Awakened Heart Project for Jewish Meditation and Contemplative Judaism

Birthday Improvements Are On Their Way

AwakenedHeartProject — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:03:49 +0000

AwakenedHeartProject.org is receiving some extra love and attention! During the month of November as we celebrate our 2nd birthday we’ll be rolling out some new site features and improvements.

Have a suggestion for our website? Email simon@awakenedheartproject.org with your suggestions, comments or feedback.

How We Read Torah

Norman Fischer — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:38:57 +0000

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?

Softening the Breath

Alan Lew — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:39:04 +0000

This 14 minute talk is rich with instructions about bringing mindfulness to each part of the breath, the sensations arising in the body and the sounds arising in your awareness. Recorded at the Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program during the summer of 2007, these instructions are a wonderful way to re-energize your mindfulness or meditation practice.

From the talk…

Following the breath

God creates human beings by breathing into their nostrils.

According to Rebbe Nachman, the meaning of this is that the breath is not only our connection to God, but our connection to the realm of God: that part of our experience that is deeper than language, deeper than speech, deeper than form.

…it’s the belly that senses this primal reality that is deeper than speech, deeper than form, deeper than thought.

The breath wants the belly. Our effort is not to push it down there, not to control it, but to just let it have it’s way. To just get out of the way and let the breath go all the way down.

All the way down

We follow the breath as it comes in the nostrils, we watch it go down the throat and down the breathing tube and all the way to the pit of the belly. And we pay close attention to that wonderful subtle moment when the inhale becomes an exhale.

Back up, into the moment of faith

Then we follow it up the belly, up the breathing tube, through the throat, and out through the nostrils again. And then we really pay attention, in this moment of faith, this moment of emunah that occurs every time we breathe - every moment of our life.

…The breath leaves the body and there’s no guarantee (and nothing we can do) to make it come back. It comes back on its own accord, by the will of God. A kind of moment of yeriyah, a moment of fear, a moment of awe.

And back down

…and we follow it again. Down the throat, down the breathing tube, then down the belly…

Responding to pain

Softening the breath

If we feel pain of some kind, instead of trying to push it away, instead of trying to resist it… …instead of tensing the muscles of our body just soften the breath.

When we soften the breath, the body becomes softer. When the body becomes softer it offers less resistance to whatever we’re feeling and whatever we’re feeling has a chance to arise and express itself without being locked in by the hardness of the body.

So we breathe soft. And the harder our reality gets the softer we breathe. And we follow this soft breath, that primal realm deeper than language and form and thought.

Listening to Reality

A wonderful exercise that Rebbe Nachman suggests is when we hear a sound and we realize that we’ve heard a sound…

Hear the primal essential nature of sound

When we notice that a sound has come into our mind and into our awareness we breathe very softly into that sound and when we breathe out we let go of the word of that sound and we just hear it in its primal essential nature. Just as sound.

We don’t say bird. We forget it’s a bird, we just hear the sound. We don’t say heating system, we just listen to that low primal hum. We don’t say somebody fidgeting, we just attend to those sharp little sounds that they make.

We just hear the thing itself not the word for the thing. And in doing so we open ourselves to the primal speech of God, not the words or the meaning that we give to the world, but the primal reality of being.

Examining the Unknowable

Norman Fischer — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:05:00 +0000

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.

Ignorance: Ways We Miss the Divine

Jeff Roth — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:15:17 +0000

In this Jewish meditation talk given at the Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program, Rabbi Jeff Roth talks about ignorance and the patterns of mind which prevent us from truly meeting the Divine in our lives.

From the talk…
There’s a kind of ignorance that just goes hand in hand with being lost in thought. You’re basically ignoring everything that’s happening now. Except perhaps for the thoughts themselves.

I took a sip of the soup and it was incredibly good and delicious and I immediately started thinking, ‘I could figure out what the ingredients are in this soup. I could figure out what the spices are and then I could make this soup and I could have it whenever I wanted. And I always wanted to have a restaurant, it’d really be nice to own a restaurant.’

Now the whole bowl of soup is gone. In the meantime the whole bowl of soup, you eat a whole bowl of soup and everything is lost. This is a kind of ignorance that comes out of the pleasant.

Ignorance is not about not having knowledge, it’s about having the wrong kind of knowledge. We don’t know how long we’re going to live, we don’t know what’s going to happen to us tomorrow, we don’t have the slightest clue what sense door is going to be struck next, we don’t know what the next second of the sit is going to be. Not knowing is an antidote to ignorance.

