When Moshe Met the Buddha

Matthew Rosen-Marsh: Hello. A very warm welcome to When Moshe Met the Buddha. It's an event organized by JW3 and HaMakom. My name is Matthew Rosen-Marsh, and I'm the person who initially proposed this event to JW3 and brought the speakers together. I feel quite moved that so many people have come tonight, and who perhaps share my Jewish and Buddhist journey, or share an interest in this area.

I wanted to tell you something about myself, and why I wanted to initiate this conversation. I was brought up in a non-Jewish area of west London. My parents were culturally Jewish, but religious practice was confined to Friday night meals and twice-yearly attendance at the overflow High Holy Day services at the Reform synagogue to which we belonged. I remember the endless standing up and sitting down with a hidden choir singing dirge-like melodies. There always felt like a lack of air, and the message seemed to be the equivalent of cod liver oil: "This is supposed to be good for you, although it doesn't taste nice." I also went to 'Sunday school,' as it was known, where I experienced the same sense of boredom amongst rooms filled with dusty books and stale air. I left as soon as I'd done my bar mitzvah.

I associated Judaism with something old and dessicated, and I felt little emotional or spiritual connection. Judaism was once described as "an old man saying 'no.'" It was a description I related to. However, there was also a strong sense that, whether I liked it or not, I was Jewish, and I was therefore different in some way. I struggled with this, and also the idea of 'the chosen people.' I had developed an interest in meditation, and was drawn to its implicitly transformational message, as well as perhaps a desire to transcend the world of confusing and painful emotions. There seemed something very attractive in a practice which was both universal and individual. The quieting of the mind, which I only very occasionally experienced, felt worth the effort.

Life went on. I travelled and worked abroad, and I remained drawn to paths of spiritual inquiry. I was particularly affected reading Be Here Now by Ram Dass, or "nice Jewish boy" Richard Alpert. I continued to remain disengaged, ambivalent, and perhaps even somewhat resentful of my Jewish heritage. In the mid-nineties, I returned to the UK for good, and went on a retreat at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, where I read a book by an American monk of Jewish heritage. I went with my father to a smaller monastery in Devon, where it turned out one of the monks was also Jewish.

In 1997, I was diagnosed with post-viral exhaustion, and ended up at Gaia House, Devon, where Rob is now Resident Teacher. Gaia House is a silent retreat centre founded in the Buddhist tradition of Insight Meditation or vipassanā, described as a practice of developing a calm and mindful investigation into the nature of experience, leading to wisdom, compassion, and the end of suffering. Since then, I have returned on a regular basis, and it's become spiritual home. Whilst there, I also noticed that many of the Western Buddhist teachers I read about had interesting names: Salzberg, Kornfield, Goldstein, Boorstein, Feldman, Postelnik. What was going on? What was it that had drawn so many people of Jewish heritage to the Buddhist path?

I felt a peculiar sense of community with these people, and in some strange way it allowed me to feel more Jewish. My Buddhist self and my Jewish self could be mutually supportive. I could find my own path. I started to notice crossovers: the idea of Shabbat as vessel of sacred time made a lot more sense after experiencing the sacred silence of a retreat. Mindfulness and saying a brakha, a Jewish blessing, before everyday activities, seemed to be both ways of encouraging us to be fully present in the moment. Back in London, I was inspired by various Jewish groups run by like-minded people looking for new ways to connect with their Judaism. Services have taken place in homes, tents, vineyards, and on beaches. I was also a participant in HaMakom, a forum for those interested in well-being meditation and spirituality, which has hosted teachers such as Amaranatho, a Jewish monk from the Theravādan Buddhist tradition, and Rabbi James Maisels, who led a weekend of Jewish and Buddhist meditation practices recently.

Although I still struggle with what seems like endless Hebrew liturgy, in a sense that rote and rules are sometimes elevated above spirit and intention within some aspects of Jewish practice, somehow my Jewish world seems a lot more open, more vibrant, more spiritual than what I experienced growing up. And it is a world which has been enriched by practice and interest in Buddhism. I hope this evening gives us all a sense of enrichment.

The format of tonight will be -- Rafi and Rob will be talking for about an hour, and then there will be a space for questions, about half an hour of questions. Can I just ask people to turn their mobile phones off, if they haven't done already? So without further ado, I would like to introduce our two discussion participants tonight.

Rob Burbea has been practising and studying Buddhist meditation and philosophy since 1985. Having taught internationally for some years, he is currently based in Devon, as Resident Teacher of Gaia House, one of the largest and most respected Buddhist retreat centres in Europe. Rob is a co-founder of SanghaSeva, an organization dedicated to exploring the Dharma (Buddhist teaching) through service work internationally, and also a co-initiator of DANCE, Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement. He is the author of Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising.

Rabbi Dr Rafi Zarum is Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, which is some fifty teachers providing education for over 700 students. He received rabbinic ordination after studying at the Kollel of the Judith Lady Montefiore College, and received s'mikha from Emeritus Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, amongst others. He completed a PhD in theoretical physics in 1999, and published a number of papers on quantum chaos theory. He is a leading Jewish educator in the UK, and teaches at conferences and seminars, synagogues and Jewish community centres across the globe. He is the author of Torat Hadracha and Jampacked Bible educational study guides. Please, could you give them a big hand? [applause]

Rabbi Raphael (Rafi) Zarum: Good evening. Welcome. Hello, Rob.

Rob Burbea: Hello.

Rafi: We've had two or three conversations on the phone, and a good hour chat just before. Matthew gave a wonderful introduction to what's going to happen tonight. And so what we thought we'd do is do three or four different things. One is talk about our personal journeys (I don't think either of us stand for our entire traditions). And then talk about three or four issues. And the issues we want to talk about are the issue of desire, the issue of mysticism and transcendence, alienation with our own traditions, and why we're sitting here. So let's begin with our stories. Would you like to begin, and tell the room your journey to this seat?

Rob: My journey to this seat? Okay. [laughter]

Rafi: And then I'll tell you mine.

Rob: [8:35] Okay. Well, I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. My father was a Sephardic Jew from Libya. And I think, growing up, to be honest, I felt a bit like what Matthew just explained -- that I felt a little bit oppressed, perhaps, by what seemed like a lot of rules and rituals, dotting the i's, etc. And something maybe a little vague began to emerge in me, a more spiritual sense of things. I felt like that wasn't really being met by that tradition, and I couldn't see any way within that tradition for it to be met. So that led to me just exploring other things, other possibilities outside of the Jewish tradition.

I think I got introduced to Transcendental Meditation when I was 17 or something, but I never really took to it. And when I was at university, I saw a poster for Buddhist meditation, and it was like an instant 'fish to water' thing. So I heard basic Buddhist teachings. It made a lot of sense to me. But I think I was really hungry for ... I had a sense that there are different ways of being in the world, of knowing the world. There's a sense for consciousness to travel a little bit deeper, to open out in different ways. I couldn't probably articulate that at the time; it was an intuitive sense. That's really what I was looking for in meditation, and I found it very quickly, and took to it, and just began exploring it more and more.

I mean, from that point, the journey has taken a lot of detours. So there were difficulties and challenges which meant that I had to actually back away from the whole thing for periods, and explore other realms, like psychotherapy, etc. But always coming back to that root tradition of Buddhism, and learning a lot through it. In 1997--98, I was living in the States after I graduated from university here, and still continuing meditating and exploring Buddhism. Then I spent a year in England -- no, 1998--99 -- and that was my first time at Gaia House. I absolutely loved it. As Matthew said, it's a very magical place, where the atmosphere there of silence has sort of seeped into the walls. It's a very powerful place in a lot of ways. And I felt I really opened a lot in that year.

I went back; I was involved in studying music at the time, actually, enrolled in a PhD programme. But something was calling me back, and I actually was considering seriously becoming a Buddhist monk. So I left the PhD programme with the intention of becoming a Buddhist monk, but I thought, "I'll just go to Gaia House for a year-long retreat in silence," to explore that before I became a Buddhist monk. And during that year, I felt like, "I don't want to be a monk. I don't think I need to be a monk, and I don't think it would be good for me." And they asked me to teach. That's, indirectly, what leads me here. And Matthew and I, we've met at Gaia House, basically, when he was on retreat.

Rafi: Okay.

Rob: Is that okay?

Rafi: Yeah! [laughter] That's okay.

Rob: How about you?

Rafi: My story is that my father's Israeli, a Yemenite Jew. I was born in this country, and I was born a traditional Orthodox Jew in Edgware. And like many people, as well, I did the rituals, and it came naturally to me. I quite enjoyed it. But I didn't think it was particularly deep. I was in a youth movement as a teenager, and that grabbed me. The story of the State of Israel, the story of the return after thousands of years, that grabbed me, and for lots of young people, I think, as Jews, that's a great story. I enjoyed that, but it got quite fundamentalist as I got older. And then after I finished school, I wanted to really study, and what people -- I went to Bnei Akiva youth movement -- did is they went to kibbutz for a year. They would be involved in the land and a little bit of learning. But one of my leaders would say to me, "You don't know anything about Judaism. You don't really understand it. You need to go study properly in a yeshiva." And I realized I didn't really know that much. So I thought, "I'm going to do this." And it was a very crazy thing to do at the time, because there weren't many of my friends that went. I hardly knew anybody that was there. But it was my kind of teenage, childish search for truth, search for meaning.

