Entries Tagged 'events' ↓

Wednesday night was the JMC’s 2nd annual “Beer, Jews, and Enlightenment” party. Even in the rain, we had a great turnout and a lot of fun. When we first started the Jewish Meditation Center, we put a survey up on our website to see if we could gauge what programming would most interest everyone. Out of a bunch of options (including weekly sits, holiday events, etc), social events got the highest percentage of responses. This desire for likeminded community and engaging interactive events aligns perfectly with our vision of creating a Jewish Meditation Center.

Meditating at a bar is an effort to really integrate contemplative practice into our everyday lives- it’s also a little bit silly and fun. Knowing that we can place ourselves firmly in the present tense, no matter where we are or what we’re doing, and find that amazingly deep well of stillness and peace wherever we are, is powerful. Whether it’s walking across the Brooklyn Bridge together, seriously paying attention to the drink in our hands at a party, sitting together on our cushions each week, practicing yoga as part of our prayers, preparing for and celebrating holidays together, all of these practices root us in our own experiences individually and support us collectively, in community.

The party this week was also a celebration of the first year anniversary of the JMC. In the past year we’ve built the first neighborhood-based, community-led Jewish Meditation Center reflecting the leadership and values of the next generation of young Jews. We realized early on that the JMC of Brooklyn can be a replicable model, and we started creating the infrastructure to make the JMC sustainable and provide the training and resources to create a national network of JMCs. This is exciting and would not be possible without the dedication, enthusiasm, practice, and support of many, many people who believe in the transformative nature of meditation and recognize the necessity of spiritual community that meets people where they are.

I’ve been to many Buddhist meditation teachings and retreats and very often someone will bring out a bowl or bag of raisins and everyone practices an eating meditation with the raisin. Why always raisins? They’re small, easily portable, don’t go bad, etc. But there’s also this raisin-precedent. All of these teachers learned this practice with raisins, so they continue using raisins. I’m kind of tired of raisins, personally. Practicing over beer in a bar in Brooklyn is not only awesome alliteration, it reminds me that we can take these same lessons of attentiveness, patience, observance, slowing down, and fully experiencing our present moment in any situation.

Meditation is a practice of retraining your brain, teaching yourself to see what you really are and giving you the space to plug back in to your source. For many people, “religious experiences” don’t always happen in a religious space or context, they happen in the presence of love, brilliance, genius, intensity, wonder, and I love the idea of setting ourselves up for them in the least likely of places. Even on a rainy night in Brooklyn at a local bar with a bunch of friends.

Let’s not wait a year to do this again.

Tu B’Shvat, the 15th of the month of Shvat, is the “New Year of the Trees,” kind of like the Jewish version of Earth Day… only with a whole bunch of mysticism. On Saturday night, we had a JMC/Brooklyn Jews Taste of Tu B’Shvat Seder in Brooklyn. It was a seder based on divine sustainability and mindfulness. We went through the Kabbalists’ Four Worlds, the four seasons, drank wine, ate fruit and nuts (and dinner), and ended with a seriously beautiful havdalah ceremony.

As we moved higher and higher and up through to the third world, Beriah, creation, we had already eaten fruit that is inedible on the outside and soft on the inside, fruit that is soft on the outside and inedible on the inside, and drank pure white wine and a glass of white with some red. In the third world, we drank a half and half mixture of red and white wine and ate fruit that is wholly edible. This world of creation is also the world of the mind. In this world there is an understanding of divine connection, the oneness of creation. Here’s the meditation that we did for the world of Beriah:

Start by connecting to your breath in this moment. Close your eyes or soften your gaze and breathe deeply. Inhale and exhale. Deepening your inhale and extending your exhale. Paying attention to your full cycle of breath. As you breathe in, remind yourself that your inhale is also the exhale of every green, living plant on earth. Your exhale is also the inhale of trees and plants. Our cycle of breath is part of a larger cycle of breath, of life. As we go through this short meditation, keep bringing yourself back to your breath and the breath of the world.

Thinking about the unpronounceable name of God, in the Torah, yud hay vav hay. Four letters, no vowels, and we really have no idea how to pronounce it. One of my favorite teachings is that if we transliterate these letters into English (but using an ancient pronunciation for the letter vav), it would be YHWH. YHWH, this combination of letters could be said as a breath: YH for the inhale; WH for the exhale. Every breath a reminder of our connection to all living things on earth. Every breath a blessing. Every breath a prayer of awe.

“Then we would not only eat, we would taste, we would not only hear, we would listen, we would not only be awake, but be aware, we would not only be standing, but be upstanding, then we would not only be released from prison, we would be free: Free to say our thanks, free to feel our love, free to feel our pain, free to struggle, free to submit, and free to inspire the breath of life infusing all matter, all energy in all time and space. When that breath is our breath, then every breath will speak the secret holy name.” (Rabbi David Cooper)

Let us use our breath to connect to the oneness of our world, to remind ourselves that isn’t any separation, to live fully and wholly, blessing the world and letting the world bless us.

We lit candles on the chanukiah tonight and watched them during our sit. It was incredibly lovely, especially watching them each burn out, one by one, returning us to darkness. I’ve been thinking so much about bringing light into dark places, and yesterday during the practice day with Rabbi Jeff Roth, he brought up something that shifted my thinking: we don’t just light candles to bring light to the darkest time of year; we are also reminding ourselves that we’re in constant motion, things will change, dark leads to light and light to dark, and there’s some comfort in that.

