This week’s parsha (Torah chapter) is from the first book of the Torah, Genesis or Bereishit which is usually translated as, “In the Beginning.” It involves the famous story of Noah’s Ark. The story says that Noah was the only righteous man in a corrupted world. He is told by G-d to make an ark because there will be a flood that is going to destroy everything on earth except Noah and his family. Noah is then commanded to bring two members of each animal species (a male and female) into the ark.

After 365 days, a year of living on the ark, the water subsides and Noah is commanded to go onto dry land, G-d establishes a covenant with every living creature that there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth. A sign was sent to symbolize this covenant: “and it shall come to pass, when a cloud is brought over the earth…the rainbow shall be in the cloud.”

I’d like to take a moment to reflect on that idea, because there is a very special message here that resonated for me: the power of finding the beauty within the storm. Sometimes you may feel like the world as you know it is ending, or everything that you have been working towards is suddenly destroyed right before your eyes. For example, a career path or a personal relationship that you’ve been working towards suddenly crashes and burns. But instead of allowing that destruction to overcome you, the message here is to find the beauty within the storm. Meaning to use the storm as a real opportunity to check in with yourself and maybe find new direction.

I know for me, I often feel devastated when things don’t go my way. The example that comes up for me is when all of my efforts towards living and surfing in LA while studying to become an attorney were destroyed after I failed the California bar exam. However, after being devastated, I realized that it really wasn’t the direction I wanted to be going in, and I was free to pursue something else that I was passionate about like teaching yoga.

The Hebrew word for ark is tevah, also means “word.”  According to the Baal Shem Tov, G-d’s commandment to Noah to build and enter the ark can also be interpreted as “enter within the words of prayer and Torah study. Here you will find a sanctuary of wisdom, meaning and holiness amidst the raging floodwaters of life.”

Another rabbi describes the flood as a cleansing process where the waters spiritually cleanse the waste that tends to accumulate throughout our life’s endeavors. Here with the flood, the world received a spiritual cleansing or redirection. In all adversity there is both opportunity and positivity. It may not always be apparent – even when we look for it. But it is there.

Every moment is a doorway for entry; a chance to let go of things that are no longer serving us, to release stagnant energy, to stop and just breathe. When we find ourselves confused by feelings or overwhelmed by a “flood” of negative thoughts, perhaps we can shift our perspective and instead use the frustration or storminess as an opportunity to “enter our own ark” and let the turbulent waters of everyday life settle so that we can see with more clarity and feel calmer moving forward.

This is what the practice of meditation is all about for me – creating a sacred space to just feel whatever it is I am feeling without any judgment or criticism. Noticing what the quality of my breath is, not trying so hard to fight it or change it all the time but just observe the breath, listen to the flow of the breath – dive into that ocean that exists inside of us and practice being fully present in the moment. It is such a gift to give yourself the space to just be and breathe into whatever it is that you are feeling in the moment and know that it is okay.

This week, in honor of the story of Noah, take some time to explore what it might mean to you to “enter your ark.” What is standing in your way of creating that space for yourself? What do you need to make it happen?

September 11, 2011

Ten years ago today I was a college student and lived in the East Village. After the first plane hit the World Trade Center, a friend called and told me to look outside. Then my TV and phone lines went out. Running to school, the only place I thought felt safe, I heard people in their apartments and cars screaming. Another plane hit the second tower. Then the towers started falling. I spent the day talking with NYPD who set up a headquarters in our building. I waited for hours to use a payphone to call my parents, and I sat, under that clear blue sky, with friends, watching what felt like thousands of people covered in white dust running uptown.

I remember thinking that this must be what it feels like to be at war— to have your city bombed and to feel completely powerless and scared. I felt connected to everyone who has experienced war, knowing that my experience, although scary, was nothing compared to what most people have been through. I thought, this is what fear feels like.

A few months ago, my father died. It was sudden. It’s been painful. Before this, I had never experienced grief in such an intense way. I was shocked by the physicality.  My eyes stung and my throat hurt and my blood felt watery. My lungs didn’t seem to be working well, and breathing was a serious effort. I felt like my body shut down. My heart hurt. It still hurts. And that’s just the physical. Emotionally, I felt like a sad zombie. I wasn’t sleeping. I was constantly bursting into tears. At some point, I was reminded that people die at every moment, and their loved ones feel just like this. I thought this is what it feels like to mourn.

