Quote of the Week 135 - The Responsibility of Work without End

The day is short, and the work [to be performed] is much; and the workmen are indolent, but the reward is much; and the master of the house is insistent.

It is not [incumbent] upon thee to finish the work, but neither art thou a free man so as to [be entitled to] refrain therefrom.

--Mishna Nezikin, Avos 2:15,16

Quote of the Week 134 - The Gauge of Success

The true gauge of success is spiritual growth and not outward gain or loss.

--Swami Rama Tirtha

Quotes of the Week 133 - Wisdom, Virtue, Change or Perish

Wisdom has been defined as knowing what one ought to do. Virtue is doing it. Wisdom without virtue is a weariness of the flesh…Where thought does not go over into action, there results mental dyspepsia or moral constipation. Men of mere ideas and no legs are no more than intellectual centipedes.

The power of safe and accurate response to external conditions is the essential feature of sanity. The inability to adapt action to need is a character of insanity. “Change or perish” is the grim watchword of nature. Keep pace with the advancing times and you can survive in the struggle of life.

--Swami Rama Tirtha

[Please note: I hope you don’t mind a heavy dose of Swami Rama Tirtha for the next several weeks. I am finishing up a book of his, The Practical Vedanta of Swami Rama Tirtha, Edited by Brandt Dayton, and it is getting better the deeper I go. These are all from that book, which has been out of print for several years, so you’re not likely to easily come across this material elsewhere]

I realize that I didn’t have a quote last week, so I will make it up with two quotes this week.

Quote of the Week 132 - Familial Love

Your spouse and children, instead of being the circumscribing hedges of your affections, ought to be the center of radiation of love to the whole world.

--Swami Rama Tirtha

Why Be Jewish?

At the culmination of this Passover, I am pleased to announce the imminent official publication of my new book, IVRI: The Essence of Hebrew Spirituality; 21st Century Perspectives on an Ancient Tradition. I expect it to be officially published around mid-April. In anticipation of its imminent official publication, I am below providing one last excerpt to tantalize your taste-buds:

“Why be Jewish?”

In one of the chapters of this book, I addressed Secular Judaism in response to issues posed in an edition of Jewish Currents magazine. In the next edition the editor posed a follow-up question to the earlier discussion about the future of Secular Judaism. The question was “Why be Jewish?” My answer is a suitable conclusion to this book:

In the hopes of not getting bogged down in a morass of endless discussion concerning definitions, philosophies, psychologies, cosmologies, ontologies, theologies, etc., let’s start with an existentialistic approach. A good start to an existentialist approach is the fact of birth, and thus individual existence.

Whether we like it or not, some people are born to Jewish families. How is a Jewish family defined? Well, one or both parents were told by their families sometime after they were born that they are Jewish, and they incorporate that designation, however murky and amorphous it may be, as part of their identity — of who and what they are. Part of the raising of their children is to tell them that they are Jewish, so they carry on that nomenclature as part of their identity, however unclear the definition may be. And so it goes through generations. For the sake of simplicity, I won’t get into issues relating to assimilation (those born Jewish, but who either are not told they are Jewish or, even if told, abandon any sense of a Jewish identity) or conversion (those not born Jewish; as part of choosing to go through the conversion process, they have already addressed this question). The question is “Why be Jewish?”, and I’m limiting the discussion as relating to people who have some identity of being Jewish by virtue of their birth and being told by their parents that they are Jewish, if nothing more.

So people are Jewish, first of all, because they were told they were Jewish sometime after they were born. From childhood forward, many things happen to such individuals and their Jewish identities, which are as varied and as unique as the sum total of all such people. Some may reject their Jewish identity, some may embrace it, and some may neither actively reject nor embrace it. They don’t deny it, maybe just passively acknowledging it, because that is what they were told as children. Some may give their Jewish identity a lot of thought, and mold and shape it, emotionally and psychically investing heavily in it, while others may put varying degrees of lesser effort into the matter.

