When I was a student in the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training (JMMTT) program, one of my colleague students would write a weekly reflection on that week’s parashah – or weekly lectionary portion from the Hebrew Bible.
Each week, one of the other students would masterfully integrate the themes, symbols, and ideas from the weekly Torah portion with the fruits of their personal mindfulness meditation practice, telling a story so grand and marvelous that it could only be told through the individual lens of a Rabbi and gardener, an integral psychiatrist, a Hazzan and performer, an artist and activist, a mediator and DJ, a professor and neuroscientist, a singer-songwriter and liturgist, a social worker and yoga therapist, and others.
To be honest, I read each reflection with a combination of admiration, gratitude, and envy and often came away from these wonderful, brief reflections moved by the wisdom gleaned from how my colleagues metabolized the texts and applied these important life lessons so beautifully within their lives in a true and inspiring fashion.
Yet, I was also left feeling a bit dejected and insecure in my personal practice and understanding.
Perhaps it is human nature, or more likely my own, to classify and partition experience into more seemingly comfortable notions of good and bad, right and wrong, me and you, us and them, better and lesser, and so so many others.
Held by the Wilderness
These ideas are echoed not only in the wisdom of Parashat Pinchas (Numbers 25:10-30:1), the Torah portion from a few weeks ago, but also in the writings of one of my greatest intellectual inspirations as a Psychologist and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist.
Melanie Klein was the founder of what is called the Object Relations school of psychoanalysis and, together with Anna Freud, is considered the grandmother of child (psycho)analysis.
Like Sigmund Freud and her predecessors before her, Melanie Klein focused on the impact of early childhood upon adult psychological and emotional development, though she understood that our most profound emotional lives and deeply held, primitive beliefs about ourselves and others could be traced to the most vulnerable of our times in infancy.
When an infant is loved with absolute perfection, held as one in his parent’s arms, in these moments, he develops and realizes the greatest and most perfect trust and faith in himself, his parents, all others, and in the entire universe, yet there is no absolute perfection.
Perfectly Imperfect
Over time, the infant realizes that she and her parents are not the same person and naturally develops a separate identify and sense of self. This is dukkha. This is our primordial experience of alienation, estrangement from ourselves and those around us, and the battle we each wage against all sorts of pain and reality as it is.
While not a dharma practitioner or teacher by any stretch of the imagination, Melanie Klein unwittingly hints at the core religious and spiritual task we all must face: how to reconcile that we are both wholly one with all others and uniquely and entirely ourself.
Without creating sharp divisions between “me” and “you” or attacking others or making idols of them, we come to realize God’s covenant.
Through embracing our vulnerabilities and the totality of our experience, we realize the promise which can no longer be ignored that we have always been, and will always remain, both thoroughly flawed and thoroughly perfect.
Alone with God
In the Torah portion from a few weeks ago, God is enraged with the Children of Israel for chasing after false (Moabite) gods. Even God experiences dukkha with us!
Overtaken by rage and envy, God demands the heads of those involved in this treachery (Numbers 24). When the priest Pinchas (Aaron’s grandson) atones on behalf of Israel, appeases God’s wrath, and kills the idolater and his Moabite mistress to save Israel from the plagues of idolatry and God’s wrath and jealousy, God is soon relieved. She blesses Pinchas with a brit shalom – an eternal covenant of peace – and bestows upon him and his descendants the priesthood for all time.
God then responds by instituting a census of Israel and teaching them the prescribed ways of daily service and sacrifice for the holiday celebrations. God counts us, because we count to God.
Like a protective parent, God cares for us. He reaches out to us, comforting us, urging us to be our best and most true. Like an overprotective parent, She feels hurt when we hurt ourselves and betrayed when we betray others, unloved when we fail to love ourselves and enraged when we refuse to love others, destroyed when we are not faithful to Her and distraught when we do not appear to love Her.
God counts us all so that we all may realize how He can be counted upon and we to Her. This is our brit shalom, our mutual covenant of peace.
Me and you (I and Thou)
As I read, sat with, and reread this portion from the Hebrew Bible over the past few weeks, it stayed with me. I was marveled by a wisdom lesson so clear, yet unknown to me and easily passed over week after week, lifetime after lifetime: God speaks to us! However flawed or perfect, like each of us, She speaks directly to us; if only we hear Her?
When I began the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training program a few short years ago, I entered the program with a deeply and long held personal koan: how can I enter into and renew my relationship with God; not a childish, immature depiction of the Divine, but an earnest and intimate personal connection and relationship with someone who is far more loving, trusting, and empassioned than I could ever imagine?
