God, Sin, Pain, Song, And Jewish Meditation

♪♪ ♪♪ >> Rick Chess: It's wonderful just listening to the silence for a moment. My name is Rick Chess. I direct the Center for Jewish Studies here at UNCA and I'm also the Roy Carroll Professor of Honors Arts and Sciences. And on behalf of the center of Jewish Studies as well as UNCA's department of religious studies, I'm very happy to welcome you to this evening's talk, presentation, conversation with Norman Fischer. Before I say a word or two of introduction, I want to mention some other events we have coming up that might be of interest to some of you. On March 12th, the Center for Jewish Studies will be hosting Dr. Shalom Goldman. His presentation on that Monday evening in this very room is called "Johnny Cash and the Holy Land: Christian Zionism and American Popular Culture." He'll also be accompanied by a folk singer who will perform some songs by Johnny Cash. Shalom Goldman will be here at the same time that his wife, Laurie Patton, will be here that weekend. She's a professor of religious studies and the dean of arts and sciences at Duke and she's going to be doing an evening presentation, a congregation, about Israel on Saturday, March 10th, on tales of biblical women. It should be a really interesting event as well. A little later on in the spring, beginning on April 21st running through April 26th, together with the Fine Arts Theatre and the Asheville Art Museum will be hosting the 4th Annual Asheville Jewish Film festival. We got some great films lined up for this year and I hope that some of you will be able to join us for that. Maybe just two more events, or at least one more that I'll mention. It's not a Jewish Studies event, but one of the projects that I've been active with since my new appointment at UNCA has been facilitating a conversation about the introduction of and use of contemplative pedagogy across the campus. And as part of this conversation we've organized, myself and a few colleagues, a little retreat/conference called Creating a Mindful Campus: Teaching, Learning, and Working at UNC Asheville and Other Colleges and Universities. This will take place on March 23rd through the 25th. It's open really to anyone who is interested in joining us. And if you'd like more information about this event in particular, please see me at the end of this evening's program. I want to give a special thanks to Malaprops. They've been out for both of Norman's evening presentation. And I know there are at least copies of three different books by Norman available for purchase and signing at the end of this evening's presentation. I also want to thank the wonderful volunteers who helped by taking some of your names and email addresses so I can send you a little quick survey sometime in the next week or so just to get some feedback in response to this evening's event. But don't worry Norman, I'm sure it'll all be wonderful feedback and - exactly. I won't let you know what the results are. Let's see. I also want to thank the staff of the Video Production team in the Media Center of UNC Asheville. They're here recording this evening for future broadcast on Asheville Educational Television. So it's been a real honor and treat to be able to host Norman Fischer for the last couple of days. He did a wonderful reading and performance of poetry based on his new book Conflict, which is available at the back of the room, last night. He's visited a class. He's participated in an interview by a student and myself, which will eventually be available on UNCA's website. He's met with our local Jewish meditation group. He's just been an incredible source of clear thinking and beautiful illustration of what it means to bring the fullness of one's being to every moment of experience. I know many of you are aware of Norman and his work. He's a poet and a Zen Buddhist priest. For many years he's been affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center where he served as co-abbot from 1995 to 2000. He's involved in bringing meditation to a variety of different contexts including in work with attorneys and mediation as well as work with members of some militaries somewhere else around the world, which is a good thing. Every army should invite Norman to do some work with them, it might result in our having a quieter and safer and more peaceful world. He's the author of many books. I mentioned his most recent book of poetry Conflict. Also the author of Slowly, but Dearly and I was Blown Back among other titles. Wonderful book on the Odyssey called Sailing Home on reading the Odyssey as a metaphor for navigating life's perils and pleasures. He publishes regularly, as I know some of you know this, in "Tricycle" and "Shambhala Sun" as well as other publications. He's deeply committed to the centrality of language in the human experience as well as all other facets of our experience. And as I said, it's been a real honor to be able to host him for the last few days. He's had a big impact on everyone he's come into contact with. And so- With that, I ask you to join me in welcoming Norman Fischer. [applause] >> Norman Fischer: Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Is this good with the microphone? I'm surprised actually to be standing here with all of you sitting there, because I thought for some reason that there would be just a few people and that we would have a chat. I actually thought it was- how many people here are not particularly interested in Jewish meditation? Raise your hand if you're not particularly interested in Jewish meditation. You're interested in something else. Yeah. So sort of. But a lot of people seem like you're either too shy to raise your hand or- [laughter] -you're interested in Jewish meditation, so. So I think what I'll do is not talk too terribly long so that there's time for things that are on your mind to be brought up. And if you're willing, I would like to begin with practicing meditation with you for a few minutes. Five or 10 minutes. Are you willing to do that? >> Audience: Yeah. >> Fischer: I guess if someone is not willing to do that, [laughter] you can think about something else. Right? While this is going on. You could pull out your phone and see what's on TV. So I'm looking around for that person who's unhappy with this plan. But I'm not seeing him or her so we'll go ahead. So let's practice meditation for a few minutes. And let's begin to returning our attention to the body and sitting up in the chair with a feeling of letting the upper part of the body be uplifted. You could be uplifted right now. Which is something I think your body would like to do if you would only allow the chest to open, the body to lift, with your feet on the floor. You can feel your butt on the chair. This is what it feels like to occupy your human body. And bring your awareness to the body sitting in the chair noticing if there's any feeling, sensation at the top of your head, noticing the tiny muscles around the eyes. Noticing the jaw and the cheek muscles and relaxing your face. If you can relaxing your shoulders, feeling your arms, your hands. And bringing your awareness to the concrete experience in its detail of sitting here on this chair. Now begin to notice your body, your breathing I mean. See if you can notice it in the bottom of your stomach, breathing in, stomach is rising, breathing out, stomach is falling back. And feel the gentle rhythm of the breathing. And bring your awareness to the breathing and you'll find that when you're aware of the breathing it