Rob: And that was in Israel?

Rafi: That was in Israel. And I'd gone to a good school. We both went to good schools. [laughs] And I thought I was smart. I got good A Levels. And Judaism wasn't as deep. It didn't make as much sense. So the rituals were good as a teenager, growing up, but they weren't enough now. And it was in yeshiva that I met certain teachers, two particular teachers -- one very spiritual, one very intellectual -- who just opened up the worlds of Judaism to me. There was so much more, in terms of thinking. And I first read Lao Tzu in yeshiva. My rav gave it to me to read. Like, "Why not read anything? All knowledge is useful. It's going to be helpful." And as well as doing Talmudic study and getting involved there, we were doing spiritual retreats and [?] Shlomo Carlebach, and just seeing all different kind of things. And for the first time, I met people who could speak in a language that I could understand, but saying ideas that were just deeper than I'd ever thought. And I felt that my Judaism I grew up with was parochial. Nothing wrong with it; it just didn't know about this whole world of ideas out there, of books, and ... Therefore, I wanted to learn the language, and Aramaic and Hebrew, well, so I could read them. There are still so many basic books I haven't read, had a chance to read.

So I felt like a child playing in a garden of ideas and dreams. I still feel that even to this day. I've changed very much. I came back. I studied physics. I thought I was going to be a scientist. It was always weird, being a very kind of rationalist in the university, but then going and praying as well. It's a phrase that I heard from, I think, Rabbi Sacks, that I'm kind of a lapsed sceptic. [laughter] How I kind of see myself, which is that, you know, I love the intellectual, rational thought, and the things it's achieved, right? But it doesn't speak to the heart enough. And Judaism really did that to me, and helped grow that. So I dabble in different traditions -- you know, Hasidic tradition, trying to make sense sometimes, and quite a rationalist one sometimes, and a little bit of the mystical. And the guy in front of me in shul reads lots of Hasidic texts, so I said, "Come round to my house, and let's learn together."

So on Thursday nights, about four or five of us get together, and we're now doing Hasidic texts. And they're completely wacky sometimes! And completely crazy. But it's a whole different way of looking at things, and that's a particular tradition of just a hundred years. That fascinates me. So I still feel -- it's not that I'm frustrated that I'm not somewhere, but I feel still at the beginning of a journey of understanding these approaches. Then you get married and have kids, and that changes things as well, because then you think, "How do I want to do it for my children? What do I want to present?" And then you realize you try to present something and it's not really you. They see through it very quickly. And just sharing those ideas. So I'm fascinated by that.

And that's also led me to running, as I do at the college, two things, which is -- one, all the questions that people [?], so I got fascinated by evolution for four or five years, because I never really studied it properly, which I thought was amazing. And the next step was interfaith, understanding other faiths, and seeing I had so much more in common with serious people of different faiths and beliefs than people who weren't serious, and it didn't really matter what their faith was. And I want to learn from that. So when I had the opportunity to come meet you, I said, "Yes!" And that's why I'm here.

Rob: Great. [laughter]

Rafi: So, we talked about -- they called it Moses Meets the Buddha, but we talked about this: it really should have been Solomon, because -- my simple understanding of Buddhism, but it involves this origin of this great master who taught a way, and it's a wisdom knowledge. It's grown into many other things, but a wisdom knowledge. In Judaism, the wisest king was King Solomon. He was offered, at one point, as a young child, in a dream, wisdom or wealth, and he chose wisdom, so he got wealth thrown in. [laughter] A great move that he made there. The irony of him being the wisest person -- Maimonides, the greatest Jewish philosopher, says that he could explain more things than anybody else. The irony of that is that he screwed up his life royally.

Rob: Solomon?

Rafi: Yeah.

Rob: Hmm.

Rafi: So he had many, many wives. He ended up serving idolatry. He's looked down as a man who made a lot of mistakes. So it's kind of Judaism pooh-poohing wisdom to an extent, which is fascinating, I think. But anyway, that's just the introduction. So that's us.

Rob: And Solomon.

Rafi: [17:06] Should we go straight into desire?

Rob: Sure.

Rafi: Straight in? So we were talking about the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and the way they're normally taught. And the way you teach them differently fascinates me. Do you want to explain a bit about that?

Rob: Okay. Well, hmm. I think partly what I want to say is, just in relation to teaching: teaching, for me, is very contextual. So I need to know who's in front of me. I can't even see you guys. [laughter]

Rafi: There's nobody here. They all left. [laughter] It's just us, and a recording of an audience.

Rob: They're making a noise! So it's not like I have one way of teaching the Four Noble Truths. It's more like, what is the context of the larger point that I'm trying to make? And who are these people that I'm talking to, or this person that I'm talking to? Where are they at? What do they understand? What do they need? How do they need to see things in relation to what they're going through? So it's not so much that. But what we were discussing a little bit was the whole area of desire, and what is the attitude of each tradition, of religion, to desire? What place does it have, or not, on the path?

And so the Four Noble Truths, to put them in a nutshell for those who haven't heard it before: this is the sort of core, basic, central teaching of the Buddha. He says the first one is, "There is suffering." There is suffering. It's just that. And by 'suffering' -- well, we'll come back to that: what does he mean by suffering? But basically, pain, dis-ease, discontent, etc. The second one is that suffering, what is the cause of it? It arises from a cause. And the shorthand answer he gives for what the cause is, is it arises from craving, from desire, okay? So there's your problem. He's pointing to it as a problem.

The third one is, there's a release from suffering. There's the possibility of total release from suffering. And the fourth truth is there is a way to that release, which he calls the noble eightfold path. It has different aspects to it in terms of how you live, how you meditate, etc., how you view things. So right there in the fundamental structure of Buddhism is this relationship with desire. Now, again, it depends: what do we mean by 'suffering'? But partly what that came out of was a monastic tradition, a monastic, celibate, renunciate tradition. So the whole idea was transcending desire, going beyond desire. I mean, I'm very much oversimplifying, so it's not quite that simple.

And then what you've got nowadays is lay people, like me, who are serious meditators, etc., seriously interested ...

Rafi: When you say 'serious meditator,' tell me what that means.

Rob: Ah, okay, well ... [laughter] It probably depends who ...

Rafi: I'm wondering about the non-serious meditators as well. [laughter]

Rob: You do? Okay. It means, just in contrast to maybe traditional Asian cultures, where Buddhism is part of the fabric of society in the way that, say, Christianity was in medieval Europe ...

Rafi: It's more cultural, isn't it?

Rob: Cultural, just saturated. The whole culture is saturated with Buddhism. Monks and the clergy, they're part of the society. They're respected, all of that. So what you get in those cultures is, if you want to really take this teaching deeply, you become a monastic. You become a monk or, in some cases, a nun, although that's a whole other story. And the rest of the people kind of support the monastics, but they don't really meditate. They have a sense that there's a possibility of a path here that can go very deep and very far and kind of radical, but they sort of say, "That's not for me in this lifetime. I'll leave that. Let other people do it. I'll support those who do."

What you get in Western culture now is people saying, "No! I really want to get into this. I really want to explore what it has to offer." And then you get this problem with the attitude to desire, that it's actually wrapped up in a framework that views it negatively, and as a problem and something to be overcome. In a lay life, where you've got sexuality and art, how does that work? So there's a ... 'tension' is a polite word for that. There's a problem there in the way Buddhism is evolving now in the West. It's something it bumps into.

So I've done a little bit of reading about Kabbalah recently, and they have, from what I've read, desire is something that is sanctified in some way.

Rafi: Yeah.

Rob: There's a holiness to desire. It takes its place in one's life, but also the cosmos. There's a kind of -- desire has its place in the cosmos.

Rafi: Every pleasure in Judaism can be appreciated. There's one G'mara that talks about that when you go to heaven at the end, God holds you accountable for every pleasure, every fruit you could have tasted in this world and didn't, because he created it all for us, and why not enjoy it? But the sanctity is within a context, because if you do too much of anything, you can become addicted to it. And then, first of all, the enjoyment goes. You just desire it the whole time. And it hasn't got a place.

So 'sanctification' means 'limitation,' right? 'Sanctified' means 'special for,' 'special for something.' The fact that the first use of the words 'holy,' kadosh, in the Bible is about a prostitute, a k'deshah, because she was just used for something, right? So it's a negative connotation. But in marriage, when Jews get married, the phrase you say is Harei at mekudeshet li: "Behold, you are betrothed to me according to the tradition of Moses and Israel." And that means, technically, at the point, it's monogamy. You can't be with anybody else. So 'sanctified' means specific for a particular thing. It's focused in that sense. Because if it becomes the whole thing, then it's not holy. So the Sabbath is holy because it's one day out of seven. Marriage is holy because it's one partner, not many. The food we make a blessing is because we eat some food and not others.

