Rabbi Ari lev fornari: menuchat nefesh: Cultivating calm in the chaos
Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5785
Oct 4, 2024
Watch
This is my 9th Rosh Hashanah at Kol Tzedek. As I reflected on the last 8 years, I realized there have been no normal years. I joined Kol Tzedek just months before Trump’s first election in 2016, and the relentless fascism that led us to the disastrous pandemic of Covid-19 in 2020. A year ago, I remember thinking, if only I can get through the High Holidays, the years of one massive unpredictable thing after another might come to an end or at least pause. And then the horrendous massacre of Oct 7th and the unspeakable siege on Gaza that has followed took hold.
There have been no normal years in my time at KT, and at this point I’m willing to say, and working to accept, that there are no more normal years (if ever there were). Which is to say, we should stop holding our breath. And even harder, we need to figure out a way to unclench our shoulders and reopen our hearts.
The threat of fascism and authoritarianism, antisemitism and islamophobia worldwide, is real and dangerous. The earth is herself in a perpetual state of distress and climate crises are proliferating. Wildfires, flash floods, drought, record hot temperatures for weeks on end. And then there are our very personal struggles with anxiety and depression, cancer treatment, career uncertainty, friends and family members in crisis, unstable housing. And much more.
In the words of one of my teachers Sharon Salzberg, “The question is, how can a human heart-my heart or your heart-absorb the continual, unremitting contrasts of this life without feeling shattered and thinking that we cannot bear it? Battered by changes, the heart-mind can become brittle, rigid. It can wither and shrink. The Buddha taught our hearts can wilt as a flower does when it has been out in the sun too long. Have you ever encountered this feeling?”
What I can offer you as a teacher and what Jewish tradition can offer you, are practices to cultivate an undefended heart and a settled spirit in a world increasingly in crisis.
This is essential not just for our own happiness, but so that we can be effective, energized, and courageous, as leaders and activists, and as a community.
This has been a particularly hard year. I’ve thought a lot about what it takes to cultivate calm in the chaos, and that’s what I want to talk about with you this morning.
Given the year that lies behind us and the year that lies before us there is every reason to feel afraid.
In a few moments, after I am finished sharing words of Torah, we will rise in body or spirit for the Unetane Tokef. The ancient words recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur which describe a spiritual reality in which the Holy One is determining our fates for the year to come.
In the words of the wise Rabbi Alan Lew, z”l,
“In the Unetane Tokef prayer, the liturgical highpoint of both the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, the curtains between heaven and earth are pulled back and we catch a glimpse of the celestial mechanics that govern the earth. In this prayer we acknowledge the awesome power of this day, its pure sanctity, the deeply felt dominion of the heaven, the heavenly roots of compassion and justice.”[1]
Mi yichyeh umi yamut - who shall live and who shall die.
Given the amount of death and human cruelty this year has included, the weight of these words is heavy.
Mi b’kitzo u’mi lo b’kitzo – who in the fullness of years and who before their time.
I am haunted by the tears of Mohammed Abu Al-Qumsan who had just picked up birth certificates for his newly-born twins, only 4 days old, when he found out they had been killed, along with his wife and her mother, by an Israeli strike on the Gaza apartment where they were sheltering.[2]
Too many lives have been cut short this year. Why God? Why?
It’s not only about inscribing us in the book of life or death. It is also about what kind of year we might have.
Will we be at peace or will we be distraught?
Will we be calm or will we be anxious?
The question isn't will we face hardships, but which hardships will we face and how we will we respond?
About halfway through the Unetane tokef we get a line that’s pulled on my heart all year long:
Mi yanuach u’mi yanau, which our machzor translates as who shall be at rest and who shall be restless?
Thinking geopolitically, it begs the question, who shall remain settled and who displaced? I have thought of these words repeatedly as I have watched millions of Palestinians flee for safety, again and again and again. Israeli families journeying to and from bomb shelters, leaving their towns. Lebanese families caravanning north.
But this morning I want to invite us to quiet the news cycle and turn inward, and ask ourselves the same question, what in me is restless? And what might it take to settle?
The quality of menucha is picked up in the mystical tradition, and rabbis write about menuchat nefesh, a settling of the spirit, as a quality that we can cultivate and strive to bring us more inner peace in a world that‘s at war.
Like most Hebrew concepts there’s not one easy translation of this spiritual concept. The closest is probably the Buddhist concept of equanimity. For those who know me you won’t be surprised to see me draw shared wisdom between buddhist and jewish traditions.
In Buddhist tradition - equanimity is one of 4 brahm- viharas, which are essentially 4 wholesome qualities we want to cultivate that make us more free. They are all qualities that we have jewish ideas for, and they are all qualities that we focus on during the days of awe.