becomes a little more alive and a little more calm. Just simply being aware of breathing in and being aware of breathing out. And I think we can all notice how, when everybody is aware of breathing in the body, that there's a kind of stillness that comes into you and into the whole room. And you can widen the field of awareness to include the space around your body, taking in the presence of the other people in the room. Somehow, even if your eyes are closed you can feel the other people in the room. If you were sitting all by yourself in this room it would feel different 'cause there's some way in which we sense the presence of others. Our body knows when others are present. If thoughts or feelings come into your mind, notice what's there. Appreciate it. It must be, right now, that's the thought that has to be there and gently, once you notice it, come back to the body and to the breathing as your primary point of awareness and focus. When you return awareness to the body and to the breath and to the awareness itself, what are you doing really? You're feeling the feeling of being alive. That is what it means to be alive. It means to be embodied. It means to be breathing. It means to be conscious, aware. This is the actual feeling of being alive. And whether you're young or old, healthy or not so healthy, the feeling of being alive is the same for all of us. Everything that you have ever done, everything that you ever will do, from the beginning until the end has always depended on this basic feeling of being alive. Without it, nothing happens and you're not here. Everything depends on this. Where did it come from, where is it going, what it is essentially no one really knows. But we can all feel it. And even though everything depends on it, maybe you've never before stopped your ceaseless activity and just focused your attention on the feeling of being alive. And this is essentially what meditation practice really is. It's not so much about focusing your calming, it's really about returning to what you are, to the basic life that you are, that we all are. So we'll sit quietly for another minute or so. Thank you. Wonderful. It's nice to get a room full of people meditating together. And now I think we should all talk at the same time and say what that was like. And I'm serious. I think that we should all find somebody next to us and introduce ourselves to the person next to us if we don't know them and have about- I'll time it- about a three of four minute conversation on the subject of What was that like? What did you think about that? And what happened there? Did you feel the feeling of being alive? Did you ever feel it before? What was that all about? Was it weird? Was it uncomfortable? Did you think- what's going on here? Whatever. Just three or four minutes and then I'll wave my arms- or I'll ring a little bell maybe when the time's up and then you can stop. So talk. [audience talking] >> Fischer: So thanks very much for doing that. The truth is we could just stop there and spend the rest of the time hearing what just happened. And we will spend time on that. But for purposes of the recording devices, it's going to be better if I talk for a little while now. But don't forget about the things that you have been saying right now and the things that you've been hearing from other people and the things you were experiencing when we did that brief meditation because I think it's very interesting. It's interesting to me what you think about this and what it's like. So I really want to hear from you afterward and we'll see what's on people's minds. So this talk has a title. Dr. Chess was astute enough to ask- he asked me, "What's the title of your talk?" and I gave him this title. He was astute enough to realize that I didn't have any talk and I just thought I would make up the most outrageous title- [laughter] -that you could imagine. So the title of this talk is "God, Sin, Pain, Song, and Jewish Meditation." That's pretty close. So now I'm going to talk about all that. Of course, it's impossible to talk about stuff like that because all of these terms are - religions are full of these kinds of terminologies that nobody really and truly knows what it means, right? And nobody is supposed to know what it means because it seems to me that human beings have all kinds of experiences that are very subtle and very hard to pin down and very hard to define and certain things we can define quite easily. This is a podium, we can all agree this is a podium. That's not complicated, and we agree on that. But there are other kinds of experiences that we have that we can't even say for sure whether we've had them. They're so subtle and sometimes we don't even notice that we're having them. And that's the whole territory of maybe art or religion. And then people notice this and then they say "Well, let's talk about this somehow. Let's find a way somehow to talk about this stuff that's actually so important to us." Because these experiences are not irrelevant. They're quite the opposite. These are experiences that are at the heart of what it means to be a human being. Like things like- just the whole idea of meaning. We can say, "My life is meaningful." We can say, "My life feels meaningless." But what's that? What is that feeling of meaningfulness or meaningless? What is that exactly? Where does that come from? How do we feel- our life has meaning or doesn't have meaning? Things like that. So then people think well let's try to develop some kind of terminology that we can talk about these things that are so important to us. Maybe the most passionate things in our lives, let's think of some vocabulary. And then, in an inspired way, religious sages and great people of the past come up with the terminology and then other people get in the conversation and then they use that terminology and they're constantly trying to understand what these things mean that they're using words to say. And then, you know, you go to church and they say, "Well, this is what God is, and this is what sin is," and we say "yeah, right, right." And we have nobody as a clue, the person that explained it doesn't know, we don't know, and we're all going along as if we knew what these things are and then we start fighting about them and we get confused about them and then we think we know what they are and we don't, and it all gets really messed up. But, it's really not, in other words, there is something going on that the words are supposed to be about and pretty soon you completely forget about what it is that's going on and you're thinking only about the words. And you're fighting about the words and you're defending the words, and you're identifying with certain words and dis-identifying with other words. I mean it's stunning to think about it, and this is what we were sort of doing last night in our poetry performance of the book Conflict which is about this. It's stunning to realize that people will kill each other, literally, over these words. It's really something isn't it? And won't realize that it's not about the words. It's about what the words are trying to get at. So, if I were to stand up here and give you words, you know explain these God, sin, whatever it was, it would be very, very fake and very false and I would never do such a thing. But what I'm going to do instead is, I'm going to read to you a little bit from- one of my, you know, great adventures, personal adventures, in this question, had to with some years ago I was practicing with the monastics at Gethsemane