Fluffy the Laptop and I have stopped in at Zip’s Café on our way home from the dentist’s office. I have to get another crown, and I am cheering myself up at the prospect. It never occurred to me you could get a fracture in your tooth. But this is silly talk.
In a moment, I shall launch myself into Berkovits’s God, Man and History. Deals with revelation and reason and the difference between religion and metaphysics in a way I can manage. Many things are written in ways I can understand… I’ve passed Advanced Calculus, after all. Twice. But in a way that I can both understand and manage, or stomach, or accept — that’s another thing entirely.
By definition, though, it is not easy reading. Perhaps theology is not meant to be easy: that’s part of the Test, to get through the verbiage. Helps weed out the faint of heart.
Zen is easy. Or, Zen looks easy, until you go along in a soft momentum and then hit the Big Bump and become enlightened. Then it’s easy again, and you can start making big bucks on the lecture circuit. You can still wear your ochre robes, but they’re the best silk, you better believe it.
I distrust Zen. There’s no heart in it. So much monotony passes for Zen that it is hard for me not to think of Zen as inherently monotonous. Everything is peaceful and sweet and sliding and … Makes me sick. They never want to tell you stories like the one about Bodhidharma cutting off his eyelids so he’d never fall asleep during meditation again. That’s not pretty enough for the inhabitants of the Spiritual Boutique.
Judaism, on the other hand, is anything but quiet. It is loud, argumentative, with a God who never stops talking. It is full of questions, disagreements, petty lifelong arguments between rebbes, and overwhelming bravery in the face of no odds at all… people fighting tanks with rocks, sticks, and their fists. There is Abraham screaming at God, “What do you mean, you’re gonna nuke two whole cities just because you don’t like the people in them? That’s not how a Ruler of the Universe acts! What about the innocent people there?” And Abraham arguing God Himself down to mercy.
Judaism never lets you be quiet, or comfortable, for long. That’s a religion I can live with.
white pebble 