Torah-Veda

An Interspiritual Journey
Find Your Inspiration and Follow It

WELCOME TO TORAH-VEDA

Torah and Veda are two ancient sources of spirituality still vibrant today. Torah is conveyed through the sacred language of Hebrew and Veda is conveyed through the sacred language of Sanskrit. The focus here is on meditation, mysticism, philosophy, psychology and the underlying spirituality that has been incorporated into religions, and not as much on the religions themselves. Your comments and posts are welcome.


Quote of the Week 419 - Listend/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance

Quote of the Week 419 - Listening/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance


Every one who is thirsty, come and drink. He who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good. Let your soul delight in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, that your soul will live…


--Isaiah 55:1-3, The Living Torah translation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan

CURRENT TEACHING SESSIONS




Interfaith/Inter-Spiritual Contemplative Groups


Please check out the following, which is an ongoing activity that may be of interest:


https://www.zgatl.org/contemplative-group.html


https://www.zgatl.org/ongoing-groups.html


http://www.interfaithci.org/contemplative.html


https://faithallianceofmetroatlanta.org/recent-events/programs-events/ongoing-programs/











Thursday, September 24, 2009

Quote of the Week 107 - Day of Atonement

Thou knowest the secrets of eternity and the most hidden mysteries of all living. Thou searchest the innermost recesses, and triest the reins and the heart. Naught is concealed from thee, or hidden from thine eyes. May it then be thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to forgive us for all our sins, to pardon us for all our iniquities, and to grant us remission for all our transgressions.

--From traditional Jewish Service for the Day of Atonement

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

YOGA AND JUDAISM, SECOND EDITION NOW AVAILABLE

In lieu of a Quote of the Week this week, I am pleased to announce the publication of YOGA AND JUDAISM, SECOND EDITION just in time for the fall Jewish Holiday season. For those who have purchased the first edition, please be reassured that it has not been rendered obsolete or useless by the Second Edition. Much of the substance of the material and message remains the same. However, the Second Edition does contain some corrections, many style and presentation revisions, and added material on Hebrew Mantras and Jewish Healing Meditation. Although the book materials contain some revisions, the substance of these new added materials is already available on the blog, so you don’t have to buy the new book just to obtain that new material. However, anyone who has already purchased the first edition is certainly welcome and encouraged to buy the Second Edition if you would like to have a spiffed-up volume complete with the new material all in one place. And I would certainly encourage any first-time buyers to purchase the Second Edition instead of the first. The Second Edition is currently available only at the publisher’s web site, http://stores.lulu.com/yajc or www.lulu.com and search “Yoga and Judaism”. It will take several weeks for it to work its way through the distribution system to become available through online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders. I will provide an updated notice when that happens.

In the meantime, why not start out the New Year through the transformative process of purchasing and reading YOGA AND JUDAISM, SECOND EDITION!!!

L’Shana Tova to All.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Bibliography/Book Review: Ramakrishna

Bibliography/Book Review

Ramakrishna; Ramakrishna and His Disciples, by Christopher Isherwood; The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, by M.

As one may surmise from the listing above, Ramakrishna is not the author, but rather the subject of the two books mentioned. To my knowledge, although books have been written about him, I don’t believe he ever wrote anything. The second book listed above is probably the closest thing to something written by him, as it is a record of what he said by a scribe who was a follower, faithfully writing down on a regular basis verbal discussions and interchanges. I nevertheless thought it best to list this entry under the name of the subject rather than under the names of the authors.


Christopher Isherwood’s book is a wonderful biography that brings to life the incredible nature of the main subject, Ramakrishna, the close circle of followers whom he attracted, and the influence he had on them and on others.


Ramakrishna was an extraordinary being who lived and died in the Bengal province of India, in the vicinity of Calcutta, between 1836 and 1886. He never traveled far, and never left India. He became known to the West through his admirers and disciples, such as F. Max Muller, Romain Rolland, Christopher Isherwood, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Prabhavananda and the organizations they founded, The Vedanta Society, The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, The Advaita Ashrama, The Sri Ramakrishna Math, and maybe others.


The story of Ramakrishna, as documented in these two books and others, is a story of a God-intoxicated being, who never lived anything like a “normal” life, by either Eastern or Western definitions. It has been many years since I read these books, so I am going mostly by memory, which may be more than a bit faulty, with some brief review of the texts as a little refresher.


