A Very Narrow Bridge

August 19, 2012

Eleven Months Part 7: Master Hakuin and Elul.

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth – that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”

– Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones p. 7. Also on 101 Zen Stories

I will get to this story later. First, some background:

I loved my ex wife from the moment I saw her. I was 17 and she was the most beautiful girl I could ever have imagined meeting. I loved her smile and her laugh and her deadpan sense of humor.

I loved her intensely, powerfully, helplessly. I loved her when we were together and I loved her for long stretches when we were apart. I loved her through relationships with other women. I clung to her. I loved everything about her, except for her. I wanted her to be someone else, someone she couldn’t be.

We have been divorced for seven years and I have spent much of those years making excuses: She wasn’t available to me, she was too involved in her medical training, she moved us too much, she didn’t respect my goals. The list goes on.

The truth is that what I wanted from her was to rescue me from my pain. From my unhappy childhood. From my lack of confidence. From everything I hated about myself. When she couldn’t do this, I got angry and stayed angry.

I would get angry at her for not paying enough attention to me, for not being there for me, for not loving me enough.

I was wrong. She was there. The person I thought she should be wasn’t. But I couldn’t see that because I was so caught up in what I wanted. In reality, she wanted me to succeed, she wanted me to be happy and fulfilled, she wanted me to be her child’s father.

She didn’t stop trying until it became impossible for her to keep trying. Our son was a baby and she realized how much it would damage him if he grew up in a home with parents who fought as much as we did. Finally she asked me to leave because she couldn’t do that to him. And she hated doing it. She hated me for not being able to come through for her.

I’m not writing this to say it was entirely my fault that our marriage ended—things are always more complex than that. I am not writing this to say that I still grieve for our marriage—I don’t. Both of us are much happier now, and our son is happy and confident—a wonderful kid. Things have turned out pretty well.

I am writing this because it’s the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul. It is time for me to engage in my heshbon hanefesh, my soul’s accounting. What have I carried around within myself for the past year (or years) that I can let go of? This year during Elul, I have made a deal with myself to begin working very hard to see the world as it is and not how I want it to be. This is not easy, but it is necessary. It means coming to some difficult realizations, like understanding how much my ex-wife really loved me for me, and how I didn’t return that. It means welcoming in all my emotions and experiences, the good and the bad, and accepting that neither the good nor the bad experiences and emotions are the whole of my existence—that both are impermanent.

Master Hakuin is going to be my guide this month. He just accepted things with equanimity.

Think about it: He lived a pure life and he was accused of doing something impure. He must have been angry. I’m sure he was. But he didn’t throw a tantrum and shout “It isn’t fair!” He just accepted his anger along with the situation and said “Is that so?” Is that how it is? Okay, that’s how it is. I will move on and do what needs to be done. His reputation was ruined but he still needed to be a part of the community so he could provide for the baby.

When the girl and her parents came to apologize, he must have been relieved, and maybe angry too. But he didn’t say “See? I told all of you that I was not the kind of monk who would go around getting young women pregnant, but no one believed me!”

When they took the child back he must have been heartbroken. He had cared for the baby for a year, watched her grow and smile and take her first steps. But he didn’t scream “How could you take this child from me now? I have been caring for her! Where have you been, you stupid people? You are breaking my heart!” He just said “Is that so?” Is that how it’s going to be now? I’m going to be heartbroken. I’m going to miss her. That is part of my life now.

Elul is about looking back and letting go of those times when we’ve fallen short of that equanimity and, not being a Zen master, I have fallen short a lot. Heshbon hanefesh is called an accounting, but it’s not about tallying as much as it’s about accepting. It’s a letting go, but a strange one because it’s about welcoming those things of which we are letting go.

