בסד A MESSAGE FROM RABBI GERSHON WINKLER You may be familiar with the famous Solomonic adage: That which , has already ; and that which is yet to , already (Ecclesiastes3:15). Its a nice wise saying, but its also kind of depressing when you think about it. Basically, Solomon (10th century, B.C.E) is suggesting that - in his own words -There is nothing new under the sun(Ecclesiastes 1:9), that you and I are simply wasting our time existing, each of us running in place like a hamster inside a wheel, exercising a lot of effort, expending a great deal of energy, yet getting nowhere and accomplishing nothing. Anything we feel weve achieved fresh and anew, its already been done many worlds back, long before this one(Ecclesiastes 1:10). On the surface of it, the entire writ known as Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet in Hebrew, comes across as quite a dismal scripture. In fact, the man who had it all - Solomon - set this disheartening tone to his prose at its very onset: Hot-air of a lot more hot-air -- everything is bullshit; what purpose is there for humans in regard to all of their striving under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:2-3). Face it - life does seem like that. We work all day so that we can eat, feed our families, gas-up our cars, pay our utility bills, make the rent, so that we might thrive in order to go to work so that we can eat, feed our families, gas-up our cars, pay our utility bills, make the rent, so that we might thrive in order to go to work so that we can eat, feed our families, gas-up our cars, pay our utility bills, make the rent, so that we might thrive in order to go to work so that we can eat, feed our families, gas-up our cars, pay our utility bills, make the rent, so that we might thrive in order to go to work.... [NOTE TO NITPICKERS: Im just giving you an example here, so please dont burden me with emails like: Well, I wish had a family to feed or I wish was lucky enough to have work, and the like. Just like those of you who recently blasted me for mentioning fur in a previous newsletter teaching in which I cited this tabooed word within the context of a teaching by an 18th-century rabbi. Had you lived back then and trudged about knee-deep in the snows of blistering cold Russian winters, youd have been first in line to skin a bear to stay warm.] It appears Solomon is proposing that life is just an exercise in futility and we are only here for the purpose of biding our time until we expire. Go on, taught the wise Solomon, eat your bread in joy and drink your wine with good-heartedness, because Eloheem has already found your endeavors acceptable (Ecclesiastes 9:7). In other words, just do your time the best you can, have the most fun, frolic as much as you want in the good things of life, because your tabs already been paid, your mortgage has been forgiven, and everything is okay, because the fact is: Eloheem has already accepted your stuff long before you even got here. So, the whole Gestalt is just a big cosmic waste and youre nothing more than the aluminum can you just recycled, originating from the earth only to go right back into the earth, as all proceed toward the same one place; all come from the earth and all return to the earth (Ecclesiastes3:20) and all the rivers stream continuously into the sea, yet the sea is never filled, and where it is that the journey of the rivers originate is where the rivers return to flow over and over and over again(Ecclesiastes 3:15). So, what indeed do we with the Solomonic solemnity of Ecclesiastes? Better yet -- why did the ancient sages of Israel choose to incorporate this melancholic book into the sacred scriptures of a tradition that emphasizes the importance of joy and that life is replete with meaning and purpose? For the believing Jew, wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel, the dreadful feeling that ones life is empty, that ones efforts are in vain, is foreign (Spiritual Grandeur and Moral Audacity, p. 56). So, what indeed does one do with these teachings by a believing Jew that seem so antithetical to everything a believing Jew believes? Heres another good one: The living know that theyre gonna die, and the dead - well, they dont know shit (Ecclesiastes 9: 5). ?! These are words of Jewish wisdom? Could you imagine your pulpit rabbi preaching such sentiments in a Shabbat sermon? Youd no doubt get up and walk out in a huff, muttering about how un-Jewish that was! [NOTE TO NITPICKERS: Yes, I know. Youre thinking Now nitpicking! So sue me.] Lets explore this issue a little deeper. How many of us are familiar with the words that immediately the aphorism first mentioned above at the beginning of this teaching attempt? Here is the full sentence: That which , has already ; and that which is yet to , already, and Eloheem seeks-out those who are driven(Ecclesiastes 3:15). Pray tell, what has Eloheem seeks-out those who are driven to do with the endless repetition of the cycles of time? Did someone accidentally hit one of those move text buttons? There are two ways in which we can run-in-place within the great cosmic hamster wheel: (1) We can do so by remaining steadfastly oblivious to the fact that the act of our running is but a journey toward nowhere and that the spinning of the wheel which enables that act is made possible by the act of our running which in turn is made possible by the spinning of the wheel which is happening by the act of our running which in turn is made possible by the spinning of the wheel which is.... Or, (2) We can do so by remaining keenly aware of the futile act of running in circles and the illusion it offers of going somewhere, yet appreciating the gift of movement itself and how movement supports our cardio-vascular health and that -more importantly -- you dont need to go anywhere because youre already, so eat your bread in joy and drink your wine with good-heartedness, because Eloheem has already found your endeavors acceptable. Each time we stop the wheel and stand still, we break through the humdrum of the eternal spin and create holiness. As God informed Moses some 3,300 years ago: The place where you are standing is holy ground (Exodus 3:5). The revelation to Moses at the Burning Bush did not happen until Moses stood still long