Israel, Part 2: Galilee Region

With Israel being such a small country, it was very nice and convenient that we didn’t have to do much traveling. We stayed at the same hotel in Jerusalem at the beginning and end of the trip, and for a stretch in the middle we stayed in Tiberias, right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, from which most everything else we wanted to visit was easily accessible.

Church of the Beatitudes

One of the things Asha told us at the beginning of the pilgrimage was to be careful of expectations. If you expect to have a deep experience at a particular site, you may be disappointed, or you may simply try too hard and thwart yourself. And if you write off a particular place as being less interesting, you may miss something. Better to practice being relaxed and open and receptive at all times, and then see what happens. And I did find throughout the pilgrimage that there were times when I felt relatively unmoved compared to what people around me seemed to be experiencing, and there were times when I was very surprised.

The Church of the Beatitudes is a lovely church, located on the site of the Sermon on the Mount, and our group also got to reserve a nice outdoor terrace for an hour of singing and meditation. And that was all fine, but I wouldn’t have had anything particular to remark on about it. The “surprise” I had here was actually just in a 10-foot section of the path the goes along the side of the church and heads towards the terrace. Every time I would walk through it, it felt almost like passing a physical barrier, and I would have a sudden rush of shivers and tears, which would be gone as soon as I moved on. After the first couple times of not expecting it, I deliberately tested it, and it was consistent. I spent a while at the end of our visit just meditating there on the path, and while I still don’t know why that particular little spiritual vortex was right there, I hope I absorbed something from it.

Church of the Primacy of Saint Peter and the Sea of Galilee

The Church of the Primacy contains—as we are becoming used to—a rock, and specifically the rock on which Jesus was frying fish when he appeared to his disciples at Galilee after his resurrection. This visit was also the first time we got to actually visit the lake directly, since the church is literally right on the shore. The water was so completely calm and still that it was easy to imagine walking on it, though none of us did, that I know of.

Tzfat

We spent an afternoon in Tzfat, a city that is a center for Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, and art of all types. The highlight here was visiting the studio of Avraham Loewenthal, a Kabbalah-inspired artist that we all felt and instant and mutual kinship with. I think true mystics everywhere will always recognize each other as spiritual siblings. Many of us bought pieces of his artwork to take home with us. I think it was very interesting also for Rami, our Jewish Israeli guide, to see this interaction, since it gave him a new perspective on what we’re all about to suddenly see such a relatively explicit link between us and a branch of his own religion.

Mount of Transfiguration

Mount Tabor is a much more serious mountain than any others we visited. The bus can’t go all the way to the top, so we had to wait for shuttles to take us the last mile or so. The shuttles were considerably delayed, so someone suggested that a group of us just walk. That sounded nice and reasonable, and then when someone else mentioned that there was a “shortcut” trail we could take instead of the road, we thought why not? Well, that trail turned out to be muddy, rocky, and nearly vertical in places. Luckily the weather and the landscape were both beautiful, but I should definitely not have been making the trek with a guitar strapped to my back. After about 40 minutes, we made a wrong turn and ended up having to climb a wall only to end up at the wrong church (I wasn’t expecting more than one up there!) but eventually we made it. This picture is from the very beginning of the hike, before we knew what we were in for. We don’t know how the light came out so magically, but the apparent source in the upper left corner is approximately where the top of the mountain would be. Transfigured in light!

View from the top of the Mount of Transfiguration

Nazareth

Our time in Nazareth was quite a bit shortened due to our escapades on Mount Tabor. When we got to the Church of the Annunciation, I saw a long line of people waiting to go and see the grotto that was Mary’s home, and I just didn’t want to spend my hour waiting in line. So I went to the neighboring Church of St. Joseph. And this was another case of having a “surprise” experience somewhere that you’re not looking for it. The church was perfectly nice, and the caves beneath it were unremarkable, but when I sat in one of the pews to meditate, I got such a clear sense of Joseph’s presence that it was almost like being introduced to him in person. Joseph mostly just has a supporting role in a story that focuses most dramatically on Mary and Jesus, but it couldn’t have happened without him, and the feeling that I started with was one simply of gratitude to him. And then the feeling I felt coming back from that was of an enormous heart just radiating selfless love and support and strength. I ended up spending most of that hour just basking in that. James came and sat next to me for just a few minutes at one point, but said later that he immediately felt a very strong presence there as well.

