confusion enough

tzfat sits on a mountain & is made out of old magic. the old city was designed by spiders with vertigo. ancient alleys & artists, kabbalah classes & falafel cooked up by mystics. i wouldn’t mind living here.

i spent a week in tzfat, at the livnot campus in the old city (the livnot folks organized my birthright trip two years ago). they had a big group visiting, so i slept in THE CAVE, a damp 500 year old room unearthed within the last 30 years. i slept dreamless like a stone 6 out of 7 nights, and dreamed pools of blood & cannibalism on the seventh. it sounds creepy but the dream felt very ordinary & non-fearful.

i went to tzfat to learn a bit of kabbalah. all the buddhist stuff i’ve been learning in asia is good, but i don’t feel like a buddhist at heart. i like being jewish & i like judaism. the only thing is – i don’t really feel connected to the actual faith/theology of it. my gut (and tanya classes) told me that the mystical aspect (kabbalah) would be more up my alley, and it was right!

kabbalah is a vast complex network of concepts that exist in their own mindspace, and can only be accessed by continual & lengthy study. but i am lucky – i met a bunch of VERY knowledgeable folks who were willing to sit down and talk to me using terms & ideas that i already had in my brain.

one of these, david friedman, has a website with some teachings. he has posted some translations of rabbi kook’s works, and i would like to quote a huge chunk here:

“There are two ways of thinking about Godliness: One way is where we speak about ‘a Creator’ and ‘the Creation’, as if each was its own separate thing, nevertheless they are joined together in that the Creator animates the Creation and the Creation receives Life from the Creator.

The other way is where there is no existence of ‘Creation’ whatsoever, and the name ‘Creation’ is only borrowed from our side, i.e. we create our (separate) selves because of the constriction of our perception, but in truth, everything is ‘Creator’ – God – and thus everything is a different content that has no relation to (the first perspective of) partial revelation, because God is explicitly the Whole thing, not one part relating to other parts.

These two ways of thinking about God have a particular effect on the ‘spirit of man’. Logic and accounting come from the way of relating to the world, the Creation, as something other than God; but poetry and song and the soul’s longing come from the second way of thinking, where nothing exists except God, and God’s Glory fills all.

Mussar (being a moral ethical person) is a path that combines logic/accounting and poetry/song in the proper blend. If one power is lacking, it (Mussar) cannot stand. Therefore when we think according to the first way and differentiate between God and the world, we see a vision of God’s Righteousness, of the greatness of the Mussar that is revealed to us when we think about God, and the laws of this Mussar are filled with logic and accounting.

Then when the second way of thinking comes, and God’s Righteousness and full splendorous Mussar has already been established properly in the soul, poetry/song is strengthened by this higher, ecstatic perspective of ‘there is nothing else besides God’, and this adds fruits of blessing to the Mussar.

But, if the beginning of thought is only imprinted from the one side of ‘there is nothing else besides God’, we wouldn’t have a depiction of Mussar – in relation to Godliness – for this higher thought to act upon and bless, because we do not recognize moral values in the relation of one thing to itself, rather in its relation to others.

Even though the exalted height of the second thought is higher than the entire vision of the value of Mussar at all – as it is higher than all thoughts and limitations – in any event, a person cannot grasp a thought that is higher than his limited comprehension in its full majesty. And values of Mussar always have to be found where they are awakened and then ‘returned and awakened’ in all the Paths of Life – that is why terrible danger can spread from having the second thought overpower the first.

However, if the first thought – whose wings are clipped – overpowers the second, that could cause the spirit of man to sink, and by sinking, he could lose many delightful things. Therefore there is no other remedy except to think about (Godliness) in such a way that the first thought is always revealed as a ‘garment’ for the second thought which is higher than the first – Zeir Anpin (the small face of God) – is a ‘garment’ for Arich Anpin (the large face of God) – and YHWH is Elohim.”

this is the passage that finally linked up my buddhist studies with judaism. in short, kook is talking about two ways of thinking about g-d: dualistic & non-dualistic. the dualistic way is: there exists g-d & the universe created by g-d, subject & object. the non-dualistic way is: there is only g-d & nothing else. the most sublime point here is that these two views are not opposing each other. again, “Therefore there is no other remedy except to think about (Godliness) in such a way that the first thought is always revealed as a ‘garment’ for the second thought which is higher than the first.” kook does not speak about choosing either perspective. both are necessary. to balance them is the work.

note the terms “large face” & “small face.” zen master shunryu suzuki used the terms “big mind” & “small mind” to speak about non-dualistic & dualistic states of consciousness. this is the bridge that finally connected judaism & buddhism satisfactorily for me. to get a better sense of some of these ideas as they appear in zen, here’s a quote:

“Zen maintains a stance of “not one” and “not two,” i.e., “positionless position,” where “not two” signals a negation of the stance that divides the whole into two parts, i.e., dualism, while “not one” designates a negation of this stance when the Zen practitioner dwells in the whole as one, while suspending judgment in meditation, i.e., non-dualism. Free, bilateral movement between “not one” and “not two” characterizes Zen’s achievement of a personhood with a third perspective that cannot, however, be confined to either dualism or non-dualism (i.e., neither “not one” nor “not two”).”

for kook, both dualism & non-dualism are necessary. neither must overpower the other. in zen, one must have “[f]ree, bilateral movement” between the two. in both cases, to choose dualism over non-dualism would be to set up yet another duality, so kook & zen describe a position of mind beyond both (or neither). the pursuit of this position of mind is why i consider myself both a religious person & a meditator.

