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#2603 - Tuesday, October 3, 2006 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Thanks to Mary Bianco for contributing the article that makes up today's issue of The Highlights.
I don't think I've ever seen the term 'nonduality' used in such a household way, as though everyone has heard of it before. Maybe they have.
"All of these impulses, ideas, predilections -- all that, together, comes to form our ideas of ourselves -- are not 'ours' at all."
Yom Kippur and Nonduality
Jay Michaelson
What is the meaning of repentance, if everything is God?
On the purely cognitive level, the answer is
not complicated. All of
us live within the delusions of the ego, the yetzer hara, which
sees
the world not as it is -- as manifestations of a single Being,
according to the Hasidic nondual reading of the Shema -- but as
divided into many different, separate objects. Most importantly,
the
ego sees itself as separate from the rest of the world, and
evaluates
the world according to how well what's outside is pleasing what's
inside. It's as simple as "have a nice day" --
"nice" being a term
that means "pleasing to the self." This is our ordinary
existence,
conditioned by eons of evolution and natural selection, and
without
this ordinary frame of reference, we'd all be dead. Pure
nonduality
doesn't do well at crosswalks.
But it is, all the same, delusory. Yes, there
are neurons at a
certain location in the cosmos which behave in such a way as to
create the cognitive phenomenon of consciousness. Yes, on a
cognitive
level, it seems as though that phenomenon is distinct from
everything
else in the universe. But seems is not is. Really, every thought
you
are having, at this moment as at every other one, is wholly
conditioned by an uncountable number of causes, which are
themselves
wholly conditioned by other causes, ad infinitum -- ad ein sof.
"Yes!
I get it now" "I don't agree" "What's
next" "That link looks
interesting" All of these impulses, ideas, predilections --
all that,
together, comes to form our ideas of ourselves -- are not
"ours" at
all.
Tshuva, translated as repentance but literally
meaning "return," is,
on the cognitive level, simply a return to what the Buddhists
call
Right View, or in the words of the popular Neo-Hasidic song, the
"Return to Who you are." It's the shuv of ratzo v'shuv,
running and
returning -- coming back to the Source, the undifferentiated
Awareness that somehow gives birth to the cosmos. Running out
into
differentiation, with (for all but the most awakened of us) all
its
traps and delusions -- but then, at special times in the year,
returning. And from that place of unity, reflecting on the
actions of
the small self, observing how they may have caused harm, and
attempting to repair the harm by reconnecting with other people
and
with God. Hopefully, the day after this essay appears online,
you'll
consider spending some time doing that.
So much for the cognitive level. Emotionally,
the predominant tenor
of the Days of Awe is quite removed from the nondual perspective.
The
traditional Jewish path to Return is not through emptiness, but
through kapparah: atonement, catharsis. It's not meditation -
it's
breaking the self. It's not early Chabad style contemplation -
it's
Rabbi Nachman's hitbodedut, a searing self-examination which, far
from leaving the self behind, puts the self through the
metaphorical
ringer. Beating the chest, reviewing one's transgressions,
fasting to
break through the resistances of the ego -- the mainstream Jewish
path of Yom Kippur is one not of nondual Right View but of
dualistic
wrestling with the small self.
The end is essentially the same: bittul
ha-yesh, annihilation of the
wrong view that "stuff" exists in the way it appears to
exist.
Normally I am sure that I am the center of the universe, just
like
you are -- or at the very least that my happiness is dependent on
getting what I want. But through work, and spiritual practice, I
am
disabused of those incorrect, and sometimes dangerous, ideas. We
get
to a similar place, the nondual contemplative and the pietist,
but
the path feels very different.
And who knows -- maybe the end result isn't the
same at all. The
pietist beats her chest and repents and reforms herself, but all
the
while maintains the dualistic notion that she is striving for
Godliness, and God is judging her, because what real bittul
ha-yesh
means is not the annihilation of all "yesh" but just
the "yesh" of
the ego, and so humility is what's most important, humility and
remorse and regret, and hopefully my merits outweigh my sins,
because, sure, the Book of Life is a metaphor, but it's an
accurate
metaphor, because if we are weighted down by sin, we're barely
alive,
and so we have to fight the yetzer hara with all our might, to
really
beat it down, to really get the yetzer hatov stronger, and boost
it
up, and steer clear from sin, and abnegate the ego in the face of
the
Torah which is true... and all the rest.
That's the thing about Judaism -- we're all on
the same train, but
we're going to very different destinations.
As I've written about before in these pages,
the predominant Western
mode of ethical improvement -- disciplining the self, striving
for
better behavior through a series of Oughts and Shoulds --
generally
does not work for me. On the contrary, it elicits anger and
resistance. I feel like I'm back in Hebrew school again, being
forced
to sit still through lectures I don't agree with. And I get the
sense
that all this pietism is, itself, a tragic delusion: you're
beating
yourself up, but the sun is shining outside, and the delicious,
sensual world is inviting you to play. Where does it end -- with
self-mortification? Denial? Repression? I've been there before,
thanks.
Whereas, for me, arriving at compassion through
wisdom --
contemplation, rather than self-flagellation -- does work. I have
found, time and time again, that when my mind is truly quiet, I
am
compassionate, kind, and a lot less selfish. I find it easy to
see
why behaving ethically, kindly, and even, in my way, piously,
leads
to more joy and more happiness -- not because of Oughts but
because
of Is's.
This year, I spent several of my summer weeks
in processes of
reflection and work. After teaching for a month at a summer camp,
I
taught two retreats, then, without a break, did a week of intense
body-energy work with Body Electric, sat a week of silence at
Spirit
Rock in California, and went again to Burning Man. It was a
powerful
month for me personally, and the work I did brought me to
exceptional
clarity in my personal and professional life. And then, upon my
return, all the work I'd postponed came crashing in: book
deadlines,
magazine deadlines, essays promised and needing to be delivered
--
it's been quite a whirlwind.
