Consciousness, Grief, Praise, and Awakening the Peacemaker.

Appeared first in a shorter form as “The Gate of kina,” Rami’s talk at his rabbinic transmission & ordination ceremony from Aleph seminary on 26 Tevet 5784,1/7/2024 in Denver, Colorado, Turtle Island, USA.

In 2016 I spent Passover at a refugee camp in Piraeus, Greece, serving families, right off the boats, from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraqi Yazidis fleeing the nightmare of wars. The needs were grave, and their tent walls, like the veils between the realms, were thin. On my last day on my way back from the camp, there was a livestream with Dr. Kjell Lindgren, a NASA astronaut who had just returned from the International Space Station. I chatted in with greasy hands from souvlaki and a tender heart from the day, “Has space taught you anything about the human family and caring for one another?”

The Spaceman responded,

“When you look through the observatory window of the station and you see the full face of the Earth, you recognize it is a beautiful but fragile spaceship, Just like the space station, hanging in the cold void of space, and it provides us food, water, air to breath, protection from radiation and the cold void of space. We have to take care of our spaceship, and I think that’s a lesson for those of us on Spaceship Earth.”

(Read the complete exchange in the post Passover in Piraeus)

Alas, Reb. Zalman’s gaian vision of the living entity of earth and a planetary fellowship between peoples and religions seems far far away today from me and many others. The one body is in pain. A collective Nightmare has taken hold of our waking lives.

A year later at another camp, as we were about to lead 120 anxious people into a week of bearing witness at the nightmare that is Auschwitz-Birkenau, I turned to my Jewish Zen Buddhist teacher Bernie Glassman z”l, for last words of advice before commencing. Quick, and gaze on me sharp as a nail, Bernie said,

“Nothing depends on you.” 

Bernie’s faith in Not Knowing was great. That’s a lot of faith from a Buddhist teacher.

What is Tzorekh Hasha’ah, the need of the hour? How to take care of our spaceship while also, knowing Nothing depends on us, full faith in mystery? how to expand our capacity to be with the impossible, the pain, dissonance, confusion and madness, disappointment, the unknown?  

In the great narrative of this cosmos with whom the very sense of covenant seems broken, how would the Jewish people, who has co-stewared this planet and has praised infinity for 5000 years, prevail?

My Jewish peace-buidling teacher, the late Dr Paula Green z”l, awarded by the Dalai Lama as unsung hero of compassion, witnessed survivors of wars and genocide on nearly all continents, and found that the cycle of revenge and reconciliation, is perpetuated by theunwillingness to see our own shame, guilt, and grief. This unwillingness to bear witness leads to violence, or avoidance: our people leave, forget, assimilate, we self-erase our ancestral ways because it’s to damn painful to be who we are. How to break the cycle? How to tend to this grief?

Reb Nachman of Breslov, the 18th century Ashkenazi hassidic rabbi from today’s Ukraine, appears behind the Spaceman, Zalman’s, Bernie’s and Paula’s shoulders, saying: 

"וְהָעִקָּר – לַעֲצֹר וּלְעַכֵּב הַחֲמִימוּת בְּעֵת הַתַּאֲווֹת, וּלְהַנִּיחוֹ בְּעֵת הַתְּפִלָּה וְהָעֲבוֹדָה, שָׁם יַנִּיחַ חֲמִימוּתוֹ וְהִתְלַהֲבוּתוֹ לְתוֹךְ הָעֲבוֹדָה כַּנַּ"ל." - ליקוטי מוהר״ן ב מ״ט ג ב 

Now, the main thing is to stop and restrain the heatedness at the moment of desire, and to place it during prayer, practice & service. That is where one should place their heatedness and excitement—into serving God. - Likutei Moharan 49:3, 2

We need to train our consciousness to be OK with Not Knowing, not indulge, not dismiss. To stay steady in the throws of Tohu (hebrew: void, chaos).  We must reclaim Jewish solitude and ​create Jewish monasteries to train both ‘geologist of the souls,‘ as Reb. Zalman encouraged, as well as ‘technologists of consciousness.’ To have direct access to the ground of being, This! as the hassidic Rabbi Maggid of Kozhnitz calls Israel - Yashar El - Direct and Equal to God (Avodat Israel, Shavuot.)

Within that steadiness, Nahman continues, “we must learn to place the heatedness (Hamimut) in the midst of yearning in prayer and the service of God.” ‘To place’ uses the same root as Mincha, a gift. We must learn to rewire our nervous systems to be in the ecstasy of grief, and hold others as they experience theirs, and not be burned, like the Burning Bush.  so when our dreams shatter, our shelters destroyed, our hearts splintered, we can cry rivers of our salty tears and not freeze into pillars of salt as Lot’s wife.

We must learn to open a tzohar, an hatch, as Noah had in the Ark, and swim into deep space, into deep time, deep consciousness. Experience Olam ha’avot, the realm of the ancestors - Tirgum Yonatan of the Torah to Aramaic, translated Yitro, Moshe’s Midyan father not as Hatan, more commonly a word used for father-in-law, but as Ham. Ham and hammimut hints of the connection of our relatives to our own interiority - our ancestors are making themselves known and present through our very own grief.

In such a way we can turn Tohu (void), into Zohar (radiance.) It is here we can communicate with the entity that is Kina (grief) We can touch it, love it. Ulitmately there is only one Kina, only one wound. We all share it.

Lest we think that this is only about oursevles, or our Jewish people, or that somehow we are the instigators of this great transformation, Isiah the ancestor appears behind Reb. Nahman and says,

״וַהֲבִיאוֹתִים אֶל הַר קָדְשִׁי, וְשִׂמַּחְתִּים בְּבֵית תְּפִלָּתִי
עוֹלֹתֵיהֶם וְזִבְחֵיהֶם לְרָצוֹן עַל מִזְבְּחִי כִּי בֵיתִי, בֵּית תְּפִלָּה
יִקָּרֵא לְכָל הָעַמִּים.״ - ישעיהו, פרק נ"ו ז'

״And I have brought them to my sacred mountain; and I have delighted them in my house of prayer; their gifts and offerings of fulfillment upon my altar. Because my house will be called a house of prayer for all people. ״ - Isaiah 56:7

Mystery has brought us to and rejoiced us in this holy place. Mystery has placed the sacred gift of grief, Kina, in our hands. Place them on, behold them with, the altar of your awareness.

Here, the deity that is Kina Awakens Hallel - Praise. Nahman’s Hammimutu, heatedness, turns into hitlahavutu,  enflamement with Presence.

It is here that covenant is reaffirmed, not just for us, but for all people, with infinity, the Godhead itself. Avraham’s covenant among the torn pieces, Brit bein hab’tarim (Beresheit 15:1-21), is entered again. The Gate of Kina - from the entity of Grief, through the gratitude of Praise, is what awakens Oseh Shalom - the one who makes peace, the one who makes whole. This peacemaker is not me, and it is not you. We allow Oseh Shalom to manifest, by opening the gate of Kina.

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Above, watch & listen to the closing singing of Isiah’s verse, “V’haviotim.” The video of the talk can be watched here.