When I returned to the Church of the Annunciation, a few minutes before we had to leave, I found it empty and I was able to just walk right up to Mary’s grotto, though you aren’t able to go inside there. I was actually more moved by the statue of Mary outside. He has her arms outspread, as in many of the statues one sees of her. But she’s large enough that you can hold her hands and look up at her face as if she were your own mother and you still a child. Her hands have had the paint worn off of them by many pilgrims doing just that.

Final post coming up next....

Israel, Part 1: Jerusalem and Bethlehem

I recently returned from two weeks in the Holy Land. This was actually the first time I’ve ever been on a major, dedicated pilgrimage with an Ananda group, and it was glorious. I’m not going to even try to touch on everything here, but I’ll at least aim for all the highlights (which, honestly, is still most of it). For photos, I’m going to piggyback on sharing Karen’s album, which is larger and better curated than my still-unsorted pile of photos.

But first, a word about rocks.

Israel is full of rocks. Everything is built out of stone. It’s incredible. I can’t imagine building a single wall out of stone, much less a city or a country. And this is true of all the ancient, holy sites we visited. It became almost a joke: “And today we’re going to see... another rock!” And if it wasn’t a rock, it was a cave. But I soon realized that this is absolutely perfect. How many holy relics will last for 2,000 years intact the way a rock or a cave does? It’s an immense blessing to still be able to have such a direct physical connection, to be able to touch the very same stone that Jesus, Mary, and others did all those years ago. So if my writings seem to develop and overly petrological focus, that’s why. It’s hard to convey when you’re not actually there, but these are all much more than “just” rocks.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre
I’m starting this post here because this is where I started my first morning in Israel, pre-dawn, on no sleep. And it’s also the place that felt the most like my spiritual home base for the entire trip. Every morning that we were in Jerusalem I would get up, usually around 4am, make the 20-minute walk over, and spend an hour or two meditating there.

The Rock of Anointing, where Jesus’s body was prepared for burial, was perhaps the most powerful place for me in the conglomeration of sites that make up this giant combo-church. I never cease to be amazed that it is just right out there in the open, in the entryway no less, for all the thousands of pilgrims to touch, and I never went past it without touching it, or sitting with it for a while. There’s a feeling of awe and sanctity there that’s different from anywhere else we visited.

It was hard to actually get in to the tomb itself, due to masses in the early mornings and crowds in the afternoons, but I did manage a few times. My other favorite places were the hole that the cross stood in, and the Chapel of the Apparition. The latter has a portion of the column Jesus was tied to when he was scourged, and which you can also touch. It sounds macabre, but this was also a beautiful spot to meditate.

The lowest level contains the Chapel of the Finding of the Cross by Saint Helena. For the first week of our trip, a group called Harpa Dei was in there each morning singing, and it was an absolutely exquisite experience to listen to them.

On two separate mornings we walked the Stations of the Cross, which of course leads up to and has its final stations in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first time we did it, it was early and dark and rainy, which was really just perfect, because you can really be in a different reality then, compared to the hustle and bustle of the daytime. I’ve never “done” the stations elsewhere, as many people have, but it was still stunning to realize that these are actually THE stations. Station V includes a rock, supposedly with Jesus’ handprint in it from when he fell. It’s now worn beyond any recognition as an actual handprint, but the feeling of it is strong enough to be true.

Church of the Pater Noster

On the Mount of Olives is the Church of the Pater Noster, which is famous for having large, beautiful plaques throughout the grounds with the text of the Lord’s Prayer in 140 different languages. (I even found a few different varieties of Braille, though disappointingly no sign language.) This, I realized later, is kind of a theme around the Holy Land. Many churches have similar displays of many different countries and languages representing their own particular themes, though this one was perhaps the most extensive. It’s sweet to see such a coming together of the whole world in these holy places.

Ein Kerem

Ein Kerem is a suburb of Jerusalem and has several sites related to John the Baptist. The Church of the Visitation is where Mary and Elizabeth met while both were pregnant, and I always thought the “belly bump” statue was kind of cute.

The upper church here has a huge painting on the back wall of Mary as the Lady of the Apocalypse, which isn’t a term I’d ever heard before, and which I still need to learn more about. But it’s a beautiful piece of art, and strikingly modern, especially facing the more traditional depictions over the altar.

We also got to visit the Monastery of Saint John in the Wilderness (it’s called a monastery, not a convent, though I believe it’s all nuns living there). The main road was washed out, so the bus took us up a winding village road to a place from which we could hike down to the monastery, which made it feel even more remote. The grounds are beautiful, and I would have loved to have more of a tour of monastic life there. But we did get to spend some time in Saint John’s cave, where he spent years in seclusion and meditation. “Long years he spoke only with God,” as Swamiji puts it in the Oratorio.

