True Ancestor

Buddhism and Judaism: More related thank you think (or, Moses and Buddha: Separated at Birth)?

Digging around in online bibliographies and the references in the backs of yellowing texts on comparative religion, I came upon a 40-year-old treasure (to me, anyway): Judaism and the Gentile Faiths, by Joseph P. Schultz. This is the kind of book that helps me understand not just "Comparative Religion" but "Religion": the meaning of the search for meaning, and how cross-fertilized our traditions, our spirits, and our religious ideas may really be.

The author takes a look at Judaism with a comparative lens, and finds intriguing connections -- not only theological, but possibly historical -- between Judaism and Eastern traditions, most notably Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

Some fun facts:

• The flowering of classical traditions in Judaism and Confucianism happened contemporaneously -- in or around the 5th century BCE. Inscriptions on a synagogue built in Kaifeng in 1163 CE showed that Jews may have arrived there during the Han dynasty (as far back as 206 BCE). 
• In the first century CE, Rome ruled the entire Mediterranean basin. The ruling class developed a taste for the finer things, including silk, which helped develop the trade route between Europe and China. Jews may have migrated along this route, especially after the collapse of the Jewish State and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
• Arab geographers noted the presence of Jews in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). It was there, according to Schultz, not only with indigenous religions, but also "along with Islam, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity." 
• Judaism, and especially the Rabbinic tradition, includes some philosophical statements that are remarkably consistent with Eastern philosophy:
  
  • "Everything is in the hands of Heaven but the fear of Heaven" (Berakhot 33b) is very consistent with Confucianism, both in thought and in terminology.
  • The Confucian li (among other things, 'correct conduct') and Judaism's halakhah (law or way) have many striking similarities.
  • Confucius: "What you do not want done to yourself do not do to others." Hillel: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor."
• Jewish contact with India may have cross-pollinated Vedanta with Kabbalah.
  
  • The articulation by Aaron of Starosselje (a disciple of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Chabad) of the diversity of the world from the human vantage point, and the unity of the world from the Divine, are very similar to the Vedanta philosophy of Maya (illusion), and especially the school of Ramanuja, who held, according to Schultz, that "God can only be known through the medium of Scripture."
• Jewish and Buddhist ideas of death and rebirth bear some similarities, too. This may go back beyond Vedanta, even to similarities in the biographies of Moses and the Buddha: born to or raised by royal families, they took radical steps to break free from their physical and theological confinements -- Moses by plunging into the world, the Buddha by retreating from it -- or the other way around, depending on how you look at it. 

Of course, there's this one gigantic difference: "a central Buddhist thesis," says Schultz, is that "what we have been in life will condition our life after death," whereas in rabbinic Judaism "God's permanent and constant direction of human affairs is everywhere assumed." In other words, in Eastern traditions, reality as we know it does not presuppose our alienation from and attempts at reunion with an omniscient and personal Creator. But it does operate according to laws and dynamics that both Eastern and Western traditions recognize and adhere to.

So what, right?

In Judaism, history is part of the moment -- this moment, every moment. History is the unfolding of a redemption. Events are foretold in prophecy and in history, moving toward an ultimate in-gathering. In, say, Mahayana Buddhism, this moment is This Moment. Every moment simply is, and does not bear with it the lengthening, crushing train of historical precedent.

So . . . is morality grounded in history, and a reality established by God? Or is morality merely one strand of dharmakhaya -- the ultimate reality that underlies everything? Is history our struggle to return to proto-awareness, or to finally arrive at it? Did medieval Jewish philosophers, as Schultz says, "purchase God's purity at the expense of His living reality" . . . or did they preserve the essence of Judaism in a time of upheaval, assimilation and persecution?

Stay tuned.

--T.A.

The Zen of Job

Reading about the Medieval Jewish philosophers and Biblical exegetes who pondered and dissected the book of Job, I can't help thinking about Zen Buddhism, for some reason.

Maybe it's because Job is from a place called Uz. One of the meanings of Uz, according to Robert Eisen, is "contemplation" or "meditation."

Or maybe it's because Maimonides and others who follow his example believe that what Job teaches us is that "one achieves psychological immunity to suffering in this lifetime once one is aware of the ultimate reward." And the ultimate reward? Immortality.

According to Maimonides, (says Eisen), "the perfected . . . intellect . . is the only part of the soul that is immortal." It's through the intellect that human beings receive "divine overflow, so the perfected intellect is open to a more constant flow of the divine.

In other words, perfecting your mind catapults you beyond suffering. It makes suffering illusory. It moves you toward Enlightenment. That sounds an awful lot like some Zen teachers I know.

Shantideva said, "The perfection of all beings is achieved through examination of one's own mistakes." Job's only mistake is that, at the start of his story, he's achieved moral but not intellectual perfection, say the medievals. He achieves intellectual perfection when he realizes that his suffering has catapulted him beyond suffering. It's the intellect (in the Aristotelian sense) that's beyond suffering and that can achieve immortality. Everything else is subject to decay.

Thus endeth the lesson for today.

--T.A.

Everything I learned climbing the Aon Building, I learned before we started

Sunday was another climbing day.

Gabe, my brother and I climbed the Aon Building, Chicago's second tallest building.

As we stood on the mezzanine level, awaiting our turn to start lurching up the fire stairs to the 80th (and top) floor, we passed by a gigantic art installation of gongs and mallets hung from the marble walls. Each gong had a word etched into it: PEACE. DREAM. SLEEP. LOVE. There were more than a dozen of them, hung in three tiers. (I couldn't find any pictures of it, nor did I see any info on who the artist was.)

