In this talk from the 2005 winter ECAMP retreat, Norman provides an overview for a profound reading of the Torah and of our lives.

…In other words it has nothing to do with the subject matter of the Torah, it’s actually a text that is trying to access the incomprehensibility of our lives.

And it’s a very intricate system that at any point in your life you have a problem that you don’t know what it is, but if you pick up the Torah and read it, (the Torah of that moment which is on the calendar and so forth), the Torah of that moment will elucidate the problem of your life at that moment that you are not sure even what it is, but you’ll figure it out and discover it by reading the Torah text.

This is how the thing is supposed to work. It’s actually supposed to work that way, that the Torah text is actually your biography, but your hidden biography not the biography that you know about but the biography that really counts that you don’t know about that’s in the text that if you read it you’ll find out.

Then there’s another thing, suppose your biography, the story that you know about your life including where you were born and what your name is and your profession and your emotional life and your wounds, your joys, your sorrows, your problems; suppose the biography of your life was also a Torah text, subject to the four levels of interpretation, the four trillion levels of interpretation.

Suppose you’ve been reading this text only on one level all this time. Suppose the problems that you have, the issues, …your issues were actually just the Pashat, that the problems that you think you have. Many of us are sitting here with all these problems, we’re fairly convinced that we have these problems and in fact, strongly reinforcing these problems in that belief.

Suppose that those problems were just the Pashat and we have to fill in with the Drash and the Remez and the Sod of those problems so we could really practice our lives instead of being stuck in a one dimensional story of our lives. And suppose further that the text of the Torah would help us to decipher the text of our lives. Wouldn’t that be interesting if that were so?

 

 Reflections on the Torah [65:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In this talk from the 2005 winter ECAMP retreat, Norman uncovers the complementary relationship between faith and experience.

This 12 minute clip will nourish and ground your curiosity… What is this life?

Somehow between the lines, something else arises, you feel your life in a different way, you begin to understand and the closer you get -to the feeling of the body, the feeling of the breath, the thoughts, the emotions- the more clear it is that there is something else going on that you are not able to experience.

And paradoxically, you know this through a very very close examination of your experience, of your concrete experience. It’s a strange thing, but that’s what we actually experience.

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The beginning part of a talk given at the 2005 winter Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program retreat, Norman aids the listener in delving deeper into seeing the true meaning and opportunity of life.

We have to not ignore our daily life and all the practical matters, relationships and obligations, not ignore them, searching for something bigger and more radiant, but rather see them as vehicles, see them as garments that need to be woven in the right way for a deeper and more beautiful purpose.

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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.

Continue reading Exodus as Liberation

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From a talk given at Makor Or

Guided meditation:

Sit with the feeling of being alive; simply being present using body and breath as anchor. This means just to be present with what is, without DOING anything with any of it. Just being in relation to it. Allowing it. Permitting it. Being permissive, being open to it. In a sense we are not experiencing anything at all in meditation, because experience is always grasping. And with grasping there is dissatisfaction, because whatever we can grasp we can tire of - we will tire of. And will want something else, something new. But what we just allow, what we just let come and go, without grasping or identifying, we don’t tire of, we don’t need anything more. So we sit, simply sit, in the present moment of being alive.

Continue reading Jewish Meditation and Buber

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