There was a rabbi who lived in this town for 30 years, it was a shtel. He lived on a village square on one side and on the other side was the synagogue. The town was run by Cossacks and the police chief was a Cossack. Most of the time they got along OK, but occasionally there was friction. Every single morning the rabbi gets up goes across the square and leads davenenning, leads the morning minyan.

One morning the rabbi, it’s 30 years later, the rabbi’s crossing the square one morning and the police chief says, “Good morning Rabbi. Where to?” as if he doesn’t know, maybe he’s just making conversation. And the rabbi says to him “I don’t know.” And the Cossack police chief gets really furious, he thinks the rabbi’s dissing him, he knows where he’s going and the rabbi knows where he’s going. He grabs the rabbi by his coat and takes him to the jail and throws him in and as he’s closing the door, the rabbi says, “See you never know.”

It doesn’t matter, you never know what the next moment’s going to bring.

Contemplative Shabbaton

Events — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:21:16 +0000

October 24 - 26, 2008

with Rabbi Jeff Roth

at Beth Israel Synagogue  of Asheville, NC

We are very pleased to invite you to Awakening the Heart, an exploration of meditative and contemplative practices that can enrich your Jewish life.

Our guide and scholar for the weekend will be Rabbi Jeff Roth, founder of Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality. Rabbi Roth has recently launched the Awakened Heart Project for Contemplative Judaism. At Congregation Beth Israel, Rabbi Roth will lead us in meditation and chant. The practices he will introduce include concentration techniques that will be applied to prayer and ritual. He will also teach awareness techniques that can bring clarity and insight to daily life.

In addition to providing ample opportunities for us to experience the power of Jewish meditation and chanting, he will also give a talk on Jewish meditation, what it is, where it comes from in our tradition, and how it can become a regular, enriching part of our Jewish lives. Rabbi Roth will lead portions of Kabbalat Shabbat and Shabbat morning services and offer other opportunities to learn about and experience Jewish meditation. Please see the schedule for all of the details.

This weekend is open to everyone, members of CBI and non-members, beginning and experienced meditators. Registration is not required for most of the weekend. However, those wishing to enjoy a communal third meal on Shabbat, seudah shlishit, must register and pay in advance.

Rabbi Jeff Roth is the founder and Director of The Awakened Heart Project for Contemplative Judaism. He was the co-founder of Elat Chayyim where he served as Executive Director and Spiritual Director for 13 years. Currently on the faculty of the Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program, he is an experienced meditation teacher and the facilitator of over 70 Jewish meditation retreats .

Tentative Schedule

Friday
6:00 P.M. Meditation Instructions and silent practice
7:00 P.M. Kabbalat Shabbat: contemplative style using chants and silence
Maariv: led by Rabbi Rob Cabelli

Shabbat
8:45 A.M. Meditation Instructions and silent practice
9:30 A.M. Shabbat morning service with chants and silence including the regular Torah service, which will be augmented with some special aliyot.

4:00 P.M. Afternoon session introducing a contemplative blessing practice designed to open the heart of compassion. Participants will learn a set of phrases, repeated over and over in the mind as we cultivate loving-kindness for ourselves and all beings as well.

6:00 P.M. Seudah shlishit- we’ll learn practices for eating meditation and share the third meal of Shabbat in silence, punctuated by niggunim, wordless melodies and some teaching.

7:30 P.M. Havdalah and dessert

8:00 P.M. Evening program to be primarily a didactic presentation on Jewish meditation, its purpose and practices, allowing for a question and answer period and some short periods of silence. We’ll include havdallah as well. (Shabbat ends at 7:21 according to Lubavitch in Asheville)

Sunday
9:30 A.M. - Experiential workshop in meditation with a focus on breath awareness as a vehicle. - 12:00 Noon for seeing the Divine nature of all Being and working with the tool of mindfulness to dispel obscurations to this kind of world view.

Vipassana-style Jewish Meditation in Mexico

Events — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:20:22 +0000

November 5 - 9, 2008

with Rabbis Jeff Roth and Joanna Katz

a non-residential retreat in Xalapa, Veracruz, México

Hosted by Espacio Zen Montaña Despierta and
Casa Luna Centro de Comunidad Consciente

Rabbis Jeff Roth and Joanna Katz are co-founders of the Jewish Retreat Center Elat Chayyim in Connecticut, USA, where they served as directors during 13 years. Presently they are teachers of The Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program (ECAMP). Both are experienced meditators and between them they have facilitated more than 70 Vipassana and Jewish meditation retreats. In addition, Jeff is founder and director of The Awakened Heart Project for Contemplative Judaism.

