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.

just came back from climbing fuji. ilya (who is here for a week) and i accidentally went up the wrong path, and got up about halfway. it rained viciously& horizontally the whole time. extreme winds drove water into every part of our bodies + minds. it turns out nothing that i think is waterproof actually is. my gortex boots became puddles, and my rain jacket was as wet on the outside as inside. despite all this, and the endless slog of switchbacks through furious clouds, we had lots of fun. not sure why, as i’m usually cranky in these situations!

we came to fuji from kyoto, where ilya and i were staying at kate’s house. we met kate through erik (another high school friend), and she is teaching english here. she has been kind enough to let us stay at her tiny apartment and show us around.

i don’t have too much to say about kyoto. the shopping district is dense and huge, even at 2pm on a monday. they have excellent men’s clothing here for very little money, and their 100 yen stores (aka dollar stores) put american ones to shame. there are beer vending machines, english signs of little sense everywhere, and eerily punctual public transport. everyone is polite and helpful. the streets are clean and there is no crime.

food is about what you’d expect. nothing too magical or outlandish yet. i’ve resumed eating fish as it would be impossible to eat otherwise.

the most fun was hanging out with kate. she took us out with her coworkers and students for a night of revelry (read: bar hopping and eating). they have all you can DRINK specials. this would never fly in the u.s., but in japan everyone is civilized and doesn’t pound dozens of shots. i believe out of everyone present, i got the drunkennest and proceeded to tell innocent japanese folk about hipsters & gangsters from the 30s.

ilya and i also went to see temples, but i wasn’t into it. they are huge and impressive of course, but empty. crowds of tourists are a turnoff.

before kyoto, i spent a week at a tekishinjuku, a zen temple outside of inukai, which is a tiny town outside of kameoka, which is a small city outside of kyoto. they ask for a donation of 3000 yen (~$30) per night, and provide three meals and lodging. the meals are simple, plentiful, and delicious.

the schedule at the temple looked like this:

450 – wakeup
515 – sutra chanting
600 – zazen (meditation)
645 – cleaning
700 – breakfast
free time (aka nap for me)
900 – 1.5 hrs of manual labor (usually pulling tiny omnipresent weeds)
free time
noon – lunch
free time
2pm – zazen
free time
4pm – sutra chanting
5pm – dinner
free time
7pm – zazen
8pm – sutra chanting
free time
10pm – bed

a much easier schedule than the vipassana meditation retreats i’ve done. sutra chanting is interesting. it ends up being a meditation in the sense that it requires total focus on your present activity (i.e. recitation) and breath control. we chanted so quickly that there was almost no time to breathe, and a beginner needs total focus to stay on track.

the manual labor is a kind of mediation as well. picking tiny weeds is a very useless activity. they are everywhere and come back in only days. the point of the activity isn’t to get rid of the weeds, but to cultivate an “only doing” state of mind which is at the base of zen.

which is not to say that there is no thinking. there were many books on zen in the library of the temple, and many of them emphasize this point. even in shikantaza (just sitting), which some consider to be the most “advanced” form of zen meditation, the mind is not free of thoughts. (note, there are technically no levels). you just see the thoughts starting, and watch them pass through “like clouds in the sky.” the point is to cultivate a choiceless awareness/mindfulness with no particular goal in mind. you are just sitting there and watching what is happening without participating in it.

this is much harder than it sounds. i found myself needing a goal (such as “pay attention to the breath”) to make meditation possible, and struggled with that. all of the literature makes it clear that zazen is supposed to be without a goal, or it is not proper zazen. however, having spent a week working at it, i think that having an initial goal such as focusing on the breath is a fine approach. it is akin to doing something so thoroughly that you forget you are doing it. when concentration is sufficiently well developed, the meditator forgets that he or she is paying attention to the breath and is JUST paying attention to the breath – which is precisely the state of proper zazen. i suspect that level of concentration will take me years to reach.

more on zen later!