Part 7 (2/2)

Moshe Waldoks chanted the barkhu barkhu, the traditional call to prayer. He explained that in ancient Jerusalem, the priests would stand on the parapets of the Temple and call the barkhu barkhu down to the crowd gathered below, to proclaim the evening sacrifice. ”Blessed are you, G.o.d the most blessed.” The people would answer back, ”Blessed is the Lord for ever and ever.” Moshe added, ”But the replacement of sacrifice by prayer has been for many Jews considered an improvement.” Karma Gelek translated and the monks laughed. down to the crowd gathered below, to proclaim the evening sacrifice. ”Blessed are you, G.o.d the most blessed.” The people would answer back, ”Blessed is the Lord for ever and ever.” Moshe added, ”But the replacement of sacrifice by prayer has been for many Jews considered an improvement.” Karma Gelek translated and the monks laughed.

As darkness fell, Moshe read the prayers by flashlight. In the chilly mountain air, some of us retrieved blankets from the cottage and wrapped them over the bare arms of the elderly lamas. They were fascinated as Moshe, our prayer leader, threw his tallis tallis over his head during the silent meditation, rocking gently side to side. over his head during the silent meditation, rocking gently side to side.

As the service concluded, we greeted the Tibetans one by one with ”Shabbat shalom.” Very quickly they learned to reply back with the same words. Then, spontaneously, they recited their own dedication prayer, The Word of Truth, ”composed,” Laktor told us, ”by His Holiness the Dalai Lama for regaining Tibetan freedom.” Zalman Schachter stood with his palms pressed together Tibetan style, a broad smile on his face.

He was noticing that just as the Jewish group had their interpersonal dances so did the Tibetans. ”You could almost get the sense of one person saying, 'I told you so,' and the other one saying, 'No, it doesn't count.' They also have some arguments about, Is there truth in other ways?”

We walked up to the porch for the candle lighting, lamas and Jews alternating, Jewish Buddhists and Buddhist Jews, making a circle around the table. Blu Greenberg, in her gray scarf, recited the blessing over the Shabbas candles and Moshe chanted kiddush over a cup of grape juice. Buddhist monks don't drink alcohol. When we recited shehekheyanu shehekheyanu, Moshe explained it ”was a special prayer because this is the first time we've ever celebrated Shabbat like this in Dharamsala.” The monks raised their cups and added another word to their quickly growing Hebrew vocabulary, ”l'chaim.”

Instead of challah, Blu Greenberg used matzahs. The bread of affliction expressed solidarity with the Tibetans in their exile-and was the closest we would get to a Buddhist seder.

We scattered through Kashmir Cottage to eat. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet more informally with these men who collectively represented the exiled wisdom of Tibet.

I found myself sharing bread and wine-a meal-but also wisdom, with Geshe Sonam Rinchen and his student Ruth Sonam, a longtime translator at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

Geshe Sonam was in his early sixties, tall and rather handsome. When he leaned toward Ruth there seemed to be a special communication between them, and as Ruth translated, they even looked a little like father and daughter.

I asked Geshe Sonam a question that had already come up several times in the Jewish group. Is it possible to practice Buddhism and Judaism together?

He thought so. He found many things that ”would harmonize very well. For example, the practice of generosity and ethical discipline.” There were differences in philosophical view, ”but when it comes to practice, there's so much common ground.” He thought though that in some cases ”we use similar terminology, like love and compa.s.sion, but we mean something different. When we understand the deeper meaning clearly, then we will find much common ground.”

I turned to specifics. What was the Buddhist explanation of the Holocaust?

He answered, that ”from the point of view of the Buddhists, the Holocaust itself is a result of past karma. Those people were not necessarily Jews in their past lives when they created the actions that they reaped in that form. But when your karma ripens there is nothing that can protect you.”

A young Israeli visitor joined in and asked if the geshe geshe viewed the Holocaust as a national karma, like the exile from Tibet. viewed the Holocaust as a national karma, like the exile from Tibet.

”This is a common karma. If you purify actions before their ripening, before their fruition occurs, then one doesn't have to experience the results. On the other hand, once the results have ripened to manifest, then it's too late, there's nothing that can extenuate, you have to experience them, that's the only way to get rid of that negative momentum.”

I was taken aback by the geshe geshe's explanation of the Holocaust, because it sounded like blaming the victim. The issue would come up again in my conversations with Jewish Buddhists. It bundled several points of contrast between the two religions. How does one respond to evil? What is essential for survival of a people? What is the meaning of terrible group suffering?

Exile was another karma both peoples shared. So I was touched when I overheard Zalman's midrash on the week's Torah portion.

