Re-Enchantment

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
Study is one of the dharma gates I enter often. Last night was Erev Shabbat and we stopped what we were doing to light candles, say blessings, and welcome a day of rest and holiness with a family dinner. The thing is, what I was doing was an expression of that very thing. I was studying and writing. My paper’s working title is the Sacralization of Reform Judaism.
As a Buddhist priest and a Jewish lay religious teacher/student, I practice to keep my dharma eye open to see such expressions and as an expression of holiness itself. I know, I know…words can be serious obstacles. What holiness is is another topic.
Anyway, I am noticing a tension between the rational, linear processes utilized in study and my willingness to open my heart to the sacred itself in that very process. Study requires a ‘what’s this in relation to that?’ sort of thinking. Holiness requires entering both this and that at the same time. It’s an immersion.
In Buddhist and Jewish traditions we have prayers for both entering study and wrapping ourselves in the sacred. In the end, we should come to understand they are not separate at all as we discover everything is sacred, everything is holy.
Unfortunately today, both study and the holy are either tortured or eschewed. Study has become a fact finding process with brain cells storing as much as possible while the holy is rarely encountered in our post-modern conscience. And if it is, we see it as anachronistic. Therein, the tension. We want holiness.
Such tension is a shadow, though, of our mind at play in multilayered playgrounds. These playgrounds are built as a result of our moving away from the natural, the powerful dark, edges of things. In the light we see the sacred is everywhere in everything. Non-duality dispels such a tension. Religion today seems to be rolling along that track. People seem to need a way to touch the sacred in their lives. We want to get to the edge and take a step.
A flower is opening.
That a religious group like Reform Judaism, born in the Age of Enlightenment and wedded to the principles of universality, science, and reason has itself begun to ask itself how to be an avenue to the holy for its members is testimony to this third millennia blossom.
Zen, often cold and indifferent feeling, has taken on a similar thrust. Our Order was created to take us out of the cold monastic walls of Japanese tradition and into the warm light of engaged practice with the world. We are in a place where our task is to re-enchant the world. It is best to do this by beginning with ourselves.

Be well.