the seven factors of awakening

I began my week at the Met, where I had the incredible opportunity to witness the inauguration of Philadelphia’s new mayor and city council, including our own badass member Rue Landau, who boldly raised her right hand and swore on the sacred text of her choosing, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.” Of the many pastors and preachers who spoke (and there were many!), it was the words of Mayor Parker’s pastor, Reverend Dr. Alyn E. Waller, Senior Pastor of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, that resonated most. 

With his eyes closed and his heart focused, his prayerful invocation echoed the beginning of the Amidah. He began, “Eternal God our Father, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” and then he continued, “God of Harriet, God of Simone, the God of Cherelle, God of Martin, Malcolm and Medgar…” (You can see his prayerful presence here at 1 hour and 57 minutes.)

He located the political moment both in time and place. Philadelphia was a landmark city for freed slaves in the time of abolition. And Cherelle Parker as the 100th Mayor, the first woman, a black woman. The entire ceremony felt like church (and also like Yom Kippur because it ran more than 4 hours) and I was quick to offer an Amen to this pastor’s words. 

It felt especially poignant to invoke Harriet, Martin, Malcolm and Medgar this week, as we begin reading the book of Exodus. It returned me to one of my most beloved Harriet Tubman quotes, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

Many rabbis have called attention to the moment in our Torah portion when they imagine that the Israelites become aware of their own enslavement, and therefore the possibility of getting free. 

Exodus 1 begins with the ominous recounting that a new King rises over Egypt and treats the Israelites ruthlessly. Yet they survived, they endured and they even multiplied. It is not until the very end of Exodus 2 that we learn that the Israelites had been enslaved for generations. Again a King dies and this time it leads to a collective awakening. The Israelites moaned and groaned, they cried out and finally the Holy One heard them. Exodus 2:24 reads, “God heard their moaning, and God remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Which is to say, the God of Harriet, Simone and Martin. 

Here I understand the language of the Divine as an externalized articulation of human spiritual awareness itself. This is the moment of Israelite awakening, of remembering their human potential and dignity. It is a moment of insight into their own experience of suffering, which is the beginning of liberation.  

One of the enduring gifts of my sabbatical was the opportunity to sit a longer meditation retreat. Last January, as I entered my second week of retreat, I noticed the presence of both calm and concentration. This felt new in my practice. At which point one of my teachers shared with me the seven factors of awakening. They are: Mindfulness (sati), Investigation (dhamma-vicaya), Effort (vīriya), Joy (pīti), Relaxation (passaddhi), Concentration (samādhi) and Equanimity (upekkhā). She noted I was experiencing some of these qualities, which felt shocking, since I always imagined awakening to be over the mountain and beyond my reach. But she insisted, no, awakening is within your grasp, in fact it is already within you. 

Apparently it is understood in the Dharma that when any factor of awakening is present, all of the factors are in fact present. Which is to say, if I felt calm, it was also possible to feel equanimity (which most often eludes me). 

Returning to our parsha, I see this pivotal moment at the end of Chapter 2, as the beginning of our collective awakening through Moses. In the coming verses Moses will experience mindfulness as he encounters the Holy One at the Burning Bush. He will investigate, asking God over and over why him? He will effort to free his people. There will be joy as they sing and dance across the sea. And there will be moments of equanimity at Mt. Sinai, as the thunder and lightening makes way for profound silence and the people respond “Naaseh v’nishmah,” we can do this. 

One teacher once reminded me, equanimity doesn’t happen on the cushion. It happens when you get a flat tire on the highway. Or in the case of our community, I am hoping it happens as we prepare to move into a new building, while responding to an evolving pandemic and organizing to hasten a ceasefire. This is a stressful time, for so many of us personally and for us collectively. 

My prayer for us as people and as a community is that we take this parsha and this moment as an invitation to recommit to our own capacity to cultivate awareness and to awaken. To see this as our spiritual path and obligation. To know that the path to liberation begins with curiosity which energizes our commitments, which allows us to settle and focus, which is unexpectedly delightful and sustainable. Cultivating any of these qualities makes all of them possible. Liberation is not in the heavens. It begins right here, in our hearts, and radiates out until every city is a city of shalom. May it be so.