Abby, near Lexington, Kentucky which was Thomas Merton's monastery. And I was there practicing in the Catholic monastic practice which is the offices of the day in which the Psalms are recited, and I was reciting Psalms with the monastics, and they happened to be reciting Psalm 137 on that day, which is a very famous Psalm which ends with the line praying to God, "And please God take the- take their babies, the children of their families, and dash their heads against the rocks so that their brains will be smashed." Actually says that, Psalm 137. So I said to the good brothers of Gethsemane Abby who actually are really good people, and incredibly inspiring spiritual people, I said, "In my practice of sitting in silence I don't get how reciting this could be your spiritual practice. Could you explain this to me?" And they did. They had many wonderful things to say about it. But it got me interested in the Psalms, and I began a process which eventually led to my book, Opening to You, which was my version of Psalms, working from the Hebrew and using many translations, coming up with versions and becoming very, very immersed in these original texts. And of course, when you do this, it raises questions because you're translating, you're these words, like God, and sin, and all these kind of words that, and you're realizing that all the things we think about these words are wrong. That it's not about- it's not what we think it is. And it's not that, I'm not going to tell you what it really is, because I don't know what it really is, but it's clear that what we think it really is is not what it is. That there is a deeper reflection necessary. So I want to read you a little bit, just a few pages, of my introduction to the book, because it actually in fact the introduction does talk about exactly these things that are in the title of the talk. So, one of the words in Psalms is the word "God." And so I had to think about, how do you, you know what is that word in Hebrew, what does it actually mean in Hebrew, does the English word "God" do it justice? In the context of the Psalms. And so here's what it says in the introduction. Who- or "What or who is God? The word God in English with all its synonyms and substitutes as they appear in the Psalms, presents a serious problem for many. I find it meaningful and use it freely in my teaching where it seems helpful, but for many people, the word God evokes parental and judgmental overtones and even worse, false, meaningless and even negative piety associated with what they have taken to be their less than perfect religious upbringings." So I'm talking about people who don't have a good association with the word God. Many people have a positive association, but a lot of people have a quite negative association with the very word. "In fact, the word God often seems to militate against exactly what it is supposed to connote. Something immense, and indescribable, toward which one directs enormous feelings of awe, respect, gratitude, desire, anger, love, resentment, wonder, and so on. For many of the religious seekers I encounter, the word God has been all but emptied of it's spiritual power. Even where it is taken in a positive light, it is sometimes reduced and tamed, representing some sort of assumed and circumscribed notion of holiness or morality." So even for people for whom- believing people for whom the word God is a very positive word, sometimes even in the very positivity of it, it's reduced, of it's- what it really is, the real power of it and the real energy of it. What it's supposed to be indicating. "For me, what is challenging about the word God is exactly, is that it is so emotional. So metaphysically emotional. The relationship to God that is charted out in the Psalms is a stormy one. Codependent, passionate, confusing, loyal, petulant, sometimes even manipulative. I wanted to find a way to approach these poems so as to emphasize this relational aspect while avoiding the major distancing pitfalls that words like God, king, Lord, and so on, create. My solution was simple, I decided to avoid whenever I could, all these words. And instead use the one English word that best evokes the feeling of relationship- the word- You." So the book is called Opening to You. So I actually didn't use the word, very seldom, maybe only once or twice, used the word God, because when you look at the Hebrew, you realize these are intimate poems- they're like love poems. They are not poems addressed to a distant, kingly figure, but they are to, those of us who read Psalms in English, because the were translated, the translations that we know are from the King James version- the King James version. Well the people who were working for King James wanted to kind of conflate the God of the Bible with the King. And they emphasized that part, and I wanted to go and emphasize intimacy and relationship, which is actually there, if you study the Hebrew texts. "Though I realize the idea of seeing God as you, isn't unique, in fact it's a common troupe in medieval Sufi poetry- it had a very personal, almost a private dimension for me. For some years I have been giving thought to the question of who the audience for my poetry actually was." And as Dr. Chess said, I'm primarily a poet and you know, have worked in poetry for many, many years and published many volumes of poetry. So who is the audience for my poetry? "I came to see that I was not writing for ordinary persons, nor for colleagues, nor for poetry lovers. The person to whom my poems actually seem to be addressing was someone much more silent and much more profoundly receptive than any human being could possibly be. This person wasn't a person at all. It was nobody. Nothing. And it wasn't anywhere or at anytime. It was even beyond meaning. So poetry is important to me, not because it gives me a chance to express myself or to communicate, but because it is an encounter with that which is both so close to me I can't see it and so far away I could never reach it. Poetry evokes the unknowable. Because of this, I've always found words themselves, the extraordinary fact of their being words, absolutely mysterious. Especially words like me, and you, or I." Did you ever think of this? Everybody sitting here, we can all say I- it would be the same word, we would all use the same word to refer to ourselves. Did you ever think of that? How can I be I, and you're also I? It doesn't make any sense, you know? Wait a minute, you know? So this is very mysterious to me. When we say we, or me, or you in a poem or elsewhere, do we really know what we mean? Shakespeare's sonnets whose power comes from the fact that they are passionately addressed to a you who is forever unknown, have always impressed me. And I believe the whole sense of the lyric in western poetry beginning with the Psalms, has its source in this notion of a passionate writing addressed to a nonexistent or supra- existent listener. With human consciousness, with language, the perfect silence of being is necessarily broken as we call out with our words to one without a name or location to all that immensity that surrounds us everywhere, inside us and outside us. The word you contains all that, and includes all its sadness, intimacy, and power. For in the word You, God becomes painfully close, and utterly unreachable in it's nearness. And if you doubt this, I have an experiment you can try. Go up outside in the mountains or somewhere out far away where nobody else is around, by yourself, and stand somewhere where you can