In his early life, Ramakrishna was immersed in the essence of the path of devotion, known in yoga as “bhakti” whereby he was enthralled with personal representations of the Divine, both male and female, particularly with the Hindu representation of Krishna in male form, and Kali in the female form of the Divine Mother. It is characterized as a path of the heart, as it is emotion-based, although Divine higher emotion, not petty lower emotion. Due to the spiritual culture of his surroundings, he was tolerated by the locals, some considering him an imbalanced madman, although basically harmless, while others had a certain reverence for his total immersion in a ceaseless devotional mode. He therefore was granted enough food and shelter by admirers to maintain physical subsistence while dedicating his life to devotional rituals at various Hindu Temples. The idol images in the Temples where not merely representations of the Divine to him; they were living, animated actualizations of these Divine aspects. He was a lover, a child, a friend, a servant, a devotee of God in both male and female forms. His body and being manifested many symptoms of spiritual/kundalini awakening documented in various yogic texts. He lived many years in this basic spiritual mood. Nothing mattered to him except his intimate relationship with God. He often slipped into an ecstatic state known in yoga as savikalpa samadhi, whereby he was absorbed with one or another form of Divinity as another.


At some point, a wandering monk of one of the orders of Shankara, the great exponent of Advaita Vedanta, “happened” upon the village where Ramakrishna was residing. Advaita Vedanta is a non-dualistic approach maintaining that the true reality is that there is nothing but the impersonal Brahman, the indivisible permanent unity underlying all of creation, and that everything that appears separate from that oneness is impermanent, and as such, is illusion, maya, even all representations of Divinity, no matter how glorious. The path of this approach is known in yoga as “jnana” or “gyana” yoga, the path of discrimination. It is characterized as a path employing the highest aspect of the intellect, the “buddhi”, which provides for the mind to discriminate between the true permanent reality of the absolute, and the “unreality” of the impermanent world of the relative.


Of course, as fate would have it, this wandering monk quickly came upon Ramakrishna and immediately recognized his advanced spiritual state, although founded in bhakti and not in jnana. He offered to train Ramakrishna in Advaita Vedanta, which invitation Ramakrishna accepted. But try as he might to immerse himself into the oneness beyond all duality, Ramakrishna reported to his teacher that he could not get beyond the glory of the internal image of the Divine Mother providing him with infinite, unconditional, boundless, nurturing Divine Love. His teacher persisted, and in the tradition that “the teacher will use force, if necessary”, he took a sharp piece of glass he found nearby and thrust it into the area of Ramakrishna’s forehead corresponding to the third eye above and between the eyebrows, and instructed, rather insistently, to focus on that. All of Ramakrishna’s immense spiritual power of the Divine Heart was thus channeled to the Divine Mind, the entry portal to the realm of non-duality. By virtue of this channeling, Ramakrishna was thrust into the realm of the non-dual, totally merging with the oneness with no sense of separate self remaining, where he sustained this state of motionless nirvikalpa samadhi for three days to the astonishment of his teacher, who eventually was moved to stir him out of that state, lest he die.


Needless to say, the two became fast friends after that. The teacher, by virtue of his vows as a wandering monk, would normally not stay in any one place for more than three days. But he decided to bend the rules a bit, and hung out with Ramakrishna for 11 months, whereby the relationship took a subtle turn, with the roles of teacher and student becoming reversed. Ramakrishna now had come to a full realization of the Impersonal, Permanent, Absolute espoused by Advaita Vedanta. But he had a quarrel with his teacher over the traditional characterization of the world of the personal, impermanent, relative as “mere” illusion hardly worthy of any time or attention, to be scorned. Under Ramakrishna’s gentle tutelage, his teacher finally came to a realization that Divinity also resided within the world of the relative, with its most subtle and powerful representations being that of the various Divine Personages. Upon receiving this realization, Ramakrishna’s teacher left, realizing that he had fulfilled his purpose to both teach and be taught.


After this event, Ramakrishna often greeted newcomers with the following inquiry: “In which form do you prefer to worship God, the Personal or the Impersonal?”. He had now entered a phase in which he was an embodiment of the paradoxical condition of one fully immersed in the realm of the non-dual, while maintaining functionality in the world of duality.


The author, Christopher Isherwood, is responsible for bringing to the West one of the earliest, if not the earliest, translation of the Bhagavad-Gita into English, in collaboration with Swami Prabhavananda, one of Ramakrishna’s close disciples. Although Indian spirituality has a vast wealth of spiritual texts and scriptures, the Gita is considered by many to be the closest thing to a Hindu bible, containing a succinct summary of the broad spectrum of Indian spirituality.


The other book noted above, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, comes in both abridged and unabridged versions. It contains a record of verbal dialogue and teachings of Ramakrishna personally witnessed and recorded by the author. It is a wealth of Indian spirituality, especially Vedanta, and profound universal spiritual teachings uttered from one who many have considered to be an avatar, an incarnation of God on earth.