enough for it to happen. It did not occur until he broke through his patterns, his rote state of being, his slop-happy complacency, to unveil his oblivion and actually see, not in a passive, peripheral sense but in an active, deliberate sense: And Infinite-All saw that he [Moses] vamoosed in order to see (Exodus 3:4), that he stopped the wheel and got off, removed himself from the repetitious spin of his daily life-pattern; that he looked at the woman with whom hed been married for twenty years and saw her like hed never seen her before; that he read a piece of Talmud or Torah that hed read fifty thousand times as if it were the first time hed ever seen it. Now, in order to stop the wheel, we have to first become aware of the fact that we are spinning, that it is no longer who are moving the wheel but that it is rather the wheel which is moving . As I have noted numerous times in many of my few talks, if it would have been me who came upon the sight of the burning bush I would probably have responded by grabbing a bucket of sand and putting it out. Because, that is a routine response to a burning bush. I dont think Id have stopped spinning my wheel long enough to notice that the bush was not being consumed, like Moses did (Exodus 3:3). And wed then read in contemporary anthropology texts how there was once a very short-lived religion called Judaism that began with a guy named Abraham and ended a few hundred years later with a guy named Winkler who extinguished the Divine Revelation at the foot of Mount Horeb. It is not opium that mesmerizes us into a deep sleep of oblivion. Rather, it is life itself that drives us into the hypnotic clutch of routine. Routine of whatever sort is a tool we create with the intent of introducing meaning and purpose to our otherwise...um...routine lives. However, the danger is that, often, what begins as us moving the wheel can easily and without warning morph into what becomes the wheel moving us, and consequently we become driven by the very force, by the very routine we originally established for the purpose of lending meaning to our lives, at which point our lives may lose some of its meaning. That is what Solomon was railing about. And that is what he meant by ...and Eloheem seeks-out those who are driven. When we are not driven but are awake to the magic of the moment; when we - in the language of Torah - lift up our eyes to see, then Eloheem has no need to seek us out, for we are in those moments involved in actively seeking Eloheem. On the other hand, when we are asleep in the smugness of routine and patterns -- whether in regards to religious practice or personal relationship - then it is Eloheem who has to search for us, as in: Where are you? (Genesis 3:9). When Adam the Man was awake, he perceived Adam the Woman in the personal I-Thou context of Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh (Genesis 2:23), and when he was asleep, lost in the spin of the Forbidden Fruit wheel, he perceived her in the impersonal I-Itcontext of The woman that you gave [to be] with me (Genesis 3:12). Within the spin of the wheel, taught Rebbe Nachmon of Breslav, there are many doorways, many portals through which we can choose to exit out of the reel of momentum into the real of moment. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: Say onto those who are stuck, Get out! and to those wandering aimlessly in the dark, Reveal yourselves! (Isaiah 49:9). Finding those elusive doorways that lead us out of our spin can be very challenging at times, especially when things are gloomy all around and we find ourselves groping helplessly in the dark searching for the nearest doorknob. The key to the awakening, taught Rebbe Nachmon, to the discovery of enough light to illuminate the way to the nearest exit, is a three-letter word comprised of the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet , the very middle letter , and the very last letter which spells - EMeT - Truth (Likutei MoHaRaN, Ch. 112). This is not merely about telling the truth or being truthful as in being honest in business dealings and in relationship dynamics. Rather, by Truth is meant something far more basic and challenging: your open and honest acknowledgment of the total you, namely the inclusion also of your weaknesses, your vulnerabilities, your dark side; the angel in you and the demon in you, side by side. Indeed, wrote Solomon, that is the best counsel, Best to grasp of this and of that [your light side and your darkness side] and let your grip not weaken of either, for one who is God-Conscious emerges [out of the whirl of the wheel] through all of them (Ecclesiastes 7:18). When we speak privately with God and acknowledge openly What a jerk I am or what an ass-hole Ive been, what a low down filthy.... -- then, through that very act of bringing our darkest parts to light, the emergence within us of our deepest and most frightening Truths will illuminate and reveal to us the doorways which lead us out of the spin of oblivion into the journey of meaningfulness and holiness. Absolutely no degree or depth of defilement or of darkness, taught Rebbe Nachmon, is without its exits. However, since the exit doors are within them, one has to delve into those very uncomfortable places within oneself in order to generate the light that will enable one to discover these doorways and move through them (Likutei MoHaRaN, Ch. 112 toward end). When all is said and done, concludes the Book of Ecclesiastes, Let it all be heard, and live always in awareness of Eloheem, and observe its instructions, for that is the sum total of what Human is all about(Ecclesiastes 12:13). This is what helps to bring meaningfulness to who we are and what we do. This is what helps us to stop the wheel from reeling us so that we might see and experience the magic of the moment through the blur of its ever-reeling momentum. A human being, wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel, must be valued by how many times he was able to see the world from a new perspective (Spiritual Grandeur and Moral Audacity, p. 20). Precisely. ### Walking Stick Foundation | POB 3072 | Thousand Oaks | CA | 91359
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 05:13:29 +0000
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