Do you remember your first love? Your first kiss? Your first embrace? How you and they met? What they wore that first day? What they were like? How you felt meeting them? Or perhaps your first love is your current love? The Hebrew Bible tells us such a story…
And Rebekah rose with her young maidens, and they rode on their camels and went after the man, and the servant took Rebekah and went off. Isaac came from going to Be’er Lahai Ro’i, as he lived in the land of the desert. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field just before evening, and he raised his eyes and saw. And here! Camels were coming. And Rebekah raised her eyes and saw Isaac, and she fell off the camel. And she said to the servant, “Who is that man walking through the field to meet us?” And the servant said, “He is my master,” and she took her veil and covered herself. (Genesis 24: 61-65)
First Love
The Bible tells the story of the first time Isaac and Rebecca met. It tells the story of how Rebecca and Isaac fell in love with one another, quite literally! What an amazing koan!
Love is mentioned about a hundred times in the Koran and about two hundred times each in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
The importance of love—and falling in love—cannot be raised high enough or overappreciated!
Who Sees Me?!
It is three years since we hear of Isaac in the Bible. Last we see, Isaac lay bound to Abraham’s altar for a burnt offering. Abraham descends the mountain, but not Isaac. Isaac is nowhere to be seen.
Abraham and Isaac haven’t spoken to or seen each other since that horrible day on Mount Moriah. We do not know where Isaac has been… until now!
This koan tells us that Isaac came from Be’er Lahai Ro’i. This is not the first time we hear of this place.
Earlier in the Book of Genesis, Abraham and Sarah are barren without children. Sarah gives her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Abraham as a concubine, which results in the birth of Abraham’s eldest son, Ishmael.
Sarah intends to have a child with Abraham through Hagar but soon grows in hatred and despises Hagar, putting her down and mistreating her so terribly that Hagar was forced to flee her harsh treatment into the desert wilderness.
It was there that “an angel of God finds Hagar by a spring of water in the desert” (Genesis 16:4).
“Here! You will give birth to a son, and you will name him Ishmael. For God [“-El”] has heard [“Ishma-”] your affliction….” And she names God who spoke to her. “You are El Ro'i—God who Sees Me” and continues to say, “Because You see Me, I see You.” Thus, that well is called Be’er Lahai Ro’i—Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.” (Genesis 16: 11, 13)
Hagar felt completely seen and recognized. God sees neither Matriarch nor maidservant. God sees Hagar as she is, and Hagar sees herself and experiences the true gift of Divine acceptance and compassion.
It is so hard to see ourselves and others as we are, isn’t it? How does Isaac go from seeing his father’s cleaver above him to seeing the love of his life? =It takes time! In Isaac’s case, it takes three years. This may even feel like three or three hundred lifetimes!
Yet, that place from where Isaac comes to meet his love is from the very physical place where God finds Hagar, the Well of the Living One Who Sees Me, our well from where we are thoroughly seen and completely nourished. Can you taste the delicious water?
Coming Out from the Dark
When Rebecca meets Isaac for the first time, Rebecca sees Isaac. She really sees him. From across the fields where Isaac meditates, Rebecca raises her eyes toward him and—in a way like and unlike a typical romantic comedy today, Rebecca went after her man. The same Isaac who knew hurt and betrayal is now the Isaac that knows a woman who chases after him in love.
There is a Rabbinic midrash—or exegetical legend—that although Isaac’s life was spared on Mount Moriah, he was blinded by the tears of God’s ministering angels falling in agony from the skies upon Isaac’s eyes (Genesis Rabbah 65:5; Rashi’s [11th century] commentary on Genesis 27:1).
Yet, from eyes filled with angels’ tears, we find love. Ruben Habito Roshi (2006), one of my Zen teachers and a former Jesuit Catholic priest, writes, “By the light of grace, we are given a glimpse of the universe from the eyes of God” (p. 67).
After his near sacrifice and saving grace, Isaac begins to see yet his (in)sight is still developing.
The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328) teaches:
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
As we shall see in our next koan and upcoming Torah portion, Isaac’s vision is still dim. “This glimpse” that Ruben Habito refers to “enables us to bridge our supposed separation from God and thus heal our… woundedness” (Habito, 2006, p. 67). Isaac has gone to the place where the Living God sees him, though he does not yet see through those eyes.
Treasure in the Field
Ruben Habito (2006) speaks about the importance of love in our lives. While he may refer to the truth of “cosmic affirmation” and the realization that “God is love,” please do not be mistaken! There is no essential difference between God’s love for us and our love for the Divine, ourselves, and each other. Not even a tiniest “hair’s breadth” of difference (p. 73).