Ten years later, we are commemorating September 11^th in New York City. Where I lived at the time, all of the bus shelters, street lamp poles, any wall space was covered with signs of missing people. I remember for months, staring at those signs–  so many different faces of every color, age, background, all missing, most dead.  When I thought about our losses on September 11^th, I thought about those pictures. I felt sadness for all of those lost lives. This year, I’m thinking about them and all of their loved ones who have felt what I’ve been feeling in mourning and in grief. If this is what grieving feels like, I wonder how the world continues to turn, how anything gets done. If millions of people all over the world are going through this same, involuntary process of grief, how is it possible that we continue to make wars, consciously killing, if anyone with any power has ever felt like this?

After my father died, I was struck with this sticky, painful grief, but I was also faced with a caring and kindness and love that I didn’t realize was possible. And that made me remember the coming together of communities and the love that New Yorkers and the entire world extended to each other after September 11^th.  I remember visiting St. Paul’s church downtown where people came each day to offer rescue and recovery workers food and supplies. The pews were used as beds and the walls were covered with children’s art. Musicians came each day to play music. It was beautiful. And this is what it feels like to love and be loved. This is what it feels like to connect and care.

It’s in my meditation practice that I cultivate my own capacity to hold both love and fear. Sitting with both, holding both, is impossible and necessary, and this is what it feels like to be human, to be alive. Today at By Love Alone: A Day of Meditation on the 10th Anniversary of the World Trade Center Attacks, at the Shambhala Meditation Center of NYC, I offered the chesed, lovingkindness, practice where we blessed our loved ones, all those affected directly and indirectly by the attacks of September 11^th, those who we may know or not know who are difficult for us to love, ourselves, and the entire world with peace (shalom), joy (simcha), lovingkindness (chesed), and compassion (rachamim).

If you’re reading this, please take a moment to do this practice or at least just the last part: breathing in, you can say in your mind or out loud “May we be blessed,” and with an exhale, “with peace.” Breathing in: “May we be blessed,” and breathing out, “with joy.” “May we be blessed… with loving kindness.” “May we be blessed… with compassion.” It’s my hope that through this blessing practice we can remind ourselves that this is what it feels like to love. This is what it feels like to know peace.

May our practice of sitting with love and kindness let us know peace. May this peace not stay only with us, but radiate out in to the world through our thoughts and words and actions, and may we be of blessing. May everyone know peace.

This week’s Torah portion, Sh’mini, begins on the eighth day of the consecration of
the tabernacle (or mishkan) which is the traveling dwelling place for God’s presence.
Moses summons Aaron, his sons, and the elders of Israel and instructs them on the varied
offerings they will be bringing before God with the hope of God revealing him/herself.
Once the sacrifices were complete to the precise order of God, the people were then
bestowed with the sight of “God’s glory.” After the offering, God tells Moses and Aaron
to inform the children of Israel of the laws of kashrut or being kosher. The requirements
for edible mammals include having split hooves and being able to chew their own cud.
Animals who have just one of the two requirements are deemed non-kosher such as
the pig, which is clearly the one that gets the most non-kosher attention in the Jewish
community. The pig is also the only one indicated in the torah who has the split hooves
but does not chew its own cud. From the outside the pig can pass as a seemingly kosher
animal; however, its inner process does not match what is visible to the world. This
concept reminds me of discussions had around Purim and the concept of going through
life wearing masks or presenting a face to the world that may not match our own inner
being.

Perhaps you had a day at work that required you to put on a persona that you do not feel
matches who you really are. Or maybe you had to schmooze with people that required
a lot of external focus and you have yet to check in with yourself and your breath today.
Wherever you are, I invite you to center yourself by bringing your attention back to
the very thing that sustains you; your breath. For the first sit I would like to offer the
kavannah, or intention, of using your breath as a vehicle to leave the masks aside and
draw your attention to your inner self.

The parsha goes on to talk about the laws of ritual purity which include the purifying
power of the mikvah or pool of water. Rabbi David Cooper says in his book God is
a Verb, “Mastery in purity comes through contemplation.” Rabbi Cooper goes on
to describe the goal of purity within spiritual or contemplative practice as being “to
minimize or eliminate thoughts that cause inner conflict.”

