Meditation and Prayer

Taking time to meditate and pray is one thing. Living in meditation and prayer is quite another.

Evolution and Religion

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23wright.html
An interesting approach to reconciling science and religion on the issue of natural selection and evolution. Personally I never had the conflict.

The SOURCE

The SOURCE is nothing. Nothing does not mean a vacuum, but no thing (no/thing). No/thing is pure energy.

Lech Kaczynski and Polish-Jewish Reconcilation

http://jta.org/news/article/2010/04/12/1011536/kaczynski-leaves-legacy-of-polish-jewish-reconciliation
May his memory be for a blessing. It’s very impressive how far Jewish-Polish relations have come over the last 75 years.

Heinrich Harrer, “Seven Years in Tibet”

Heinrich Harrer, “Seven Years in Tibet”

I am almost finished reading Heinrich Harrer’s “Seven Years in Tibet.” A superb mountain climber, sportsman, geographer, and adventurer, the Austrian Harrer escaped from an internment camp in India and managed with a companion to make his way to Tibet in the 1940’s. Even though Tibet closed itself to foreigners, Harrer was able to navigate incredible physical obstacles and bureaucratic impediments to see rural Tibet and eventually make his way to Lhasa. Over time he became an important figure in Tibetan life and one of the Dalai Lama’s best friends. He learned to speak fluent Tibetan. Harrer was not a scholar or a religious leader, but a practical man whose humanity and spirituality overflow in spite of his apparent skepticism. It was that practicality and his love of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism which made him such a beloved figure in Tibet. Because he knew Tibet and Tibetans intimately, he did not idolize Tibet, but could love it for all its wonder and greatness and its flaws. He criticized the Tibetan resistance to adaptation to the modern world, a view which the Dalai Lama seemed to share. At the same time, Harrer deeply respected the emphasis on spirituality and ritual in Tibetan life. His stories of Tibetan workers who, upon seeing a worm in a shovel full of dirt, stop all their labor in order to preserve the worm’s life, is powerful and inspiring.

In Harrer’s memoir, the humanity of the Dalai Lama also comes through, and my respect for the Dalai Lama has deepened, as his Buddha nature appears not because of his lofty intellect or power, but because of his genuineness and authenticity. That seems to me what connects both Harrer and the Dalai Lama. They are first and foremost fully human, with very little posing or posturing. They are who they are. Harrer’s writing style is very matter-of-fact, which makes readers feels a sense of participating in the events described. I found the book gripping.

The Dalai Lama escaped Tibet in 1959, and he and Harrer remained close friends until Harrer’s passing in 2006 at the age of 93. I recommend this book highly.

The Text of the Hebrew Bible Was Not Permanently Fixed

Recently Oxford University Press published a book, which looks of great interest.  Though I have not yet read it and cannot vouch for it, the author presents a thesis that alerts us all (scholars and lay both) to the proverbial elephant in the room:  B. Barry Levy, Fixing God’s Torah:  The Accuracy of the Hebrew Bible Text in Jewish Law (New York, Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2001).  For text critics (those who work with the original manuscripts) and those who read them, knowledge of the biblical text’s fluidity comes as no surprise.  From biblical versions found at Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls) and from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), from the second century BCE to the first century CE, we know that the biblical text varied from source to source.  Yet, most of us still work and study  “as if” the Masoretes got it absolutely right in the Middle Ages:  we have the correct text.  Now Barry Levy apparently shows that the rabbis of antiquity did not even agree on the notion of an immutable text and recognized the need to “correct” the text.  He provides a plethora of evidence.  Wow.  That’s kind of an earthquake.  Even the very traditional rabbinic tradition seemingly acknowledged that the text of the Torah was not permanently fixed.  Should provide for lots of lively discussion.

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