Rob: But isn't it also in Judaism that -- this is a question: isn't also what makes something holy that it has a relationship with God? So when I went to the toilet just now, Rafi was explaining there's a blessing after going to the toilet, and that places sort of basic biological functions that we tend to think are dirty -- it actually places it in the context of ...

Rafi: Right.

Rob: It gives a holiness to it, because you're seeing it in relation to something other than purely ...

Rafi: But giving the holy is not because it inherently is holy ...

Rob: Right. We make it holy.

Rafi: Right.

Rob: Okay. That's beautiful. We make something holy through the attitude to it. So in terms of Buddhism, this is really interesting to me. What are the different kinds of sanctity that people can feel, and what do they, as individuals, what do you feel gives something sanctity? So at the moment in the West, the mindfulness movement is huge. And some of the people in the mindfulness movement -- although it's framed in a secular way -- would actually, if you push them a little bit, say that, "When I'm mindful [of] this glass of water, and I give it total attention, and the very fullness of presence there -- it's what my consciousness is giving it -- it makes it holy." They might not use that language, but the flavour of sanctity comes through the mindfulness.

Rafi: So the screw-up in Judaism was that that was what a blessing was meant to do, right? Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha'olam, shehakol nih'ya bidvaro. It's meant to make me aware. But because I was a 9, 8, 6-year-old learning them by heart ...

Rob: Sure.

Rafi: They were rituals, which Matthew talked about. So I had to do them. Then the Hasidim came along and said, "Right. Let's do a prayer that you say before the blessing to get you mindful of the blessing to be mindful of that." [laughter]

Rob: Great.

Rafi: It's Hin'ni mukhan um'zuman, which now people just think it's just another prayer you have to say.

Rob: Right.

Rafi: And it just keeps going.

Rob: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Rafi: And what Buddhism, I felt, and the way you described it, is it focused on -- it didn't give you a ritual to do it; you had to do it yourself. Ritual is meant to be a help, but it became, for many Jews -- and I think the way Matthew described it -- a straitjacket.

Rob: Sure.

Rafi: These words, I'm bound by this siddur, this book. It limits me. It took me a long time to let go of that, to feel freer, and to be able to choose from it. And in the history of Judaism, it's interesting. We're supposed to pray every day. A religious Jew, they wake up, and they're going, "I've got to do [?] HaShachar," and then morning prayer, and then as soon as it's midday, "Have I done the afternoon prayer?" It's an internal clock, nagging: "Have you prayed? Have you prayed yet?", all the time. It was a very negative thing. But then I'm reading Maimonides, who said, "When you come back from a long journey, you shouldn't pray for three days." I got so excited! [laughter] I showed a rabbi, and he goes, "We don't follow that." [laughter] I said, "But it says it! It says it here!" But Maimonides was saying, because he believed if you weren't ready mentally -- because journeys then were seriously major physical efforts -- if you weren't relaxed, how could you pray? And I got that. I really understood that.

So I follow the tradition, because our community does it every day, so I do every day. But when people are finding their way in Judaism, I much feel what I suggest that they do, because I know that underneath this ritual -- like the morning rituals, when you get to synagogue, there are like seven or eight prayers you say: help open my eyes, help me stand up, all that stuff. That used to be said as you got out of bed, by heart, as you physically did each next step. When you made your first step, you made that step. So it was completely connected with the action. But the rabbis felt, people wake up, their hands are dirty. They've been maybe touching themselves. They're not spiritual enough. Safer to do it in synagogue. So all that meaning, all that value and that greatness, got lost in the fear of doing it wrong. And that's what upsets me about what happened to Judaism. And Buddhism has found a way to stay at the cutting edge on that aspect of it. A big thing, which Matthew, you described in Judaism, is rote: going through the motions. Can a Buddhist get away with that? Would that happen, or would they just walk away? Do you know what I mean?

Rob: I mean, maybe in Asian societies, one can go through ... [crosstalk] But in Western society, can you do rote meditation? You can, but you typically feel it very quickly, and a person will complain that it just feels rote. So they will come to someone like me and say, "You know, it feels dead."

Rafi: I feel that's much more ... In Yom Kippur next week, we're going to bang our hearts, say these "al khet" for the sins that I've done. There are, like, fifty of them. I think fifteen of them are about it being fake -- the sin that I've done, and repenting, and in a fake way. It's very self-conscious Judaism, but is it really real? Back on the Noble Truths.

Rob: [28:15] Well, I mean, in a way, it ties in with the next topic we were going to discuss. Some people who are maybe Buddhists or mindfulness teachers might say, similar to something you said earlier, "You can have your desire, and you can do it, as long as you're doing it mindfully, and you don't get attached to it, and you don't overdo it. It's okay." But for me, there's still ... If you read the original Buddha's teaching, that's not really what he's saying. Underneath that, there's a tension. They're pulling at the structure of the teachings. And one feels it. It becomes more into how one chooses one's life, and what one's vision is of where one's going -- whether, for instance, desire is something to be really felt as holy is different than whether it's tolerated, whether it's okay in sort of small amounts.

Rafi: How do you see it?

Rob: Well, first of all, I'm interested in seeing it all different ways. So there are times to see it as something to renounce and let go. If I was teaching, I would say, "Can you do that? Do you know what that tastes like?" It's like, to have desire, and to let it go, and feel the freedom of that -- that's really important. But maybe a person has done that, and then they're trying to live their life free of desire, and that's where it gets a little silly. How can I live a life free of desire? And what does that mean? Let's say I'm an artist, or there's sexuality or something. It no longer really makes sense.

Rafi: Well, my overtime brain's thinking, "Then they're living their life, and their desire is to not have desire."

Rob: Yeah.

Rafi: So it's still based on desire.

Rob: You're running into something there. So I would be interested in that: can a person, do you know what it tastes like to let go of desire at times, and really feel the freedom that comes?

Rafi: So what examples or lessons or method do you give people to do that? What do you suggest?

Rob: That's where things like mindfulness come in. [30:16] So, you know, desire is felt as a kind of -- well, it might be expressed in thoughts, or it might be expressed through the body. You feel a kind of pressure in the body: "I want this thing." And it's intolerable, and that's why -- we can't tolerate this in the body, so I want (if this is whatever it is), then I escape this feeling by getting ...

Rafi: Right.

Rob: So a person learns to be with those feelings in a way that accommodates them more, gives them space. They can just rise and pass, and you have much more space. So can a person learn to do that? But then, after a while, you know -- and again, this all depends on who I'm talking to, etc., but could you then see the opposite, and actually, what would it be to see desire as something holy? And what would that mean, in this person's life? Is there something even pushing through their consciousness that maybe has a sense of something holy that wants to come through, that doesn't fit the paradigm? So, mentally, they're living in a paradigm of, "It's bad. I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't want that, etc. Desire should be toned down or gotten rid of." And yet there's something pushing through as a vital force, creative force in their life. And maybe, you know, I'll say, "What about that? And could we look at that a different way, and actually see that maybe it's something holy?" But that's not typically Buddhist. You get that in Tantric Buddhism.

Rafi: Would you take that as far as suffering though? Because the suffering one is at the core, I think, as one of the desires. Suffering was a real -- in India, in sixth century BC, that's the difficult, painful life that most people lived. The message of the Buddha that the suffering can be annulled in some ways -- I can see it's so attractive. And I think today in the West as well, people with a lot of depression and so on, the idea of being able to cope with that suffering ... So do you see the suffering as holy, or do you see that as ... [crosstalk]

Rob: Typically, Buddhism doesn't see suffering as holy. It's just, going back to the first one, "There is suffering." It's just a kind of bold statement, and it's to be gotten over, to be transcended. Classical Buddhism, what's called the Pali Canon (there's a set of texts of the Buddha), they view all this as in the context of rebirth. So really getting rid of suffering -- when earlier I was explaining the Four Noble Truths -- actually it depends what you mean by 'suffering.' Classically, to get rid of suffering would mean to be out of this world, to not be reborn again. Now, a lot of modern Western people can't buy that. So the whole word, 'suffering,' means something very different. It doesn't mean existence.

Rafi: So suffering is a cycle. There's a rebirth over and over again. And if you conquer that, then you don't come back, and then you don't suffer any more?

Rob: That's a very classical teaching. There are people nowadays who try and read back the texts that it doesn't say that. I don't know, I've never counted, but there are many, many modern Western Buddhists who would absolutely say, "That doesn't exist. That's wrong, rebirth. I'm going to view this whole teaching not in that context." There are some who are agnostic, and there are some who believe it. But for the people who don't want to regard it in rebirth, then I have to say, "What does this mean, to get rid of suffering? What on earth does that mean? And when I say 'suffering,' what am I talking about?" And we talked about this earlier. Does that include socio-economic suffering, environmental suffering? Generally, Buddhism has not viewed it that way, and modern Buddhism doesn't view it (A) in terms of ending rebirth, or (B) socially. So it views it purely introspectively, in terms of how am I coping with (that was the word you used before) this body, this mind, these emotions, and learning to cope with them better and better, so the suffering is less and less.

Rafi: Because in Buddhism, there's taking, "Therefore suffering is a given. There is suffering." Whereas Judaism, and I think Christianity as well, has the arrogance or they seem to say, "No, I'm going to put a framework for that. There's a reason why this is." Right?