look out at a distance. And say the word You. Or even just start talking. Even if you don't use the word you, just start talking out loud. And you will have the unmistakable experience somehow that someone is listening even though there is nobody around. I mean it's a weird experience. Because in the speaking is the listening. In the words are the listening. I mean, I hope this makes sense to you, because it makes sense to me and I'm trying my best. The other thing that occurs to me as I'm saying this is that one time I was at Stanford University at a symposium, poetry symposium, and I was with a, there were three of us, myself, and Michael McClure, whose one of the beat generation poets, and Leslie Scalopino, was a great, now deceased Avant garde poets of my generation. And the three of us were there and someone asked us who was the audience for our poems. And all three of us, each in our own way, said the same thing. Something like what I've said here. In a certain way, the deeper you get into, and it's not only true of poetry, it's true of any art, I think, the deeper you get into it, the more you realize that at its most profound level, it's not about, of course you're communicating and this and that, you know, for some it's a livelihood, but the impulse to do it doesn't come from there. The impulse to do it comes to, comes from this place of expressing and reaching out to something that is unreachable. That's the source of these human activities that have always existed as long as there have been human beings. So now I'm skipping a part, and I want to address this question God as king, God as big boss, which is one of the big problems we have with God, those of us who, those people who find the word God objectionable, that's usually why, you know I don't want anybody bossing me around, you know. And those people who like the idea of God and are very faithful, religiously, like that idea, I'm glad I have the ultimate boss who knows what to do, so if I follow the ultimate boss, I'm going to be ok. But either way, you're left with this impression of God as the ultimate boss. So I noticed that and I thought well what is that saying? What's that really about? The idea of sovereignty, you know ruler ship, kingship, seems to me to be one of the key themes of the Psalms. God is the ultimate fountainhead of sovereignty. Through God sovereignty is conferred on kings and through them in turn to the people. In ancient times, everybody wanted to have a king. Because there was no kind of authority in the realm unless there was a king on his or her throne. A king or a queen. You need that. Societies need that. In those days. With sovereignty there can be honor, reality, a secure place to be the possibility of wholeness and salvation, a way to live. With sovereignty, exile in the world ends and one comes home. The most powerful Psalms seem to yearn for the sovereignty that only God can confer. To praise it where it's present, to lament it where it's gone and to evoke constantly God's presence and praise God's name all because of the potency of sovereignty. I have pondered this, investigated it for what I could begin to see of its spiritual content and I finally formed a notion of sovereignty as spiritual authenticity. Some deeply felt but almost indefinable quality of meaningfulness that is the highest potential of human experience and I think a human need. Think about it. We are the only creatures on the planet capable of living meaningless lives. Is that right? Did you ever see a cow that was living a meaningless life? No. A cow can't live a meaningless life. A giraffe can't live a meaningless life. A little mouse running around in your house can't live a meaningless life. There is no question for them of a meaningful or meaningless life. But we, I don't know why, I think because of language can live a meaningless life and therefore are driven to live a meaningful life. Because in a way, maybe there is nothing worse than a meaningless life and we all find some way, we're not all necessarily you know artistic or religious in any way but we all find some way to live a meaningful life. And what I'm saying is that that's what the sovereignty of God stands for, that the sovereignty the can confer on you the sense that there is meaning in your life. It's as if a human being can exist, but not live; can be physically present, but spiritually dead; if this quality of sovereignty is absent. I began to think- I'm skipping another part- I began to think that the sovereignty of God referred to in the Psalms was a species of consciousness beyond the human, but not separate from it. A kind of settled and steady contemplation of reunion with God, constantly evoked and longed for in the poems. Many of the Psalms are this longing for being met and being- having God- confer God's presence on one. Because one is in this state of meaninglessness, and in this state of oppression. So, is that so? Then, there's another way of understanding- And now, here, we get to the sin part of my talk- There's another way of understanding concepts like wickedness, punishment, sin, and so on. Wickedness becomes heedlessness. Being unmindful, unaware of God's presence. That's what wickedness is. It becomes a kind of off-centeredness, a kind of egotism, a kind of narrowness of spirit, a kind of crookedness, as if you lost your way. And in fact, that's what the word 'sin' means in Hebrew. It means to be off the mark- to lose your way. To fall into such a state is to suffer alienation- to be off course and therefore terrified. You've lost your way, you don't know where you're going, in the wilderness, you're terrified. So sin is a question of being 'off the mark,' of being a distance away from the unity that one finds within this awareness of God's sovereignty. And punishment for sin is natural and necessary if there is to be a course correction. When you're off, you need to be- something has to force you back. And, you know, in a way, the punishment for sin is the sin itself. I came to think that the enemies mentioned in the Psalms were external. Clearly they're, you know, the Psalms have a political, and social, and historical dimension. But also, as you read them over the generations, these enemies become internal. Praying for their defeat could be seen to be akin to praying, as you find in Tibetan Buddhism, to fierce guardian deities to destroy the powerful inner passions that keep one in bondage. And this is how I ended up looking at this in Psalms, and translating with that in mind. One last short passage, and then I'll read you one or two brief Psalms, and then that'll be all. And we can talk. One more influence that stands behind the efforts I've made with the Psalms is my reading of the German- the Jewish, German-language poet, some of you may be familiar with, Paul Celan. A deeply spiritual and inward writer, who was a Holocaust survivor, whose works are an attempt to meet the tremendous challenge to the human sprit, that that event, to which Celan always referred only as 'what happened.' He never used the word 'Holocaust.' He always said, what happened. His poetry was a response to that what happened. Celan used Biblical material, including Psalms, with all the tradition feeling it evokes, yet at the same time, manages to make it personal. Personal, as if the ancient lines and their echoes were coming from his own mouth for the first time. Expressing the depth of all he had seen and experienced himself. Writing in German, the language of the murderer and oppressor, he