Part 8 (1/2)

The Jewish Sabbath is above all a family affair, and as it turned out, we had gathered to us an extraordinary group of Jewish Buddhists living in Dharamsala. The next day would take on all the joy and some of the pain of a family reunion.

11.

Jewish Buddhists, Buddhist Jews.

SAt.u.r.dAY, OCTOBER 27, DHARAMSALA.

A stroll through the Tibetan market at McLeod Ganj on Friday morning had already convinced me that a good number of Jews were seeking spiritual wisdom in Dharamsala. On a narrow street crowded with shops, the Tibetan merchants sold ma.s.s-produced thangka thangkas, for two or three hundred rupees (about twenty dollars), and other rarities such as a yak horn snuff box (good for a perfume bottle, though you can also buy the snuff). The street ran uphill to a view of the Dhaula Dhar range, where it looked as if you could step off the edge of McLeod Ganj into a vast mystical depth. Since the sixties Dharamsala has been a way station for spiritual travelers, including Thomas Merton, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. Now a new generation, the long-haired and the monastically shorn, mingled freely with Hindu beggars by the steps of the Lhasa Guest House.

Marc Lieberman bought some very handsome mala mala beads, dark circles of wood strung on a leather thong, with inlays of Himalayan coral, silver, and gold. The beads were the size of a man's knuckle, heavier than the ones around the Dalai Lama's wrist-108 per string, used for counting mantras. During breaks in the dialogue Michael Sautman had been clicking away on his. Hundreds of thousands of repet.i.tions were required at certain stages of the practice. beads, dark circles of wood strung on a leather thong, with inlays of Himalayan coral, silver, and gold. The beads were the size of a man's knuckle, heavier than the ones around the Dalai Lama's wrist-108 per string, used for counting mantras. During breaks in the dialogue Michael Sautman had been clicking away on his. Hundreds of thousands of repet.i.tions were required at certain stages of the practice.

I bought some beads of my own from a wrinkled Tibetan woman who sat in front of a card table. Marc said they were very old. ”What kind of wood is this anyway?” I asked him. ”Mahogany?”

That's when I learned those dark little wheels had been bored out of a human skull-intended to make you reflect on impermanence. It sure worked for me. I gave them a sniff and they smelled slightly salty, a faint perfume of their previous owner.

The Tibetans made quite a trade in human bones: in various shops I saw trumpets made from a human femur, with skeleton intaglio. In old Tibet a dead body would be carried up into high places for a sky burial-to feed the vultures. Ground burial was impractical in frozen soil, but the custom also reflected a Buddhist view of the body-as an impermanent frame that the mind stream entered and left, one with no personal value. Buddhist texts argue, I am not my body, nor does the body belong to me.

I was tempted by the novelty of a ceremonial skull bowl, imagining it br.i.m.m.i.n.g with Cheerios. But I settled for an embroidered hat with fur ear flaps, and a pair of bra.s.s ting sha ting sha bells joined with a leather thong. They made a sharp soul-awakening sound that gradually diminished into silence, along with the noise of the mind. bells joined with a leather thong. They made a sharp soul-awakening sound that gradually diminished into silence, along with the noise of the mind.

I overheard some voices speaking Hebrew, then saw Moshe Waldoks in front of a T-s.h.i.+rt shop in an animated conversation with three Israelis in khaki shorts. Moshe was buying Tibetan yarmulkes for himself and his kids: beautiful pillbox caps with fancy, thickly threaded embroidery and bits of blue gla.s.s glued in. They were very princely. He introduced us and told the Israelis about our meeting with the Dalai Lama, but they'd already heard about it from the buzz in the streets. Moshe told them that all of Yiddishe Dharamsala was invited to the Sat.u.r.day morning service, and they promised to come. According to what Thubten Chodron told me later, there'd been a flood of Israelis in Dharamsala in the past few years.

Still, when I hiked the quarter mile up from my quarters to Kashmir Cottage Sat.u.r.day morning, I was surprised by the size and variety of the crowd we'd gathered. More than a minyan minyan.

Traditionally, the Torah portion for the coming week is divided into sections, intended for daily meditation. It had made a running commentary on our week-or was our week just the latest midrash on the story? Melchizedek and the Dalai Lama, shalom shalom and and tashe delek tashe delek. Having opened myself to the beauty of the Buddhist spiritual tradition, I was reawakening to my own as well.