You could reach the lowest tier of gongs with the lowest mallets. I grabbed a mallet and hit a gong (I think it said SLEEP). The gong let out a low roar -- actually, half roar, half sigh. The sound washed along the marble wall, and all the other gongs trembled a little. The gong I'd struck vibrated and exhaled for several minutes as we inched our way toward the fire stairs.

That moment stayed with me.

It reminded me of the meditation bell that's rung in Zen centers -- usally just a small metal bowl hit with some kind of cloth-covered mallet -- to begin and end a meditation session.   It usually makes a clear tone that fades until it dissolves into that humming sound that you hear when it's absolutely quiet -- the sound of your blood racing past your eardrums.

In just that way, everything you touch vibrates with your deposited energy. Everyone you interact with ripples a little, like the surface of a pond, and you do the same, reflecting the way in which they've touched you.

When I can't sleep at night I pick up Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. Much of it seems like rehashed and processed Zen to me. But last night I read something that I woke up thinking about. It said something like:

The definition of 'ego' is "a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment."

A gong or a meditation bell offers a visceral demonstration of how moments vibrate and dissolve into each other. The same way the gong shook its undulations along the smooth wall, the effort of the climb was a pleasing pulse in my legs the next day. Just as when you hold someone -- or push someone away -- the wave of that energy is still moving, all but undetectable, as it's washed over by other waves, other stimuli.

That gong was probably still vibrating, undetectably, when I finished the climb 20 minutes later.

--T.A.

Death of a JuBu Patriarch

Alan Lew has died.

He was a Conservative rabbi who veered back to Judaism just short of his ordination as a Buddhist. He went on to advocate and teach meditation as a mainstream Jewish practice. Working alongside his friend, the Zen abbott Zoketsu Norman Fischer, Rabbi Lew introduced American Jewry to the novel concepts of silence and stillness, through which the Divine can become present in ways that many Western Jews have long neglected, forgotten, or perhaps never knew.

I met him once, briefly, during the time when I was practicing Buddhism. He led a meditation session at a conference on Jewish meditation put on by Chochmat HaLev in San Francisco. I waited patiently, in a line of meek Jewish seekers, and when my turn came to speak with him, I walked up to him. He was still seated on a meditation cushion, and people came and sat by him, like acolytes. I asked him if one could be both a Buddhist and Jew.

"No, I don't think so," I recalling him saying. "I think you either make God the center of your life or you don't. I think the Jewish calling is a very specific one, and it has God, and service to God, as its cornerstone."

He died suddenly, at 65, while jogging. As sad as this is, it may be that his death will bring renewed attention to his work, which is very important, and his teaching, which can still be found in his books, web sites and his students.

He was frequently referred to as a "Zen rabbi," but he was more than that -- more than just a rabbi, meditator and teacher. He was an activist, an author and husband, father and friend.

May his memory be for a blessing. And a meditation.

--T.A.

"The 'Oy Vey' School of Buddhism"

The title of one of three guest posts by Rabbi Dovid Sears (from about a year ago), the director of the Breslov Center for Spirituality and Inner Growth.

The posts, over at A Simple Jew, are based on ruminations inspired by Letters to a Buddhist Jew, my book with Rabbi Akiva Tatz.

The posts are well-written by a guy who, as a Jewish seeker in the late 60s, "found a battered lean-to on the south coast of Block Island and moved in with a volume of Chuang-Tzu, Jack Kerouac’s 'Desolation Angels,' and a beautiful hand-made candle – but neglected to bring along any food or water." 

Very interesting reading on the similarities and differences between Judaism and Buddhism.

Including: Is the Buddhist idea of Emptiness 'separated at birth' from the Jewish concept of Ayin?

--T.A.

Buber's concern for the Palestinians

Martin Buber was many things: mystic, philosopher, scholar, dreamer, Zionist.

He was also an ardent defender of the rights of Palestinians. And he became unpopular with the burgeoning Zionist movement for telling its adherents that they ignored the "Arab question" at their own peril.

The Zionist movement marginalized Buber because they thought he made too much of this issue. To him, Palestinians weren't just a stubborn and unwelcome fact of life -- they were essential to the Jewish mission.

"If we are able to withstand this challenge," he said, "this will be a new kind of human togetherness." According to Buber scholar Dan Avnon, in his book Martin Buber: The Hidden Dialogue, "Buber considered the presence of Palestinian Arabs in the land essential for the fulfillment of Israel's mission: to demonstrate how mistrust may be overcome in a context that appears destined to create the opposite result," says Avnon in his book.

The success of this endeavor, Buber argued, would be not just a judicious moment of rapprochement, it would constitute a signal achievement in the pursuit of the Jewish mission: "[it would] serve as a living testimony to human ability to overcome the presupposition that conflict and division are 'natural' elements of human existence."

Ah, well.

Buber eventually distanced himself from the Zionist movement, and vice versa, because of his insistence that the rights of Palestinian Arabs on the land they'd occupied for centuries were not to be overlooked. But the creation of a new political entity by a long-marginalized and oppressed Jewry, which had never before had the chance to create its own future, meant mistakes would certainly be made.

Buber, it would appear, understood, among many other things, Karma.

It's amazing what you learn while you're learning.

--T.A.

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.