could not help but recognize with each word how easily language betrays us, even as it provides us with the emotional and religious connection to that which we most need in our extremity. In time, Celan's poems become more and more terse, more and more dense, until by the end of his short life, he committed suicide in Paris, in 1970; he was 49. They were all but incomprehensible, approaching closely the boundary of what can be said. Celan's project as a writer is the desperate attempt to find meaning in a terrible situation, one in which a return to an innocent or traditional faith seems impossible. This is why it- meaning Celan's work- is so important for our time, in which it is the challenge of religious traditions to do something more than simply reassert and reinterpret their faiths, hoping for loyal adherence to what they perceived to be the true doctrine. Looking back at the last century, with its devastating wars and holocausts, and the shock of ecological vulnerability, I have the sense that religious traditions must now take on a wider mission. And it is in recognition of this mission, I believe, that interreligious dialogue becomes not only something polite and interesting, but essential. I have come to think after working for many years intimately with many people along the course of their heartfelt spiritual journeys, that traditions now need to listen to the human heart before them as much as, and more, than they listen to their various doctrines and beliefs. And that was why- that was the sort of spirit behind my doing this work on the Psalms. And I'll read you one short Psalm and then I'll be finished. This is my version of the 93rd Psalm. You are sovereign. Clothed with goodness. Dressed in strength. And so the world is firmly established and it cannot be moved. You, addressed by the world's voice, are firmly established from the first, and before, and after the first. The rivers have been lifted. The rivers' cries, the rivers' shouts have been lifted. The rivers have lifted their dark waves. But more than the thundering of the waters, more than the thumping of the seas, is You. You're witnessing is steadfast. Your house is ever whole, even past the end of time. So, I did it, right? God. Sin. [laughter] Pain? Pain. Song. You ready to sing? [laughter] So I'll start and you'll join in. [indistinct singing] [indistinct singing] Well. So, let's talk about all this. And I guess we have a mic over there? And remembering what we started with, the silence, and the being together in the silence, and the feeling of being alive. And what that might have to do with all the things we've been talking about. Or anything you wanna bring up, we can share. Think together. >> Chess: [indistinct] the microphone working and then when you wanna share, please come to the microphone. Right there. >> Fischer: Oh, the microphone's not working yet, is that it? Singing- what's that? >> Chess: We'll start with the silence! >> Fischer: Yeah, I know, that's it! Silence is never a problem. >> Chess: The microphone is working. So just please come to the microphone with your questions, comments, observations. >> [Audience member]: Hi. >> Fischer: Hi. >> [Audience member]: Would you talk a little bit about- with your training in Zen, the notion of silence, like the role that silence plays in Zen teaching, and kind of the border between meaningful and meaningless as it comes up in some of those in literature? >> Fischer: Well of course, in Zen practice there's a lot of silence. The classical Zen practice is a meditation retreat that goes on for many days, in which mostly there's silence. There can be chanting services a few times a day. There can be a talk given everyday. But when you start at four or five in the morning and go 'til nine o' clock at night, those take up a very short amount of time compared to the many, many hours spent in utter silence. So this practice that we were doing in the beginning, returning to the body and the breath, that's basic, generic meditation practice as it's done in Zen, more or less. And so I think that- you could say that Zen practice has an enormous respect for and trust in returning to silence as the way to energize and inspire our lives. I think the idea is that through the silence and the continuous practice of silence, you know, for a lifetime, of retreats, and daily practice, and so on, and so on. You would have a feeling for life and a view of life that would be powerful. And positive. And sustainable. And that would bring you to a lot of compassion and understanding of others. Simply through practicing silence intensively over a long period of time. So it's hugely important in Zen. And, you know, although I think many popular writers about Zen will stress that Zen writing is often meaningless or illogical on purpose to defeat one's logical faculty, I don't believe that myself. I think it's just a form of religious literature, not so unlike other forms of religious literature- every religion has it's own style, right? And every religion is precious, right? Because it has a human style that no other religion has. And Zen has a particular kind of style, which is always meaningful, I think, in some way. But it's a style of producing meaning that we're not used to. So it's not meant to be meaningless or kind of jerk our chain so to speak, or screw us up. It's really a form of expression with a style, a particular style and a purpose. It's pointing to these kinds of experiences that come out of silence. And because it's pointing to those kinds of experiences, which are very hard to distinctly define and delineate, it's gonna be talking in sometimes paradoxical language. Because one finds that inner experience is often paradoxical. So it's not- this is not a bunch of jokes to- hahaha, you dummies, you know, like that. So anyway. Does that speak to what you are raising? Yeah? >> [Audience member]: Yes. >> Fischer: Thanks for the question. You know it's nice when you practice silence. It's like when there's an uncomfortable silence in the room, it's never uncomfortable. So since we already established in the beginning, we could sit together in silence - we could - I could stand here and just be with you and nobody could say anything. It would be alright, you know? Eventually we'd go home. But we're going to go home anyway, eventually. [laughter] >> [Audience member]: So Norman, what is the difference between Jewish meditation and Buddhist meditation? If there is a difference? >> Fischer: Yes, there's a big difference. Jews do Jewish meditation. [laughter] That's a big difference. >> [Audience member]: Jews do Buddhist meditation. >> Fischer: Right. That's true too. No, in a way the technique - there's different kinds of Jewish meditation in different schools of Jewish meditation. But one very powerful school of Jewish meditation has taken the basic Buddhist meditation and then naturalized it into a Jewish setting. And then, because Jewish people are doing it and Jewish ideas and history and concepts and feelings are the context of the meditation, it changes the meditation. So Jewish meditation - one of the things I feel about Judaism as a tradition as opposed to say, Zen or Buddhism, is that Judaism is a very emotional tradition. It's very emotional. And every - you ever think about this, those of you in the room who are familiar with Jewish liturgy. Every time God is evoked in a typical prayer that's recited every single day, it's always said, God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rachel, and