Honestly, heshbon hanefesh is more like meditation than accounting. During meditation we are taught not to stop thinking, but to allow our thoughts to arise as they will, to welcome them, but not to follow them. Instead, we observe them and let them fall away. That’s what we are doing, maybe on a slightly bigger scale, during Elul. We are allowing our lives over the past year arise as they will, we are observing them and letting them fall away. When I do this on the meditation cushion I get up feeling clearer and refreshed—ready to move through the day. My hope is that when I move out of Elul and into Rosh Hashanah, I will feel similarly ready to move through another year of my life.

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August 12, 2012

Eleven Months Part 6: How to Pray

I wrote before about attending shacharit (morning services) every day—particularly in the context of mourning. As the year has passed and I’ve returned to the rhythms of Jewish life and blended those rhythms into my larger life, prayer has become more and more part of my consciousness.

I knew about prayer, I thought. I knew the structure of the service and the evolution of the service over the many, many years since Judaism adopted organized prayer as a spiritual practice. I understood the tension between keva (the formal structure and rules surrounding prayer), and kavanah (the intentional or mindful aspects of prayer). Despite that knowledge, or maybe because of that knowledge, I still need to constantly teach myself how to pray. Praying every day has underscored to me how much prayer changes each day, and I think that’s part of why there is a fixed structure. Structures, like yoga asanas or fixed prayers, provide a profound opportunity for reflection and even for creativity.

So I’ve made a list of various ways to pray, depending upon my mood, or my level of energy, or my spiritual needs. I wrote them for myself as a series of intentions to hold as I sing through the service; the “You” in this list is me.

Enter the room.
Your attendance means something here. Everyone in the room is counting on you. Without you and nine others, no one can pray the complete service. More than that, your presence counts for everyone in the room as well. Be there, be present.
Say hello.
Acknowledging that you are here with other people is how you begin praying with them.
Imagine you don’t know the words or their meanings.
You don’t know the nusach. You don’t know anything about this prayer service at all. Let the others sing it to you. Notice how they use their voices, the rising and falling of the music, the changes in tempo and pacing. Be receptive—that awareness is the opposite of passivity.
Imagine you know the words to the prayers, but not their meaning.
Pay attention to how those words are formed by the shapes you make with your mouth and your breath. This can be a gateway to understanding more about yourself.
Know the words and their meanings.
Count the number of times certain words come up, or simply note when they do. Try the Hebrew words for: Love, Compassion, Earth, Wisdom, Kindness, Gratitude, Redemption. Choose one each day. Try to take that word with you when you leave.
Sit up straight when you cover your eyes and say Shema: “Listen.”
Feel the vibration of the word travel down your spine to its base in your tailbone. Listen to your back body. What do you have held there?
Vary your pitch.
If you lower your voice an octave during the prayer that begins emet (true), when you get to the word yafeh (beautiful), you will feel it through your entire body.
Match pitch.
If you match pitch with the person sitting next to you, the moment of singing in unison with that person will remind you of the connection you have with that person. You are in this together in a very meaningful way.
Stand
Feel the floor underneath your feet. Feel the earth beneath the floor supporting you, holding you up.
Open up.
As you stand to pray the standing prayers, move your shoulder blades toward one another and keep the sides of your body long. Your heart will open and your spine will gently stretch. Remind yourself of the strength of the connection between your mind and body. There is no difference between them, really.

I use this list a fair amount. Some mornings I wake up excited to see where some of these practices bring me and I find that I leave the synagogue feeling the same way I do when I leave my favorite teachers’ classes. Some mornings—more mornings, even most mornings—I rely on the structure of my list to get me focus myself on being present as I pray. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Those days I struggle to keep up, to keep my focus, even not to be annoyed at the fact that I’m at the synagogue at 7:30 in the morning when I have a meeting at 9:00. Those mornings, I have done something just by walking through the door.

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July 27, 2012

Eleven Months Part 5: Start Now

Tisha B’Av begins at sundown tomorrow Saturday, July 28.

The saddest day of the Jewish year is one filled with tragedy upon tragedy. One of these tragedies, the destruction of the Second Temple is said to have been caused by sinat chinam, baseless hatred.

