True Ancestor

Neural Buddhists and the Rest of Us

In the space of a couple of weeks, the New York Times ran at least three articles about how therapy, neurology and the search for spiritual fulfillment are converging. On May 13, the Times published a much-discussed column by David Brooks that ran under the headline "The Neural Buddhists." In it, Brooks noted that "scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states." The moral: "The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits . . . Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They're going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day."

Twelve days later, under the headline "A Superhighway to Bliss," Times Reporter Leslie Kaufman wrote an article about Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard neuroscientist who experienced nirvana when she had stroke that temporarily silenced the left lobe of her brain.  Dr. Taylor was able to "see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy." The article goes on to describe her electrifying speech at the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference and a subsequent appearance on Oprah. (I've embedded a link to the talk, below, but it doesn't seem to be working. Use the link above as an alternative.)

The moral: "I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be."

And two days after that, Benedict Carey wrote the lead piece in the May 27th Science Times section. It described how mindfulness meditation is rapidly gaining credence with therapists across a variety of disciplines. Although research doesn't seem to indicate that meditation is universally helpful, the "Buddha-like effort to move beyond language to change fundamental psychological processes" is changing the focus of many therapists from merely reframing thoughts to changing one's relationship to the content of one's thoughts.

It seems that the underlying premise of these articles is that science will help discern the real essence of what religionists have been misunderstanding and exploiting all these millennia -- that by understanding the processes at work within distinct and diverse regions of the brain, we'll be able to put the poetic nonsense aside and get at Oneness the way we might get at a flu vaccine or an endoscopy.

It's an intriguing thought, but in the end, I don't think it'll work out that way. There is a mystery that neither religion nor science can own. Religion at its best celebrates, at its worst exploits this mystery. Science at its best exploits that mystery, and at its worst turns it to deadly effect.

In my mind, neither will ever corner the market on Truth.

I'm writing this in the few moments before the beginning of Shavuot, the Jewish holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah to Moses at Mt. Sinai. We will never know what truly happened to a band of Jews on the run in the wilderness. But if all that happened was that Moses had a stroke, or ate some 'shrooms, and the event had been handed down to us with that narrative, we'd have a religion where we went about inducing strokes and hallucinations in ourselves (some would say this is, in fact, the case).

Thankfully, this isn't what happened. We received the narrative of that event and its aftermath in the form of a system of laws that, according to an intriguing paper by a Maryland undergraduate named Eitan Freedenberg,  "start at a single point and expand into a vast array of wavelengths." That point is Mt. Sinai -- wherever it is -- and those wavelengths are the spokes of law and custom, narrative and ritual that are the bedrock of at least three major religions and much of the moral and ethical framework of modern life.

But sometimes I wonder: if Moses had been Jill Bolte Taylor and taken a detached view of his revelatory experience, would we really be that different? After all, Moses said the word of God is "in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it" (Deut. 30:14). Professor Taylor says that anyone can choose to live a more peaceful, spiritual life (by sidestepping their left brain).

As the sun sets and Shavuot dawns, I find myself hoping -- praying, really -- that we take advantage of the confluence of these mighty rivers of thought, and ride them to a new sea of wisdom, still riding our rudimentary rafts of choice.

--T.A.

Memo to Sharon Stone: Just Shut Up.

Sharon Stone has just given a lecture on bad karma.

To which I reply: Oy.

When are we going to stop being juvenile about the unseen workings of the Universe?

Do we really think hundreds of thousands of Chinese needed to die because the Chinese government is mean to the Dalai Lama?

Or that thousands were swept away in the Tsunami because of Israel's disengagement from Gaza?

And how about those naughty Burmese? We're not sure what goes on there, but their government sure sucks! Guess that's why the powerful were spared, while the poor folks in the Irrawaddy Delta got washed away.

If there were a God that had such terrible aim and such flawed execution, don't you think that God would have tripped on His robe and stumbled into our midst by now?

Or if that God had such a deep investment in current affairs and a love for Tibetan Buddhism, don't you think that God would have stepped into the situation, oh, maybe 50 years ago?

Or is God's timing off because 50 years is, like, a millisecond to Her, and She was late because She forgot her keys and had to run back and get them?

Sharon, if karma works as you say, then your house should slide into the ocean in a week or two. But no, bad karma, so they say, is spread across many lifetimes and takes many lifetimes to clean up. It's a complex idea that can be distilled down to cause and effect -- between living beings, not between one government and the ground under its people's homes and schools. 