Leah. Why would you need to say that? Like God needs to be related to some people. But yes! You need to say that because in Judaism, the way that you, for better and worse, the way that you appreciate God is through your family lineage. Right? So this is good and it's bad, as we all know. We love our families and we have plenty of problems with our families. And it makes Judaism very emotional and very passionate. So I myself, when I practice Judaism and I'm standing in the synagogue, my most typical reaction when I'm really praying is enormous sorrow because my parents are gone and I feel like I'm very close to them at the time of praying and I'm very aware of their being gone. And so that becomes the quality, the feeling of my prayer. And it becomes the feeling of the meditation in Judaism. It's very emotional. People feel many emotional things in the meditation. And that's encouraged and part of the practice. It's less the case in Zen meditation, where the surround is quite different. So in other words, the practice itself changes with the surround, and vice versa. I think that Jews who do this kind of meditation will have a different feeling for Judaism because of it and the meditation they do will be different because of their Jewish sensibilities. It's taken- I've been doing Jewish meditation in Jewish context for, I don't know how many years, maybe twenty years. And in that twenty years, I've seen a change. The meditation practice itself has changed for me and for the people doing it- that I do it with. Yeah. So it's different. Also, in Zen- in Buddhism as you know, Jeanie is an old Zen comrade I forgot she lived near Asheville. I just saw her and said, "Aw, there's Jeanie." Anyway, as you know in the Buddhist context of meditation there can be- they're different presentations- but there can be a sense of a distinct goal of the meditation practice; a goal of enlightenment or nirvana or- extinguishing the passions, in some schools of Buddhism, a goal. In Jewish meditation there's no idea like that. In Jewish meditation, it's simply sitting as an ongoing practice of, in a way, opening one's heart to God. That's the title: Opening to You. That's the point of meditation in Judaism. In Buddhism, there are many ways that you can understand Buddhism. And I happen to understand it myself in this way, in which, it's not so different. You know, the way that we practiced, in the end, was not so different. But there are many presentations of Buddhism- presentations of Buddhism in which there is that goal. That makes it very different from Jewish meditation. Good question, thank you for asking. Yeah. I guess, you know, the mic could also be passed around, can't it? Or is that been for the- >> [Audience member]: Could you expand on it? You just spoke about Jewish meditation. How about Christian, Islamic, or any other thought, field, or endeavor? Please expand on it. >> Fischer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I understand that the number one practice in Catholic monasteries throughout the world is this meditation. They have choir as I said. That's their basic practice. But they also do other practices privately and personally, and I know many, many, many, many, Catholic monks who do this practice, because it just makes sense to them religiously. It opens the heart religiously. Islam, I'm not familiar with. I don't know if this practice has been applied in Islam. I'm just- I'm afraid that the circumstances of my life- I've had opportunities to be in dialogue with many Christian practitioners, Catholic and various denominations of Protestant, and of course with Jews but I have not had the opportunity to do the same with people who practice Islam. So I'm quite ignorant of it. And I am not aware of this kind of practice being done in Islamic circles. >> [Audience member]: What about Native American? >> Fischer: Well, I think Native American people that I've encountered, who practice their religion, have a feeling for this, but they mostly express it through music and dance and ritual, rather than the practice of sitting in silence. But they certainly appreciate silence, they understand it I think. So it feels like the same territory, yeah. >> {audience member}: I'd like to hear more about how you feel about meaningfulness and meaninglessness and whether meaning has any meaning? [laughter] >> Fischer: Well, that's a great question. Of course then you have to ask what do we mean by meaning? [laughter] Yeah. And, yeah, so, when we say meaning, we think, "So what's the meaning?" And then you have to say what the meaning is. But suppose that meaning were not the kind of thing that you could say what it is? Then to call it meaningless would be just as well. In other words, it's not conceptual, it's a feeling that we have inside about our lives. It's something that we- maybe one way to look at it is there's a feeling of hope, there's a positive feeling about having been alive. "Yes, I'm glad I have been alive." There has been a feeling that's it's been good and right to have been alive. Not that I know why, but I have that feeling. So if you want to call that meaningfulness, you could say it's meaningfulness. If you want to say, "Oh that's beyond meaning, 'cause I don't have any concept of it, it's just a feeling that I have," you could call it meaningless if you want to. It doesn't really matter what we call it, but it is- it seems to be a human feeling. It's the opposite of despair, right? Despair is when you do not know why there would be any point in living for another day. And I can understand that feeling too, you know. I mean, in a way it makes sense. It's like, life is so short. Also, it's very troublesome. I mean, every day you gotta feed yourself, you gotta clean up after it, you gotta go to the toilet, you gotta clean the toilet, it's a lot of heavy lifting, just getting through every day. And you're gonna die anyway, very soon, so like, why prolong this- and you know what? The older you get, the worse it's gonna get. So why prolong the agony, why don't we just, as soon as things start going sour, why don't we just end it right there and save ourselves a whole lot of trouble? And what's the point of this anyway? So I can understand that. >> [Audience member]: I have a quote for that. The long habit of living unaccustomes us to dying. >> Fischer: Yeah, right. It's just habit. Right. [laughter] >> Fischer: So, yeah, I'm not proposing any meaning here, but I'm proposing that we do seem to need to have the feeling that our life has hope and not- we're not engulfed with despair. And of course, being engulfed with despair, is something that human beings experience too, right? And in fact, if you read Psalms, there are many, many despairing moments in Psalms. In fact, that's one of the main troupes of Psalms, the speaker of the Psalms will often be in a position of utter despair. "I don't know what to do now, I can't imagine living another day." And from that place of despair, crying out to God, "Please, God, come and lift me up from this despair!" And often that happens in the course of a single Psalm- there'll be that crying out, and then they'll be saying, "Oh, and I have been lifted up. I have been lifted up. I have overcome this despair." So in a certain way, I don't mean to be suggesting here that despair is something that is a problem and should be eliminated. Despair is also natural and it's the other side of this meaning. It's the meaning that answers the despair, and it's the despair that will come from our humanness