Being a Buddhist, Being a Jew

How many times have we heard  Eastern spiritual  teachers  tell us: go back to your own tradition, it is all there? And   we may try to look back at our tradition. If we are Jewish we may find there  some  uncomfortable or  even painful perceptions. Our memory of Jewish life as a child might  be a miserable formalism (what hats to wear to synagogue). Or it may be some minimal church-like services. Or it may be something vaguely racial, tribal, familial, without any recognizable spirituality. Or we may be appalled by an authoritarian hierarchy, with a very authoritarian and even jealous God at the top of the pyramid, who seems, according to the Bible,  quite happy with conquest and wars. And worst of all, if we look at Judaism today through the eyes of the media, we may see  a right-wing and nationalistic kind of fundamentalism, that is obsessed with  settling land, occupation and owning  holy places, creating immense suffering for their neighbours in the process. Is this what there is to go back to?

 

As a practitioner of Buddha Dharma there is no necessity to go back and find truths from your own tradition, just as there is no a priori reason why we should surface one type of childhood memory over another. All memory is opportunity. Whatever comes up is good enough material for insight into the Four Noble Truths. But it may simply be very useful. The question is not: should I, as a Jew, abandon the Dharma and try and seek liberation through my Jewish self. Rather it could be: can I recruit my Jewish self, along with everything else, into the path of liberation? Or, to put it another way: can  recognition and honouring of my Jewish self help me  towards realization of the truth? For some people it can. For others not.  For some Jews, the fact of their  Jewish birth has an importance in the creation of the self, that should be observed, and incorporated into practice. It may be unwise to leave it as a ‘dead area’ in the same way that other important facets of ourselves, our mental formations,  our patterns and our biography are grist for the mill of meditative attention. It is, after all, our first meeting with religious experience, and there may be early experiences there which are important, but which are denied and suppressed by the pain of meeting later disappointments.  Our Jewish birth may be a spiritual potential or power that can help us. Or it can be a nagging  inner conflict that we push down and that holds us back: a ‘stain on the cloth’ as the suttas call it, that prevents us from taking up the dye of dharma evenly.

 

This can be illustrated by a case that Carl Jung wrote about in his autobiography Memories, Dreams and Reflections. It began one night when he dreamt of an unknown girl who appeared to have a strong father complex. The next day a chic, intelligent and worldly young Jewish woman came to see him. He had never seen her before. She was suffering from long term anxiety and distress. During the session, Jung could find nothing special, but he suddenly remembered his dream.  Jung asked her about her father, and when that produced nothing notable, went on to ask about her grandfather. She told him that he was a rabbi. “Was he, by any chance a  Tzaddik”? (a Jewish holy man) asked Jung? “Yes,” she replied, “it is said that he was a kind of saint and also possessed second sight. But that is all nonsense. There is no such thing!” Jung advised her that perhaps, by turning her back on her faith and ignoring such a power, it had turned against her. It was the anxiety of a basically spiritual person who was leading a meaningless life. “You have your neurosis because the fear of God has got into you,” said Jung. This shocked her into returning to  intensive Jewish study, and she was cured. There is a basic truth here that the most wonderful experiences and powers can turn against us if we reject or are afraid of them. Our angels turning into demons.

 

But the question remains. If, as Jewish Buddhists,  we do want to access some of the spiritual power within Jewish life, where do we begin? How do we cope with the obvious obstacles described above. Probably, our first task is to work with the negativity we may have in  our memories, or to what we read in the newspapers today, and experience it as patterns, as aversion, as suffering. Both in ourselves and in the Jewish people. The common dukka of the Jewish people is no different from any other people’s pain, just perhaps very  visible. Can we react with compassion to Jewish troubles, including Jewish xenophobia and extremism? A recent film by Claude Lansman (who made a famous film on the Holocaust called ‘Shoah’) interviewed many different Israeli Jews concerning the current conflict. He interviewed an extreme right wing Jewish  woman settler who gabbled all kinds of justifications and concepts, at high speed. He commented on the film that after a while  he realised that he couldn’t understand anything she was saying. But a sense of her pain arose in him. “All I wanted to do was to hug her” he said. on film.

 

We might even ask if this  might be a low point in Jewish spirituality, and that every faith, including Buddhism,  does go through difficult times in the ebb and flow of change. Interestingly, one of the great sages of this century, Rav Kook, who was the Chief Rabbi in Palestine during the 1930’s, wrote at that time an impassioned plea of the dangers of confusing spirituality with nationalism. He forecast that it would lead the whole religion downhill in the coming years, producing all kinds of obsessions in the name of God. He stated that the religious Jews, once they went on this path, would have to be rescued by the non-observant Jews whose more open questioning of the nature of the divine world was more respectful of the mystery of the sacred. If this is the case, we can also ask if  it is anything to do with Jewish teachings themselves, or is it  just about the way they are used and interpreted in samsara?