Show me how Beijing's repression of Tibet caused the movement of tectonic plates in Sichuan Province.

Go on. I'm waiting.

It'll probably be awhile, so in the meantime, could I just ask the MSM, pleez o pleez, to stop treating Hollywood celebs like major thinkers and powerful diplomats? Show us their lovely houses and their most excellent cosmetic surgeries. Show 'em on the red carpet and the runway.

But I beg you: no microphones.

--T.A.

Going Negative

I'm in one of those periods in which my skin is incredibly thin, my patience terribly short. I'm hurting people around me, and their expression of hurt only pisses me off more, as if I'm the one being wronged.

I can discern a couple of contributing factors. One is my anxiety about going back to school. Another is the interrogations to which I'm regularly subjected about this midlife adventure, and the incredulity and condescension with which it's often greeted. I suppose if I were able to hold onto a shred of equanimity I'd see that some people are jealous, some are threatened, and most are just plain ol' surprised that a guy with a family and a mortgage and a decent job would chuck it all. They have every right to be surprised, don't they? Heck, I'm still surprised.

Another factor: I'm sort of between worlds right now -- still focusing a lot of energy on work, even though it's now official that I'll be cutting my hours back. People have begun to take over some of my duties. School doesn't start until late Fall. I feel a little untethered. I'm not so good at that.

Also, I'm not meditating enough. When spiritual discipline goes, everything becomes personal. There's a direct correlation between how much you cast yourself at the mercy of the Great Mystery, and how personally you take things. Of course, some things are meant to be taken personally. Still, when you viscerally understand how interconnected It all is, we all are, even the barbs aimed at you don't hurt so much. You have a better understanding of the force that propels them, and better medicine with which to salve the wound.

But when I'm feeling like this, I feel claustrophobic. I can't get enough space. Every interaction is an interruption. Everything nettles. The closer someone is to me, the harder I push them away. The One True Wife has had just about enough, and I guess I don't blame her. The Daughters, in various stages of transition out of the house, want nothing but space anyway, and are blissfully unaware. Gabe, whose life is still centered in the house, takes it all in and says not a word. But at times like this, he has a nickname for me: Mean. It's not an accusation -- it's a moniker.

Buddhism helps you cultivate a peaceful acceptance of even the unsatisfactory. Judaism sets you at odds with it. Buddhism goes with the flow. Judaism struggles upstream. Buddhism meditates. Judaism thinks, prays (equal parts petition, praise and thanksgiving) and thinks some more. Buddhism grows silent. Judaism grows loud. Buddhism opens its arms. Judaism takes up its tools. Buddhism nods and smiles. Judaism shakes its head and cries.

With all this turning around in the overheated dryer of my cranium, I have several simultaneous responses to every world event, every snotty remark, every casual injustice. I can't sort them out or express them clearly. On the one hand, I think I'm suffering from a wider syndrome, a kind of ethical hypochondria (on which Charles Martin waxes eloquent), in which all actions are weighed for their ethical and moral content, and, if found wanting, merit Fixing. On the other hand, I am sick unto death of fuming invective, obnoxious, anonymous commentary and high-handed judgment from people who have no skin in the game.

With the aid of my Zen training, I hereby rededicate myself to making peace with the Unsatisfactory. And, with the anchor of my Jewish soul and all to which it answers, I resolve to make peace with the Unsatisfactory by slowly, persistently, challenging it.

Starting with my self.

--T.A.

"Stop napping. This is important."

Charles Martin explains the Heart Sutra, perhaps the seminal text of Mahayana Buddhism.

I'm not saying you'll come away enlightened. But I'm not saying you won't, either.

It's interesting that in Buddhism, knowledge is seasoned by wisdom, whereas in Kabbalistic thought it's basically the reverse: chochmah (wisdom) is the flash of insight -- "the beginning of all form, yet still formless" -- whereas binah (understanding) is insight leavened by the disciplined intellect.

The early Kabbalists saw the intellect as the highest faculty, the one most imbued with Divine energy. Its primary task was the domestication of the imagination, the seat of the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, in the healing service of the Divine. The Kabbalists knew that the intellect is nothing without the imagination, but they felt the imaginative faculty, when left in charge, misapplies knowledge to horrible ends (see "Garden of Eden, Expulsion From").

The Heart Sutra's climactic thought, in Charlie's translation:

There is no wisdom, and no attainment. There is nothing to be attained.