Rob: Yeah.

Rafi: And there are many ways of going down that path, but one aspect in Judaism is that suffering is unjust: "It shouldn't be like that, yet it is." And therefore, if there's a just God, then there's the world to come. And then all the issues that were unfair in this world get fixed then. That's what kind of helps. I always hated that, because it just pushes the problem off to something else, into not now. But even the whole issue of "it's unjust," does that come in Buddhism at all? That approach of, like, "It's not right, and therefore ..." I mean, you don't have an issue of God in the same way, but is it not unjust because it's just the way you see it, and therefore you see it in a way there's no suffering? Or ...?

Rob: I don't know how to answer that simply.

Rafi: It's so different.

Rob: It's very different. And I think, for a lot of people, that's what's attractive about Buddhism, is it seems to set aside a lot of what some people call 'metaphysical assumptions.' It's just, "Let's put that aside and say, 'There is suffering.'"

Rafi: Right. Which they can't be sure they can believe.

Rob: Yeah, exactly. So I can't believe that, and a lot of people nowadays in modern Western society cannot believe all that package. So there's a big movement to say, "Let's just put that aside and say, 'There is suffering.'" Can I deny that? No. I feel it. I feel it in all kinds of different ways. What am I going to do about it? There is a way, at the very least, of reducing some of the suffering. So that's often, for modern Western people, what the Four Noble Truths has become. There is some suffering. A lot of it is individual suffering. And there are ways of practising and working and orienting oneself, etc., and things to do in one's life, that reduce some of that suffering.

Rafi: In the Talmud -- and it's five pages in -- they ask the question, "Why is there suffering?" Because every tradition wants to do that. It's not taught enough, so I was going to share just briefly. The first things say, "If you're feeling suffering, the first thing to do is analyse your actions," "Be'et tsara yekhapes bema'asav." [35:58] Some people read that as that you've done something wrong to deserve that. I don't see it in that way. I see it as Judaism is very much -- I read it as a reaction: if you are suffering, what are you going to do about it? First, analyse your life. Is there anything in your life that is causing that that you can change to make that better? And then they say, "If you analyse that and you can't find anything, then you need to learn more Torah." And again, you can see that as a kind of magical solution. I don't. For me, learning the Torah means knowledge. You need a deeper thought system to understand what suffering is.

I mean, when you discover you've got a medical condition, when you learn about how it works, and what that medicine is, you're less afraid, I find. When I study evolution theory or the science of nature and reality, it doesn't give me reasons why bad things happen, but I understand them more. So, for me, the next step, Torah, gives you more knowledge of it. And the third stage which the Talmud then says, which is the most really challenging one, "And if you have looked to your actions and you can't find the issue, and if you've learnt much Torah and there's not an issue, then it's yissurim (which means 'suffering') shel ahavah, which means 'suffering out of love,' so that God has chosen you in some way to have a special relationship that you have out of love. Now, what that means -- it's open to loads of misinterpretations, and I'm very nervous about it, but even the idea of suffering to do with love, that's how it ends, the story, and maybe tell some stories of rabbis who experienced that.

Rob: That sounds beautiful to me. I mean, that's not a typically Buddhist way of approaching these things. Although the first one of the three you said was: if there's suffering, it's arising from the Second Noble Truth, from the cause, and so let's look at the causes. Now, what often happens is a person doesn't so much look at the wider causes, in terms of how I'm living ethically, lifestyle choices, etc., actions, but basically suffering, classically speaking in Buddhism, arises from karma, which actually means 'action.' It means 'action.' What action or intention or speech or thought has happened that's given rise to this suffering? So it doesn't arise randomly. I think sometimes what happens in modern Buddhism is there's just a sense of, "There is suffering, and what can I do in the moment to change the way that I relate to that suffering?"

So usually human beings have a way of, when they're suffering, relating to it in a way that just compounds it, exacerbates it. So this is where the skill -- mindfulness, and other meditative skills -- come in. It's like, "Oh, I can acknowledge the suffering, soften around it, etc., learn to relate to it, see it in a different way," perhaps cultivate some other qualities of mind and heart -- for instance, more kindness or generosity, which will pour in a kind of positivity into the mix, and all of that will address the suffering.

But questions of meaning are left out of it. It's a mistake, but sometimes the wider ethical questions are left out of it. And the thing about connecting it with love, that, to me, sounds holy and sounds very beautiful -- that's not really there in Buddhist teaching. But just between you and me, because there is no one here [laughter], sometimes, if that's what's coming up, I'm speaking to a person and I can maybe sense that that's there, that that would be a beautiful way for them to see it, then, in the way I think about things, it's like, maybe there isn't a right and a wrong way to see it. There's a way that that person could see it that transforms that suffering into something holy, and then they have a whole different relationship with it. And that's beautiful. And it's something that almost is coming from them; it's not something, "You should see it like this," you know?

Rafi: But helping with what they need, even though it's moving away from traditional Buddhist thought. Do you see that as actually what Buddhist thought was meant to be? Because in the Hasidic view, that's what happens. Hasidism took it differently, but they said, "No, we're reconnecting with what Judaism was meant to be that had got forgotten." Do you feel you're doing that, or that you're taking it somewhere else?

Rob: When I do what I just said?

Rafi: Yeah.

Rob: I feel that there's a way of interpreting Buddhism that I'm kind of fond of, which has more to do with -- I don't know how to explain it simply, but more to do with that, okay, so there's this suffering. We're imprisoned in lots of different ways, you could say. And part of the way we're imprisoned is that we're imprisoned in the ways that we look at things. As I said, we tend to look at, let's say, my own suffering, in paradigms or blinkers or certain modes of reactivity: "I just don't like it. I hate it. Why me?", etc. But much wider than that in terms of paradigms, and even intellectual paradigms that we're not conscious of. And I see the bigger project of perhaps what the Buddha was pointing at as having a real freedom, exercising and developing a freedom to see everything -- self, other, society, existence, materiality, all of that -- in various ways. So you can actually see in multiply different ways. That's the freedom. We say that, in Buddhist teaching, you say -- it's a very deep teaching -- you say things are not really any particular way. They're empty of existing any way. What makes them one way is the mind looking this way or that. And so, for me, that's where the depth of Buddhist teaching points at. So that I give myself then licence to say all kinds of things in response to people.

Rafi: I relate to that very much in terms of employing different traditions than Judaism. I'm crunched for time, so let's not cover a whole bunch of other subjects.

Rob: Sure.

Rafi: So we talked about the issue of mysticism and transcendence. We were emailing each other. You were talking about what's transcendence in Judaism, or the issue of transcendence. So do you want to say a few words about what you mean by that? Because I'll be honest with you: I'm very -- I even use the word 'cynical' -- about these issues. People say, "I had a transcendent experience," and, you know, is it involving a mind-altering drug? Is it just a dream? There are so many rational ways of explaining these things.

Rob: Sure.

Rafi: Just because I've explained it rationally doesn't mean it's not meaningful and even helpful. But what do you see by 'transcendence'?

Rob: Well, I mean, again, it's hard to be simple about this. But first of all, I would repeat what I said before, as you said: you cast it in the light of what's helpful and what's not. And to me, again, that's how I tend to think about Buddhism and meditation. It's less in the realm of what's right and what's wrong, or what's canonical and not, and what's allowed and what's not. It's just: what's helpful? So, you know, 'transcendent' experiences might be helpful or not, and if they're not for a certain person, forget about it. So first of all, I'd just cast it in that light. Secondly, it was more, I think, a consciousness -- again, it's like, if one looks at modern Buddhism in the West, especially something like the mindfulness movement, it tends to (A) take reality as given (it's just what appears), but (B) believe in a kind of materialist philosophy of the universe: "There is just matter, and consciousness probably emerges out of that matter. And we can cope with that. We can tweak our software and programming, maybe a little bit change some hardware, and cope with and deal with this universe of meaningless matter." So sometimes that's actually conscious, explicitly articulated, and often not, but it's kind of wrapped up in a paradigm of some modern ...

Rafi: That's why I can see self-help books gravitate towards this, or mindfulness being Buddhism without the religion aspect of it, because it's just ... it takes away all the difficult metaphysical issues, and just gives you something useful.

Rob: [43:36] So, you know, everyone, obviously, has a choice. I'm not going to try and persuade anyone, in other words. But it's interesting to me what happens to a life -- in a way, how does one regard life, how does one regard the earth and the problems of the earth, and other people, and one's own existence, and death, when that's the underlying view, and there's nothing beyond this, there's nothing transcendent? To me, it's something that people rarely talk about, and yet it seems so fundamentally to make a difference in how one experiences existence. So it seems to me almost obviously given that Judaism must have a sense of transcendence just by the virtue of the fact that God exists. So there's something other than matter. Even if you just say, "There's matter and God," there's something beyond just this, whereas a lot of modern versions of Buddhism don't have that, and I think that has a big effect on one's vision, and how one lives one's life. I'm interested in that, and I'm also interested in challenging some of those ideas.