As the buddha organizes them, they are:
- Metta: loving kindness
- Karuna: compassion
- Muditta: shared or sympathetic joy
- Upekkha: equanimity
One of my hevrutas taught me that in some traditions these are called “the immeasurables.” They are boundless states. Our capacity for kindness, compassion, shared joy, and equanimity is boundless. Not that it always feels that way.
In Jewish tradition we also have an idea of these things being beyond measure. One of our earliest texts describes mitzvot for which there is no measure. Mishnah Peah begins,[3]
אֵלּוּ דְבָרִים שֶׁאֵין לָהֶם שִׁעוּר.
The list includes the size of the corner of one's field left for the poor to harvest, time spent studying Torah and acts of loving kindness.
There’s a sense that the doing of things that have no limit is inherently good and good for us and therefore we can’t overdo it.
While the things on the list aren’t exactly the same, the idea pervades both traditions.
The rabbinic immeasurables are each a form of mitzvah that make us more caring and connected people. What fundamentally has no measure is our ability to do acts of lovingkindness.
Each of those pali things also have an ancient hebrew counterpart that appears in the machzor.
The idea of metta is the most wellknown, chesed.
The idea of karuna is rachamim
Muditta, shared joy, is simcha
Upekkha, Equanimity is this idea of menuchat nefesh
Sharon Salzberg explains, “The four boundless states that we call the brahma-viharas or divine abodes culminate with equanimity. In Pali equanimity is called upekkha, which means "balance.”... Equanimity is a spacious stillness of the mind, a radiant calm that allows us to be present fully with all the different changing experiences that constitute our world and our lives.”
I truly believe that to protect access to abortion, to bring about a ceasefire in gaza, to bring about an end to the occupation of palestine, to limit the suffering of climate crisis, to keep going in the face of endless chemotherapy, to weather the uncertainty of our lives, we individually and collectively need to prioritize cultivating these four limitless qualities as a kind of spiritual armor.
The Buddha tells this story,
A fierce and terrifying band of samurai was riding through the countryside, bringing fear and harm wherever they went. As they were approaching one particular town, all the monks in the town’s monastery fled, except for the abbot. When the band of warriors entered the monastery, they found the abbot sitting at the front of the shrine room in perfect posture. The fierce leader took out his sword and said, “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know that I’m the sort of person who could run you through with my sword without batting an eye?” The Zen master responded, “And I, sir, am the sort of man who could be run through by a sword without batting an eye.”
About this story the great teacher Sylvia Boorstein writes[4],
“Our own benevolence is actually the protection that renders enemies impotent. In [depictions of this story], as the spears and arrows come to touch the shield around the Buddha, they fall to the ground as flowers all around him. I like to think of those flowers as an illustration of how each of us, by cultivating steadfast goodwill, can dissolve the forces of confusion and fear in the world.”
This is part of the path to equanimity, to menuchat nefesh.
–
Fear not, equanimity does not aspire to turn us into gray, vegetative blobs with all the feelings washed out. This is not complacency or indifference. This is an invitation to feel pleasure fully, without defining it as our ultimate happiness. An invitation to feel pain fully without condemning or hating it. And we can experience neutral events by being fully present, so that they are not just boring periods of waiting for the next thing This inner balance leads us into freedom in each moment.[5]
I’m not talking about cultivating equanimity in abstraction. I’m not saying “just try to be accepting of whatever arises in your day”. I’m suggesting that there are concrete, spiritual practices that come to us from honored lineages that we can learn, that we will actually cultivate within us equanimity - the ability to find some steadiness amidst an endless cascade of crises.
For anyone who has ever heard me talk about metta, or sat a metta meditation, it’s a very specific practice in which one in the quiet of their own heart is invited to offer a series of phrases wishing themselves or another human being, well. And this happens through the recitation of phrases, usually 3-4 of them, and there are traditional ones that are described but not required. Most often when I’m reciting metta phrases I’ll say things like
May I be well
May I be free from harm
May I live with ease
Metta phrases are in many ways an expression of our greatest aspirations, call them blessings, that we might want to offer ourselves and each other.
Until the past year I was only familiar with the phrases of the metta practice, but I’ve come to know that actually, there are phrases that accompany each of the four immeasurable qualities.
For the practice of equanimity, the Buddha invites us to offer ourselves these phrases:
May I be at ease with the changing conditions of life
May I allow joy and sorrow to arise and pass away
May I open to how it is right now
May I be peaceful
--
Years ago, one of my teachers told me bluntly, “Equanimity doesn’t happen on the cushion. It happens when your car breaks down on the side of the highway.”
In other words, equanimity arises in crisis, both personal and collective.