Reduction in inner conflict has been one of the greatest benefits I have found for myself
within my own meditation practice. Friends of mine will often hear me talk about making
a big decision and say “I need to meditate on it”. Meditation has been a source of quiet
and calm in my own thinking and has helped purify my opinions, feelings and desires and
weed out external factors that can muddle my decision-making ability. There are many
factors we take into account when making decisions or determining our own feelings,
some of which are largely unimportant to the matter at hand. We often get swept away in
the “coulds”, “shoulds” and “woulds” of our mind’s dialogue which often contributes to
our impurity of thought thus bringing us distress.

I would like to invite you to take a step in bringing this “purity” to your own practice.

Bring your attention to your breath, and when your mind inevitably wanders, observe
your thoughts or feelings (however “pure” or “unpure”) without judging them. Gently
bring your attention back to your breath. In the first sit, I offered the intention of
using the breath to tune in to your inner self. In this next sit try and let the “coulds”
and “shoulds” be replaced with the practice of returning to the breath so as to breathe
purity into your inner process.

Parsha Re’eh – ראה – Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

This week’s parsha, Re’eh, begins with the line “See (re’eh), I place before you today a blessing and a curse.” Basically, Moses is offering the Israelites two options: follow the rules and be blessed; abandon God and be cursed. Moses instructs the people on the laws of the Temple, Kashrut, tithing, the Sabbatical year, and the three pilgrim festivals of Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot.

I love the idea of holding blessings and curses together. There’s a not so subtle directive that in order to discern between the two and choose a direction, we have to truly see what is placed before us. Through meditation we allow ourselves to create space in our lives to check in with our mind and heart. Sitting with and holding our deepest truths, fears, desires, we often find that it’s complicated. Blessings and curses, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant- the longer we sit with something, the more our judgments and preconceptions shift and blend. We all know of someone who got exactly what they wished for and they still weren’t happy. Many times, we sit with physical pain and find that it’s a gateway to insight.

For most of my childhood, I took painting classes. One of the most important lessons was that if you were going to paint an apple (for example), you have to erase the idea of an apple from your brain and simply paint what you see. Painting an apple based on an established or even subconscious image of what an apple is supposed to look like will hold back your creative process and your resulting work won’t be very good. The art teachers who impacted me the most taught me to draw the space between objects, paint things upside down, and train my brain to see things as they are and not how I remember them or want them to be. When reading this week’s parsha, which starts with the instruction to “see,” these lessons came immediately to mind.

Meditation practice is a way to retrain our minds to see our thoughts, our lives, our histories, as they really are. Following Moshe’s instruction to see before us a blessing and a curse, we see that it’s rarely either/or and often both at the same time. We can mindfully use our Jewish practices, that Moses expounds upon in Re’eh, to know that our seeing and our understanding allows us to find our own path to blessings. As we sit in meditation, we may also find that the path itself is blessed.

A quick kavanah, intention, to guide practice: As you sit, follow your breath. Whenever you find that your mind has wandered, gently return to the present moment. Check in with your breath, your posture, and see what has drawn your attention from your intended focus. Allow yourself to see what you identify as a blessing and a curse and whether these designations shift as you watch them. Remind yourself that this is your task: to see before you blessings and curses and to learn to see them clearly.

This afternoon, I met up with a friend at the Museum of Modern Art. The main attraction right now is the Marina Abramović retrospective, “The Artist Is Present.” The piece that everyone is lined up to watch and/or participate in is on the second floor, with big lights, and a simple table and two chairs. The artist sits in one chair and museum-goers take turns sitting silently across from her for however long they want. The two just gaze at each other. Looking, breathing, sitting.

When we approached the exhibit, my friend, a long-time meditator, asked aloud whether Abramović was actually looking at the person sitting across from her or just sort of glazed over and staring out into a void. We stepped closer and decided that she is really looking into the eyes of the person across from her, that she’s not zoned out. It feels serious.

The woman sitting across from her when we showed up seemed to have been there for a while. That could mean 20 minutes or 2 hours; I have no idea. We watched as they watched each other. Abramović in a long red dress, and this woman in a short purple dress. I wondered what Abramović is thinking. Is she thinking? Imagining that person’s life story? Studying their face? Just being with them? Art museums are good places for religious experiences, and that’s what this looked like. An individual and collective awakening. Just looking at each other. Being seen and seeing.

