Mystic is as Mystic Does

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Last night at Temple Beth El, after two periods of seated meditation where I silently recited the Heart Sutra, the Sh'ma, and the Elohai N'Shama, I talked about emptiness and nothingness from a Jewish mystical point of view. The Wisdom Heart Sutra directly addresses compassion and understanding doing the twist on the head of deep samadhi. The Sh'ma declares God is One. The Elohai N'Shamah thanks God for creating a pure soul. Many words: one existence. My head dances at times.

From One comes everything. The kabbalists say God pulled Himself together creating a huge void, then created the universe to fill it. He created it with His words, that is, His breath sounds. Imbuing everything with His presence. We hold up a mirror, there is God.

The Sefirot are a sort of map of this image, detailing the attributes of God with human terms. There are ten of these, but I will only mention a few: On the top is Keter, the crown, understood to be Ayin, nothingness. Then comes Hokhmah, wisdom. Binah, on its left is understanding. Below these are Chesed, love and Gevurah, strength.

What is interesting to me about these attributes is that they seem key to most spiritual traditions. In Zen we talk about the emptiness, that is, the impermanence of existence. Achieving emptiness we understand the proper relationship between conditioned things.

The relationships between these sefirot have parallels in Zen. The Heart sutra teaches that as we sit with love and compassion, and reach a clear understanding, we see that all things are "empty". In order to do this we need a powerhouse of what in Japanese is called joriki, strength. This understanding is wisdom and the deepest wisdom is "empty".

My point is this: regardless of our religious tradition, if we sit with strength, concentrate on being present (the last sefirot, incidentally) we will reach a point where we see clearly the way of the Universal. We might call it Adonai, Godhead, Christ, or Buddha Mind, it is all the same. And once there, the words are like boats used to cross a river: tie them up and leave them be.


Be well.