Ruben then refers to one of Jesus’s parables:
The reign of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and covered up. Then in one's joy one goes and sells all one has and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44)
Earlier in the weekly parasha wherein Rebecca and Isaac see one another, Abraham purchases a burial plot for his wife, Sarah, who died just following the near sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham does not fully realize that the treasure hidden in a field is indeed priceless yet financial cost. In fact, he offers the Hittites a rather exorbitant price.
After losing part of himself that day and his mother soon after, perhaps Isaac is only now ready to love, only now able to be really seen. Isaac appreciates the genuine cost of the treasure in the field years after the horrific trauma of his near slaughter and now emerges from his meditation in the field able to love again.
Likewise, Rebecca has spent years carrying enormous jugs of water feeding her family and her father’s camels. When Rebecca sees Isaac coming from meditating in the field, she falls right off her camel. Rebecca is so smitten, she literally falls head over heels in love, exposing herself accidentally before quickly re-covering herself.
That fated day, Rebecca and Isaac see the field’s treasure hidden in plain sight; Isaac and Rebecca offer and accept each other’s entire life and beating heart.
I cannot help but think of the amazing Elvis Presley (1961) song, “Can’t Help Falling in Love”:
Would it be a sin? If I can't help falling in love with you. Like a river flows surely to the sea, darling, so it goes, some things are meant to be. Take my hand, take my whole life too, for I can't help falling in love with you. For I can't help falling in love with you.
The “Greatest” Commandment
The central command in the Hebrew Bible is… to love. God commands us to love ourselves, our neighbor, our brother, the widow, the orphan, and even the stranger.
There is a popular story where a potential convert challenges the two leading 1st century BCE Rabbis Shammai and Hillel to teach him the greatest commandment in all the Bible while standing on one foot. Why this is so, who knows? But it sure makes for a creative, interesting story.
When the potential convert asks Rabbi Hillel (1st century BCE) to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot, Hillel responds:
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah—the whole Truth—All the rest is commentary. (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
When similarly tested by his adversaries in the New Testament one century later about which of the commandments is greatest in all of the Torah, Jesus teaches:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.” This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Upon these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. (Matthew 22: 37-40; NASB).
While these are taught as Divine commands in the Bible, I see them less a command from a great God in the skies above as much as an innate internal Divine and human yearning.
Intimacy
In the Book of Genesis, one of the verses just following this koan reads, “And Isaac brought [Rebecca] into his mother Sarah’s tent. She became a wife to him, and he loved her. He loved her and was comforted by her following his mother[‘s death]” (Genesis 24:64; translation by author).
If we are lucky and fortunate, we feel loved. Not everyone feels this way, but when we do, it can be abslutely magical, as if there is absolutely nothing wrong in the entire world. All is safe and comfortable!
When we feel most loved, we feel that all is good! Isaac felt this way with Rebecca. Three years after Isaac was nearly slaughtered by his father Abraham and his mother dies shortly thereafter, Isaac not only took Rebecca as his wife, but Rebecca actually became his wife easing his grief and comforting him.
The master psychotherapist Sue Johnson writes that “the first and foremost instinct of humans is… to seek contact and comforting connection” (Johnson S. , 2013).
The forty-second ancestor was priest Liang-shan. He studies with T’ung-an the Latter and served him. T’ung-an asked him, “What is the business beneath the patch robe?” The master had no answer. T’ung-an said, “Studying the Buddha Way and still not reaching this realm is the most painful thing. Now, you ask me.” The master asked, “What is the business beneath the path robe?” T’ung-an said, “Intimacy.” The master was greatly awakened. (The Record of Transmitting the Light [Denkoroku], Case 43; Barragato, 1997)
This koan above is taken from a collection of koan depicting the enlightenment experience of each and every Zen Buddhist ancestor from the Buddha himself for 52 successive generations to Eihei Dogen Zenji, the 13th century founder of Zen Buddhism in Japan.
In the Buddhist tradition, Buddhist priests wear a patch robed garment over their robes. So when Liang-shan asks T’ung-an what the business beneath the patch robe, he is not asking a mere simple question.
Lian-shan is asking his master a very earnest and sincere, eternal question, “What is the point of spiritual practice?” Like the potential convert asking Rabbi Hillel the entire Torah while standing on one foot, Liang-shan is essentially asking T’ung’an about the reason for life and living. The master’s answer, “Intimacy!” Just this is the whole Truth! All the rest is commentary!
When Isaac breaks his self-reflection and meditation in the field to walk over to Rebecca, she responds to this same question of life and the purpose of living through falling off the camel and exposing herself as head over heels in love…and comforting Isaac.
Fall head over heels! Fall in love! Just this is the whole Truth! All the rest is commentary!
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Adam Fogel
www.mindfuljudaism.com