After the woman in purple got up and walked out of the exhibit, my friend went over to ask about the experience. “What was it like?” she said, and the woman in purple took a deep breath and asked “Do you have a meditation practice?” My friend said yes, she does, and the woman said “Then you can imagine that I need to sit down for a few minutes.” We walked away, gave her some space, and then looked over to Abramović, who was also taking some space. In between each participant, she closes her eyes, lowers her head, and take a few seconds to breathe.

I’m so curious about her process, which enables her to do this work. Sometimes, when I am having difficulty communicating with someone, I shift my focus away from their actual words and towards their breathing- matching their inhalation with my own and exhaling when they do. I don’t know how to explain or express it, but there is something amazing in that experience. I kept wondering if she does this with each person.

I read a few reviews of the exhibit, and one critic wrote about how a participant burst into tears at one point (I’m sure it’s happened more than once). Allowing ourselves to just sit and breathe, especially with another person, is an incredibly vulnerable act, and we rarely give ourselves that kind of freedom. I wonder if practicing meditation allows us to access that space, so that we can feel more comfortable and safe in the world.

Have you seen the exhibit? I’d love to hear others’ thoughts (tell us in the comments!).

Last night a room full of seventh graders sat silently, followed their breath, contemplated the Sh’ma, practiced listening, and asked lots of insightful and deep questions. Usually these classes are small- five to ten students, but last night the entire 7th grade class decided they wanted to learn Jewish meditation. I tried to get half of them to do something else, but they were adamant, and I told them that if they wanted to stay, they had to take out their cell phones, turn them off, and put them in the front of the room, and each person had to agree that they were going to take this class seriously, be respectful to each other, and participate fully. Everyone agreed. Everyone sat down. Not everyone really practiced meditation, but that’s okay if two out of forty kids didn’t play along, as long as the few resisters didn’t disrupt anyone else, they were welcome to stay.

Spending a lot of time teaching this age group (at one workshop a few weeks ago, one of the 12 year old girls told me that she doesn’t even know what to call herself, whether she’s a “tween” or a “pre-teen” or a kid or what, and how it’s just confusing) has taught me a lot about fear and vulnerability. I realized last night that the kids who had the most trouble staying with their breath or keeping still had the most fear. One boy raised his hand and asked, “what if it’s too difficult for me to keep my eyes closed? If I hear a sound or just feel uncomfortable, I want to open my eyes. It’s kind of scary to not open your eyes.”

We spent some time, as a group, talking about this idea. The thing is, it IS scary to sit with your eyes closed in a group. Most adults don’t even think about it, but in seventh grade, I think we’re probably at our most judgmental, our most critical about ourselves and others. It’s at this exact moment where I think meditation and inclusive spirituality and community is the most important. I was very strict when we all sat down- taking away the phones, telling them that if anyone was disruptive I would ask them to leave and there would be no conversation about it, telling them to be silent, sit so that they would not be touching the person next to them, and I explained that this was all in an effort to protect the students who were serious about practicing meditation. Limiting distractions and interactions, at least during this one hour period, gave the kids a space to relax, close their eyes, breathe, and notice those judgments and thoughts and critical voices, observe them, and let them go.

One of the regular teachers commented that they’ve never seen this group of rowdy, always loud, sometimes obnoxious group of kids so quiet, calm, and sharing feelings, and I was shocked too. It seems like they just needed a space to step into themselves and community where they could sit down, rest, and share their thoughts about listening, compassion, prayer.

Rabbi Alan Lew used to talk about how in the Mishnah, it says that the ancient pious ones sat for an hour before prayer every day. This sort of preparatory time was essential to direct their minds toward God, to be ready to pray. We talked about this idea in the class last night. One of the girls said after doing a few different meditation practices, “I don’t know if I was just tired before, but now I feel different- I feel more awake and at the same time more calm.” And I think that’s probably the point. We sit upright, but comfortable, uplifted. We calm our minds, but wake up. Our discussion last night included the idea that being receptive, listening to ourselves and each other and the world, can be scary. Using our meditation practice to practice sitting with that fear, to being aware of our vulnerability, is a way to shift our reactions to the fear itself. This experience started when I told them to turn their phones off and leave them in the front of the room, pure fear. And for me, realizing that I was completely overwhelmed and scared to teach such a large group of seventh graders how to meditate was a moment of fear.