at certain times, at times of great loss. One often can feel this, like, how do you go on for another day in the face of this loss? And what's the point of going on? And then somehow or other, we can get that hope back and that sense of purpose and meaning back, so. The everyday Zen website, which is just www everydayzen- one word- everyday zen dot org, has more talks by me than you can ever listen to. [laughter] And you can download them all for free and listen to them on your computer and you'll never- believe me, you'll never come to the end of my yakking. [laughter] And, I just want to tell you, for those of you who are not particularly interested in the things that I'm saying, there's another benefit that's very important. And that is that many people have told me that when they listen to my soothing voice, it puts them to sleep. [laughter] So, I don't charge now, but that is my retirement plan. [laughter] When I'm ready to retire, I'm going to market my talks as a sleep-inducing potion with no side effects whatsoever. You'll feel fine, you won't feel nauseous or anything. You'll feel fine and it'll put you right to sleep. So, if you have trouble sleeping at night try it. Yes? >> [Audience member]: So whatever meaning and meaningless mean or don't mean, are Atheists doomed to despair? Doomed to meaningless lives? >> Fischer: Atheists. I don't think so. No, I- >> [Audience member]: Well, that's what I got from your talk. What you were talking about. >> Fischer: No, there are many ways of having a feeling of meaning in your life that are not associated with any kind of religious life at all. In fact, it could be the case that in the developed world, it's possible that the majority of people in the developed world, maybe the whole world, don't have any particular religious affiliation that's important to them, but they do have things in their lives that are important to them. That give them a sense of meaning and largeness. I think we need a largeness to our lives, because it's too much to be as vulnerable as we actually are without having some sense that there's a largeness beyond what we can see. So people have all kinds of ways of feeling that in their lives. Sometimes if you ask them what it is, they won't be able to tell you, they don't know what it is, but there is a reason why- believe me, anybody who gets up in the morning and gets out of bed has a reason. Because you can't get up in the morning and get out of bed and go forth into a day unless you have a reason. You just can't do it. And maybe you've experienced those days when you don't get out of bed because you don't have a reason. And that's when you're in despair, and you can't go forth. So, no, you don't have to be religious at all. I just think that, when you think about this reasonably, some of the holiest, wisest, most beautiful human beings that have ever lived on the planet, have been involved in this discussion from the standpoint of our great religions. Right? And so, if they've been developing this way of looking at the world and talking about the world, why would we not want to take advantage of their two thousand year and more conversation and all the things that they've developed and all the beautiful words and feelings that they've talked about, and the vocabularies that they've used. Even the smartest and wisest among us couldn't possibly be reproducing 2,500 years of the history of these conversations. So. So, it's, to me it's just practical. And the fact that our religions have been guilty of so many bad things, is, we have to take that into account and we have to say, "No, I don't want to get- be used by my religion and I don't want to use my religion for these kinds of purposes, but I want to be inspired by my religion and not narrowed by it, or ruled by it in some way." But for many people there's just not the real interest, there's just not the spirit for that, so they find other ways. And mostly, it's ethical and political. There are people who have no religious feelings at all who feel like what makes their lives meaningful is benefitting other people, making a world that their children and their children can live in, and doing activity that assures that. And that is a very- I mean in a sense, all religions also teach that, so whether you do that out of a religious conviction or just because that's what gives your life meaning doesn't make any difference really. So I think that, to me, that is religion. See what I mean? To me, from my point of view, everybody has some version of a religious life. Everybody. Without exception. When I talk to a person, I'm always, to me, I'm always talking to a religious person. Any human being is by nature, by the fact of being human, there is some sense of what I call religion in them. So I'm always talking to friendly people. People who understand what I understand, always. Yeah. How we doing? A couple more minutes? More questions? Comments? It's kind of nice to be together, just- easy going spirit. >> [Audience member]: I have a question if you find it appropriate, and that is to share with us something about what the circumstances were that first led you into the religious life? [indistinct] >> Fischer: Yes, 'cause it wasn't mic'd. Yeah, what were the circumstances that led me into a religious life? You'd think that would be an easy question, but it's always mysterious, right? And I've thought about this a lot. And what I think is, and maybe this isn't true- but what I think right now, is that what led me into a religious life is growing up in the circumstances in which I grew up. Because some of you are old enough to remember what was a very strange national mood after World War II. I was born immediately at the end of World War II. And everybody was so happy that the war was over, plus we won, and it was over and everything was over, and now we could really do great things. That was what you read in the papers and that's what everybody said. But the truth is that everybody was traumatized. And you notice that when you're a little kid, not that you go around saying, "Why is everyone so traumatized?" You have no idea of that word. But you notice something is weird. So I noticed that. And the other thing is that we grew up in a household with my grandparents, who were born in Europe and who carried with them the old world history, and I felt that. And also my grandfather was deathly ill. So when I was a kid, we lived in a house where there was somebody who was not to be made nervous or upset because he was very, very, very sick and then he died when I was about six or seven. So I realize now, looking back on it, that I grew up in the shadow of trauma and death. And that's enough to make anybody religious, you know? [laugher] But not that I was- in fact, I was actually religious as a young boy, but then when I became an adolescent, I completely forgot about it and it wasn't until much later, not much later, maybe ten years, in my early twenties, that I began once again to be interested in religion. But maybe from adolescence until my early twenties, I was only interested in sports and girls. And there is no room for religion when you're interested in sports and girls, there's no time for religion. Fortunately I got over that and got religious. It would have been a bad life to be going around interested in girls and sports at my age, you know it's no good. Are you going to say something? Oh yeah, she has the mic, and she's going to speak, yeah. >> [Audience member]: I just- when my father died 12 years ago I