So the question of “Why Be Jewish?” really means “Why expend time and energy and psychic resources into investing in a Jewish identity?” After all, except for converts, Jewish identity is first of all a matter of circumstance of birth. How do we deal with that circumstance? What do we do with it? Do we think it is even worthwhile addressing? Those are the real questions.

Succinct definitions of Hebrew Spirituality and Judaism: Hebrew Spirituality is a spiritual teaching, distinct from religion, received and expressed by humanity through the medium of the sacred language of Hebrew. Judaism is a religion that evolved out of Hebrew Spirituality.

I am a proponent of Hebrew Spirituality. I could probably be a proponent, to a lesser extent, of a form of Jewish religion devoid of the many doctrines and dogmas that have developed over the centuries in the various forms of Orthodoxy. They encompassed the prevailing standard until various drastic reform movements began appearing over the last 300 years. There are ongoing efforts to define a Jewish religion or identity imbued with deep spirituality, yet devoid of traditional religious doctrine and dogma. Sometimes it seems more difficult than it should be.

Theistic spirituality generally leads to religion. Non-theistic spirituality remains a possibility for those not attracted to religion. There needs to be a recognition of a sphere of non-rational intuition (as distinct from irrationality) that is not in conflict with rational reasoning, but parallel to it. The integration of the rational with the non-rational leads to the spiritual.

Humans are composed of body, emotion, mind and spirit. Spirit is at our core; it is our essence. We are undeniably spiritual beings. And thus spirituality is important to our sense of identity, meaning, purpose. Many spiritual traditions have appeared throughout history, and the spirituality expressed through the Hebrew language is a significant and ancient one that has endured in some form or other for thousands of years. Anyone born Jewish is somehow connected by circumstance of birth (even if deemed nothing more than an accident of birth) to this ancient tradition of Hebrew Spirituality. The undeniable existential fact of being born Jewish should provide sufficient cause to at least give some serious consideration to incorporating Hebrew Spirituality into their lives, as part of their inherent spiritual nature and identity. Maybe it is worth preserving. Maybe it is worth enlivening.

Why be Jewish? That is why.

Quote of the Week 130 - The Last Birth

It is declared that in the last birth of people the marks on their souls are destroyed, resulting in endless compassion for the afflicted, indifference to changes, and fitness for service, everywhere without distinction.

--Yoga-Drishti-Samuccaya of Haribhadra Suri, a Jain sage, translated by Christopher Key Chapple, as appearing in The Yoga Tradition, Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice by Georg Feuerstein.

The Ten Plagues Passover Thoughts

On this eve of the beginning of Passover, I’d like to share these somewhat novel (though not entirely original) thoughts about looking at the ten plagues from a different perspective.

As we know, the traditional Seder includes a description of the ten plagues that were inflicted on the Egyptian oppressors prior to the release/escape of the Israelites from their bondage. I have not found much discussion about the significance of each particular plague either in the Haggadah or in traditional sources, and usually, what discussion there is focuses on the suffering endured by the Egyptians caused by the plagues.

During a group study of these events a few years back, it suddenly dawned upon me that we are possibly missing an important lesson by not focusing on the impact on the consciousness of the Israelite slaves who witnessed these events. Were these events merely to inflict suffering on the Egyptians and illustrate to them the superiority of the Hebrew God and the protection God afforded to His People? What about the effect on the consciousness of these people? Perhaps witnessing these events was important as a preparation for this people which was about to emerge as a newly independent nation. Perhaps the forty years of wandering in the dessert was necessary in order for this people to adequately digest and absorb the inner significance of these events into their collective and individual psyches before they would be ready to enter the Promised Land. What was the significance and nature of each of these plagues? How were they intended to impact and impress the people witnessing them? How are they intended to impact and impress the consciousness of the people reciting them in subsequent Seders year-in-and-year-out? They involve water turning into blood, pestilence in the form of amphibians, insects, land animals, disease affecting livestock, boils affecting humans and livestock, hail with thunder and lightning, locust swarms, darkness, and finally, the death of all first-borns.