Rafi: In Judaism, because our people suffered for so long, they took refuge in transcendence in the world to come -- that everything will be justified then. It will be okay at that point. But then, later on, when things were better, still people said the world to come was the ultimate aim, and this world is just a corridor to the next world. Even though those ideas are there, people have taken it much too far, so that they distance themselves from this world.

Rob: Sure, yeah.

Rafi: Another commentary says, "Better one moment of doing a mitzvah and being in return, repentance to God, than all the world to come."

Rob: Sure.

Rafi: Right? So it's about being able to have that vision, but for now, as opposed to something to be delayed.

Rob: Yeah. So I think that's really important. I think every perspective on something, or every way of practising, or every tradition, or every meditative technique or whatever, it always has a shadow side. It has a blind spot. So that you could say the blind spot of transcendence is exactly what you just said: you say, "Who cares about this world? Next world, the goodies are there. They're waiting." And then we neglect a real care, and the beauty, and actually the mystical wonder of this world.

Rafi: There was a rabbi who ran from the Romans and hid in a cave for twelve years, and he comes out ...

Rob: I read this story. It's great.

Rafi: Right? And he sees a farmer just working, not in a spiritual situation. He looks at him and he explodes. And God said, "Get back in your cave. I didn't ask you to do that." And in that cave, it's a whole image. The image is, you know, because they had to be there for years, they had nothing. They would take their clothes off, bathe themselves [?], and just eat from a carob tree. And this image, I once heard one educator say, "It's disembodied heads. It's the ultimate intellectualization," which Judaism rejects -- it's meant to be able to transfer back to the world.

Rob: Yeah. So there is a shadow of transcendent perspectives and inclinations, but there's also a shadow of the opposite, of non-transcendence. That's all I'm saying. And the dominant philosophy that everyone on the street (not philosophers) walk around with is a material, is a non-transcendent philosophy. So it's permeating our culture. We live in a secular culture. And I'm just interested: what's the shadow of that? What's the blind spot? What are the effects of that? And then when it comes into a version of Buddhism, also, what do you block off, as a practitioner of Buddhism or meditation, that might be possible, if I open my view, actually as an experience? And again, then you have, is that experience helpful or not? I mean, I would consider it extremely helpful. In other words, the range of what's possible for a human being in terms of opening consciousness is much more than some versions might give it. But both have their shadows.

Rafi: If I can ask, it's something we talked about earlier. I find that my readings of Buddhism -- which is very limited -- it's very individualistic. So there's the issue of basically marriage, kids, family, community, which Judaism is huge on -- one on just for survival tactics, but also in terms of relationships, that you understand, you know: Eve ate from the tree, but only when Adam also ate were their eyes opened. It's in relationship that we understand things, right? The person leading a service needs to be married, because if they haven't loved another person physically, how can they love God? So relationships are always seen in that -- relationship is essential in Judaism. And until you marry, or you share life, and you have children, you miss those things. But what I looked up about Buddhist marriage, it's totally different to Judaism. There's no ritual for getting married. Is it much more individualistic? Is it that it's limited?

Rob: I think, again, it's the fact that ... Buddhism is changing. It's evolving. And it's also extremely diverse. So it's not like there's one answer. I think it's more like it's influenced and it's informed by what was at the beginning, and it's either in reaction to that, or still informed by that, and oftentimes without really thinking it through. So the Buddha was married, but he walked out on his wife and his 7-year-old son to achieve an individualistic awakening. I mean, it's said, "for the sake of all beings." But basically, what saturates the flavour of the early texts is an individualistic quest for individual liberation. That changed later, historically. And there was still the emphasis on community in the early texts, but it's really the monastic community in relation to the lay community, or the monastic community in themselves. So yeah, you're right. And again, if we talk about shadows and blind spots, it's a weak point in Buddhism. We tend not to really have much to say about political, socio-economic, environmental problems. It's beginning to change a little bit. And even less to say about marriage and family.

Rafi: Let me ask you then. There are, by different accounts, 500 million Buddhists in the world, maybe even a billion if we count different ways, which is much more than Jews. And it's moved from where it came from, all over the West. The individuality of Western civilization, the nervousness about marriage, that freedom, the centrality of the individual, given Buddhism's individualistic nature, do you think that's what's made this growth -- and an answer to the question, Matthew's question about why so many people are drawn to it, is because they feel atomized in the world, and this is a path that helps them, takes the atomization as a given, and helps them on a path to deal with that, but doesn't force them into community? Sartre said that, you know, what he said about other people, "Misery is other people." So you don't have to deal with them; you can retreat. I always find it interesting why they call them 'retreats,' by the way. [laughter]

Rob: Yeah, I didn't invent that word. [laughs]

Rafi: I'd want 'attack.' 'Attack weekend.'

Rob: Yeah, sure. [laughter] I think maybe a small minority of Buddhists are seeking to get away from other people. I don't think that's really the tenor of Buddhists. But there is a sense of that liberation is individual -- 'liberation' meaning nirvāṇa, enlightenment, whatever. It's an individual achievement that a big part of that involves solitary practices -- not necessarily on one's own, but that one does in oneself, and less in relation. Again, these things are starting to change. They're starting to sort of stretch out in different ways. But basically that's where it came from. That was the model.

Rafi: Yeah. I see a place now, in the synagogue, there's that orchestrated moment where everybody -- the most important prayer, the Amidah, the standing prayer, is a silent, private one you do on your own.

Rob: Right, right.

Rafi: So those are communal moments, but the most intense things are when you're on your own, praying to God, but within a community. So that jump between the two, individual and communal, happens in a different way. I think we'd like to open up to questions.

Rob: Sure.

Rafi: Because apparently they're back, and we can take that from there. So, Matthew? Do you have a microphone? Do you want to do that?

Matthew: Yeah. I've got a question, so I'm going to start. [laughter]

Rob: Is that cheating?

Matthew: So I was reading recently a book by a Zen practitioner recovering from cancer, and he talks about his experience in hospital. I'll read what he says, and then you can comment on it. He says:

My outlook stood in sharp contrast to the way of looking at suffering that I saw in some brochures containing spiritual advice for cancer patients. One writer said that questioning the 'why' of our suffering leads to anger and despair, and eventually this anger spills over into our relationship with our loved ones and into our relationship with God. I strongly disagree. I have learned that the practice of introspection while ill, combined with a belief in karma, can lead to insight, acceptance, and peace, even in the most difficult of times. Having spent years reflecting on the law of causation, I found it jarring to hear hospital clergy begin their visits by saying, "Jim, we don't have the answers to the questions of why God chooses some to suffer and not others." I would stop them immediately. I feel differently about this. In Buddhism, all things have their cause. Our body is a memory of our past deeds, karma.^[1]

I'd like to hear if you've got any comments on that sort of dichotomy that he draws. [laughter]

Rob: I think there are different kinds of Buddhists, and just as human beings, there are different kinds of ways we ask 'why.' So oftentimes I hear people asking 'why,' and they're not really asking 'why.' It's just outrage and upset and frustration coming up. So it could be that the thing that this person is reacting to, or the report, when people say, "'Why' leads to just more alienation," is actually that the person they're talking about is not really asking 'why.' They're more just in a bit of upset, you know? So it's not really a question. It would be difficult to ask this person to prove that the body is a result of karma from past lives, so he's basically adopting a belief and a framework of a belief, which, for him or her, it sounds like it's helpful. It's doing something helpful. But as I was saying earlier, you get a lot of Buddhists nowadays. Some would adopt that view. Some would completely reject it. And some will just be agnostic about it. Is there another part there that I'm missing? Is that answering what you wanted there?

Matthew: Yeah, yeah. I'm interested to hear what Rafi -- why do these things happen?

Rob: I'll maybe just say one [more thing]. Most modern Buddhists would not ask the 'why.' And as I was trying to explain, most it would be, "This is what's happening. I'll leave the 'why' question aside because, what the Buddha said, there are questions that are not helpful to ask. This is what's happening. This is the experience. These are my fears. These are my bodily sufferings, etc. How can I relate to those in a way that's helpful, in a way that eases some of the unnecessary levels of suffering there, opens the heart, maybe makes my death (if this person [is dying]), makes that something easier and maybe even lovely." So most people, this is quite rare, at least in the Buddhist circles that I move in. That would be quite rare, to even go down the 'why' question. Most people would put it aside.

Rafi: Rabbis have learnt now to not try and explain things. And when they go to a Shiv'ah or a sad thing, they say, "We don't know the reason why." And I'm being a bit cynical here, but the reason they're doing that is because Jews are so sick of rabbis giving these metaphysical answers -- "This is this" -- and not being happy with it. They actually want to see humility in their spiritual leader who says, "We don't know the things," and they sit with them and share with not knowing. But I don't find that so satisfying, although, in that context, that's what you would say. But ultimately it'll always come to the question of, "What is existence?", because I can explain it biologically, having studied biology, and then I can explain it physically, explaining/understanding physics, and how the nature of a diversity in the world means that things are going to go wrong, and there are different potentials there. That's the nature of physical reality. But why is there physical reality? If you keep asking why, you get to the fundamental question of, "What is existence?" But that doesn't help them. So then I'll change tracks. So when things happened to me, it was fascinating, talking personally. I, in my head, could explain everything rationally, and so I wasn't angry, but I still felt pain. So I was trying to think about that. But I wasn't angry with our tradition or anything, and I understood why things happened, but I still felt that pain. And just talking to people and sharing helped.