 

The  main problem is a general ignorance of the ground of Jewish spirituality. This is partly the result of  a confusing proliferation of  Jewish teachings in the medieval period, and many distortions have crept in over 2000 years of more or less fearful exile.. The Jewish  path of  purification and liberation has been obscured by layers of reinterpretation, especially in recent years,  with sometimes strong  survival orientation. At best this produces the ‘archiving mind’. At worst it can lead to  disastrous misunderstandings. There are masses of examples of this. I will pick out one or two. Jewish life today is characterised by an intense attachment to graves of patriarchs (justifying occupation of Hebron), to Holy sites and  ruins, and to  Jerusalem and ‘The Holy Land’ itself. These emotions stop peace in the Middle East.  But the great Jewish teachers and texts  are very clear on this issue. The Talmud states that graves are not to be places of worship, and there are specific restrictions  to them. The Midrash, the mythological texts, give the example of Moses, who is said to have died in bliss (‘the kiss of God’) but was buried in a hidden place so that Jews would not make the grievous mistake of worship at the site. The  Holy Land is not at all a piece of real estate that we must hold on to at all costs, because it is holy.  “Jerusalem” is much more a mythological location than a real one, and even today, in Jerusalem itself, the prayers to reach the goal of being in Jerusalem are still said. Mount Moriah is like Mount Meru, a holy mountain which is located in myth. Traditional texts state that God is not specially locatable in the Holy Land. He is  everywhere. One of his names is simply ‘Place’. It is stated that “God is the Place of the Universe, but the Universe is not his Place”, that is, the Universe is in God, not God in the Universe.  Even the word ‘Zion’ just means a mark, an arbitrary spot, within the endless desert. Just because a certain historical event happened at a place, the rabbis tell us, it does not mean we have to pray there, let alone break all the basic moral values (respect for strangers, not harming others, etc) to grab it. The  Godly place is where wise and just men stand, says the Midrash.

 

As another example, we can take the issue of Messiah. It has become a major theme today among fundamentalist Jews, and has been developed into  a  wish-fulfilment fantasy of a future saviour. But the basic sources, from the Bible onwards, regard   the issue of the Messiah (which means anointed one) more as mythology  than as prediction. It is about the return of  the ancient golden age, when King David would return to rule. The Messiah is mentioned as the return of a leading Jewish soul (much like the hope of Tibetans for the return of  the Dalai Lama) which will come only when the Jewish people have purified themselves spiritually. It is a kind of reward for awakening, just as the legends that state that Buddha Maitreya will come as the culmination  of a future golden age of Buddhism. The main point. Though, is that the rabbis of old, and the Jewish oral law, does not regard the Messiah as an important or even interesting issue. It is entirely peripheral to Jewish life, which is a life of self-observation and worship through the medium of  action.

 

The fact is, if we bring to Jewish life attitudes learnt from the meditation cushion,  a radical shift can begin. Perspectives can change, anxieties can surface, dire  conflicts dissolve, labels which we hold on to tightly can become revealed as changing views based on conditions. For example the basis of Jewish life is the Torah, the Bible. Some Jews believe that every word comes from God and is therefore by definition a truth to be acted upon. (Often this  means the more comfortable truths are acted upon, and the others not). A common reaction to this is the rejection of the Torah as a teaching altogether. Many reject Jewish life because they cannot see how to worship a God that makes wars and invades and slaughters Canaanites that are apparently peacefully going about their business. But from a dharma perspective, the bible is a long biography of an entire people, a journal of a  physical, historical and spiritual journey, just like the Mahabarata is to the Hindus. During this journey there are many transformations, there is the receiving of revelation, and then the constant struggle to manifest it in real life. The battles are backgrounds of human conflict and duality which tests our purity. Why is it that the most revered part of the Mahabarata (which has a lot of  fighting in it), the Bhagavad Gita, is revelation set in a background of  one long battle? Like all journals the Bible details the pain and the anger and the violence, as well as the wisdom and the  compassion and the revelation. It is about ordinary life, and about slavery and redemption. It is the discovery and unfolding of ethical and social principles.  There is no reason why it should be taken as an absolute truth. Indeed the Jewish rabbis indicate clearly that it must not. For example they regard the Karaites, who took the Bible literally, as ludicrous and in great error. The Jewish teachings go on 2 legs, the Bible is one, but it must be balanced with the ‘oral law’ that is the teachings of sages of the last 2500 years. Further, the oral law  states that probably the most holy book in the Torah is ‘The Song of Songs’ which is arguably one of the most profound and spiritual poems ever written.

 

So can Jews re-think their  relationship to the Bible as a kind of group memory? In that case we can relate to it exactly as we relate to our own memory of  ourselves? It is to be treated with the greatest of respect, because it is all we are, and records the preciousness of our birth into the human realm. It is to be explored and studied, brought into our awareness and not left to fester in the unconscious. But at the same time, we can see it is anatta, fundamentally without substance, a rolling history that has carried on because of events and reactions, born out of the conditioned mind, since the creation of Adam, and before. The Jewish mystical tradition can accept this too. It is said that the white page on which the Torah is written is as holy as the words themselves.