Join us for an exploration of what it means to become an awakened human being. Vipassana or mindfulness meditation is an invaluable tool in seeing directly the workings of one’s own mind. Left unexplored, most of us find that we get caught up in the very human qualities of greed, anger and confusion. Much of our way of being in the world becomes a defense to anticipated hurts or an attempt to get what we can. With the tools of meditation we can begin to change the course of our lives, cultivating wisdom and compassion and transforming more of our actions into expressions of loving-kindness.

Register Now.

These tools are found in every spiritual tradition but have been more clearly delineated in the practice of Vipassana meditation. As a practice, mindfulness meditation opens up doors into making our own religious practices more meaningful. In this retreat we will use aspects of Jewish tradition, demonstrating the value of bringing mindfulness to all parts of our lives. The retreat will be equally valuable to Jews and non-Jews as an experience of how to bring the insights of meditation into the whole of life.

Retreat Structure
One of the primary vehicles supporting the practice of seeing clearly is silence. The retreat will be conducted in the space of social silence which means that we don’t interact with other participants verbally or non-verbally at all times including formal practice periods, meals and when walking or spending time in our rooms. There will be ample instructions given by the teachers in all aspects of the practice. We will teach sitting, walking and eating meditation as well as use some contemplative chanting or prayers. There will be question and answer sessions to allow to ask for clarifications about the teachings or how to use them in personal experience. In addition, the teachers will arrange for private sessions with each student to explore this experience in more depth.

Friday night and Saturday are the Jewish Sabbath and we will use aspects of Sabbath practice to enrich the retreat experience. The Sabbath is a day in the Jewish week where we practice “being” rather than “becoming”. It is a day when we are invited to let go of trying to control our world and shift our attention to appreciating the world. In many ways, this is a teaching on how to greet each moment of our lives and our meditation practice can help us learn to be with our own experience rather than fight it. The Sabbath can be a practice of letting go that increases our happiness and our observance of the day will be a joyous one.

In order to foster intimacy the size of the retreat will be limited to 20 people. It is indispensable to make a reservation with anticipation. The retreat will be open to any person who is interested without distinction of creed or religion.

Suggested donation: $150 US Dollars per person. Most of the meals will be included. (Economic resources are necessary in order to offer a donation (Dana) to our visiting teachers, who do not directly ask for payment in return for their teachings. Nobody will be rejected because of economic reasons).

Further information at Casa Luna or at the telephone number in Mexico 52-228-8183069 or at sstern@prodigy.net.mx

Register Now.

Month-Long Jewish Meditation Retreat

Events — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:51:37 +0000

January 4 - 25, 2009

with Rabbi Jeff Roth and other teachers

at the Am Kolel Retreat Center in Beallsville, Maryland
(1 hrs from DC - 3 hrs from Philadelphia)

Join us at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center for a week of Jewish meditation with the Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation program (Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008 – Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009 in Falls Village, CT).

Then deepen your practice with a month-long Jewish meditation retreat.

Structure of the Retreat:
We are very excited to be holding a month-long meditation retreat. There are many benefits to an extended period of retreat practice, which makes this opportunity a unique one in the Jewish World. The retreat will be in silence comparable to other Jewish silent retreats. Most mornings, there will be davenning using chanting, and some mornings will be used for solo davenning. There will be instructions given most days. There will be daily lectures, some of which will be prerecorded. All participants will have private interviews with the teaching staff - two or three times per week - with other contacts as needed to support your practice.

Our hope is that a significant number of people will want to sit for all 4 weeks. Preference will be given to those interested in sitting the entire period - shorter periods will be considered only if space permits. The retreat will be limited to 25 people.

People interested in sitting for the entire period who are not currently in the ECAMP program will be given special permission to attend the first week. For those sitting the first week, we have made arrangements to ease the logistics of changing locations.

We also will welcome people to sit for three weeks, beginning on January 4th. In order to facilitate as few distractions as possible, we will try and make December 28th and January 4th the only times to begin the retreat.

Register Now.