Rob: [57:10] Yeah. I still also feel there's a distinction here. A person can ask the question 'why.' Again, as I said before, it can come out of frustration, and not really be a question. So oftentimes we use that word, it's not a question. We're just complaining, you know? Is it kvetching? Is that the right word?

Rafi: Yeah. [laughter]

Rob: Okay. So it's not really a question. Other times, a person asks the 'why,' and they really want an answer. And then, as Rafi says, I can see it biologically. I can see it physically. I can see it metaphysically. Or you can see it -- which maybe is related in the question here -- that God has some intention here, but then if I want to know what God's intention is, that's a whole different story. But even knowing that God has an intention for me, for this fate which is very painful to me, I don't know what it is that puts a person in an attitude of trust, and maybe a certain kind of holiness. So it's not necessarily figuring things out, as a perspective on existence that one's choosing to believe, or has an intuition of, that softens the whole thing.

Rafi: Because it gives someone a purpose. They can do something about it.

Rob: Or they feel it has a meaning, maybe, a meaningfulness. So these questions are often about, yeah, meaningfulness, and casting things in different lights. If I go back to how I would see Buddhist practice, it's a lot about that. It's about perspectives, and which perspective casts this in a different light that actually is helpful -- helpful for the heart, helpful for the being -- rather than, "What is the actual answer here?", which I think is ... are we really going to answer something like that?

Matthew: Okay, thank you. So, any questions? Okay, we'll take the lady on the left here.

Unnamed Participant 1: Thank you. I just wanted to ask you. I heard that there's been 84,000 Buddhist teachings given by Buddha, and I was interested: why so many? And also if you can say a little bit more about different schools in Buddhism, because Buddhism is not like a monolith, so far as I know, but different ways of teaching and approaching. Thank you.

Rob: Do you want to be a little more specific, or ...? [laughter]

Unnamed Participant 1: About the schools, or ...?

Rob: Yeah, like, what is it about the schools that you would like to know? Or a rough outline? Is that what ...?

Unnamed Participant 1: A rough outline, yes.

Rob: Okay. [laughter] That's a very difficult question, by the way, to answer succinctly. So there's what they call Theravāda Buddhism, which literally means 'the way of the elders.' And whether it's historically accurate or not, I don't know, but at least Theravādans regard them -- I would say that's my root tradition within Buddhism; that's where I sort of learnt, and that's what I feel most comfortable coming from, as origin, perhaps. 'The way of the elders.' So they believe that they are the closest to the original teachings of the Buddha. What characterizes that? Some of the things we've been talking about tonight. Well, my reading of it is actually quite a transcendent view on things: one is trying not to be reborn back into this world. Modern interpretations of Theravāda are not transcendent at all. They're very much to do with the mindfulness and things we were talking about earlier -- dealing with, coping with this reality.

Very briefly, historically, what happened in India is something called the Mahāyāna started, which put more emphasis on compassion than just this individual liberation. So in the Mahāyāna, the idea was to be liberated for the sake of serving other beings, so that when I have more wisdom and more compassion and more heartfulness, I'm better able to serve other beings. But then that met many different tributaries. And in India, Tantric Buddhism arose historically out of that, which is a whole other thing that I can't get into. But then it started spreading in different countries and all over. So when, for example, Buddhism reached China, it was rejected, and for a couple of reasons, but part of it had to do with the belief in rebirth. So because Chinese people really don't go for that, and they go more for the sense of the connection with ancestors -- so if we're just reborn, the ancestors lose all meaning, because you have many lives, many ancestors. So it was actually rejected the first time. Then it came a second time, but the Buddhism there, and later in Japan, which are very non-transcendent cultures -- they're really, if you know the Japanese tea ceremony, it's about this moment, this thing, this cherry blossom falling from the tree. So it's a very immanent culture. The whole direction of Buddhism took a very different turn, very different flavour, a more sort of immediate flavour.

Tibetan Buddhism has lots of different schools within it, but they believe that they're more faithfully following later Indian Buddhism. But it spread and spread and spread. And what you get in the West now is a whole mishmash of all that, to be honest, so that even what we call now the Insight Meditation tradition, which is the tradition I predominantly teach in, it's actually a mishmash of Theravādan and Zen and the kind of things that were just influential at the time that that took root. But I have no idea if that answers your question. [laughter] Is that okay? Okay.

Unnamed Participant 2: To make gross overgeneralizations [?], on the one hand, as with Judaism, you have a great sense, perhaps, in the majority of theories to a tradition and the code of law, and on the mystical side, perhaps, there's some emphasis, at least in some quarters, on devekut[?], so clinging to the transcendent [being?], coming over to Buddhism is a great overgeneralization. You get the sense that even quite early in the tradition they say things like, in some sūtras, "There's no path." And today you hear an awful lot of people saying, "Don't take my word for it," people doing talks, saying, "Don't take my word for it." Then on their mystical side, it's very much, perhaps, about a flow, and not clinging to another, but sort of staying with impermanence and change. So the question is, if you're born, perhaps, in one of the traditions, then it's perhaps not helpful that maybe each tradition had to perhaps go for one or the other in order to be consistent. So I'd invite your comments on all of that.

Rafi: Just say that last bit again. [laughter] The one or the other that you're talking about.

Unnamed Participant 2: That perhaps the tradition, in order to be consistent, has to go more or less one or the other. Of course, neither tradition went for those two views exclusively in any way.

Rob: So the "one or the other" is the more mystical or the more ...?

Unnamed Participant 2: The cleaving versus non-attachment, essentially -- that dichotomy.

Rob: Cleaving to God?

Unnamed Participant 2: To get to God, the tradition ...

Rob: Or the tradition? Oh, okay. [To Rafi] Would you like to take that? [laughter]

Rafi: There's variation. Within traditional Judaism, you know, Hasidim, the more spiritual will talk to rationalists and share, you know? You can get people arguing to an extent, but I don't think you're forced to -- you can choose. On the individual aspects of it, you can definitely choose the path you want to do, and read the books you want to read. If you're very much in a very focused tradition, a particular Hasidic sect, maybe, you might not read other people's books. But everyone -- what you were talking about, the different Buddhisms today, I very much see in terms of, like, pop musics. There were different eras where there were certain styles. Pop music today, people can write new songs of all different styles at the same time, because they're conscious of all the past. They have much more access to it. I think the same is happening in traditions and in Judaism, so that people can pick up a book on a particular Hasidic sect, and love that book even though they're not Hasidic or a Jew. So I don't think you have to choose which path. I don't know if that's helped, if that's what you were relating to, or you're being more specific about an issue. Is that ...?

Unnamed Participant 2: [inaudible]

Rafi: If it's what on the one hand?

Unnamed Participant 2: If it's being advised on one hand that generally you're cleaving to a tradition, and on the other hand, you have a tradition that says non-attachment [?].

Rafi: By 'non-attachment,' you mean ...?

Unnamed Participant 2: Non-clinging to any idea in a tradition.

Rafi: You mean being free? I want to say one thing on this, which is that I think it's simplistic to think you have to stop doing traditions as the next step. I think, for me, the freedom is within any structure. Because every tradition I've read has rituals. It's within those rituals to be free to express them in the way you do them. That's how I see it. But I don't know if that's ...

Rob: Yeah, I think it's complex, you know? And there seems to be a lot in your question, which maybe I wouldn't necessarily put together as the same thing. For example, cleaving to God and cleaving to tradition may be one and the same thing, or they may be quite separate. If we take the other side, non-attachment, that's related to the desire thing we talked about earlier. So that's a big, big, big emphasis in Buddhism, non-attachment.

You can view, "What is the purpose of that non-attachment?" And again, I can view it in a purely non-transcendent way: "I am in this world, and the best way of living in that world is in a non-attached way." So there's no cleaving to God there. There's no cleaving to something non-transcendent. There's not that as an aim. The aim is just to be in this world in a non-attached way. Or you can say, "No, it's through non-attachment that the sense of God, as a more direct experience, if you like (or, in Buddhist language, a sense of what is not constructed or not fabricated, what is transcendent), it's the non-attachment that you take deeper and deeper" -- not so much as a way of life, but as a meditative path -- that, in meditation, you can learn to let go of deeper and deeper levels of attachment. What that does is it opens up the sense of God, which would maybe be similar to the Kabbalist cleaving, the Hasidic cleaving to God. Cleaving to tradition, that's a whole other thing.