To which I say (even as I prepare to deepen my study):

Amen.

--T.A.

Oh, now I get it: I don't get it.

I just don't get it.

Which means I get it.

Which means I don't get it.

What I don't get is how much bile and invective there is in the blogosphere.

But it's not like I never excoriate anyone, never lose my temper. I do that all the time (just did it again this week). I like to think about and study religion, but I really, really don't get it. I get it less than ever. Not only do I not seem to be able to learn Hebrew, but I don't seem to be able to absorb the lessons of Judaism or retain what I learned from Buddhism. I'm the same cranky, thin-skinned misanthrope I was before I studied any of this stuff.

I don't get how we've wound up with three such seriously flawed presidential candidates. One has little in the way of experience but posesses tremendous vision; one has tremendous experience but little or no vision; one is just someone who puts you in a bad mood, and you can't put your finger on why.

Each one of them represents some aspect of our national persona: the war hero, the cool, ambitious climber, the valiant outsider. These individuals have subjected themselves and their families to the most unending scrutiny, the most horrendous slander, the straight-up danger of running for the presidency, and you just know there's got to be something wrong with each of them.

But our consummate wrongness, our flawed decision-making is already reinstalled in the White House. Do we just have a system that rewards and enshrines thick-skinned mistake-makers?

But this isn't about them. As usual, it's about me.

As Passover nears, I see, more clearly than ever that the story of liberation doesn't make sense on a peoplehood level unless you can make sense of it on a personal level. Through the preparation for and observance of Passover, we're supposedly affirming belief through memory. Of course, you can't remember something you never experienced. Can you...? What, then, are you remembering? And what are you believing in? Are you remembering beyond the horizon of your own lifetime? Or are you engaging in existential self-examination and dogmatic myth-making?

The real question Passover poses is: What do you need to get liberated from?

Me: I guess it's my thin skin. My concern for whether people like me or not. My lack of certainty. Which gives me a temper. Which begins the cycle all over again. So where do I interrupt the circuit?

I think I begin with the trait of Equanimity. As a good friend reminded me today, it says in Cheshbon ha Nefesh (Accounting of the Soul) by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Satanov: "Rise above events that are inconsequential - both bad and good - for they are not worth disturbing your equanimity."

Easy for him to say. That's just an old-fashioned way of saying "Don't worry, be happy."

Or maybe it's Humility. If you're worried and uncertain and easily offended, you're probably overestimating your own importance. You can learn this from your sacred texts, but I just started catching on when I saw an episode of South Park last week, in which Kyle spends the better part of an episode trying to show Token that he, Kyle, understands what it feels like to be African American and suffer discrimination. Token gets angrier the more sensitive Kyle tries to be.

At the end of the episode, Kyle has his epiphany, and tells Token: "I get it, Token! I finally get it: I don't get it."

Token smiles and says: "Now ya got it."

Shabbat Shalom.

--T.A.

It's official: I'm a student again

Having received approval from the One True Wife, consulted the oracles, and sat with it for awhile, I formally gave word to the University of Chicago Divinity School that I intend to enter their MA program this coming Fall.

This is a two-year program that will require me to ramp up my knowledge of Hebrew and one other language -- probably French -- and study and read more than I have in the two-plus decades since I was last in school full time. It will also help me figure out if I want to go any further into the study of Jewish text and history.

I can't wait.

When I went to a meeting for prospective students last week, I wound up sitting at lunch with two Baptists from Oklahoma who also are entering the MA program. These were big, corn-fed guys with calloused hands, wearing ties and leather jackets. The Divinity school served a vegan lunch. One of the Oklahomans stared at the food and said: "This ain't lunch. This is what we eat before lunch." They were extremely young and extremely polite. One of them was very excited to meet a Jew.

"Have you been Jewish from birth?," he asked.

I allowed as how I had.

"May I ask you a question?," he said.

Anything, I said.

"Does a Jewish person achieve salvation through works or through Grace?"

I said, "Well, to most Jewish people that question wouldn't even compute, I suspect. I also think I'll answer that question better in a couple of years than I can answer it now. But basically, we don't really believe in salvation, and our idea of Grace is a little different from yours, I suspect. We also have this little thing called Ancestry: if you're born Jewish, you're a Jew no matter what you do. If you convert -- well, that's a little complicated, because the Orthodox don't recognize non-Orthodox conversions. You won't be able to get 10 Jews together who agree on this stuff -- and I don't even think I agree with myself sometimes, so maybe we should leave it at that."