Facilitator of the Retreat:
Rabbi Jeff Roth will be the primary facilitator of the whole period. Other teachers will join for shorter periods. The final staffing pattern will depend on the number of participants. There will be a sliding scale of prices. The three weeks at Am Kolel will cost $1000/$1500/$2000 for room and board, based on single/double/quad occupancy. There are limited options for single and double rooms, and requests for those rooms will be on a first come, first served basis. Teachers at the retreat will be offering their time freely. Donations to support their work will be discussed at the end of the retreat. Costs for the week at ECAMP are available at: http://www.isabellafreedman.org/ecamp.

Room and Board Costs:
The cost for the three weeks: $1000 (quad occupancy) $1500 (double occupancy) $2000 (single). More information about Sanctuary available at: http://www.sanctuaryretreatcenter.com.

For More Information:
Contact Rabbi Jeff Roth at jeff@awakenedheartproject.org
Register Now.

Sylvia Boorstein and Jeff Roth @ Isabella Freedman

Events — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:24:22 +0000

March 8 - 15, 2009

with Sylvia Boorstein & Rabbi Jeff Roth

at Isabella Freedman in Falls Village, CT

Save the date! More information to be announced.

Obstacles to peace

Joanna Katz — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:48:50 +0000

Another opportunity to wake up. In this talk, Rabbi Joanna Katz names and gives real-life examples of the obstacles that prevent one from being truly present and consciously with G-d.

Desire (lust), aversion (things that we push away), sleepiness, restlessness and doubt. These forces really hinder us from being present in the moment.

When we’re caught in these mind-states, we are invariably completely separate. We’re right there separated by the anochi, we’re really there in the small sense of I and we’re no longer connected to the larger unfolding, the larger truth that I am part of the ever unfolding of G-d.

Five Steps for Spiritual Transformation

Alan Lew — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:39:15 +0000

In this Jewish meditation talk given at the Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program, Rabbi Alan Lew speaks of patterns observed in the Torah that reveal the essential experienced ingredients for spiritual transformation.

This is the moment of leave-taking that life and meditation pushes us to. The moment when we realize that we just can’t go on the way we’ve been going, when we feel we have to do something and we have no idea what to do or even how to endure the next moment. And this according to the Torah is what we should do:

Stop running around in a panic, trying to run away from phantom stories that we’ve been telling ourselves.

Be with the moment, fearful or not.

See what is really there.

Feeling the calm from seeing the truth.

Take the next inevitable action which rises of its own accord, out of the stillness.

Far Beyond What We Can See

Norman Fischer — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:24:10 +0000

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.

My Soul Yearns for Love

Jeff Roth — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:50:21 +0000

נפשי חולת אהבתך, אנא אל נא רפא נא לה
Nafshi holat ahavahtecha, ana elna refa na la
My soul yearns for your love, please God, heal her

Every human act is either an expression or a request for love. This line from Yedid Nefesh, which Jeff Roth translates as my soul yearns for your love, please God, heal her is introduced with the kavanah (intention) that we may really feel both the yearning to give and express love as well as the longing to receive love.

The healing that’s implied [in this prayer] is not that the yearning should stop. The healing that’s implied is heal this yearning by helping us to experience this love. The yearning should continue. It’s what pulls us to search for this love.

The healing is bringing our awareness and our consciousness to this yearning and seeing that it is OK to have this. When we see it from this more conscious place we feel more connected.

Morning Chants, day two (part one)

Sylvia Boorstein — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 23:09:28 +0000

The first part of a morning chant service from the March 2006, Discovering the Divine retreat, Sylvia Boorstein introduces Modeh Ani, speaking of the power unleashed by gratitude.

Saying thank you is the affirmation that one is able to hold the whole of experience in the awareness that everything, a desired thing or an undesired thing, is amazing just because it’s happening.

The Things that God Gave You

Joanna Katz — Sun, 20 May 2007 20:31:22 +0000

In the second part (click here to listen to the first part) of a Jewish meditation talk given at a 2005 ECAMP retreat, Rabbi Joanna Katz opens with a quote from the Dalai Lama suggesting that the very purpose of our life is to seek and to move towards happiness. Using a verse from Deuteronomy and stories from her own meditation retreat experiences Joanna describes the merit of being with what is arising.

We do this by rejoicing in everything that God has given us. …this is a practice instruction inclining our hearts to rejoice in all that’s been given to us… …it also reminds us of ‘that place,’ of wholeness and of center, where we experience that joy…

Be with yourself. …allow yourself to be with what comes up for you in [this] moment. Sometimes it’s hard to do that because we are aversive, because we want something or because we’re in fear.