At our opening retreat, Rabbi Jeff Roth, taught us the practice of hitbodedut – or speaking directly to God without filter. What I learned in my first time formally practicing hitbodedut was something simple, yet very profound and personally meaningful. To initiate a relationship with God, all I really had to do was open my mouth and speak.
Similarly, we learn from the Bible that to honor and maintain our relationship with God, all we really have to do is open our ears and listen. The Divine voice resounds everywhere!
Brit Shalom, A Covenant of Peace
When I first began Zen Buddhist practice in the late 1990s, I attended an orientation to Zen meditation class and was taught a practice most often presented to beginning Zen students of counting my exhalations from one through ten and was instructed to repeat this over and over and yet over again in my meditation.
I used to think that the practice of counting one’s breath is just a beginner’s practice, inferior to the more “advanced” practices of following the breath, just sitting, shikantaza, or koan study, yet I was so, so terribly wrong.
Like each breath, we all matter! We can no more live without each other than we can without each breath. We all matter, yet this is too soon and often forgotten.
There is a koan included in the Miscellaneous Koan collection assigned to students engaged in formal koan study within the contemporary Sanbo Zen lineage, “Count the number of stars in the heavens”. Each star, each breath, each Divine creation, each one of us, is unequivocally shalem(a), entirely complete and whole.
Each breath is the realization of a promise made hundreds of years ago; each one of us, the flower of a covenant sowed hundreds of lifetimes ago.
All that is Israel
When we sit in zazen – or meditation – we establish, maintain, and are witness to the brit shalom, the everlasting covenant of peace between God and Israel, between All that is Divine and “All that is Israel” (as translated here by Rabbi Don AniShalom Singer Sensei and Eihei Peter Levitt Sensei).
In the 47th case of the Blue Cliff Record, we are told that:
A monk asked [Zen Master] Unmon, “What is the dharma-body?” Unmon said, “Six do not gather it in.”
Imagine a young Rabbinical student today asking her Rebbe, “What is God’s body?” Her Rebbe answers, “Even all the stars in the sky do not contain it.”
In the traditional reflection poem attached to this koan in the Blue Cliff Record, it is written, “One, two, three, four, five, six. Even the blue-eyed barbarian monk cannot count it completely.”
Similarly, God promises Abraham that his descendants, our ancestors and our children’s children, will be as innumerable as the number of stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5). Each one of us counts! Everything is included! Nothing is excluded! There are no limitations!
Knowing God
The craft of practicing, and teaching, meditation is the craft of priesthood. The artistry of contemporary priestcraft for our age is not limited to those named Cohen or Levi, but penetrable and accessible to all those who share the name of Israel and the artistry for healing hearts and minds through reverence for the brit shalom, our covenant of mutual surrender with the Divine, our birthright as being born in the image of God; innately perfect, yet thoroughly flawed.
Meditation is more than calm, relaxation, feeling good, or a ouroboric feeling of oneness; it is the acceptance of the Real—both sunrays and shadows—and our natural place in and part of It.
Rabbi Alan Lew writes:
This is real. This is very real. This is inescapable. And we are utterly unprepared. And we have nothing to offer but each other and our broken hearts. And that will be enough.
This is true service and sacrifice!
“For I desire mercy and lovingkindness, not sacrifice; the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6; translation by author).
A Peace You Can Count On
This week in meditation, practice counting your exhalations. When you breathe in and breathe out, say to yourself for the duration of your exhalation, “One.” On your next breath, breathing in and breathing out, say to yourself, “Two.” Count your exhalations from “One” through “Ten” and then repeat this over and over and yet over again.
When we count, “One,” the entire universe counts with us, “One!” When we count, “Two,” the entire universe is just “Two!” Hear God’s voice, however He speaks. Acknowledge God’s murmur, wherever She whispers. When pain comes, accept it; when joy comes, accept it. When happiness comes, accept it; when sadness comes, accept it. Whatever comes, accept it, and just return to your breath.
If you forget your count, when you forget your count, this is not a problem; return to “One” and just start over. Practice teshuva, just return to your breath, return to where and who you truly Are.
Each breath and one of us, wholly one with all others and uniquely ourself; each breath and one of us, innately perfect, yet thoroughly flawed; each breath and one of us, deeply cherished and counted upon; each breath and one of us, a sign and signatory of the everlasting covenant.
Next Steps
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Adam Fogel
www.mindfuljudaism.com
(You may find the title, lyrics, translation, and transliteration for the above song here.)