Traditional sources claim that each plague took a total of four weeks. There was first a warning issued by Moses, with the actual plague starting three weeks after the warning, and generally lasting for one week. The first nine are noted by traditional authorities to run in cycles of three. The first two of each group of three are preceded by a warning from Moses, giving Pharaoh a chance to comply with Moses’ request to let the people go and thus avoid the plague, while the third one commences without warning as punishment for Pharaoh breaking earlier promises. This parallels the time of the human gestational period of nine months, divided into three trimesters, so perhaps these can be seen as figurative stages of development in the womb in preparation for birth.

Why ten plagues? Any correlation with the ten sephirot and the ten commandments?

There is much food for thought and pondering here. So think about these things as you’re munching on your matzos, marror, charoset, and downing your kosher for Passover wine!

Happy Passover!

Quote of the Week 130 - Bushes Afire with God

Earth’s crammed with heaven. And every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Burning/Unburnt Bush

On a recent visit to the Pike Market in Seattle, I was attracted to a booth selling crafted tiles featuring symbols from various world spiritual/religious traditions. They were all very beautifully done, but what particularly caught my eye was a depiction of the burning bush in the Judaica collection. All of a sudden the deep significance of this particular image hit me in a way it never had before. Certainly, the other Judaica images displayed, the menorah and the Star of David, are much more well-known and more often utilized in depicting Judaism, but when I saw the burning bush, I realized what a spiritually powerful image it is. The menorah came later, and the star later still (and is not unique to Judaism), but the burning bush is more primordial and in some aspects more quintessential.

It came to me in a flash of insight that what was so special was generally overlooked by traditional sources discussing this event and symbol, partly due to the emphasis on the bush. The focus has generally been on the fact that there was something special about the bush, because it was burning, but not being consumed. So that was some special bush! It was burning, but it really wasn’t burning, because it wasn’t being consumed. I did a little bit of quick Internet research, and found that some strains in Eastern Orthodoxy espouse a significance similar to my revelation, referring to this as the event of “The Unburnt Bush”.

In the revelation of the unburnt bush, the bush in some sense is incidental. The real significance concerns the nature of the flame, the fire, not the bush. What is extraordinary about this flame/fire is that it is not dependent on fuel (why the bush was not consumed), but rather depicts the foundational source of fuel and all existence. The first word in the Rig Veda, the oldest of all of the Vedas, is Agni, which means fire, which to me is what is depicted in the burning bush, the same Divine primordial fire from which emanates both Divine Light and Divine Sound, the source materials for creation.

There is nothing extraordinary about the bush. It is not the source for the fire, but just a contrast background for its appearance. I began pondering about why have the bush at all? The fire could have appeared independently, and the event would have become known as the event of The Eternal Flame or Holy Fire or something like that. So why the bush? Why the bush? What purpose does it serve in this depiction? Hmm…And then it came to me. If the flame/fire appeared independently, then those hearing the story might still have assumed that it was more or less like any other flame/fire, even if it appeared that its source was supernatural or miraculous, as it appeared to have no normal fuel. The bush was utilized to illustrate that not only was the source of the flame other-worldly, but also the very nature of the flame was other-worldly. This was no ordinary fire, for it was the fire of creation, not of destruction. It did not require fuel as its origin, and it did not consume fuel for its sustenance. The Hebrew word used for it in the Torah describing the event of the burning bush in Exodus is “eish”. A derivative is earlier used in describing man and woman in Genesis as “ish” and “isha”. Even earlier in Genesis, another derivative of “eish/fire” is used in combination with the word for water (mayim) to form the word for heaven and the firmament dividing heaven from earth (shamayim). So this creating, sustaining, non-consuming Divine Fire that appears in the burning bush also exists as a core element in Human Being and in Heaven. There is nothing unusual about the bush itself, other than that it helped to illustrate the unusual nature of the fire, and that it could coexist with the fire, just as heaven, earth and life coexist with the fire.

Quotes of the Week 129 - Despair

Despair is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality – it is a kind of a mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it.

--Philip Slater, as quoted in The Sun magazine, March 2010

Through desperation, liberation.

--Steven J. Gold