Bethlehem
Bethlehem is also very close to Jerusalem, but feels farther away, since it’s in the Palestinian territory. Our fantastic Israeli guide Rami couldn’t actually come with us because of this, so we went on Shabbat when he wouldn’t be working anyway.

The Church of the Nativity had probably the longest line of anything we went to, and it wasn’t even a big day for them. Passing through the cave and bustling past the official marker of the spot was a little too busy for me to get much of a feel for it. Though I do like how this photo shows us all looking down into the cave, with a light coming up out of it. But we got to explore some adjacent caves at more leisure, and do a bit of singing there. And we were told that the caves were actually artificially separated a few centuries A.D., and the exact spot of Jesus’ birth could have been anywhere in them because no one is certain.

After that we went to Shepherds’ Field, which surprised me because I’d had no idea that there was a specific, known field we could actually visit. It’s a park now, and there’s a church on it, of course, and some caves where the shepherds would sleep at night. And most dramatically, you can turn around from the top of the hill and see the Church of the Nativity on its own hilltop across the way, and realize that that was exactly where the angel pointed them on that very night. Wow.

We also made friends there with a big group of Nigerian pilgrims who liked our singing, and we ended up singing a bunch of Christmas carols together and having a fun time.

The Western Wall

On our first Friday evening in Jerusalem we visited the Western Wall. It’s just heartbreaking to see so many hundreds of people coming together to pray there, but being unable to go all the way to their holiest site on the Temple Mount. But simultaneously there was also such a joyous feeling of celebration. At one point I was standing at the edge of a group listening to the song they were singing, when it suddenly just exploded into an exuberant, bouncing, spinning dance that spread out like a nuclear chain reaction, pulling more and more people into it and sweeping aside tables and chairs as it went. Very fun.

It seems a little ironic given that this was a Christian-focused pilgrimage, and a little silly in its obviousness, but I just loved how Jewish Israel is. I love that everything shuts down on Shabbat so that people can actually observe and celebrate it. I love seeing the ultra-orthodox in their garb that just proclaims their religious dedication, like seeing brahmacharis and nayaswamis around Ananda. As David G put it, for the Jews, this is their Ananda, their spiritual home and family, and for all the difficulties and conflicts and politics, it’s still beautiful.

Further posts to come, as I manage to get them written....

War and Peace

This is a long book so I’m going to let myself indulge in a long review. Consider yourself warned: you can either settle in or skip out.

First, how did I decide to take this particular plunge? Well, basically it all started because I didn’t read (or watch) Game of Thrones. With the show recently wrapping up, it’s been on my mind, because I had really wanted to get into it, just for the huge, complex, sweeping expanse of epic fantasy. But I read the first couple books years ago and, while yes, they were completely engrossing and addictive, they also just felt horrible and made me feel horrible. There are still icky images burned in my mind that I wish I could get rid of. So anyway, I was again wishing it could have been something I liked, and it occurred to me that if I was in the mood for something sprawling and epic, I could finally tackle War and Peace. I didn’t expect there to be any dragons, but still….

The biggest hurdle, aside from the mere decision to read this at all, was deciding on a translation. I picked up the Maude translation first, because the Maudes were friends with Tolstoy who liked their work (though he didn’t live to see this particular translation). But honestly, the anglicization of names really annoyed me, and so I moved on to my other top contenders: Dunnigan, Briggs, and Pevear & Volokhonsky.

P&V are very clear about their approach to translation, in which they really try to nail the word-by-word meaning, and maintain as much of the original sentence structure as possible, even if it seems unusual or awkward. Many translators try to even everything out into what they generically think of as “good writing,” thus losing the original author’s peculiar style (which, in Tolstoy’s case, includes more convoluted sentences and more repetitions than some people are comfortable with). The downside often attributed to P&V is that their translations aren’t as “readable.” Dunnigan seems like a good balance in that respect, being a more traditional translation but maybe not as archaic as Maude, and somewhat more accurate. Briggs is much more modern and takes many more liberties with the text.

So… I started reading all three. Yeah. I would literally read Chapter 1 in each version in turn, then rotate through them all again for Chapter 2, etc. Thank goodness for ebooks, and luckily the chapters are very short. I actually went about 10% of the way through the book like this before I decided to jettison the Briggs. It felt like he was taking too many liberties and I didn’t feel I’d miss him.