”Now the Lord said unto Abram, Lekh Lekha Lekh Lekha-remove yourself out of your country, your birthplace, and your father's house to the land which I will guide you.” After Zalman read, Ruth Sonam translated for the Tibetans.

”So the commentators asked a question. The order doesn't seem to be right: country, birthplace, father's house. The order should be go out from your father's house, from your birthplace, and then go out from your country.

”So you have the question. So when we study this, we go, Woo.” He clapped his hand like the debating monks, which the geshes geshes enjoyed very much. enjoyed very much.

”I give you now the short answer, coming from one of the teachers of our tradition. The word 'from your country' also means from your earth-bondedness, from your involvement in the earth. So the first thing we have to clean up is that which we got from our regular earth life, that is the body.

”And since people are made because the father and mother beget them, in the act of begetting they bring something into life, and that is the second stage of purification they have to deal with. So that is how they interpret birthplace.

”The father also means desire. So the house of your father can mean, the source of your desire. So it says, after you've cleaned up your earthness, and your birthness, you can go to clean up the source of your desire. Then you come to the golden land, the promised land which G.o.d shows you.”

It was great to hear Zalman teaching this particular midrash to these Tibetan holy men. The idea of cleaning up the source of your desire sounded like the Buddha's second n.o.ble truth, that the cause of suffering is desire. At the opening of the All Himalayan Conference, the Dalai Lama suggested finding new ideas in Buddhism, by interpreting ”words not fitting with reality.” Zalman was demonstrating the Jewish method. Through the midrash, Abram's leaving his homeland became a paradigm for every spiritual journey. This was a deep thing he and the Tibetans had in common, this Lekh Lekha Lekh Lekha, this ”going forth.” Their task was the same: to transform exile from a physical to a spiritual journey.

Perhaps, as the Dalai Lama had suggested to Nathan Katz, ”some such exchanges between Buddhists and Jews had taken place” in the ancient world. Now they were taking place before my eyes.

And there were remarkable similarities in the theology of exile. Nathan Katz told me once about a time he was staying in the Drepung monastery in southern India. ”It's out of the way and they don't have so many foreigners as in Dharamsala. A monk said to me spontaneously-he didn't know I was Jewish-'We have the same idea as the Jews had. They had all this exile, but they know G.o.d was leading them into exile, and we know that because of this exile the whole world is learning dharma from us. If it weren't for what the Chinese did to us, we wouldn't be spreading dharma, which is more important than our suffering.'”

The geshe geshes and Zalman got down to a serious exchange over techniques of meditation and visualization. Rabbi Schachter was interested in the phenomenology of the experience. He asked them, ”What happens in vipa.s.sana vipa.s.sana [insight meditation]? Should you let the mind go along with the dream that it gets into or should you let go of the idea?” They told him, ”The answer is, in [insight meditation]? Should you let the mind go along with the dream that it gets into or should you let go of the idea?” They told him, ”The answer is, in vipa.s.sana vipa.s.sana, gently bring the mind back to the subject, which is the mindless s.p.a.ce....”

Vipa.s.sana is a term that belongs, strictly speaking, to Theravadan Buddhism, which is the older form of Buddhism practiced princ.i.p.ally today in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Burma. is a term that belongs, strictly speaking, to Theravadan Buddhism, which is the older form of Buddhism practiced princ.i.p.ally today in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Burma. Vipa.s.sana Vipa.s.sana is an advanced form of meditation that involves becoming aware of the processes of the mind through careful observation. It is also known as is an advanced form of meditation that involves becoming aware of the processes of the mind through careful observation. It is also known as insight meditation insight meditation.

Later Zalman told me, ”We got into a discussion of sitting, and watching the breath, and seeing the bodhisattva looking at you, and I raised the question, does the bodhisattva come off the yantra yantra [the image], does he really breathe and look at you, do you make that kind of a mind form, or is he more like an icon? And he said, no he's living, breathing, he's really there.” [the image], does he really breathe and look at you, do you make that kind of a mind form, or is he more like an icon? And he said, no he's living, breathing, he's really there.”

So Zalman shared with them a visualization practice from the Hasidic tradition, as taught by Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk.

He explained that you visualize ”a great and awesome fire burning in front of you,” and you, for the sake of sanctifying the name of G.o.d, ”overcome your lower nature and throw yourself into the fire as a martyr.”

As a young man Zalman had been trained in this visualization to the point that ”there's this person staring at you, looking at you, scrutinizing your behavior and each time shouting out at you. You hear the voice. They're building in the voice of the rebbe....”

The geshe geshes described their own training, the rote learning, the twenty years of sutra reading, the one hundred thousand prostrations, as Zalman put it, ”all kinds of austerities people have to do to get into it.” For instance, the young monks at the Inst.i.tute of Dialectics spend five to ten hours a day for twenty years memorizing, studying, and debating basic Buddhist texts.