Is baseless hatred actually justified hatred that nets the hater nothing, as is concluded in the lesson I linked to just now? Or is it hatred for hatred’s sake?

You know what? It doesn’t matter. You know why? Because everyone gets angry and everyone has the potential to hate. Sometimes anger seems justified: You break my heart, I’m hurt and I’m angry with you. You hurt someone I love, I’m hurt and I’m really angry. And, if I hold on to that anger, it becomes hate.

One story behind the destruction of the Second Temple is a story of clinging to anger, public humiliation, more anger, and vengeance.

Hatred destroys. It destroys our cities, but it also destroys us. Hatred focuses ourselves on ourselves. Hatred removes the possibility of connection to each other from our consciousness.

Tisha B’Av is about remembering these tragedies, but not in order to cling to the pain they caused the Jewish people. We can note our tragedies without adding them to a scorecard of pain and suffering and reasons why we have the right to be angry.

It’s about remembering those tragedies so that we can move on. We are hurt. We are angry. We are bereaved. These are normal human states, but we can take this day and focus on moving forward. Letting go.

As usual, someone else said this much better and more succinctly:

Tisha b’Av is the beginning of Teshuvah, the point of turning toward this process by turning toward a recognition of our estrangement from God, from ourselves, and from others. ( Rabbi Alan Lew (z”l): This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, 2003, p. 52)

And so, in the middle of summer, in the middle of the heat and the bright, long days, we can consider those limitless possibilities that summer brings to mind, but first we should turn inward and do a little letting go.

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July 25, 2012

Silence

This year marks the 40th anniversary of murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The International Olympic Committee has decided that there should not be a moment commemorating the attack during the opening ceremony on Friday, though Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, held a moment of silence with other dignitaries on Monday, July 22.

I’m not going to comment directly on who’s right and who’s wrong about a moment of silence during the opening ceremony. The IOC didn’t ask me what I thought and a lot of other people are talking about whether Monday’s moment of silence was acceptable or not.

Instead, I’d like to talk a little about silence.

I’ve written about silence before.

Being silent means that our preconceived notions, our prejudices—even our loves—don’t get voiced.

Being silent helps us to be present. We can note our thoughts as they come and move on, allowing that which distracts us to fade away. Silence allows us to inhabit the world all the better. Without the distraction of the noise we make we are able to hear life around us, whether it’s the creaking of the house, the sound of the cat snoring, or even the small movements of those around us.

Silence allows us to inhabit our own bodies more fully. In silence we become aware of our breath, of the small noises that are made as we shift our weight on the floor, of the beating of our heart.

Silence equalizes us as human beings. That awareness of ourselves and of those who surround us can work to improve our compassion for one another. I can’t voice my opinions and neither can you. We can only be together, at that moment, in that place.

I imagine an entire stadium filled with silence. Filled with people who, for that time, are not representing countries, or particular athletic disciplines, or points of view about whether or not that moment of silence is appropriate for the Olympic opening ceremony. They’d all just represent humanity.

June 19, 2012

Eleven Months, Part 4: Clinging to Egypt

“You’ve worked harder [at feeling the presence of Grace] than pretty much anyone I know…” She said.

Yeah, and sometimes I completely miss it. And, honestly, it’s much easier for me to miss it than it is to feel it. But Grace is there for the taking. That’s how it is—it’s just there. It’s everywhere. And when you open yourself up to it, you end up sharing it.

That’s just how it works.

And yet, believing this as firmly as I do, I still miss it. I still decide, at times, to stay in a place where I will never notice it. Even if it’s a place makes that me miserable. A place where I find myself thinking things like “Don’t love me like that, love me like this.”

It’s a place where my expectations are not based on reality because I’m not paying any attention to reality. It’s my own private Egypt. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Everyone I know who works on this stuff feels that way at times: “Don’t love me like that love me like this.”