Rabbi Schachter and Rabbi Greenberg officiated at Congregation Beth Kangra in delightful suns.h.i.+ne. Our old traveling companion, the Sephardi Torah, stood upright in its case, once more showing its power to bring Jewish sparks together. Rabbi Greenberg announced the portion we'd been mulling over all week, Lekh Lekha Lekh Lekha. The Hebrew means: Take yourself out. Go travel. Seek foreign lands. So Reb Zalman announced an aliyah for ”those, like Abram, who travel, those who seek truth in other places.” Most of our guests identified with that one and crowded around the Torah, including an academic couple from Ma.s.sachusetts traveling through India with their kids, some backpacking spiritual seekers from Los Angeles, a young Israeli doctor, and four Jewish Buddhist nuns in maroon robes and close-cropped hair. From Hada.s.sah to Dharamsala in three generations! I was only disappointed that Max Redlich, the former Israeli paratrooper I'd heard about, bailed out at the last minute. He sent word that he was working hard on building a stupa stupa, a Buddhist reliquary. But Ruth Sonam came, and Alex Berzin, and Thubten Chodron. So did George Chernoff, the monk from Chicago, looking for more lessons on how to become one of Hashem's Hashem's messengers. messengers.

With the ma.s.s aliyah of Jews and JUBUs a.s.sembled, Yitz and Zalman chanted the Torah. They spot translated the Hebrew into English. At the same time, they maintained the Hebrew cantillation. It was a gracious and nimble performance that showed a remarkable command of the text. I realized that whatever their differences in outlook, they shared a deep reverence for the Torah.

Sitting around on lawn chairs, and in the cool gra.s.s, we later discussed a pa.s.sage from the Torah portion. One nun asked if Abram's wars against the kings of Sodom could be interpreted as spiritual struggles against delusion.

But to Rabbi Greenberg at least, the wars were real. They ill.u.s.trated an actual struggle to establish religion against violent opposition. They were like the wars Israel has to fight today. For Yitz, ”Humans live in history. We have to make choices, sometimes painful choices.”

A Western Buddhist challenged him. ”What are we faced with in our present culture? Many of us see that Buddhism provides the balance we need in this world today.”

Yitz Greenberg admitted being impressed by the Buddhist commitment to nonviolence. But he felt pacifism was only possible in the context of a balance of terror between larger nations. Neither Buddhists or Jews could afford to be pacifists if their survival was at stake. For instance, on a.n.a.logy to Israel's battles, Yitz very much supported the Tibetans fighting for their freedom and was skeptical of their winning in any other way. Likewise, to Dr. Isaac Bentwich, the young Israeli I'd met the night before, spiritual growth was always colored by historical circ.u.mstances. He compared the Dalai Lama to Abram, and the kings of Sodom to the rulers of China.

The discussants tried to resolve the conflict between survival and spiritual values. Could Buddhists fight to preserve a tradition of nonviolence? Many Buddhists thought not. Chodron put it this way, ”If you get angry and you start acting unethically to protect a doctrine that preaches patience and ethics, then are you protecting the doctrine or by your own behavior are you destroying it? If all the Buddhists start becoming terrorists, then what's the use of preserving Buddhism? The preservation of Buddhism is preserving your own internal heart. If Tibetans became terrorists they might win back Tibet, but Buddhism would be destroyed by that att.i.tude.”

We moved on. The Jewish Buddhists had some of the same questions I had. They wanted to know if Judaism was flexible enough to adapt to our times. Could it respond to feminism, the ecological crisis, and the need for individual spiritual growth? Zalman Schachter, in the Hasidic style, offered a story as an answer. ”A man opens a bank account in Switzerland. He's dying and he believes in reincarnation. Thirty years from now, he tells the bank officials, someone will come with a syllable. I want you to give him control of the account.

”Thirty years later a man comes and asks to withdraw all the money. When they question his judgment, saying that, after all, the original depositor told them to hold on to it, he says, 'I gave you the order last time around, but now I want to do what I want to do.'