I think the scariest part of feeling lost, anxious, depressed, sad, is that we fear that we’ll feel that way forever. Of course, we know, rationally, that this isn’t going to happen, but in those dark moments, it’s hard to see the light or even the possibility of light. So we light candles and remember our ability to create light, joy, peace, love, and also that darkness precedes light and light goes to dark and back again.

We learn in the Chanukah story that even the holiest place, the Temple, could be desecrated, that the eternal light can go out. How heartbreaking that must have been for the people of that time. And, if that’s possible, what are the chances that our fragile, human hearts could ever stay whole and holy for our whole lives? Just like the Maccabees rededicated the Temple and searched through the rubble for light, I’m using this holiday of Chanukah (dedication) to excavate my own heart and life, rededicating myself to creating within my heart a dwelling place for holiness.

May our practice be a source of light, as we search through our own rubble and rededicate ourselves, and may our practice also light us from within and allow us to radiate outwards, during the darkest time of the year and always, bringing light and peace to ourselves and the entire world

Tonight (7pm, meet us on the Manhattan side of the Bridge) we’re walking, mindfully and meditatively, across the Brooklyn Bridge with the Brooklyn Zen Center. The Brooklyn Bridge, iconic and beautiful and fun to walk across, is sort of a perfect physical metaphor. Bridging traditions, connecting mindfulness to daily life, and if you haven’t been outside today, it’s pretty much the perfect autumn afternoon.

There’s something profound about walking meditation- really feeling the sensation of walking and breathing and paying attention to each step and sort of expanding your awareness as you walk to not just your own steps and breath and thoughts but everything around you. John Muir said, “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown: for going out, I found, was really going in.” There are different types and levels of silence and stillness. Sitting in meditation is one way to connect with our breath and divinity. Just as chanting, prayer, creating art, dancing offer different ways and forms to connect, walking is a profound practice. Thinking about walking immediately calls to my mind the Abraham Joshua Heschel teaching: when asked why he marched in Selma instead of staying in New York and teaching and praying, Heschel replied “when I march in Selma, my feet are praying.” Tonight we’re not going on a protest march, we’re not even marching. We’re simply walking together, with community members, friends, and people we haven’t met yet. We’re taking a little bit of time, some of our daily commute from work to home, and transforming it into a spiritual practice. By paying attention as we walk, we come together to the present moment, where regrets and anxiety don’t have a place, where we can practice the peacefulness and joy that we want to create in the world. This walking meditation across the Brooklyn Bridge is a reminder to ourselves that we can always walk with mindfulness, we always have access to peace and the present tense, we just have to step into it.

There’s a song that I was recently reminded of that is a standard Jewish camp song, and I never knew what it meant. The song is simple. It starts with “kol ha’olam kulo, gesher tsar me’od, gesher tsar me’od, gesher tsar me’od.” The translation is “the whole world, is a very narrow bridge, a very narrow bridge, a very narrow bridge.” The song ends with “veha’ikar, lo lefached klal (and the main thing to remember is to not be afraid at all).” The song is attributed to Rebbe Nachman of Breslov and stems from his teachings that life is a very narrow bridge. It’s hard to navigate through this world, feeling danger on all sides and a deep precariousness in everything we do. The bright side is that from this bridge, this life, we have the most amazing views, and also, it’s the only way to get somewhere.

I love that the song doesn’t say “don’t be afraid.” Instead we sing that the most important thing is the remember not to be afraid. It’s softer, more doable; the instruction lets not being afraid become a practice instead of a destination. A lot like walking, don’t you think? Tonight, as we walk over the Bridge, we know where we’re going to end up, geographically. That’s not the point. It doesn’t matter, really, where we’re going or where we think we’re going. Wherever we’re supposed to be, we’ll end up there somehow. Let’s, instead of being afraid and worrying about our destinations, allow ourselves to pay attention to the walk itself. We might as well enjoy the journey- there’s no other way across.

First Lesson by Philip Booth

Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s-float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

As the daughter of a Rabbi, I’m always surprised when I read something completely new – or that I never noticed before – in the  Torah. I’ve been through YEARS of Hebrew school, heard hundreds of sermons, sat through countless Torah services and study sessions, you would think I would get the basic story by this point – even if it would take lifetimes to get all the meanings/interpretations, etc.

Well, this week, while reading this week’s Torah portion in my new copy of Everett Fox’s  Five Books of Moses (which I LOVE), I read the following of Moses’s words to the Jewish people for the very first time: “So circumcise the foreskin of your heart – your neck you are not to keep hard anymore.” Deuteronomy 10:16.

!!!

I immediately read this part over. What evocative language!

Fox drops a note to explain that “circumcising” the foreskin of the heart means to “peel away the ‘thick’ part” to get closer to God. Earlier he notes that Moses keeps telling the Jewish people they have a “hard neck” because they are so stubborn, like a donkey that won’t turn its head.

So this is the situation. We are standing as a people, about to enter the new land. We have thick “foreskins” around our hearts. We are stubborn and scared. But Moses (and God) tells us to go forth anyway, and try to open our hearts and relax our necks. We are loved. We have everything we need within us. We can do it.

Sounds like the perfect analogy to the start of our weekly sitting practice at the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn! Beginning this Monday, August 10th, at 8:00pm, we will come together as a community and open ourselves up to our breath, to God/the universe, to ourselves.  Like all other important journeys, it won’t always be an easy road, but I think we will end up in a place with more wisdom, more healing, and more joy – a land of milk and honey.

So if you live in New York, please mark your calendar! Let’s explore together the resistance we hold against change and the powerful hearts we keep so carefully protected.