By the end of the class, I hope that everyone was able to see what it felt like to feel that fully, to place that sensation and just sit with it, letting it come and go, and hopefully remembering that wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, this practice is always possible, always accessible, and, I think, always helpful.

I remember when I first started learning about mindfulness and realizing that the Jewish practice of blessing is basically a framework for mindfulness in our every day lives. We are tasked with paying attention to each thing we do, blessing and sanctifying and making the mundane holy. By elevating our experiences, we shift our awareness, stop, fill up with gratitude, and every action is somehow different, special, better.

There are blessings to accompany everything you do from the moment you open your eyes. Waking, getting out of bed, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, eating, sleeping. I was at a salon about prayer last night and someone said “It’s not like you say a blessing for each breath. That would be impossible!” So, I’ve been thinking about that. I think a lot about the idea the God’s name is a breath (more about that here). If each breath is invoking the name of God, each breath is a blessing, then maybe we don’t have to do anything. The blessing is already built in. Sometimes during meditation I remind myself to pay attention to what it feels like to breathe. To remember that this is what it feels like to be alive.

On Monday night, the JMC’s first sit in our new home at 505 Carroll Street, our circle of meditators went around and said blessings for this transition into a new space and a growing community. I read a prayer that I had copied into my journal. I’m not sure who wrote it, but it was sung by Jhos Singer at Chochmat HaLev with the Yivarechecha, the Priestly Blessing:

May God bless and keep you, friend, and shine a light upon you.
And may the garden of the life you tend, bring forth graciousness and peace.
The road is long, and the journey, it can be quite hard,
And no one’s strong enough to travel it alone.
May you be a blessing and be blessed, by everyone who knows you.
And may you always do your best to serve your God with love.

I think I love this because of the line “May you be a blessing and be blessed.” It reminds me that the blessing practice, mindfulness, itself is a gift. That the act of blessing, of invoking holiness in our actions blesses us. When we say the blessings in the siddur, when we say the motzi or the blessing over the wine, we are blessing God. Baruch atah, Bless You. Every time we say a blessing we are also coming into relationship with divinity, with our breath, with life, which opens us up in some small way. It reminds me of the story of the Kotzker Rebbe. When asked where God is, he is said to have answered “God is wherever we let God in.” I think it can be difficult to “let God in” (whatever that may mean) sometimes, so any opportunity to open, make space, and feel that spaciousness, is a blessing.

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’ve blogged and talked a lot about why we meditate, but there’s one aspect of practice that hasn’t gotten a lot of air time. This past week I was on a 5-day silent retreat with Sylvia Boorstein and Sheila Peltz Weinberg- amazing teachers, deep insights, and a truly wonderful group of people to sit with (mostly rabbis).

Whenever I teach beginners I usually say that anxiety lives in the future, where we are worrying about what hasn’t happened yet, what could happen, our imagined stories; depression lives in the past, where we relive moments and memories, watch our patterns, and feel regret and hopelessness. One of the beauties of meditation is that it places us firmly in the present, where there is no space for depression or anxiety, where the past and future may be observed, but we don’t dwell in either, we stay in the present.

One of the teachings during the retreat was all about why we practice meditation and mindfulness. All of the science was glossed over- yes, it decreases stress, boosts the immune system, but the practice also changes the habits of the mind, puts us more in touch with ourselves, our bodies, and each other, our perspectives widen, and we gain different levels of insight. Practicing mindfulness deepens our sense of composure and relaxation and allows us to not get caught in distraction, indifference, and feeling overwhelmed. I was reminded during this retreat of the pure pleasure of sitting and being present.

Instead of distracting the mind or putting aside our emotions, sitting quietly and simply breathing, watching our mind and body, is like a brain vacation, or “staycation,” really. There is something so beautiful about not running to or from the next thought, not grabbing at the next breath, but just waiting for it to come to you on its own accord. Feeling breathed, by the world, sitting back, not doing anything, and knowing in your heart that you’re doing the best you can, and that things really couldn’t possibly be better (or they would).