. It is there that all of our masks will be stripped away by the great impenetrable silence, if only we can bear its voiceless command to surrender all that we know of ourselves and embrace the benevolent light of our unborn nature. We must throw out of our consciousness everything that is not essentially our own, by being absolutely willing to be a light unto ourselves where we -- not someone or something else — encounter the fullness of our nothingness.

Then, and only then, can we embody the fullness of our own skin, and be a clear and benevolent presence in this often confused world. Then we in our humanity embody the sanity, freedom, and love that is the only hope for humankind, and can consciously and lovingly participate in the outer work of healing the cultural wounds of racism (and all forms of division) that distort the indistinct unity of our shared human and spiritual nature."

The above Q&A is excerpted from an online study course with Adyashanti. ©  2015