This week the Torah portion is Korach (Numbers 16:1 – 18:32) Korach is the second of two portions that are pretty hard to take.

Last week in Sh’lakh L’kha (Numbers 13:1 – 15:41), we read about how the majority of the spies that Moses sent into the new land, the land where the Israelites would truly no longer be slaves, came back and said. “Forget it—there’s no way we can defeat the people who live there. They’re just to strong. Too frightening. We saw giants.” For this lack of faith, the entire generation that left Egypt is forbidden to enter the new land. Then, as if to top it off, a guy is stoned to death for gathering firewood on Shabbat.

This week, Korach and 250 others, all of them important people, speak out against Moses and Aaron saying “Why are you so special, everyone here is holy—God is with everyone.” So, Korach seemed to get that Grace is everywhere. But later, he missed the point. Moses calls some of Korach’s people over to discuss things, asking “What has Aaron ever done to you?” but they respond “Isn’t it bad enough that you took us out of ‘a land flowing with milk and honey?’ Are you going to lord it over us, too? And even if you’d have brought us to a really great place, you’ve still pulled the wool over our eyes (because you’ve got all the power and you don’t appreciate us)?”

In effect, “Don’t love us like that, love us like this.”

Egypt as a land of milk and honey? Seriously, those guys are forgetting what slavery was like. But we can get used to anything I guess, and it’s hard to let go.

In the end, Korach is buried alive. The Earth opens up and swallows him and everyone who follows him. A pretty strong metaphor for absolute isolation.

Letting go of old habits is pretty hard. It’s pretty easy to think back fondly on Egypt. But it always ends up making us feel isolated, cut off.

“Don’t love me like that, love me like this, Mom.” Egypt.

“Don’t love me like that, love me like this, Ex-Wife.” Egypt.

“Don’t love me like that, love me like this, because I’m feeling alone, and I deserve it, and because I want it.” Egypt.

Lately, I’ve been clinging to Egypt. Feeling the same things I felt as a kid. The same isolation. The same expectations that have no real basis in reality. Feeling like this makes me want to be alone—to rebel against everything I know will make me more aware of Grace. I need to remember that the giants are a matter of perspective, and that rebellion is just going to make me feel buried alive.

The way out of Egypt may need to take me through the desert, but the heat, and the fear, and the heartbreak are just part of the journey. So I’ll be back on the mat, back on the meditation cushion, back to the pause to open to Grace. It’s there, waiting for me to notice.

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April 23, 2012

Unknown at the Center of Things

Near the center of the cemetery, among some of the oldest graves, there is a small marker. Near the center, surrounded by some of the largest and fanciest monuments. It simply says “Unknown.”

Grave marker for Unknown, Mount Zion Cemetery, St. Paul, MN

We don't know who is buried here, but that doesn't matter.

Is this a case of lost records, of an oversight when the cemetery was moved? Who is buried there? Someone who came to St. Paul alone? Without a family? A Jew? There is no ready answer and it doesn’t matter—we care for everyone.

Today is Rosh Chodesh. On the most practical level this means an extra-long shacharit service, as evidenced by some surreptitious watch-checking this morning. It also means a lox platter after services. Gotta love a lox platter. But it also means a beautiful commentary on a beautiful commentary, and, most importantly, it means Hallel.

Today as I was singing, my voice cracked a little at the line: “Even ma‘asu ha’bonim haita l’rosh pina.” (The stone that was rejected by the builders will become the cornerstone.) As usual, there are a lot of interpretations of this.

This morning, I thought about Unknown as I sang that. We are all, in some way, Unknown. We are all unknown, but we are also all asked to care for the unknown. Unknown does not necessarily mean rejected, and even if it does, those rejected people can be brought into the center, if we care for them as if they were known to us.