——-

relatedly, i am reading “g-d in search of man” by heschel. here are some quotes & commentary:

“Lift up your eyes on high and see, Who created thee?

This does not reflect a process of thinking that is neatly arranged in the order of doubt first, and faith second; first the question, then the answer. It reflects a situation in which the mind stands face to face with the mystery rather than with its own concepts.”

in this section, heschel talks about how doubt doesn’t exist in biblical thinking. i was skeptical of that at first, until i read the above passage, which reminds me a whole lot of meditation. in day to day life, i find myself regularly paying more attention to my concepts of people & things vs. the people & things themselves. meditation is a lot about noticing this & shifting focus to the extant reality instead of my concepts about it. and doubt is precisely such a concept. if the biblical person takes up the practice of looking directly at the universe instead of at her or his own concepts of it, then i can see how doubt ceases to have a serious existence for such a person. i think of faith as a concept as well – obviously there is more to it than that. need to ponder more…

“Just as clairvoyants may see the future, the religious man comes to sense the present moment. And this is an extreme achievement. For the present is the presence of God. Things have a past and a future, but only God is pure presence.”

! no comment =).

i am having a grand old time in israel. everyone is friendly and hospitable.

1) be’er sheva has not much going on except the massive friendliness + hospitality of the tubman’s & their squirmy baby of happiness.

2) mitzpe ramon. i stayed at adama, a hanger turned into a dance school SLASH hostel. the day i arrived, they had a free-style dance party. it was very fun because everyone was dancing without any constraints. the notion of “dance” was not operational. so i felt free to just do the crazy things that are actually stored in my body. know this, gentle reader: whenever you see me walk down the street, i am actually suppressing a desire to dance-convulse like a zombie tree-climber. at “clubs,” everyone is using a certain set of moves. when i really let go, i found myself doing outright weird stuff. this served me well when i got to…

3) desert ashram bamidbar. a kind of kibbutz/commune/ashram combo. i have been here a week now, doing the WOMP (working meditation program), which involves 4-6ish hours of work per day (very relaxed with many breaks), doing two active meditations per day, and generally hanging out with cool people.

it was hard to be here at first. the folks are all practicing being exactly who they are. this means the standard social niceties that i am used to are not operational. the social interactions occur spontaneously & directly, and to get into them you have to put yourself out there. massive insecurities showed up. but – good! i rocked out with them for a few days and got a handle. i feel like i got my sword back. sword being kind of like a groove, but sharper. something ha been understood about personal power, but i am not 100% on what it is.

the meditations here are “active.” a sample meditation goes like this: 15 minutes of shaking, 15 minutes of dancing, 15 minutes of sitting, 15 minutes of lying down. all to appropriate music. very different from the silent still meditations that i have been training. the dancing is done with eyes closed so everyone feels comfortable to do anything at all with their bodies. it took me a few days to really get the hang of not “dancing” but allowing the body to do what it actually wants to do in response to the music. the movements are odd & satisfying; often emotional & therapeutic. i also did 3 sessions of something called rebirthing. extremely cathartic.

leaving on friday. not 100% sure where i’m going yet, but NORTH.

howdy. it is good to be back in the clutches of western civilization. with all its morbid faults & errors, it is my home and i have missed it. after 7 months in asia, going bouldering and then eating granola and soy milk for breakfast the next day is a transcendent experience.

central tel aviv, unlike jerusalem, really feels like a smaller version of the hipper parts of san fran, chicago, or even new york. cafes sprawl out onto the sidewalks. everyone is well dressed. i don’t know if it’s because of me being jewish, but i’m attracted to just about every israeli woman i see. it’s distracting – when biking around, i turn into a neck-craning hazard.

not too much else to say. i’m taking a week to read & watch movies (and catch up on 30 rock). my plans in israel are inchoate. after studying buddhism for a while, i want to see how the jewish world conceives of & implements awareness practices. in pursuit of this, i’ll be going to tzfat, and some intentional communities. i would very much welcome advice on where to meet practicing jewish mystics!

i’m here until april 4th, and then i fly to istanbul. from there, i will make my way (by land) to lvov. and from there, i fly to chicago. see you soon(ish).