Bereishit | No Beginning, No Ending | Torah At The Intersection

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ

Beginning-ing, Elohim, Shaper of Form, created heaven and earth

וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם׃

The earth was empty and void, tohu va vohu, and darkness over the face of the deep and wind-spirit of Elohim(s) hovering over the face of water(s)—

Genesis 1:1-2 — Tr. RW

I first turned to the book of Torah as a spiritual wisdom text in the midst of wandering through feelings of emptiness and void. I was, and always am, beginning and continuing the journey of life. How do we find meaning and live with a sense of integrity and gratitude, fully celebrating this precious gift, and at the same time deeply engaging with the overwhelming suffering and darkness that hovers over everything?

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear.

— Inferno Canto I:1-60, Danti Alighieri, “The Dark Wood and the Hill”

I opened the book of Torah, the wisdom guide of my ancestors, and also continued decades of immersion in Buddhist study and practice. In the Plum Village Buddhist practice, "beginning" and "ending" are concepts that exist only in our minds. They do not reflect an independently existing reality.

I see this as I write this blog, just a day after finishing the entire Five Books of Torah in a yearly cycle of reading and studying. The cyclical process of Torah study is the process of moment-to-moment living. In each moment, we can access the energy of beginning and also of continuing. Newness and discovery give energy and wings, space to breathe and create. Continuing gives a sense of rootedness, solidity, connection. We are not and never have been alone or separate.

In the process of beginning-ing, I am full of ideas, perceptions and experiences. Most of these came into this form long before "me" and still aren't known to me. Mostly I live in darkness over what is actually motivating me and what the impact of my choices and actions are in the world. And still I treasure and come alive in the experience of beginning something anew.

And this is exactly how Torah begins.

The text highlights a mysterious fertile void, a tohu va vohu. Elohim, a mysterious combination of singular and plural form, begins creating from, with or into the tohu va vohu.

In Buddhism, "fertile void" is how Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh defines emptiness. The spaceless space from which everything co-arises. The beginner's mind from which we can meet and greet the world in deep intimate connection.

As in Torah, this is not "nothingness." In the opening verses of Torah, there is already water and also something (or no-thing) called tohu and vohu. Ancient Jewish commentators wrote that God created something "real" out of tohu. The Mishnah writes:

Ten things were created on the first day: heaven and earth, tohu and bohu, light and darkness, wind and water, length of day and length of night.

— From the Mishnah, Judah ha-Nasi, second-century rabbi and chief redactor and editor of the Mishnah.

Another Talmudic era Rabbi, Rabbi Berachya wrote:

and the earth was tohu and bohu. What is the meaning of "was"? That it was already. And what is tohu? That which confounds people. And what is bohu? It was tohu and then turned to bohu. And what is bohu? That which has mamash (something real) in it, as it is written bohu means `something is in it.

As Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, "something" wasn't created out of "nothing."

In some traditional Torah commentaries, tohu va vohu is conceptualized as a space or place of "waste." Waste too is not nothing. Waste is potential.

I want to address one way that Torah's exploration of what is " beginning" is deeply relevant to our world today.

Last night in Asheville, North Carolina, USA, I joined a zoom webinar on "The Violence and Virtue of White Women’s Tears." A leadership group of women of color led an exploration of personal, cultural and systemic ways they have experienced white women's tears. The facilitator asked the women of color on the panel what experiences they have had with white women's tears. One woman shared her story, beginning by telling us that she is left handed. Forty five years ago, when she was 6, she came home from Asheville public elementary school with scars on her knuckles. When her mother saw the scars, they went to the school and confronted the teacher. The teacher had been hitting the left handed child on her knuckles when she wrote with her left hand. The white-bodied female teacher burst into tears. The panelist's mother asked the little girl to leave the room and she did.

The moderator asked the panelist what she remembered feeling at the time. Fear, she replied. She was afraid that something would happen to her mother.

When did this begin? Did it begin in the teacher's office that morning? Did it begin when that teacher hit that child? This was Asheville, North Carolina, where the schools in my town were not fully integrated until 1971. So this incident occurred almost 20 years after the United States Supreme Court in Brown versus Board of Education ordered that all public schools in America were to be desegregated. The end of Jim Crow law. It took 20 years of litigation and will to make that happen in Asheville. This incident of the teacher hitting this child, and the child feeling afraid for her mother when she saw a white woman burst into tears, followed just a few years after desegregation.

Understanding the context and history is crucial to realizing the impact of what happened in the moment. Understanding this as a continuation of the oppression of Black people in the American south is crucial to everything. When we realize that beginnings are continuations, that the past is in the present, we can begin to connect with our own and others' experiences. That contact can begin healing. Trauma educator Thomas Hubl says, when I feel you feeling me, healing can begin.

Torah is awakening us to know that each of us carries within us everything that went before and everything that will come after. This gives us heightened responsibility in our choices. It also gives us the power to heal the past and create a different future.