What Keeps Us From Happiness?

Joanna Katz — Fri, 18 May 2007 17:34:14 +0000

The beginning of a talk (click here to listen to the next part) given at a 2005 ECAMP retreat, Joanna reflects on the isolation, attachment and judgment that prohibits us from experiencing a truly free and peaceful happiness. Joanna uses the Shevah Brachot (seven blessings traditionally said at weddings) as a way of encountering the true happiness that God (and we) wish for ourselves.

…we are blessing them to be happy in the way that God and Adam and Eve were happy before the exile. …this is about the capacity to be in a state of union with God.

When we connect with the ground of being and also the truth of our experience there is a capacity for joy that is radically different than the happiness we hear about all the time.

Complete Contemplative Morning Prayer Service

Jeff Roth — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:45:15 +0000

Accompanied by acoustic guitar, introductory kavahnot (intentions) and pauses for meditation, this 47 minute recording provides a full experience of contemplative Jewish chanting. The service, led by Sylvia Boorstein and Rabbi Jeff Roth at the March 2006, Discovering the Divine retreat includes Modeh Ani, Ma Tovu, Elohai Neshama, Kol HaNeshama, Or Chadash and the Shema.

And in this moment, being enough is enough. Being alone, by itself, is enough. This world full of beings and breath is itself an acknowledgment and a praise of the Divine.

Introduction to Contemplative Jewish Prayer

Jeff Roth — Tue, 15 May 2007 17:20:42 +0000

A thirteen minute introduction to contemplative Jewish prayer. This talk by Rabbi Jeff Roth includes practice instructions on how to work with the interface of mindfulness, concentration and prayer.

Rather than only being left at the mercy of, ‘now I’m angry, now I’m lustful,’ it’s actually possible to cultivate the heart-mind space that has qualities like what we’ll be working with in the prayers.

What is Meditation?

Sheila Peltz Weinberg — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:48:31 +0000

Questions abound in our teaching and learning. Questions abound in our effort to establish and clarify a vocabulary that we can use to communicate with each other and to commune with the resources of the past. What is meditation? What is mindfulness? What is spiritual practice? What is prayer? What are mitzvoth? What is authentically Jewish and what is not? And, of course, what is the relationship between any of these things and the others.

There are two fundamental ways to approach these questions. The first is “What do we do?” and the second is “Why do we do it?” I find the “what” question a question that opens into multiplicity and the “why” question one that leads to unity. In other words, there are multiple forms of meditation, prayer and spiritual practice but ultimately they tend toward the same or similar aims. We may use different language to describe these aims, but I would suggest that they are different ways to speak about the same thing.

What are we speaking about? What do we hope will be accomplished by spiritual practice? Here is a list of aims or intentions that may be all pointing at the same center.

Establishing and expanding our relationship with God
Expanding our awareness, becoming more awake in our lives
Expanding into a higher consciousness, perspective, understanding
Living with Divine qualities of openheartedness, compassion, patience, tolerance, loving kindness, generosity, humility, trust, reverence, gratitude, etc. (middot)
Expanding our ability to receive and give love from Divine and human sources – Ahavah Rabah through V’ahavta
Experiencing and acting from integration, unity, wholeness- of body, mind, emotions, spirit, of inner and outer, of different dimensions of existence, of the seeker and the sought.
Understanding the relationship between acting wholesomely and a sense of being part of the Whole.
Living with more ability to make choices that conform with our intentions
Being more responsive in relation to oneself and others, rather than acting out of habit and reactivity
Being more peaceful not because one is withdrawn or indifferent but because one has an understanding of what contributes to aggression and violence and what alleviates it
Having a perspective that is more able to include the different dimensions of existence including the unpleasant, the different, the weak, the uncertain, the fleeting.
Understanding the relationship between suffering and the self that is craving a thing, an experience or a state of being
The ability to live with joy and praise
The transformation from being a slave of Pharaoh, controlled by unconscious inner and outer forces and a servant of God, one who is able to be in relationship with the Eternal unfolding of existence from moment to moment.
Being less self centered and more other centered, not in order to manipulate others but out of a true identification and sense of commonality
All of the above is to the end of being part of a holy community and a redeemed world

Saying that spiritual practices train our minds, shape our consciousness and mold our character can sum this up. We undertake spiritual practice in order to change in some way, even if it is only a change of perspective. In more traditional language we undertake spiritual practices because they bring us closer to God’s will.
How does this work?

