The Hope of Injustice

Rabbi Rami Avraham Efal gave the following talk before the Zen buddhist sangha of Beacon Zen Temple in Beacon, New York, in Adar I 5784 / March 2024. It was centered on the teachings in “Outline of Practice” from The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, translated by Red Pine. The talk touches on meditation and awareness practice in light of the Hamas massacre in Israel in 10/7/2023 and the destruction in Gaza by the Israeli army that followed. It opens and closes with niggunim, hassidic melodic practice.

Recording:

Transcription below:

This is from the "Outline of Practice," the writings of Bodhiharma: "To enter by practice refers to four all inclusive practices: suffering Injustice, adapting conditions, seeking nothing and practicing the Dharma. To enter by practice refers to four all inclusive practices: suffering Injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing and practicing the Dharma. As a comment, this is a variation on the Four Noble Truths and we'll concentrate on the first one, "Suffering injustice."

"When those who search for the path encounter adversity they should think to themselves, in countless ages gone by I've turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I'm punished by my past. Neither Gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of Injustice. The sutras say when you meet with adversity don't be upset because it makes sense. With such understanding you are in harmony with reason and by suffering injustice you enter the path.”

So this is from like I said the Outline of Practice the Zen teaching of Bodhiharma who was a sixth Century Indian monk who's as the legend says is the first emissary of Buddhism in China. Both an ally and a challenger of Emperor Woo's merit-based practice. He's considered the first ancestor of Zen; he's known to be formidable, advocating practice outside of scripture direct pointing to the human mind. "When you meet with adversity don't be upset because it makes sense. With such understanding you're in harmony with reason and by suffering Injustice you enter the path. So as we one of the first thing we learn when we start study Buddhism is that the first Noble Truth "life is suffering." I know for me it was one of the things that gave me such relief when I learned it for the first time; that I found a tradition that is putting it front and center because I was suffering. I was having a hard time in my life. But here Bodhidharma used a very unusual language even in Buddhist writings, injustice. "By suffering Injustice you enter the path."

I can imagine that if you take a moment to take stock of yourself and possibly your experience in the last few months you may experience just like myself that there's been so much injustice, misunderstanding, dissonance, confusion. For me specifically since the war in Israel and Gaza started but for all of us there's so much going on in this country right now with the election coming up with the climate how often we have that sense that injustice is being exacted. "But I do no wrong -" right? Bodhidharma says that. "Now though I do no wrong I'm punished." 

Last week I spent in sesshin. I was at Zen Mountain Monastery and I was in a weeklong sesshin and there were some moments of sublime quietness; and I also felt sick for a long time. I had flashbacks from testimonials that I heard both from the Israeli side of the war and the Gazan side of the war and my mind flashed to being trapped under scorched bodies in a shelter in a kibbutz in Israel or under the ruins in Gaza. And here I was meditating right and we're not supposed to move when we meditate otherwise the monitor will say "don't move!" But here I was completely immobilized. I could not move because I was trapped. I was fully in that experience and it surprised me and shocked me and I nearly panicked while doing zazen. I was also in the midst of this vision, I had a voice that said, you know, "snap out of it, stop it, come back to your breath." Right? That's the practice. I heard another voice that was a lot more self-righteous and said, "no you got to do something." There was another voice that said, "this is it!" this is the work, right? How many times have we heard in practice to run into the fire to sit in the fire so here it is how much closer can I get to the tragedy that's unfolding other than being it completely. I heard incessant justification. I heard protest. I heard demand. I heard guilt, how could I gain a sense of sanity and stability? 

So again the Sutra say, "when you meet with adversity don't be upset because it makes sense." Even before reading this line from Bodhidharma, for me this was my practice for the last four months and before that but especially now it makes sense. It doesn't mean that it's condoned but it makes sense. Of course life is suffering. Life is injustice. I can act towards Justice. I can act toward right action, what I think is the right thing but fundamentally I can expect injustice. In a way, practice encourages me to take a breath and recognize that my first devotion and I'm specifically using the word devotion because in the places when things are so out of whack I need devotion. My devotion is not to justice or injustice, my devotion is to awareness. How much of these last few months could have been different if awareness was what we were devoted to rather than our individual kinds of justice. 