And again, you could say -- one of my teachers, Ajaan Ṭhānissaro, used to say, you know, people talk about non-attachment, but it's like you're climbing a ladder. If I want to let go of that rung of the ladder, I need to hang on to this rung up there. Does this make sense? So I need to hold on to that one, and then I can let go of this one, and put my leg there. Then I can hold the next one. So there's a kind of progressive non-attachment. I think, again, with so much of this stuff, you get kind of very simplistic-sounding stuff, like, "Just let go. Just don't attach to anything," and it's ... life is complex, and anyway, just doing that would be impossible, and wouldn't really take you to a transcendent thing, because it's not evolving in that deeper sense. And similarly with the tradition thing, cleaving to a tradition, you know, maybe the tradition has a lot to give you. We need structure. We need a support. You might question certain things, but that's what you kind of piggyback on, if you like. But you get very different flavours. There's a Zen saying: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." So there are lots of different roads.

Unnamed Participant 3: My name is not Richard Dawkins, but I would ask both speakers, and particularly the rabbi: is it possible to be a scientist and religious?

Rafi: I like to think I am. So yes. [laughter] I know one! Yeah, yeah. I think it's simplistic, the contradiction that people make. It upsets me, because I think where people [?] it -- they're either very religious, and they want science to be wrong or irrelevant, or they're scientists and they want to pooh-pooh religion. And I think both are amazing. It's the great partnership that's fascinating. Science and religion both have things to teach us, and you're going to be [?] if you block out one way of looking at the world. On a more specific level, every Jewish book that [?] came out, my mum bought for my birthday, so I've got them all -- books on religion and science, trying to make them fit together. And there are many different ways of looking at it. But for me, they help.

When I was in shul on Rosh Hashanah two days ago, and we [?] took a prayer, and we say, "Who will live and who will die, and who by fire and who by ...", and this moment that our life is so transitory and could end, it reminds me of a line in Origin of Species where Darwin says that one slight difference in an animal being born, one defect or change that could be useful to them will make the difference on who will live and who will die. And so evolution has helped me have a deeper understanding of my tradition. In the morning, we say the psalms, and we look at all the creatures that are made, and how they're all so different, and the diversity. I believe in a creator who made creation creative. And that's a much deeper view than a simplistic view of, "God had to make each species separately." To understand a God who would make nature, of itself, evolve in itself, is a greater God of a greater achievement, in that sense. So I've never really seen any contradictions between the two. I'm just fascinated by them, right? That's how I've seen it.

Rob: This interests me a lot. I mean, I think most people would say, well, for most modern Buddhists, it's not a problem, because we don't have this idea of God and creationism, etc., and it's not phrased in that, so it doesn't seem to be a contradiction. But it's something that I think about a lot. And I'm just picking up a thread of what Rafi just said. To me, everything comes back to views and assumptions. I'm very interested in challenging that. And for me, that's part of what Buddhism should do. One should have a certain power and courage in challenging them. So there's 'science,' but there's also a word that's current a little bit now called 'scientism.' I don't know -- some of you may know that word. I'm not quite sure what it's meant. But I think partly it means sort of making a religion out of science, so that science is the only way we can know about the world, or ourselves, or truth.

So, you know, for me, science is a paradigm, a way of looking at things. Of course, immensely helpful and wonderful in so many ways, and so much to learn. I'm fascinated by physics and all that still. But it's only one way of looking, and one way of knowing things. So what it really comes back to is, to use a philosophical word, epistemology: how do we know? What are the ways of knowing? And do we need to squeeze it into just one box? So modern Western culture has grown so much by really cultivating the scientific mode of knowing and exploration and discovery, but oftentimes it's at the expense of other ways of knowing. And I would be more for the plurality there, that they can coexist.

Unnamed Participant 4: I've got two questions. One's first for Rob. I was interested in -- because you mentioned suffering. I heard that Stephen Batchelor translates the word that you would normally use for suffering of dukkha as sort of feeling -- I don't remember how he translates it now -- dissatisfaction, and if you prefer, which one you prefer. And then a second question, which is for both, which is essentially, in both traditions, how do you know if you're doing it 'right'? What makes, in each tradition, somebody who's righteous, or the opposite?

Rob: [1:14:17] So the first question is what translation of the word for 'suffering' do I prefer? Yeah? I can go with 'dissatisfaction,' yeah. As I said, originally -- and, you know, what Stephen's trying to do is really cut off that whole rebirth thing and that whole paradigm, what he regards as metaphysics, and so cast it all in just a sense of the troubles that we inevitably experience by virtue of being alive, having a body, and our sort of basic existential situation, without God, etc. And that, sometimes what I think needs a little bit more questioning, a little bit more examining: what are the assumptions behind that? But as a word, I think it's fine, yeah. Is that all right? Or did you want something more there?

Rafi: And then the second issue of, "How do you know when you're there or you're right?"

Rob: How do you know whether you're practising right, or 'righteousness' as in 'virtue' and 'goodness'?

Unnamed Participant 4: Well, how do you know if you're being a good Buddhist? At the end of your life, when you look back, how do you know you did it right?

Rob: That's not a question I'll be asking myself.

Unnamed Participant 4: Okay.

Rob: Seriously. That's not a question that will be on my agenda on my deathbed, I don't think. [laughter] I'm not going to answer that! [laughs]

Rafi: Don't you think, in a way, that question, which is so Western, is self-consciousness? "How do I know that I'm something?" So if I know, then I'm standing outside of the experience of the path. Then I'm not on the path. So why would I ask that? Or self-consciousness about what I'm doing would be a step away from it. So why would I ask that question, unless there was some external thing bigger than ... There was an event in [?] once. It was a panel on the meaning of life. And they asked my rabbi, "What's the meaning of life?" And he answered in less than a minute. He said, "The meaning of life implies that behind life, there is a deeper issue called 'meaning.' But if the essence is life, then the only question you can ask is not 'what's the meaning of life?', but 'what's the life of meaning?'"

Rob: Mm-hmm. Okay. [laughter] Is that what you're asking?

Unnamed Participant 4: [inaudible]

Rob: I'd tell you partly the problem is coming because of the diversity -- like the other questioner said -- the diversity of Buddhism. So what it means to be 'a good Buddhist,' or 'doing Buddhism right,' means very different things to different people. It looks different. It involves all kinds of different assumptions. I think for me, I feel that of all the different teachings I had, and all the practices I've come across, and all the experimenting I've done, I feel like something has borne a lot of fruit in a way that's actually far beyond anything I ever expected, and very transforming and important. That's my measure. But I wouldn't impose that or thrust what I have come to as a sort of interpretation of Buddhism -- I wouldn't thrust that on anyone. I would offer it as a possibility. So it's not so much about 'right,' or it's what feels right, if you want to use those words. Does that sound okay?

Unnamed Participant 5: In Judaism, you have kind of a prescriptive look at morality in terms of mitzvot. Is there anything similar in Buddhism -- I suppose building on the previous question -- or are there certain acts that are revered from teachings?

Rob: What you get in Buddhism -- so the code is different for lay people and for monastics, for a start. To simplify, you could say lay people have five precepts, five ethical precepts, which should be kind of cardinal. So they're (1) not killing, (2), not taking what is not given, (3) something around sexuality, which is very vaguely and differently interpreted, but let's say something like 'not causing harm sexually,' (4) not causing harm through speech (and that involves speaking harshly, or lying, or gossip, and that kind of thing; also things like idle chatter, which is, you know), (5) and not misusing substances. So there are five. And the phrasing in the Theravādan tradition is quite particular. It's "I undertake the training precept to refrain from ..." So it's regarded as a practice. You're bound to mess up, but you're setting an orientation that you're trying to do something and develop that. Then that becomes a kind of basis for meditation, etc. But then there's also virtue, the sort of positive qualities, and they're more like kindness, and kind speech, and kind actions, and generosity. So there's an emphasis on that, too, but not so much specific acts in the Theravādan tradition. [To Rafi] Do you want to say anything?

Rafi: No.

Unnamed Participant 6: Hello, Rob.

Rob: Hi. You've grown a beard.

Unnamed Participant 6: Yeah, I have. [laughter] Happens sometimes. Several people here tonight, we had a group meeting, group retreat with Akiñcano, who I guess you're familiar with. So this is a Buddhist group that looks at issues around [?], and associated with the Insight tradition that Rob mentioned. We had a fantastic question, and I said I must bring this up at this meeting. The question was, by one of the members, "Well, the Buddha did a lot of wandering in his life, and what if he had wandered a bit further, and he happened to come across Job? And Job in the very worst of it." So that first led to a question: "Well, what exactly happens?" I guess there were a lot of non-Jewish people there. So Akiñcano, of all people, who was, I think, born a Catholic, I think he explained it. But the question -- and it's really a question, I think, particularly for Rob, but probably for both of you, was, well, what is a sensible response? Given the point that we're not talking about giving people false hope, or hope at all, perhaps, but what does one say to people who really do suffer, given that suffering is a part of any religious experience? I said I'd bring it up anyway. I thought it would be interesting.

Rob: So it's not so much about the story of Job; it's about people who are suffering a lot?

Unnamed Participant 6: What is a good response to suffering? What's helpful, perhaps?

Rob: As a teacher, I don't have a formula. It's not the way I tend to work. Someone's in front of you. They're telling you what's happening. You're feeling that. You're responding. And based on my -- everything, something comes out. So I don't know that I could give a formulaic, "This is what I would say" sort of thing. I don't know. What's your response to that?