read The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying, and four bardos that they talk about where we go when we die, which resonated with me. But it- my nephew, it would have been his 21st birthday, yesterday was his birthday, he died two and a half years ago from Leukemia, so I even- so I picked the book up again. And somebody asked me- and I really wasn't sure- what do Jews believe in where we go after we die? Where do we go? Do we have- we don't have heaven and hell, right? >> Fischer: Yes. I don't think that there is an official Jewish belief manual. Otherwise I'd look it up. >> [Audience member]: So I did ask a friend of mine, he's raised Hassidic Jewish. You know? I said, "Oh, you're the guy to ask. Somebody asked me this." And- >> Fischer: What did he say? he said- he said that there's somewhere in the Talmud it talks about that we go to this kind of place like Hell for a year, but then we are released. If we sinned, and- [laughter] >> Fischer: Well, there are numerous beliefs like that, there's actually a Jewish belief in reincarnation, too. >> [audience member]: Yeah. So there are all kinds of things that you could discover. But I don't think there is a Jewish position that is normative on that question. Nor is there a Buddhist one either. Because The Tibetan Book of the Dead is one position and one thought, it's not- it doesn't- all Buddhism doesn't believe that or ascribe to that. So the problem of- yes of course, this is one of the big problems that all religions are concerned with, right? What happens after we die? And the answer is, nobody knows, really. You know? >> [Audience member]: So just do the right thing while we live, right? >> Fischer: Yeah, but I mean one thing seems clear to me. And you tell me if this resonates with you. And that is that, you do have the feeling, I have the feeling that there's something strange going on here that is not accounted for by the materialistic framework of "You're born on this day, you die on that day, and that's all that there is to a human life." It doesn't seem really to make sense. Now obviously, being born is a big deal. There's a big difference between being born and not, right? [laughter] And death is also a big deal- there's a big difference between being alive and being dead. So it's not that these things are trivial. They're not trivial. They're really important. But at the same time, you have the feeling- and this is I think, for me, no doubt- partly because of spending my lifetime doing spiritual practice. It gives me the feeling that there's a scope to my life beyond that, and a scope to all of our lives beyond that. Now, all the explanations of exactly what that looks like and how that works are all just different ways of trying to express- it's kind of like what I was saying at the beginning, we have many ways of expressing things that we know are somehow so but we just can't, because we know they don't make any sense within the framework of our language and our human experience. I mean, we- you know, we think that the world looks like the world we see. Well, this is not the case at all. The world that we're living in is created by our senses and our consciousness, right? We all know that. If an ant is walking across the floor right now, the ant is not living in the same world we're living in. The ant has a totally different world that it's living in. So to think that the world projected by our senses is the only thing that there is is madness. On the other hand, we can't understand any other world that isn't in terms of our senses and our concepts and our language an so on. So we're never going to be able to answer these questions in a way that's definitive. But somehow we know, something in us is also beyond our senses, right? And our language, and we have a feeling for it. So that's why you live your life for more than your life. The person who lives their life- if I'm only this, from birth to death and that's it, then the only thing that makes sense is I should have the best time that I can have while I can. And then, when I'm about 35 I should jump off the bridge because after that it gets worse, and why go through all the trouble? That would be a reasonable thing if this were all that there is. And- But I think we all understand that no, there's some bigger scope in which we're living our lives and there's some realm in which our life is more important. Like every- why is it, you know what I mean? Do you think about this? We all understand- we all understand, even though we often kill people in wars and stuff like that, we all understand that it is not right to kill people. We all know that. You don't kill people. And, we don't say, "You don't kill some people, it's not right to kill some people, other people it's okay to kill them," no. The moral imperative is that every human life is sacred regardless of how wealthy a person is, how accomplished they are, we might have more respect for somebody who's a high person in the world, but we certainly don't say their life is worth more as a life than any other person, right? This is a common understanding, I think, that we all have. More or less. Why would that be? Because we think that life is sacred. We think that life is somehow more than my accomplishment or my wealth. We all agree to that proposition in some way. And that's really saying that there's a sanctity to a human life. And we all have to live lives that honor that sanctity. And we all know that. We all agree to that. Even though we haven't thought it through. We all agree to it. So there's another- >> Chess: Maybe this will be the last one. >> Fischer: Yeah, this will be the last one. Yeah. >> [Audience member]: I wondered if you might have any thoughts or comments or suggestions about how to integrate Jewish meditation into the practices and rituals of the religion? In other words, maybe it's something distinct from a service, yet there are parts of the service that seem to lend itself to meditation. >> Fischer: Are you- are you- belong to one of the synagogues in Asheville? >> [Audience member]: Sort of. [laughter] >> Fischer: So you're a Jewish person who is not affiliated with a synagogue, or- >> [audience member]: Right. >> Fischer: Yeah. Well you're- you'll be glad to know that at least one of the rabbis of one of the synagogues is sitting a few rows behind you, and you can talk to him afterward, [laughter] and in fact, the synagogues in- and the other Rabbi, I don't know how many- how many synagogues are there in Asheville? Two? Three? Three. So, I was just at the synagogue just before coming here and two of the three Rabbis in Asheville were there because they are interested in Jewish meditation and are in the process of integrating it into the community. In fact one of the things we were talking about were the different ways in which that can be done, specifically and technically. So if you're actually interested in that, there is a meditation group at Temple Beth Israel. So you should be joining temple Beth Israel tomorrow [laughter] and going to the meditation group and you should be supporting it and helping that group figure out how to do that. I think that would be a great thing. And my colleague Rabbi Jeff Roth who's a wonderful Jewish meditation teacher often comes to Asheville and gives Jewish meditation retreats. So you're in luck. You're in luck. And I'm glad that was the last question. That was a really good one. Thanks everybody. [Applause] Books! Yes, yes. You should buy books. Yes! I'm happy. ♪ [closing music] ♪ ♪♪