Rosh Chodesh is the new moon, the darkest night of the month when keeping a light going is most important. The moon (seriously, you should have followed the link on the word “commentary“) wanted to know the advantage to being visible during the night and the day: “A latern in the daylight is useless,” she said. But she was mistaken. A lantern in the daylight reminds us that night’s coming and darkness, the unknown, is just a part of life.

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March 27, 2012

Eleven Months, Part 3: Not at Some High Place Along the Way.

This has been moving through my mind for the last couple of weeks:

Birth is a beginning, And death a destination.
And life is a journey:

From childhood to maturity; And youth to age.
From innocence to awareness; And ignorance to knowing.
From foolishness to discretion; And then, perhaps, to wisdom.

From weakness to strength; Or strength to weakness
– And, often, back again.
From health to sickness, And back, we pray, to health again.

From offense to forgiveness, From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude, From pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding – From fear to faith.

From defeat to defeat to defeat – Until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage,
A sacred pilgrimage.

Birth is a beginning And death a destination.
And life is a journey, A sacred pilgrimage
– To life everlasting.

(Gates of Repentance, p 283)

It’s a poem from the Kol Nidrei service in Gates of Repentance: Reform Judaism’s machzor. It was written by a rabbi named Alvin Fine.

Growing up, my rabbi read it almost every week at Friday night services. My mother loved that rabbi.

“…Victory lies not at some high place along the way, but in having made the journey…”

I wish my mother had gone to services more so she could have heard this man, for whom she had so much love and respect, repeat those words. She didn’t and I think, up until the end as the paramedics worked to resuscitate her for the final thirty minutes of her life, she hoped for some victory. Some victory that never came, but to which she was so attached that she missed out on massive amounts of potential happiness, and mired herself in misery and anger.

I’m on the table at the acupuncturist when the intern’s supervisor comes in and tells me, in no uncertain terms, that living primarily in my head is not viable. “In the end,” he says “The body always wins, so listen to your body now before it’s too late. That body will win—it will die.”

We don’t get a lot of time here and our bodies remind us of that most days. But listening to those reminders can enrich our life. Thich Nhat Hanh, in the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, explains that “…Looking deeply at our own suffering can help us cultivate understanding and compassion…”

“Life everlasting,” I think, starts with compassion.

January 23, 2012

Just Stronger

My friend Benno told me that Karen, his wife, has a saying: “It doesn’t get easier—you get stronger.”

Which brings me to the Billy Goat Trail. I am climbing the wall here with Elliot right in front of me. When he first saw it, he said that maybe we should turn back. Then he paused, watched some people going up, and said that we should try it.

“Okay, you go first and stay right in front of me. Stay very close to me, and we can do this together.”

This is the advice Benno gave me: “Have the kid go up first and stay right behind him. You can help him climb if you need to.” This is how he got his daughter Clare to the top safely when she was about 3. Knowing I’m right behind him gives Elly the confidence to keep going—that and his kid’s desire to do difficult things, I suppose.

The entire way up, I try not to look at the river moving fast in back of me. In back of me and a couple of hundred feet below me. In back of me, a couple of hundred feel below me, and liberally sprinkled with large and pointy rocks.

At the top, Elly tells me it’s not so scary to climb the wall, but for me it’s about the scariest thing I’ve ever done.

Benno clearly gets the fact that a kid should know, not believe, that his dad is there to catch him, even if the dad in question has no earthly idea how the momentum of the fall will not send them both over the edge and into the rapids. But he and Karen understand how to do that now. They stayed on their feet when Clare fell. Not off the path—they could keep her safe from that—but when she succumbed to leukemia, something they couldn’t control.

I think they do it by knowing they can make it to the next day, even when their pain is so terrible that they don’t believe they will.

This can’t get easier, but they keep getting stronger.

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January 10, 2012

Eleven Months, Part 2: Yoga and Tefillin

My arm hurts a little. Probably because the small box of Torah verses strapped there is digging into it as I pray.