He nodded, but looked puzzled.

It should be a really interesting couple of years.

--T.A.

Why God sent the Jews to Buddhism

Cross-posted on Jews By Choice

On Saturday night, I went to B’nai Joshua/Beth Elohim (BJBE) in nearby Glenview to attend a concert/performance of Soul on Fire. It’s a musical and narrative piece written and fronted by Danny Maseng, an inspired teacher and musician, and a cast of several others, including BJBE’s cantor, Jennifer Frost.

Danny was for years a committed practitioner of Zen, as was I. And, like me, he felt he was opened anew to Judaism by the practice of Zen. Part of Soul on Fire maps that journey.

Danny told a remarkable part of this story during the concert:

“After one of my concerts,” he said, “this wild-eyed Chasid came up to me. He had the tzitzit and the payis and all the accoutrements of a pious Jew. And he said to me: ‘Do you know why you went to Zen?’

“I just stared at him. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what he was going to say. And he said again, ‘Do you know why you went to Zen, why so many Jews went over to the practice of Zen?’ And I said, ‘No, I would love to know why.’

“And he said the most extraordinary thing: ‘Because,’ he said, 'after the Holocaust, the hearts of the people and their teachers were filled with so much bitterness, weighed down by such feelings of betrayal, that Hashem, in His infinite mercy, sent teachers to Zen so that they could learn once again to love God, and be inspired again to teach Judaism with the love and the sweetness and the compassion that it merits.’”

--T.A.

Random Thoughts and an Act of Self-Promotion

• Here's an article I wrote that's out today in the February '08 issue of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought & Culture. I'd love to know your thoughts.
• It's a snowy, blustery day here in the Chicago area. Ironically, Gabe's Jewish day school is open, but Our Lady of the Snows in Chicago is closed due to inclement weather.
• Samson Raphael Hirsch has opened my eyes to Psalm 23. Here's his translation:
  • A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall want for nothing.
  • He makes me lie down in pleasant green pastures; He leads me beside the peaceful waters.
  • Again and again he restores my soul; He desires to lead me in the paths of Justice for His Name's sake.
  • Yea, though I walk in the valley overshadowed by death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.
  • Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my oppressors; once Thou didst anoint my head with oil; my cup has been full ever since.
  • Only goodness and loving-kindness shall follow me all the days of my life, and then I shall return to the House of the Lord -- forever.
• Of course, this is a translation into English of Hirsch's interpretation/translation from the original Hebrew into German. Still, its Buddhist essence is evident: a relationship with All That Is cleanses you of bottomless desire. You live sustained by a knowledge that each breath is an impossible bounty. As Hirsch says in his commentary on verse 5, "Any situation, once I understand it and once I know how to use it as a means of coming nearer to [blank; he says God, a Buddhist might say Emptiness], brings me nothing but joy. The ordinary concept of 'good fortune' or 'calamity', therefore, no longer has any meaning for me. Changes in my fortune cannot disturb the table of spiritual contentment which [he says God; you say potahto?] set before me." Then you die and go home.
• I am trying to adopt this viewpoint of immeasurable bounty. In the past week I've been rejected by a graduate school and had a book idea rejected by a publisher. And it's probably a good thing that both those things happened. Really.
• I'm glad to hear Hillary and Barack didn't go at each other's throats. I think that means they're scared, and that they understand that if they keep tearing each other down, McCain will climb up and plant the flag on their smoking corpses.
• Fred Thompson really does remind me of Deputy Dawg.
• I've got to cut out this insomniac blogging. I'm going back to bed.
• Shabbat Shalom.

--T.A.

Dukkha vs. Tsuris

My friend Charles Martin has a compelling look at the Buddhist concept of dukkha, the omnipresent suffering and unsatisfactoriness that is "at the root of the four noble truths," according to the Shamhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen.

Charles can be forgiven for calling me both a Buddhist and a Jew -- I no longer consider myself the former -- but in his excellent explorations of the Dharma, and especially dukkha, he calls my interpretation of the difference between the two "wrong" -- well, thanks, Charlie, for causing me more tsuris. Right in the middle of all this dukkha, that's the last thing I need.

Actually, Charlie originally asked me to explore the similarities and differences between dukkha and tsuris, that great Yiddish word for suffering (I love that Charlie even asked the question).