Bodhidharma is known as a 'zealot' ancestor and I was thinking about my one of my own Jewish ancestors the prophet Eliyahu, we may know him as Elijah, and he know he's known around in the Torah and afterwards as an extreme zealot at times he would bring fire from the sky to decimate his opponents. But in fact he was so zealous he had a way of justice that he was condemned to live eternally and return in every generation not unlike a bodhisattva returning throughout the six realms with kindness, and to remind people of the Covenant. And in Judaism when we speak about Covenant it's what in Buddhism we refer to as a vow when we refer to a vow "My Vow is to save all sentient beings" My Vow is to return to my awareness. That's what in Judaism is meant when we speak about a covenant; that we have an agreement with reality. 

This is what we will be doing and it's told that in the talmud - a collection of teachings from 1st to 3rd century CE, both in Babylonia and in early Israel - in section called Brachot 3A there's a story about Rabbi Yossei who was walking along a road and needed to pray and he was walking in a road that goes through Jerusalem and just for context this was right after the great destruction of the temple in Jerusalem this is the time of of a great great great tragedy great Injustice by the ripples of which many of us are being affected today especially if you're if you're Jewish so he was on the road around those ruins, right, his people's Temple was destroyed there and he needed to pray and he says I noticed that Elijah came and guarded the entrance for me and waited at the entrance until I finished my prayer. When I finished praying and exited the ruin, Elijah said to me with respect as a rabbi, "Greetings! Why did you enter this ruin?" So Rabbi Yosi said to him, in order to pray, right? This is what I do. Elijah said to him, you should have prayed on the road. So Rabbi Yossei said, I was unable to pray along the road because I was afraid that I might be interrupted or attacked and I couldn't be able to focus. Rabbi Yossei preferred to go into the place of destruction of his ancestors rather than be interrupted on the road. Elijah said to him, you should have recited abbreviated prayer according to the circumstances. Rabbi Yossei said that he learned three things from this: 1. that one should not enter unmindfully into a ruin; 2. that one doesn't need to go into a building in order to practice; 3. and pray but one can pray on the road and it's okay to pray an abbreviated prayer; and when I say prayer I in our context I can say meditation. 

There's a saying that I wasn't able to track down, it's something that I picked up in my training at the monastery and I asked one of the teachers there and they couldn't tell me where it was from

but somehow it was imprinted in my mind the saying "don't stop when you meet the Buddha, move quickly where the Buddha is not."

So when I was in those throws of that terrible Vision that I was in during the sesshin, did I meet the Buddha? Was that my moment of compassion and being one with suffering? You may say it could be that I was also so blended with my imagination that a Buddha was not there too. What degree my breath was available and if we're bringing it back to practice maybe this is the ultimate question that we can ask ourselves every single moment when we meet injustice when we're in the throw of tragedy or bliss; when we are completely in love and our heels you know fly to what degree our breath is available to us, because our breath is that portal to that awareness. 

Continuing from Bodharma and this is from another sermon it's called "The Breakthrough Sermon," speaking about this breath, "if someone is determined to reach Enlightenment what is the most essential method you can practice? The most essential method which includes all other methods is beholding the mind. but how can one method include all others? The mind is the root from which all things grow if you can understand the mind and everything else is included. And I want to pause here for a moment because Bodhidharma says, understand the mind, it may seem like we are figuring it out so if you're in this room you probably know that we're not in the business of figuring things out here, just before that he was saying beholding the mind. In Judaism there are two kinds of prophets there's the prophets that see mystery see God see infinity and the verb they use is to see, Lir’ot and there's Moshe who is the ultimate Prophet who said that he knew knew God, Mabit, his was a direct pointing, direct experience. So this is what Bodhidharma here speaks of, everything else is included. It's like the root of a tree. All a tree's fruit and flowers branches and leaves depend on its roots. If you nourish its root a tree multiplies. If you cut its root it dies. Let's pause here for a moment. 