”We're invested in a tradition so we have a continuity. The best people to invest in tradition are conservative. But the best people to spend it are those willing to take a risk.

”Our treasures-what a fantastic bank account we have grown. The past and the tradition have a vote but can't have a veto, because we are in unprecedented conditions. Now there's an understanding emerging that we are an organic part of all species, that religions are the organs of humanity.”

The Jewish delegates and Jewish Buddhists replayed an old family quarrel. Jewish Buddhists felt that the bank account of Judaism had been empty for them when they came to make a withdrawal, whereas they had found real spiritual wealth in Buddhism.

I knew the immediate defensive reaction to that, it was the mountain or barrier I had put up in my own thinking: the Jewish community tends to dismiss such people as flakes or apostates. I had come to Dharamsala with a few of these att.i.tudes myself.

But in the Shabbat sun, those mountains were melting. I'd been deeply impressed with the Dalai Lama and the other Buddhist masters, and having felt firsthand the attraction of another religion, I could no longer be judgmental about Jewish Buddhists. I'd been moved when the Dalai Lama addressed our group as his Jewish brothers and sisters. Well, the JUBUs were certainly my brothers and sisters! So I was eager to talk to them, to learn in depth about their Jewish backgrounds, how they came to Buddhism, how they feel about Judaism.

Extremely open about their lives and beliefs, what they had to say that morning seemed revealing not just about them, but about the problems of gaining access to Jewish spirituality-and the need for a new way of teaching it, for a Jewish renewal.

I approached a tall woman in her late thirties, in a maroon robe and with shorn hair. She'd seemed to enjoy the service and had partic.i.p.ated in the discussion afterwards. I wanted to hear more from a Buddhist nun with a Brooklyn accent.

She told me her name was Thubten Pemo; her family name was Landsman and she ”grew up in Brooklyn in a middle cla.s.s Jewish neighborhood.” We sat in the shade and I scribbled her answers in a notebook.

Her grandmother was the chief Jewish influence in her life. ”I remember she was always praying. She'd get up before sunrise, pray all day and at night. She was extremely strict and she followed her rabbis. She kept kosher, and on Sat.u.r.days she wouldn't turn on a light bulb.” As for synagogue, ”I used to enjoy it. I'd go and feel happy that everyone was praying.”

Yet her formal Jewish education was a disappointment-though she did learn to read, write, and speak Hebrew at age eight or nine-because she was the only girl in the cla.s.s. Eventually she gave up Hebrew school.

Even as a young girl, Pemo had been deeply concerned with spiritual issues. ”I used to lie in my bed and think about my life. I would make up rules of morality: I'm not going to kill. I'm not going to steal. I'd make up all these rules. I didn't want to have any children. I thought that marriage was suffering. I decided, I'm not going to get married, that means I'm going to be a nun. Then I'd have to be a Christian nun, but I didn't know anything about Christianity. I had a very strong wish to have wisdom.”

Later, at Brooklyn College, she had some contact with Hillel. But in 1967 her mother died suddenly. ”One day she had a heart attack and she was gone. Then I had to support myself. I switched to night school. I had a full-time job. That went on for years. My aunts and uncles couldn't take care of my grandmother and they put her in an Orthodox old-age home in Brooklyn.”

She dropped out of school and in 1970 decided to quit her job and travel for six months. ”I went with some girlfriends. We flew to j.a.pan for the World's Fair and started traveling west.” However, soon she found herself alone in India. She was twenty-seven. ”I got on a thirdcla.s.s train to Nepal. I thought I'd go for two weeks and look at a snowy mountain. I went to a Tibetan lama for a teaching. I didn't know what Buddhism was.

”Lama Yeshe sat and spoke for two hours in horrendous English. But Lama was radiating love at everybody. I thought, this is the nicest man I've ever met in my life and I'd like to be like him. That was twenty years ago. His point was: the ego was a demon and had to be destroyed. I thought, gee, they'd never taught me that in my psych cla.s.s.