Spiritual practices including meditation (whether the object of attention is set at the breath, bodily sensations, a visualization, a mantra, a prayer or at floating open attention), and mitzvoth like Shabbat, Kashrut, and Torah study, and conscious non-harming speech share a similar technology.

One commits to a particular action as the focus of one’s energy, attention, time, and behavior. One articulates this intention. Then one waits. Soon, the obstacles appear. In a sitting meditation practice we may intend to follow each in breath and each out breath. No sooner do we begin then thoughts rush in or we find ourselves nodding sleepily or in a state of anxiety regarding the pain in our knee or lower back. Or we have decided to observe the Sabbath and an invitation comes our way that is irresistible. Or we promise ourselves to observe kashruth and a strong desire arises to taste the forbidden. Often rationalizing thoughts obscuring the clarity of the original intention surround these temptations.

The training occurs in the next step, the step of renunciation or returning. We see the temptation. We acknowledge it in a non-judgmental and non-personal way realizing that we are seeing forgetfulness in the human mind. As we bring attention to the temptation we see that it has no substance. Each time we do this, the ability to choose is strengthened. Each time we return from distraction or obstacle, the power of habit and unconsciousness is weakened. In this process we begin to see the nature of our minds and the nature of reality itself. We increase our ability to pay attention. And what do we begin to notice? We observe the arising and passing away of thoughts, sensations, sounds, desires, feelings, and moods just as daylight passes and evening comes. We see the consequences of various forms of contraction in the mind or body like fear, desire, suppression, judgment, anger, and aggression. We see the consequences of various forms of expansion like, trust, ease, relaxation, acceptance, generosity and gratitude.

The kinds of spiritual practices we can undertake are limitless. However, ultimately the form is less important than these factors: the commitment to practice, the ability to keep returning to the intention, the attitude one brings to the uncontrollable and the ability to transfer the benefits of the practice into how we live our lives, how we relate to ourselves and others, how free we become to embody the values and ideals we embrace in our minds, how we deal with temptations of all sorts. In other words we practice to live with the wisdom and compassion, which we already possess. We practice to actualize the pure soul, which God has planted with us.

What is Jewish Meditation?

Jeff Roth — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:46:08 +0000

The Awakened Heart Project’s approach to Jewish meditation comes out of a desire to cultivate an awareness of the Divine Presence along with the particular qualities of wisdom, compassion and kindness from a Jewish perspective.

The Ground of All Being

The practices we include under the rubric of Jewish meditation are designed with this direction as our reference point. The wisdom accessible through Jewish meditation supports the understanding that the Divine Presence is the ground of All Being, and the ground of All Being is part of a singular interconnected web of being.

Jewish meditation also provides the wisdom to understand the nature of mind including those factors of mind that tend to obscure clear seeing. The practice teaches us how to direct our attention into the present moment of experience, which is the only place the Divine Presence can be experienced.

In careful observation of the present moment, we become more aware of which of our beliefs and which of our actions are beneficial to ourselves and those around us and which ones are harmful.

Opening the heart, cultivating gratitude and awe

As wisdom grows through practice, the obscurations that cause the heart to close gradually become transparent, and lose their ability to keep the heart closed. At the same time, using other Jewish meditation practices of prayer, chant and blessings it is also possible to cultivate wholesome mind states such as gratitude and awe.

Together, these practices open our hearts and strengthen our love for all Beings, parts of the Holy One of Being. This sense of connection leads to a commitment to act as much as possible in the service of tikkun olam or repairing of the brokenness of our world.

Blending the traditional and the contemporary

With this overview in mind, The Awakened Heart Project makes accessible techniques inherited from earlier generations of Jewish contemplatives and in addition has developed contemporary syntheses of a variety of meditation practices that further the Jewish practice of veahvta l’ray-eahchah kah-mocha, You shall love your fellow human Being as yourself. (Lev 19:18)

Three Pillars

Jewish meditation also brings an awakened and clearer state of mind to three fundamental arena’s for attention as it says in Pirkei Avot: The world rests upon three fundamental pillars- Torah, Avodah and Gemilut Hassadim, or Acquiring wisdom, the service of the heart and deeds of loving-kindness.

Understanding the Practice

Sylvia Boorstein — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:08:07 +0000

In this talk given in March of 2006 at Discovering the Divine: a week-long Jewish meditation retreat, Sylvia Boorestein speaks of the merits of a meditation practice and the ways that this practice improves the quality of our relationships and our lives.