Zalman told them in response, ”First of all, I'm the last of the Mohicans from our end. I still have some memories from before the Holocaust of what spirituality was about and you guys are the last from yours. And you're looking ahead, you're getting old, so the urgency to hand over what you have received, without change, to make sure it is authentically absorbed, I can understand in full.

”But the other side is it still takes too long. Because our technology outstrips our spiritual and moral development, we need to hurry it up. We can't take twenty years to do the sutras. We have to break it out for people.” So Zalman, with characteristic chutzpah, suggested that his fellow teachers do some research and development by exploring the relations.h.i.+p of their practices to contemporary thought, especially to transpersonal psychology and planetary consciousness.

At that point, Zalman's translator told him, ”We don't need this stuff. Buddhist practice doesn't have to be psychological or ecological.” But Zalman, who'd taught psychology of religion at Temple University, disagreed. The role of the contemporary teacher was to help students find their way to the riches of tradition.

He told the geshe geshes a story about how he once took a group of people to the Lubavitcher rebbe. One of them asked the rebbe, ”What are you good for?” And he said, ”I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about what my master was for me. He was for me the geologist of the soul. There are great treasures in the soul: there's faith, there's love, there's awe, there's wisdom, all these treasures you can dig-but if you don't know where to dig, you dig up mud-Freud-or you dig up stones-Adler. But if you want to get to the gold, which is the awe before G.o.d, and the silver, which is the love, and the diamonds, which are the faith, then you have to find the geologist of the soul who tells you where to dig.” The rebbe added, ”But the digging you have to do yourself.”

When Zalman told them this story, they were full of stories, too: how to deal with students, the role of the teachers, their methods of training.

At one point Zalman explained to the geshe geshes an important teaching of the founder of Hasidism, the eighteenth-century rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, known universally as the Baal Shem Tov, or ”Master of the Good Name.” It is the doctrine of ”strange thoughts.”

”The Baal Shem Tov says when you are praying and you have a thought of a beautiful woman, l.u.s.t, such a thought comes to you begging to be raised. You raise it by saying, 'Oh, where does the beauty, where does the charm, where does the attraction come from?'-it comes from the source of beauty. He would say, Don't get scared, don't push it away, such symmetry, such beauty-what was it in this ideal that drew you on? Where did it come from?-it didn't make itself. It's so sublime, so beautiful, that's why it draws you, so take it back to its divine root.”

I wondered what celibate monks made of this teaching on ”strange thoughts.” According to Zalman, they loved it. ”It was such a gratifying thing. Then I started pus.h.i.+ng again on the research and development. There are ways to hurry ahead....” By such prodding, Zalman felt he was ”agenting for the next level of the dialogue” when geshe geshes and rabbis would meet to exchange techniques of meditation and training.

What was delightful was that such conversations were taking place all over Kashmir Cottage, living room, dining room, porch. When we rea.s.sembled for after meal prayers, we had traveled light-years from the formal interaction of that afternoon. We had blown on the spark lit when the Dalai Lama called a Shabbat psalm a visualization. Now Rabbi Joy Levitt led us in the very psalm Yitz had cited. ”When G.o.d returned us to Zion from exile, we thought we were dreaming....”

She expressed the hope that the Tibetans too would ”return...again to freedom.” The lamas responded, putting their palms together and chanting a low-throated dedication that the good energy of the evening would go out to the aid of all suffering sentient beings.

As the two groups parted in the dark, the Jews formed a receiving line and the Tibetans wished each of their Jewish friends ”Shabbat Shalom.” The Jews responded in Tibetan, ”Tashe delek.” Sabbath peace. Peace to you. The Angel of Tibet and the Angel of the Jews were surely listening in just then.

Rabbi Greenberg had explained to the Dalai Lama the power of Shabbat in theory. But I was deeply moved to see how powerful the Shabbat could be in practice. Clearly the geshe geshes were also impressed, as were some of our Jewish-Buddhist visitors. Among them was Ruth Sonam, Geshe Sonam's translator and student, who it turned out had grown up Jewish in Ireland. I also met the Venerable Thubten Chodron, who had made the amazing journey in her life from American Jewish housewife to Tibetan Buddhist nun.

On their way home, Chodron and Ruth talked about the Shabbat. They'd noticed that the geshe geshes were sitting stone-faced while the rabbis were dancing and singing. That shared joy was very attractive, Chodron told me later. ”It seems to create a stronger sense of community than if you're meditating.”

I asked her what the geshe geshes thought of the davening.

Chodron laughed. ”They were probably wondering how you can maintain control of your mind while you are singing and dancing.”

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