”I ended up staying for two years in the East. I went back to New York to earn money. I'd heard there would be a Kalachakra initiation.” (This is a special teaching about the cycles of time.) ”I wrote Lama Yeshe, 'Should I come?'” The answer was yes. And then, after a one-month meditation course, this Jewish woman from Brooklyn shaved her head, took vows of celibacy, and became a Buddhist nun. Now she was Thubten Pemo, and she had vowed to cut herself off from worldly things. She went to Brooklyn to dispose of her furniture, jewelry, and personal items, still hoping her relatives would understand. But her aunts and uncles refused to see her. And her final encounter with her grandmother took on a poignant and comical aspect. ”I visited my grandmother in an old-age home. She didn't notice I was wearing my robes.

”'When are you going to tell me the good news?' she said, meaning, When are you going to get married? There was no way to tell her I was a Buddhist nun. She was just happy to see me.”

I was impressed by Pemo's intense preoccupation with religiosity at a very early age, her search for some way of living a spiritual life, a search unfulfilled for her in Judaism as she knew it. Growing up in the Eisenhower years, she knew no women rabbis or cantors. She had no access to a spiritual life outside the traditional roles of wife and mother. When I asked her about her knowledge of the Jewish mystical tradition, she said she might have been interested but it was never taught to her.

But Pemo's new path had not been easy either. Though I'd heard questions about the Jewish response to feminism, from Pemo's account I gathered there were also problems for women in the Tibetan Buddhist monastic world. Tibetan and other Asian cultures give women a very low social status, and this is reflected in the treatment of an ani ani or female monastic. In any case, all Western Buddhists had to be self-supporting. For Pemo that meant years of hards.h.i.+p. or female monastic. In any case, all Western Buddhists had to be self-supporting. For Pemo that meant years of hards.h.i.+p.

Sometimes she had to return to secular life. ”I worked in New York and saved money to last for twelve years. It lasted six. From 1979 to 1989 I had nothing. Sometimes I had no money for food. In Switzerland the monks wouldn't give us nuns anything. I went to the cook for the food he was throwing in the garbage. I lived on the carrot ends for a month.”

She had medical problems as well. ”You get hepat.i.tis. Diarrhea. Tapeworms.” Yet she didn't want to give up her nun's vows. She was afraid that living with laypeople, she would ”get sucked into attachment.”

”I found I had to rely on faith. Certain deities we pray to in the Buddhist tradition can help us. One is Tara, the female Buddha. You pray to Tara to get you safely on a plane. When I have no money for Buddhist practice, I pray to Tara.”

Despite all her difficulties, Thubten Pemo remains convinced she has found answers to life in Buddhism. ”Most religions teach morality. A lot of religions say to love others. The special thing in Buddhism is, we are given the methods of development. We aren't just saying to have compa.s.sion for others, but how to train your mind for compa.s.sion.”

I thanked Pemo and took her photograph. Cutting her Jewish roots had caused her enormous pain from her family. Although I could understand their reactions, this total rejection seemed cruel and unnecessary. I was also impressed with how she had stuck to her convictions. And that she had a gentle sense of humor.

I'd met Thubten Chodron at the Shabbat the night before. Born Cherry Green in 1950 in a Los Angeles suburb, she received a B.A. from UCLA in 1971. In 1975 she attended a meditation course. Lama Yeshe had struck again, and Chodron decided not long after to put on the robes.

There's something definitely vibrant about Chodron's demeanor. She seemed a.s.sured, happy with her choice, radiant. ”I felt very comfortable,” she told me Friday night, ”making the switch from Judaism to Buddhism. I thought I was finding answers to my questions and also techniques that helped me get along better with people and a direction to help make my life meaningful.

”From my parents' point of view, they didn't understand very well. I was married, I was beginning my career. 'She's going to have a career, she married a nice Jewish boy, she's going to have children.' Then all of a sudden their daughter left her husband, shaved her head, went to India, and became a Buddhist nun. It's completely out of their American Jewish suburban experience.”

Both Chodron and Pemo have found work as teachers of meditation. Chodron has written several books on Buddhist practice and regularly gives lectures and cla.s.ses in the United States. (Among her recent books are Open Heart, Clear Mind Open Heart, Clear Mind and and Taming the Monkey Mind Taming the Monkey Mind.) Now I saw her seated on the garden wall, having an animated discussion with Rabbi Joy Levitt. Chodron told Joy that she had been really apprehensive before coming to the Friday night service, worried about how the rabbis would feel about her. But she felt relieved now.