Here's what I said to him, in an e-mail:

Tsuris is to dukkha as irritable bowel syndrome is to amoebic dysentery. For some reason, Yiddish (at least those words that have seeped into the modern Western vernacular) just isn't set up to communicate profound concepts or deep emotions. Dukkha, as I understand it, has to do with an inherent disequilibrium in life -- an inability be freed from the suffering that comes from clinging.

Tsuris, on the other hand, is about aggravation. Something that's vexing you at the moment. While Jews are never without this emotional baggage, the word tsuris itself doesn't convey some lasting, inherent unsatisfactoriness, the way dukkha does. It's more a pain in the butt that you hope will go away.

Pretty interesting: within these two words, you can see the difference between the two religious traditions (and the myriad cultures that adhere to them) pretty clearly.

So, Charlie, I wasn't talking only about dukkha representing "Big Stuff."  I was talking about dukkha representing the inherent nature of suffering, whereas the Jewish view, at least the Ashkenaz view as conveyed in Yiddish, is that suffering is inherent, yes -- but only in my life.

(Why me?!! Oy. Such tsuris.)

Suffering is so central to both Judaism and Buddhism, but the differences in viewpoint could not be more vast, and the differences dwell right in the words. In Buddhism, dukkha is (again quoting Shamhala's dictionary) "everything, both material and mental, that is conditioned, that is subject to arising and passing away, that is comprised of the five skandhas (aggregates, or individual qualities), and that is not in a state of liberation." The Yiddish Dictionary Online merely defines tsuris, however, as "trouble, distress, problem" -- all states that one ardently wishes can and will just go away.

In Judaism, suffering is both omnipresent and targeted; both unavoidable and yet, somehow, from the complainer's perspective, inherently unjust. The Psalms are a great example of lyrical tsuris: King David begs, beseeches, complains, and whines; then, relieved of his tsuris, he thanks, lauds and extols the virtues of a God who can both bestow and banish the kind of suffering that we all experience, but that we (Jews) always hope to be rid of.

Buddhism says it's inherent in merely living. Only through realizing that can we overcome it. That's the Big Stuff, Charlie, that dukkha represents.

Oy. I need a nap.

--T.A.

Random stuff I just wanted to share, all crammed into one post

• My brother has written a novel! And gotten it published! I've bought 15 copies -- one for me, 14 for the only people I know who aren't related to me and still speak to me. I'm sure that if they stop speaking to me, my brother's writing won't be at fault.
• I've had an essay published in this book. A pretty interesting book, if you're into that sort of thing.
• Charles Martin explores Buddhism (and some other things) in a revived blog that I'm sure will be worth reading. So I've added it to my Best of Blogolalia list.
• Rabbi Daniel Landes, co-founder and director of the PARDES Institute, a renowned multi-denominational center of Jewish study in Jerusalem, coined a phrase that I'm going to have made into bumper stickers: Jews for Exegesis.
• He also invoked the Talmud as proof that Jews of radically different backgrounds could speak to each other -- even across centuries and continents. So why are Jews of different backgrounds having so much trouble speaking to each other today?, he asked.
• Here's a doctor who says the only way to level the athletic playing field is to permit and regulate steroid use. He's been called "the loneliest man on the planet." And far worse.
• That Airborne stuff actually works.
• Hardest things I've ever done: 1) Meditate 2) Be a step-parent 3) Go onstage as Banquo's ghost, during a high-school matinee, drenched in chocolate syrup (it looks like blood under stage lights), and wearing only white body paint and a G-string. I think the director had it in for me. I looked like a sundae with legs.
• Funniest thing Gabe ever said: "Why is Uncle Dick named after a private part?"
• Middle Daughter is off on her journey to save the world again. She's the "World Traveler" on the family blog-roll.
• Oldest Daughter has an intimidating internship with the Federal District of this outfit.
• I haven't the slightest idea who I'm going to vote for in my state's primary. Tell me: who's fiscally conservative, understands the gravity and staying power of the threat from radical Islamic terror, recognizes that working men and women have their backs to the wall as never before, and knows what to do about it; has the guts, and the brains, to address health insurance, immigration, housing, and begin to revive our crappy reputation and foreign policy, without being beholden to special corporate or religious interests; and has the brains, the political capital and the respect necessary to assemble a top-flight Cabinet? And who isn't a TOTAL CREEP?!
• If I were Donovan McNabb, I wouldn't want to finish my career before I had the chance to flatten Terrell Owens before a national television audience.
• And if I saw Roger Clemens, I'd offer him this.

--T.A.