In the Image

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ וְיִרְדּוּ בִדְגַת הַיָּם וּבְעוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה וּבְכׇל־הָאָרֶץ וּבְכׇל־הָרֶמֶשׂ הָרֹמֵשׂ עַל־הָאָרֶץ׃

And God said, “Let us make earthling in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.”

Genesis 1:26

We are created in the image of the creator of form. We have the power to heal the past and create a different future. Each of us as a singular entity has that responsibility and it requires the collective to really do it. Elohim in their image Torah says we are created is a plural form in Hebrew, meaning gods. And throughout Torah Elohim presents as both singular and plural. This is another way in which we are created in that image. Who we are in every moment contains all of the traumas and experiences of our ancestors. And we also have the capacity, and need the will, to heal what we have carried from the past that separates us.

Ayeka, Where are You?

וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ אֶת־קוֹל יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים מִתְהַלֵּךְ בַּגָּן לְרוּחַ הַיּוֹם וַיִּתְחַבֵּא הָאָדָם וְאִשְׁתּוֹ מִפְּנֵי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים בְּתוֹךְ עֵץ הַגָּן׃

They heard the voice of Eternally Present in Form and Formlessness moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day; and the earthling and consort hid from Eternally Present in Form and Formlessness among the trees of the garden.

וַיִּקְרָא יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶל־הָאָדָם וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ אַיֶּכָּה׃

And Eternally Present in Form and Formlessness called out to earthling and consort and said, “Where are you?”

Genesis 3:8-9

Caught in separation the earthlings are lost and then banished. In the Buddhist practice we call this lost in delusion. The delusion that it is ever possible to hide from that which you cannot be separated. The delusion that your actions have no impact. These delusions are the source of our loneliness and hopelessness.

Contemporary spiritual guide Eckart Tolle explained, the thinking mind became dualistic and then the world became dualistic. The world of blame and punishment arose. The world of shame and hiding and blame arose.

Eating from the tree of "good and evil" conditioned their minds. The human mind transitioned from being unconditioned, pre-conceptual of right/wrong, blame/shame, birth/death, good/bad into a mind conditioned by duality.

The first manifestation of this dualistic mind is being stuck in the cycle of blame and shame. They felt shame and they hid. They experience themselves as so separate from their source that they believed in such a thing as hiding.Then they blamed the other for the condition.

The healing journey of humans from the karmic consciousness of dualism and separation is the very foundation of Torah and Buddhism. To this I also bring the skills and consciousness of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) that are my trusty allies in freeing myself from the duality of good/evil, right/wrong thinking that distorts life into forms and shells. NVC, like Buddhism and the Torah path especially of Hasidism, nourishes us to fully inhabit this world of form and distinction in which we live and at the same time to stay connected moment to moment to the unified source of everything.

וַיַּעַשׂ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים לְאָדָם וּלְאִשְׁתּוֹ כׇּתְנוֹת עוֹר וַיַּלְבִּשֵׁם׃

And the Transcendent and Immanent Source made garments of skins for Earthling and Consort, and clothed them.

Genesis 3:21

So much has changed since the beginning verses of Torah. It is no longer just Elohim, Shaper of Form. It is the two mysterious names for the Eternally Present Source that now makes garments of skin to protect the vulnerable and fragile earthlings. Form and formless are both needed to escort humans on our journey.

Torah is showing us that in the consciousness of duality, we need special protective clothing. We need ways of clothing ourselves that give us safe space to exist and explore and also support us in finding deeper and deeper connection. We use our cognitive and other powers to make meaning of our lives. This is a fundamental way that we create protection for ourselves, by creating narratives and stories that give us an understanding of our experiences.

Unfortunately, because we have been conditioned by culture, ancestral trauma, dualistic thinking from religion and other sources, we often make meanings of things that create separation.

Nonviolent Communication in Service of Unification

Here is a guided meditation with Ayeka, where are you, using the basis of NVC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlT33qkZPrs

Here is a practice I developed from Nonviolent Communication to help us recognize, discern and take responsibility for the meanings we make of things. And then to check in with the people who are involved or implicated in the meanings. Is this what it meant to them? This process gives us a way to help others understand the impact of their actions on us. And at the same time we are empowering ourselves to take responsibility for how we react to other people's actions.

First do this exercise on your own, in a quiet place, journaling or as a contemplation. Once you have a sense that you are discerning what happened from the meaning you have made of what happened, you are ready to decide if you want to communicate this to the other person. If you do, first ask them, are you willing to sit with me and hear what has come up for me about something between us? Set a quiet time and place that works for both of you.

Honestly Expressing | Taking 100% Responsibility

When I heard.../saw... (recount in 40 words or less what happened that involved the two of you)
I told myself … (I gave it a meaning) (I recognize that the meaning may be quite different for you., I want you to hear what it meant for me)
Because I felt ... / and when I think that I feel...
Because I have a history of …

And/Or

Because I want... need....value..... (I am empowering myself by knowing that my meaning comes from me and what is important to me, what I want more of in the world.)
- And I want to check in with you now...
Would you tell me what you heard me say? (So I can clear up anything and make sure what I said expresses what's really true for me)

Or go right to Checking In :