Unnamed Participant 6: For me, personally, because I teach mindfulness to people with cancer, well, first of all, it's hard to do an individual response because it's done in a group, but the one thing that is common to the group, the suffering. They all have not only cancer, but many people have lost loved ones. It brings back memories of other loved ones who have died from cancer. And the problem in a group situation -- well, one to one, you could work with that individually. In a group, it's the elephant in the room, basically. And the problem is, as you know, in secular mindfulness, we don't really talk about it explicitly. There's no spiritual or religious underpinning. And yet, it's a question that if you don't at least somehow start addressing, it's hard to reach that kind of presence and come into the present moment that you all want to do in mindfulness. So anyway, I guess that's for me. But it's an open question.

Rob: Yeah. I mean, maybe Rafi has something to say as well. I think -- and just knowing a bit about the situation that you work in -- I don't know how free you are to adapt the sort of teaching structure/paradigm that you're given. But maybe you can give, I don't know, homework, or just a suggestion of an exercise. So there is a certain formula. If I'm feeling pain, if you're feeling pain, I can tell you certain ways that will ease that pain, and ease your relationship with the pain, and dissolve some of the suffering. That's very standard. I would say that to anyone. If it's something like grief, grief at the loss of a loved one, or your own imminent death, given the sort of range of beliefs around everything that's come up tonight, I think it's much more individualistic.

I don't know if your paradigm allows this, but maybe it's more getting people to inquire, and setting up a kind of inquiry that's maybe in pairs, or maybe more individualistic, that they can discover a relationship that will involve meaning, and will involve, "It's okay, belief," if that's okay for them, or the route of no belief, because that might be what's good for them, or what they resonate with. So they have a direction to explore, rather than an answer coming from you. So for some things, there's an answer: "You try this. Do that. Do that. Tweak it this way. And it will help." And for other stuff, it's more like, "Let's find out what's going to work for you," but you don't have a prescription there. So just in terms of your situation, that's what I would maybe say. I don't know if Rafi has anything to say.

Rafi: It's interesting. If you notice the new advertising they talk about with cancer, "Let's fight the war on cancer," it's really sad, I think, what's happened in our society, that we're afraid to learn to live with this thing, and [?] to be solved. And I think we're more and more afraid of this issue, more than ever, and it's a huge issue as a result. I'm very much following Rabbi Rob on this [laughter], in that you've got the context and so on. What I often do is I don't prescribe for them, but talk about how I understand it myself on these issues. At the moment, we're saying a prayer. We say during Rosh Hashanah, this entire month, Psalm 27. We say every day. We kind of encapsulate the whole cycle. There's a line in it which is quite shocking, which says "Ki avi ve'imi azavuni ve'hashem ya'asfeni," "My mother and father have left me, and God gathers me up."

There are many interpretations on this. It means that eventually your parents will die, and ultimately it's only you and God. But Rashi, the traditional interpretation, is actually much more shocking. It's King David who's saying this. And Rashi says what King David is saying is, "When I was conceived, my mother and father slept together, and then he turned over" -- this is Rashi, direct translation -- "he turned over and went to sleep, and she turned over and went to sleep, and who cared about the sperm and the egg? Who cared about the multiplication, two, four, eight, to a complete human being? Only God." That's God within every biological stage. And in cancer, as I understand it scientifically -- and I really feel it helps to understand it scientifically -- it's when that starts to go wrong, when those multiplications don't work quite right, and it's hurtful, and it leads to a horrible physical reality, but it's happening on the cellular level. And when I say that verse, for me, I'm thinking I see God in all those processes, but having made the world physical, it allows, through diversity, for that possibility to happen. And it's learning to accept that, and hoping it doesn't land on me. Do you remember that, "Do They Know It's Christmas?", that song they did for Africa about twenty years ago? There's a line which is so shocking. I think they got Bono to sing it. It goes, "Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you." I don't want it to be me. I think it's okay to say that, that we don't want this to happen, and we hope it doesn't happen to us. That's part of it as well. So I would answer the person how I feel about it, and share and hear their situation, and as Rob said, suggest the ways of dealing with it which help them, and through community.

One rabbi I know, a friend, he told me a story of a person whose wife had gone off with someone else. He was completely depressed. He said, "Rabbi, what do I do?" And he literally asked him, "What do I do?" And he goes, "Give charity. Get involved in the world. Give." And for this man, at that point, it helped him. He was able to do something with this anger and this frustration of what this woman had done to him in his perception. He gave to the world. Instead of being angry with it, he gave, and that helped him move on and grow. So that going back into the world and sharing is a path.

Unnamed Participant 7: Thank you very much for the talk tonight. I have two questions, and one is related to what was just being said. It's about love, and how this is tied to suffering in both traditions. I would be interested in knowing more. My second question is about more your personal journeys. You seem both to have gained a lot from learning about other faiths, religions, and traditions. And on the other hand, you have chosen to stay firmly within one tradition. I was wondering how you made this choice.

Rafi: For me, it's kind of related to why you stay married as well, actually, I think [laughter], if you think about it. But I think part of it is it becomes aboriginal to you. I can't change the things that were done to me when I was 8, 9, 10, the TV programmes, the music. When I visit Israel, it's not properly green. My default grass isn't properly green. My default grass is England. It's just, in my head, that's what green is, and anything which is more green, in New Zealand, is rich; anything less is less. These are things that I came from. And Judaism has now become part of me. So I can gain from other traditions, and feed it into my own, and therefore I feel that I'm gaining from it. It's a terrible thing when we teach kids in school all different religions. It's much easier to understand any other faith or tradition if you have one yourself. If you don't have one, you just don't get any of it. So that's what I really think. That's how I see it.

So for me, I understand the universal through the particular, by being particular. When you try and be universalist to start with, I don't think historically, politically, that's worked so well for society. I think by focusing on one particular thing that is your path, and it seems irrelevant to the whole world, and it's just you, years later turns out to be really interesting to a whole bunch of people. That's what I find so fascinating. So I think I understand the world better by being particularly Jewish ... and fundamentalist. [laughter] Try and put the 'fun' back into fundamentalism! [laughter] But in that kind of way. The danger is that your tradition can become empty and not meaningful. And what saddens me is the stories, as Matthew speaks -- it's not that I want to make you religious, but it breaks my heart when I hear the stories of Judaism failing. They once asked [?], "How would you define the United Synagogue?" That's the major body of synagogues in this country. And he said, "The United Synagogue is like a pub with no beer." [laughter] And I've never found anything better than that. When you speak, Rob, it's pure beer. And I find beer in my tradition, as well, but I want to talk to you with beer, and have the beer. But the beer has to have a cup, or it spills on the floor, and it gets smelly and sticky ... and there's a limit to this metaphor, but I'm still there. [laughter] You know what I mean? And it also appeals to English people as well, the pub. So that's what I feel. It's about needing a pub, but if the beer runs out, you know ...

Rob: Yeah, I would very much agree with a lot of that. I feel that going deeply into one tradition and really exploring it, it gives you a container, but also ... I'm not a believer in universalism. I think going deeply into one will give you a deeper perspective on others in some ways that I've found very enriching and really helpful. I'm just endlessly curious about that. We were talking about this before, but I'm also interested in the ongoing evolution of a tradition. So typically Buddhism -- I don't know, I'll ask Rafi if Judaism is the same -- but typically religions, maybe not Judaism, but Buddhism tends to look backwards. That's the nature of a religion, in contrast to science, which tends to look forward -- based on the past, looking forward into the future to make discoveries, and in contrast to art, which just looks every different way, but evolves too.

So it's interesting to me that even Buddhists who would never, ever describe themselves as religious still have a past-referencing, and place the authority in the past. I'm really interested in, what if we don't do that? So we're in dialogue with those ideas and that tradition, those practices, etc., but we can also maybe undermine some of it, push some of it out, break through certain barriers there, so that Buddhism actually evolves -- which is what it did historically anyway. So I'm interested in the edges of Buddhism, very much on the edges, and sometimes even beyond the edges, and what that can do to the whole thing. So I don't know -- what would be your sense of whether Judaism ... is Judaism evolving? [inaudible in background, laughter] Oh, interesting.

Rafi: You could define the different denominations in terms of pace of change -- literally on that, nothing else: pace of evolution and response. In my belief, it was always meant to respond. And the pace is, how do you make a society be able to accept something new? Because if you go too fast, you lose, and if you go too slow, you don't have change. So for me, it was all about that pace. But for me, every new idea, every new thought, is not something that needs to be contained. It needs to be explored in an exciting way. So for me, I'm very much future-orientated, and I'm not worried about the next challenges. I think that's -- I don't know, maybe it's a tool kit for handling what life will throw at you.

Rob: What is? The tradition?

Rafi: Yeah, tradition. But if there's no life, then the tool kit's useless. So you need newness and change for it to survive. Otherwise it dies.

Matthew: Maybe that feels a great moment to end, because maybe part of what this is is some kind of evolving discussion. I found it extremely enriching, and I hope you have as well. And please give a big hand to Rob and Rafi. [applause]

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1. Jim Bedard, Lotus in the Fire: The Healing Power of Zen (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999), 60--1. ↩︎