Originally published in Turning Wheel, journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship

I want to interpret the story of the [Passover] exodus in the light of our meditation practice—not only what we learn on our cushions, but what we have come to understand through our experience in life about the shape of the spiritual journey.

Passover comes in the Spring of the year, a season that in all cultures suggests new life, new beginnings. So it’s no surprise that Passover is a holiday of renewal, a celebration of life. But Passover is also a holiday of liberation, commemorating the unprecedented and dramatic redemption from slavery of the Israelite nation. The Torah depicts this liberation in one of the world’s greatest moments of imaginative history: we see this people, six hundred thousand strong, bearing all their possessions in bundles on their backs, standing on the banks of the Red Sea—before them the raging waters; behind, fierce onrushing Egyptian charioteers. At that final moment of no exit there’s a sudden breakthrough: the sea parts, the people push through. The waters close behind them, and their pursuers perish.

We all know this story. We’re used to regarding it as a tale of historical and political liberation, which it certainly is. But the genius of the Torah is that it operates constantly on several levels at once, and it is possible, even necessary, to read the Exodus story also as the record of a personal, spiritual event, a spiritual liberation, a breakthrough for the soul that happened once long ago, and happens again and again, in the life of each individual who suddenly recognizes that chilling existential moment of standing right here, between the relentless pursuer and the forbidding sea. Read more