In the words of the poet yung pueblo,
“because being calm in the midst
of chaos is a sign of true power”[6]
--
Sometimes equanimity is the result of conscious intention and effort,
but other times it can actually take us by surprise.
Some 12 years ago, when I had gender affirming top surgery, there were some post op complications. Some weeks later I was telling my therapist about this, and he remarked that I was telling him how well everything went, but what I was describing was things not going well.
I laughed. I hadn’t even noticed how far I had strayed from my expectations for how the surgery would go, and I didn’t notice how calm I stayed. Things were actually going wrong and I still felt good internally. What might have felt in another moment like a crisis felt like a success.
In the months that followed, I spent a lot of time in therapy unpacking what made that possible. Almost none of which were external factors. All of it was about my internal orientation, my years of meditation, my deep need to stay calm lest my skin break out in hives as it had done a year prior when I originally scheduled to have the surgery.
When something is out of our control,
we might internalize that how we relate to what is happening is also not within our control.
My surgery taught me otherwise.
–
The Days of Awe also have their phrases.
Adonai adonai, el rachum v chanun.
Holy One, source of compassion and grace
avinu malkeinu, rachem aleinu
our sovereign, our source, have compassion for us
chotveinu bsefer chayim
inscribe us in the book of life
teshuvah, tefilah u’tzedakah ma’avirin et roa hagezera.
Forgiveness, prayer and generosity can transform the harshness of the decree.
I want to suggest that the experience of the Days of Awe can be an equanimity practice, and these are our phrases.
I’ve come to relate to the 10 days as a retreat in the Jewish calendar, of which services are only one part. There is singing and silence, shmoozing and feasting, apples and honey, and of course the sound of the shofar.
Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav taught that when the shofar blows 100 times on Rosh Hashanah, a bridge is formed between heaven and earth.
Rosh Hashanah is meant to draw us close to the heavenly realm. Which invites us to encounter our own mortality. Procrastination is in all of our nature, and this is our annual reminder that our lives have an undetermined deadline.
If we were reminded of this every day, we would become more anxious than we already are, which wouldn’t be helpful. But it is helpful once a year, to be honest with ourselves in community. It’s hard to encounter it alone, but when we together encounter tthe honest truth that our time on this planet is limited, we can create sacred space to really ask ourselves how do we want to spend our days?
The next 10 days our tradition instructs us to focus on three things: teshuvah, tefilah and tzedakah.
Each of these things fundamentally serves the same purpose. We do them to make us more compassionate people: in our relationships with each other, in our relationship with the divine, and with the wider world. To transform our inner decree from din to rachamim, from judgment to gentleness.
So what I’m suggesting is that for the next 10 days, when you’re in transit, when you’re waiting on hold, when you wake up, and when you lie down, you pick a series of phrases, either from the machzor or the buddhist tradition, or born of the wisdom of your own heart, to recite on repeat. To be a kind of portable prayer practice, or urgent reminder, and you don’t need to know the effect to try it.
If it’s helpful to say trust me, I’d say trust me. If it’s helpful to trust the tradition I’d say trust the tradition. If it’s helpful to have an accountability buddy in the community, I’d encourage that.
It will make a difference. It will make you more compassionate. It’ll settle your spirit, and that will change your year.
Wu Men Hui-k'ai, a 12th century Chinese Buddhist teacher, wrote:
“Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer,
snow in winter —
If your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
To see things as they are,
to see the changing nature,
to see the impermanence,
to see that constant flow of pleasant and painful events outside our control —
that is freedom.”
It’s so easy to be swept up, it's so hard to keep any kind of center.
I have had so many experiences this last year, where I did my morning meditation, exercised, and did everything I could to ready myself for the day. And then I unlocked my phone, opened the news and I was gone again.
I can’t know what this year will bring. Noone can.
I only know that it almost certainly will not be normal.
And that equanimity is the first thing to go.
I invite you to align your goals with that of the Ecuadorian poet, yung pueblo,
“goals:
develop my calmness
cultivate my wisdom
expand my freedom
help heal the world”[7]
These 10 days are a precious opportunity to be on retreat, to build new skills that we all need to get us through this year. And to build some amount of equanimity that you/we are going to need.
Together as we begin 5785.
May this be the best season of your life.
[1] This is real and you are completely unprepared, p. 114.
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-newborn-twins-killed-father-obtained-birth-certificates-2024-08-14/#:~:text=DEIR%20AL%2DBALAH%2C%20Gaza%2C,apartment%20where%20they%20were%20sheltering.
[3] Mishnah Peah 1:1
[4] https://www.lionsroar.com/fear-and-fearlessness-what-the-buddhists-teach/
[5] I am paraphrasing Sharon Salzberg here.
[6] pueblo, yung. inward, p. 218.
[7] inward, p. 223