Both of these books are incredibly enlightening and inspiring. I regard them to be essential reading for anyone with an interest in Indian spirituality. People who have grown up in any of the Bible-related Western traditions often have many issues with the idol-worshipping found in Eastern spirituality as described in these books. I am not here going to discuss these issues, as I have addressed them in another article entitled Idols, Hindu Deities and Yoga. I will point out that some of the spiritual states described by Ramakrishna have correlations in Judaism: Savikalpa Samadhi corresponding to Devekut, and Nirvikalpa Samadhi corresponding to Yichud, which I have described in another article entitled Further Correlations: Yoga and Judaism Levels, Layers, Concepts.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Quote of the Week 106 - The Path to Truth

The path to truth or the path of truth is a contradiction in terms. Truth is not distant. How can there be a path to it then? Truth is with you already; it is your Self already. You are in it already; nay, you are truth. You are that. So it is wrong to make use of the words “path of truth”. Your realization of God consciousness, realization of divinity, is not a thing to be accomplished; it is not a thing to be achieved. It is not a thing to be done; it is done already. You are that already. You have simply to break through the cocoons of desires which imprison you; you have simply to undo what you have done.

This undoing of what has been done is to some a very hard task, and thus with reference to the path to truth we shall discuss the process of undoing. There is some effort to be made in undoing your snares. What are these snares, these chains and shackles which bind you? …The truth is that all your attachments, all your loves and hatreds, all your desires are shackles and chains. These bind you. These do not allow you to see God. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve mammon and God at the same time. You cannot be a slave of the flesh and at the same time the master of the universe. To realize the truth is to become the master of the universe, and to entertain desires is to acknowledge bondage, thralldom and slavery of the things of this world…


Rama says, take up your duty or work with no notice or desire on your part. Do your work; enjoy your work, because your work by itself is pleasure, because work is the other name of realization. Take to your work because you have to do. Work leads you to realization. Do not take to work on any other ground. Come to your work in an independent spirit…so come to your work because pleasure or happiness lives in the garb of work. Independent we feel, not bound by a thing.


People say duty, duty, duty. Why should duty lord it over you? Feel no responsibility to anybody; you are your own Lord. Have no fear. We say you will have to work, but when your hands are not employed, when your hands are free and you are sitting in your room, enjoy your godhead, relish your divinity. That is the finest work. There throw aside all attachment you own. People say that attachment is necessary, motives are necessary, to make us work. A false idea. Give up all attachment; free yourself of all desires and the very second you find yourself free, you feel no responsibility or burdens thrown on your shoulders. All the burdens on your shoulders are placed there by yourself. Nobody is required to come and relieve you of the burdens. When you find all the objects of love are with you, when you live this Vedanta, your whole being is light. Being the Light of lights, to whom are you to pray for light? This is the secret. Free you become. Who puts you in bondage? Who is it that enslaves you? Your own desires, nothing else. All the magnetism of the world, all the powers of the world, flow from you; all the miracles of the world are your abject slaves, nothing more. Get rid of these desires; free you become this moment, and when you get rid of all desires, what immense joy should it not bring you? No responsibility, no fear. Why should you fear? You are afraid lest this thing should be lost. You fear this man; you fear that; you fear ridicule; because you desire this good name, you are attached to good name. All fear and anxiety is the result of desires; headaches and heartaches are the consequences of desires. You cringe and sneak before the president or king because you desire his good grace. You become the Lord of lords, the King of kings when you are free of desires, when one by one these desires are thrown off. How free and happy you become that moment! Thus Rama says that the path of truth is not a thing to be accomplished or brought about. By your exertions and efforts you will have to undo simply the bondage and thralldom which you have already done through your desires.


--Swami Rama Tirtha, March 1, 1903, from The Practical Vedanta of Swami Rama Tirtha, Edited by Brandt Dayton

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Quote of the Week 105 - Folly Absurdity and Wisdom

Before we get to this week’s quote, I wanted to share with you the following from the Reb Zalman Legacy Project. This is a wonderful little video of a dialogue between two beautiful spiritual teachers who have enriched our lives, whether we know it or not:

“For those who have not had the opportunity to see the wonderful documentary by Edis Jurcys and Cathy Zheutlin, The Kiss of God: A Dialogue of Devoutness Between father Thomas Keating and Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, you can now view it for free on JTN (Jewish Television Network) on-line. Just go to:

http://www.jewishtvnetwork.com and search “Zalman” and “The Kiss of God” will come up in the search results. Simply select it and watch.”


And now for the Quote of the Week:

There is an excellence or profit to wisdom from folly itself, for if there were no folly, wisdom and its words would not be recognized.

--Zohar, Vol. C, folio 47b, Soncino translation

There is no better handle on wisdom than absurdity; and if not for the absurd, wisdom would remain obscured.

--same as above, translated by Rabbi Gershon Winkler