Oftentimes we think about the roots and we think of uprooting right or maybe I have some kind of a thought that I don't like. I need to somehow find the root and uproot it. That's not what Bodhidharma says. Nourish the root. In Judaism too there's an expression of that, that a practitioner practices in order not to overcome the judgments or the hardships or the suffering or the injustice but to sweeten it. Nourish it. If you cut it it dies. "Those who understand the Mind reach Enlightenment with minimal effort; those who don't understand the Mind practice this in vain; everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible." 

So there I was sitting in a sesshin. I remember a moment where I thought because it was also first time I visited that Monastery for 10 years since I left and since I left lived there and I recalled just there was just a lot of life catching up with me and at some point I thought I heard a memory of a voice saying well you know what, you know, maybe you should leave? Right? Who did not have this thought during a sesshin or a zazen period? You know, maybe you've had enough? and then I knew that I'm going to be talking to you this week and I thought what kind of a practitioner would I be if I don't do this: "to find something Beyond the mind is impossible." So when Bodhidharma says that the “path is suffering injustice you enter the path,” I had to agree from my own experience and this is why we practice and this is why the encouragement is to practice and practice not just because we're in some kind of a gym but because we're developing conviction in another way of being. Every time we see a thought, we let it go and we come back to our breath, and this is so radical because our injustices are huge and some of them are dormant and some of them are explosive and I know that especially in the last four months there's been a lot of Injustice out there and I've been encouraged, say it mildly, to take sides and what Bodhidharma here is saying is that there is something in addition to all of this, that there is an underlying awareness. but in order for me to develop this kind of conviction in it I need to really have the courage to let it all go because all, of these injustices are ways that my sense of identity is cemented and my sense of self is cemented. 

I mean look at me, I'm a rabbi right? Can I let go of an injustice that I feel, that I'm feeling as a Jewish person, as a friend of Palestinians, some of whom from Gaza with family there? [Am I up to let go of all the narratives that make me who I am?] I hear and I take on their injustice and here Bodhidharma is saying yes and don't stop there, don't stop where the Buddha is, move quickly where the Buddha is not. He's not saying that we need to somehow disappear. This is probably something that you've heard in your Zen practice where people are afraid “oh if I'm going to let go of myself I will kind of disappear, I'm going to be some kind of a washed out person,” no it actually gives a place and a platform to see ourselves more clearly to see the places that I'm getting stuck in an injustice, disappointment, and I become so rigid in it. But more than that, every time that we let go of a thought and come back to our breath, we cultivate this conviction in bodhicitta, in the mind of Awakening. In Judaism it may referred to as the reshimu, the experience of the Divine experience or the experience of shunyata in Buddhist language. It is alike an oil. It cannot mix with anything but it's porous and it leaves a trace. When we come back to our daily way of conducting ourselves it leaves a trace that's the reshimu and it's left behind, it's like the remnants of the oil in a bottle of oil, right? You can never get the oil out. There's always a little smudge of it and that's the source of our next Awakening, the next time that we remember to wake up to take a breath in the midst of a storm. So I'm going to take a breath here with you. Just notice your body taking in these words taking another breath of gratitude for us being here together and inquiring into the reality of nature reality and our sense of self and each other; weaving cultures, spiritual traditions, ancestors; bearing witness to so much injustice in the world right now. And let's take a moment to appreciate all of our intentions and orient towards clarity. If you're here I imagine that that's at least part of your orientation so I'm going to conclude my speak before I open it up because I would love to hear how this is landing for you and what's coming up for you again with another niggun melody and it goes with the line that says I take on me the practice to love all being as myself: Hereni Mekabel Allay Et mitzvat haboreh, v'ahavata l're'acha kamocha.