 

There are two fundamental principles in Jewish life, that Buddhists might feel close to. They happen to be probably the most important to Jews too, and are defined as such in the Ten Statements (a better translation than Ten Commandments). The first of all the statements is the prohibition against idolatry. But what does this mean exactly?  Maimonedes, probably the greatest of all Jewish philosophers,  deals extensively with this question. The basic statement against idolatry is that you should not worship anything that man himself made. God is ultimate and undifferentiated. If  we make an object and so assume we have brought God down into it, we are under delusion. Maimonedes goes further.  He states that idolatry is also the worship and holding on to  inner states of mind, such as views, obsessions, beliefs. For Maimonedes, worship of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is idolatrous. Even more interesting, it is clear from Jewish philosophers through the ages, that Jews cannot help being idolatrous, like all human beings. It is only a question of how much we can purify it from our consciousness. For example, if a Jew prays to any  specific  image or conception of God, he is being idolatrous. Prayer has to be to everything. Which means just prayer. The task of a Jew is a lifelong weeding out and purification from such grasping. No Buddhist can argue with that.

 

As an aside, the prohibition against idolatry is so strong in Jewish life, that some   Jews may feel very uncomfortable meditating in front of Buddha images.  Most orthodox Jews would not put themselves in that situation. In our retreats in Israel we try to avoid such images, unless an ordained monk requires them, in which case we would accept that, knowing that some Jews would not be able to join. Perhaps Jewish Buddhists can bring that strong background against idolatry as an offering to the Sangha  as a whole, and encourage dialogue on the extent that Buddha images are indeed necessary for awakening.

 

Another most important theme in Jewish life is the Sabbath. This is the only other command in the ‘Ten Statements’ that is about man’s relationship to the divine, as oppose to man. It says remember the Sabbath Day. For many Jews this might be a good entrance gate into Jewish life. Not only because it is probably the most important ritual, but also because it is the most delightful. What is the Sabbath a reminder of? It is a reminder of rest, of non-action, of  taking a break from the addictive busy-ness of human beings. The prohibitions are not about  using energy (no laws against jogging on the Sabbath) but against transforming, creating and controlling the world around us by means of fire, work, building, and all creative activity. The word Sabbath is a translation of the Hebrew Shabat. This means ‘to sit’,  ‘to dwell’, to ‘settle down’. More or less the same word is used on modern Hebrew for a strike of workers. The closest I can come in the Buddhist sense is: ‘calm abiding’.  It is  coming to a stop, in recognition that God stopped making the world on the Seventh Day. (The ‘oral law’ of course reacts by stating that he didn’t really stop - he is making it constantly by a stream of song). It also has overtones of release from slavery, of redemption. The day is acknowledged as a blessing and a gift, just like our freedom. On this day, all Jews have an extra soul. The task is to recognize it.

 

But if we look deeper, the Sabbath can also be seen as honoring the emptiness, the stasis or ground of being upon which the world was created and to which it must return. On Friday night a poem is sung in which it is said that the Sabbath Day was the first   in the mind of God before the Universe was created, and last in the mind of God when it was finished.  It can be a day of mindfulness, a vehicle which has been maintained for more than 2 millenniums as a ritual reminder of the empty nature of reality. As such it may be a wonderful way to start exploring the spiritual nature of Jewish life, inspired by Buddhist teachings, and with respect to both. As the Buddha said - choose a place, perhaps under a tree, and setting your awareness in front, enter into mindfulness. Perhaps some Jewish Buddhists might consider  the Sabbath as this place.

 

As I walk slowly along the path on this  Sabbath morning, I feel the sense that all of life has slowed right down, and yet expresses itself fully. The June day is hot and bright. The thorns are sharpest, the trills of the birds seem that much more penetrating, yet with a sense of quiet inside their song. The hills of the Galilee spread out before me seem dancing a stately dance in the early morning haze, just like it says in the Psalms. I slow right down with the pace of life. One step and another step. Entering sacred space with each step. Do I feel a special quality to this day? Yes. A day of retreat. A retreat day that has been going on for thousands of years in some form or another. It is a day of  quiet, a day to return to ourselves, sanctioned and supported for thousands of years. It is a family retreat day, a day in which even the ancestors can join in. We do not need to feel alone in our practice on this day. Is there another ritual reminder for mindfulness that is so ancient and so accessible for westerners? As I walk I feel  this moment as  a ready-prepared  personal place  for meditation. A place that generations of people have been purifying.  But it is not a physical place, like a monastery  or a practice corner in which the room is cleaned and a meditation cushion carefully laid out. It is a place in time, rather than space.

 

Dr. Stephen Fulder is an author and researcher in herbal medicine, who has several books out in the US on these subjects. He lives on an organic farm in the Galilee in Israel. He has been practising Vipassana for nearly 25 years, and this has stimulated a renewal of interest in Jewish life.  For the last 10 years he has been very active in initiating dharma activities, inviting teachers and organising retreats in Israel. More recently he has begun to teach the dharma locally.