As an undergraduate I studied Buddhism with Taitetsu Unno, a Pure Land Buddhist priest and professor of Buddhist studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Professor Unno brought Joshu Sasaki Roshi to lead Zen retreats on campus. It was at these retreats that I first met Roshi and his jikijitsu or directing monk, the Jewish songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen whose Buddhist name was Jikan/Noble Silence. There and then, this book began …
7 Principles of a Jewish/Zen Mind
- You are not only a smaller self with sensing, feeling, thinking, and doing—you are also the Greater Self beyond all sensing, feeling, thinking, and doing. You are not only the name you carry, but the Unnamed that carries you.
- You are to this world what a wave is to the ocean that waves it: a precious and never-to-be-repeated happening of the One happening as all happening.
- You are a way the One laughs and weeps and loves and suffers. You are a way the One knows itself as the many. You are a way the One knows itself as each part. And one day you will be a way the part comes to know itself as the One.
- You have had many experiences in life. Some matched your desires, others did not; some fulfilled your goals, others did not; some upheld your values, others did not. Some brought you great joy, others brought you great suffering. Do not cling to what arises; only acknowledge the arising. Say “yes” to what was, without excuse or explanation.
- As you age, you may begin to forget, but you will not be forgotten. You may begin to let go, but you will not be abandoned. You may begin to drift, but you will never be set adrift. You are loved. You are not alone. You have never been alone.
- When you die, the faces of loved ones may come to you. Welcome each face with “I love you.” Do not cling, excuse, or explain. Without clinging, excuse, and explanations there is only love.
- The closer you get to the One, the lighter you will feel. You were a being; you are be/ing itself. You were self-aware; now you are awareness itself. You were happy and sad; now you are only bliss.
Zen Mind Jewish Mind: Koan, Midrash, & the Living Word
by Rami Shapiro
“A great way to deepen your spiritual life is to take a deep dive into a tradition other than your own-especially if you have a competent guide, and Rabbi Rami is an extraordinary guide. Not into Zen? Not a Jew? Not a problem. Anyone on any path will benefit enormously from this profoundly illuminating book.” –Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West
With reference to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Rami Shapiro begins with beginner’s mind as “empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.” Then, Rami ponders beginner’s mind in the child of the Passover Haggadah “who knows not how to ask.” The parents of this child are told to open (patach) the child to the art of questioning. Asking questions is key to Jewish mind.
The questioning perennial beginner is central to both Zen and Jewish, Rami demonstrates: a daring, iconoclastic, often humorous mind devoted to shattering the words, texts, isms, and ideologies on which expert mind–closed to inquiry–depends.
Zen Mind / Jewish Mind is not a scholarly study of anything, let alone Zen or Judaism, and despite all the footnotes, the book rests solely on Shapiro’s fifty-plus years of playing in the garden of Judaism, Zen, and advaita/nonduality. Chapters include “Dharma Eye, God’s I” (1), “Koan and Midrash” (4), and “The Yoga of Conversation” (7).