The combination of the discernment of August
and the rush of
September has been even more aversion than usual to the
traditional
narratives of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It's fine when I stay
in
my Buddhist-Jewish-Nondual cloister, talk with my friends who
agree
with me, and don't read the Jewish Week. But as soon as I open up
the
Machzor, stories come up. "I did that in August, when I was
meditating!" Or "I don't want more shame! Don't wrap me
into your
drama of sin and expiation!" Or "I'll think about it
later."
The way in for me, this year, came from
recognizing that repentance
is only half of the process of Yom Kippur. Forgiveness is the
other
half. Real tshuva requires that we ask forgiveness of those we've
wronged -- and grant it to those who've wronged us. That includes
self-forgiveness too, of course, but I'm more interested in
forgiving
other people, and what that's supposed to mean. I was inspired to
consider these questions by an interview in The Sun magazine with
Richard Smoley, author of Inner Christianity. (The interview was
actually from a couple of years ago, but I just got around to
reading
it last month.) For Christians, of course, forgiveness is even
more
central than it is for Jews: it's the essence of imitatio dei and
one
of the primary avenues toward opening the heart within the
Christian
tradition.
Smoley, like me a nondualist, was interested in
the same question I
asked at the beginning: how the discourse of forgiveness fits
into a
nondualistic, panenethestic worldview. His answer was that
ordinarily, we think of forgiveness as something that really
virtuous
people do -- people who are stronger than you and me, who are
good at
all those Oughts and Shoulds -- when they accept that someone has
wronged them, but somehow are able to get past it and move ahead.
This, Smoley said, makes forgiveness an act of exceptional virtue
--
and he was having none of it.
What Smoley offered instead was forgiveness as
an act of
enlightenment. He invited us to ask just who we think is really
"wronging" us. Why did that person make the choice, say
the words, do
the deed that s/he "chose" to do? Well, obviously,
because of a
thousand causes and conditions -- and not a hair's breadth of
soul
more. Being angry at someone for an offense they have caused is
like
when we get angry at traffic for being there, or at a computer
for
not working right, or at a baby for crying. Sure, the offensive
person is more intricate than the traffic patterns, microchips,
and
baby -- but only different in degree, not in kind. Really, all of
us
are beautiful, glorious, wonderful machines, gathering together a
thousand strands of God, and then sending them out in uniquely
recombined ways.
Forgiveness, in this light, is just seeing
clearly. Everyone is doing
the best they can -- if they could do better, they would. If
wisdom
were stronger, they'd make better choices. If patience were
stronger,
they'd be less angry. But these dispositions which arise in the
mind
-- is any of them "me"? Or "you"? When we
feel ourselves to be
wronged by another person, we are not seeing clearly. We are
being
wronged by the universe. And, take it from me, it's a bad idea to
nurse a grudge against God.
Forgiveness is not really something we do for
other people; it's
something we do for ourselves. Personally, I had a good year in
5765
-- but there were an unusually high number of people who, I felt,
"wronged" me in trivial, but still really irritating,
ways. The
contractors who took four times as long to do the intrusive,
noisy,
horrible renovations on my apartment building in Jerusalem. The
taxi
driver who ran a red light and ran into me (I could've died, so
I'm
grateful, but then, the impact busted my already shaky left knee,
making it very hard to run like I used to, so I'm angry). People
I do
business with who spoke to me unkindly and unprofessionally. I
could
go on -- as I'm sure we all could -- but the more I go on, the
more
unhappy I get. And if someone were to come with a beatific smile
on
his face and ask me to be more forgiving, I think I'd punch him.
The more I hold onto idea that the taxi driver
is some separate guy
out there -- screwing me over, not paying me even for my medical
expenses, lying about what happened -- the more angry I get. And
justified -- the guy really was a jerk. But, once again, the
truth
will set you free. The truth is that jerkiness arises. It's the
result of many causes and conditions, which I don't know. It's
not
that the jerkiness is justified (because he had a hard childhood,
or
is working hard, or whatever). It's just that it's a phenomenon
that
isn't "owned" by the taxi driver. From the mochin
d'gadlut (expanded
mind) of God-consciousness, causes lead to effects. That is all.
And my own sense of indignation -- it's also an
effect of many
causes, the chief one of which is that I got hurt. So, seeing
clearly, I can act more skillfully. I got hurt. Is the anger
helping,
or hurting me more?
I find this perspective helps me a lot -- heals
me, even. The
conventional drama of interpersonal relationships does, of
course,
continue. But instead of being one of the actors on the stage, a
nondual Yom Kippur invites me to watch the play unfold from the
audience's point of view. It's still happening, and still quite
moving -- and I'll still hop right back onto the stage soon,
playing
one of the roles I've learned for decades. But there is also the
great play of life itself, and the miraculousness of the actors
that
transcends their transitory (or even recurring) moments of
chutzpah.
This is nonduality from personal, rather than
theological language:
that what we take to be a world of people who please or
displease,
whom we regard or disregard, is really a vast, self-less matrix
of
causes and effects, conditions and consequences, with only the
illusions of a well-functioning brain leading us to think
differently. This is true tshuva, true return to your Source:
knowing
clearly that self is an illusion -- a blessed, vibrating,
shining,
dancing illusion, but an illusion still -- and that there is only
God
pretending to be wronged, pretending to be evil, pretending to be
you. And where there is suffering --
on the planetary scale, or in the
political world, or in your own life -- there the work begins.
~ ~ ~
Jay Michaelson is the chief editor of Zeek
magazine and the author of
God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied
Spiritual
Practice, to be published next month.