“Bind them (mitzvot) as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a frontlet (totafot) between your eyes” (D’varim [Deuteronomy] 6:8)

Jewish mindfulness is pretty literal. Those words are bound to my arm and to my head with leather straps. Why actually do this? Isn’t it much better to take the verse from Deuteronomy as a metaphor? The teachings of the Torah are to be treasured, “like a piece of jewelry.”

Nice, right?

Nice, but not quite enough, at least for me. I like putting tefillin on. I like the fact that when I enter the synagogue each morning, I have to pause, to concentrate on wrapping the straps around my arm. I can’t just walk in with my mind on something else. I have to be where I am. I like the slight discomfort reminding me that I am bound to something much bigger than myself, like this teaching, or the people with whom I am praying.

Fast forward to a yoga class. The teacher is giving us a lot of instruction for Ardha Chandrasana, the pose we are in:

“Be aware of your foot planted on the ground, the rotation of your lower leg, your femur should be moving back toward the wall, settling into your hamstrings. Are your shoulders equally open? Your upper foot should be engaged, as if it’s also planted on the ground. Is your upper leg working as hard as the lower leg? How is its rotation affecting your groins? Stretch out through your side body to lengthen your spine. Now, keeping your hips even, try to dial your sacrum to move your tailbone towards your thigh, like we did in Trikonasana….”

“Wow,” I say, laughing, “You gave us like fourteen different things to think about during that pose.”

“Yeah,” comes the reply, “But you’re not thinking about anything else, are you?”

In another class, the teacher “invites us to enjoy Eka Pada Rajakapotasana.” There is no enjoying this asana for me. Being true to my smartass self, I ask the teacher “Ever notice how when you ‘invite us to enjoy’ something, it’s going to suck?”

Sometimes yoga asanas involve some discomfort. Sometimes exploring our connection to something bigger hurts, maybe just a little, like having a box strapped to your arm. But concentrating on all the various parts of an action keep us in the moment. The word yoga literally means “yoke.” Yoga binds us to existence. Putting on tefillin is another reminder of that.

January 3, 2012

Re: Dedication

Hanukkah ended December 28 at sundown, so—you know—I’m writing about it on January 3.

Hanukkah is complex.

Really.

A lot more complex than we think. The story of Hanukkah is the story of a miracle, and a military victory in a civil war. It is the story of a holiday postponed, and of the rededication of a holy place.

Also, there are presents, potato pancakes, and jelly doughnuts.

Maybe it’s because of its history, or maybe because it’s a relatively low-level holiday in the Jewish calendar, but Hanukkah has been subject to more interpretation than pretty much any other Jewish holiday. Hanukkah, it seems, is all things to all people.

So, now the menorahs are put away. The excess candles have been thrown into a drawer. The very notion of food fried in oil nauseates us. Until we start all over again on 25 Kislev next year. Now it’s time to get on with the rest of the year.

But I’m still thinking about it.

Pretty much everything about Hanukkah goes back to the rededication of the Temple. It’s all of everything I said it is, but at the center of it all is that rededication. That cleaning up and search for holiness. There is a lot of talk about using Hanukkah as a chance to rededicate oneself to one’s values. This is a pretty decent idea, I think, and it’s a good time of year for it.

Hanukkah falls near the Winter Solstice—the shortest day of the year and a day when many people, including me, take a look at themselves and think about what needs to change over the next six months, as the world is getting lighter each day and we need those candles less and less.

Hanukkah also falls relatively near New Year’s Day—the biggest day of the year for the business managers of gyms and yoga studios around the world.

But, as with all those gym and yoga studio memberships, it’s too easy to forget about the holiness we might have found. Actually, even the Hasmoneans—the famed Macabees of Hanukkah—forgot about their duty after not too long; in the end, they were best known for their corruption.

Rededication is hard work, and it needs to keep going even after the candles are in the drawer. So I am writing about Hanukkah after Hanukkah as a reminder to myself to keep up with that dedication. I should also probably eat more jelly doughnuts throughout the year.

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