At about 25% through, I decided I finally needed to narrow it down, largely because I was becoming so engrossed in the book that I didn’t want to reread chapters anymore but just wanted to keep going (even though it was interesting to see how I would notice different details in the different versions). I dithered a lot, but finally stuck with P&V. I had found by then that I like their style perfectly well, and I can only assume it’s closer to Tolstoy’s. Plus, they have some helpful footnotes. I also found it was relaxing to finally settle into one style and not switch back and forth.

Okay! So I actually read the book! What did I think?

I loved it. I was rather surprised, really, because I thought it would be the sort of book that we all know has merit but is still a bit of a slog. Instead, I found it to flow along beautifully. If you had just told me the subject matter, I would have expected it to be boring, but the actual experience of it was as an absolute page-turner. I can’t even say precisely why, maybe because I didn’t want to analyze it as I went along. But it was great, and I continually wanted to know what happened to everybody.

Speaking of “everybody,” I’ve heard the complaint that there are too many characters to keep track of. I didn’t feel that at all. Though there are lots of people, the core, primary characters are kept to a perfectly reasonable number. Also, Tolstoy uses a leitmotif sort of technique, having short, characteristic descriptions for many of the characters that are repeated many times, e.g. referring to someone’s “small, white hands,” or “downy upper lip,” etc. Far from being tediously repetitive, this actually feels completely natural, and instantly conjures up the right person in your mind, even if it’s been many chapters since you saw them last.

(I also enjoyed all the variations on people’s names—formal name, intimate or family name, French name, patronymics, etc. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not confusing. Makes me wonder what all my names would be.)

Also along the lines of describing people, Tolstoy takes a very expansive, non-judgmental view, throwing in positive and negative qualities alike for everybody, with seeming disregard to leading us to a particular opinion. Because, of course, everybody is a complete mix of qualities in real life. He will often describe thoughts and behaviors very sweepingly, in terms of someone manifesting something that “everybody” does. Again, if I just try to say what he’s doing, it sounds bad, overly generalizing or stereotyping, but that’s not how it comes across. I find these are always statements, as broad and sweeping as they are, that I can actually relate to, and therefore they ring true not just to the person described, but to humanity.

I’ve heard Tolstoy described as a “miniaturist,” which sounds ridiculous in the context of such an enormous book, but it’s true. He has so much ground to cover that in every moment he has to zero in on just the exact right details to make a character, event, or image “click.” In that sense, it’s a good study for poetry—how to notice the perfect individual details and focus on them.

Historically, it was interesting to read. I thought I had a general understanding of Napoleon’s march to Moscow, but it turned out I really didn’t, so I learned a lot about that. Tolstoy also gets into a lot of what you might call the “theory” of history—analyzing what historians typically take as cause and effect and why it’s inaccurate, and offering his own take on it, which the whole book is really an attempt to embody (though with the understanding that nothing finite could really do so).

Often these sections begin to sound rather fatalistic. But I find that they don’t feel that way, perhaps because his viewpoint just feels so expansive. It’s really the cosmic interweaving of karmic cause and effect that he’s describing, which we are each subject to but also an integral part of. And it’s good to understand our place in it all.

I’m going to say a few more specific things about the story here, so if you care about spoilers for a 150-year-old book, here they are. In particular, I’m going to talk about deaths and marriages.

First of all, not everybody dies. Yay! And those who do die don’t have gratuitous, GoT-style, kill-off-everyone-you-like deaths (I think I was subconsciously worried about that). Of the major characters who die, I think all of them have some sort of transcendent, uplifting experience shortly before their death. This is beautiful, because of course we know that everyone ultimately dies, but Tolstoy always shows us how it can be a positive transition, with everyone heading in the right direction. The next step in that direction is different and appropriate for everyone. (So some might not necessarily seem “transcendent,” but relative to where they are, it’s uplifting to some degree.) I also noticed that Tolstoy never lets us see the actual moment of death directly, as if death itself isn’t as significant as the personal transformation he does describe. Let’s look at the primary examples.

• Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: After having been so focused on achieving worldly glory earlier in the book, he has a period of a few days before his death in which he is explicitly detaching from the world. From a yogic standpoint, this is very good. Then he has his dream in which he experiences death as an “awakening from life.” (Again, very yogic!) (This is a death which we almost observe, but at the last moment, Tolstoy simply tells us that Marya and Natasha “were there” when it happened.)
• Old Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky: After having been such a horrible jerk to his daughter all her life, he is able to finally be kind and loving to her after his stroke and just before he dies.
• Petya Rostov: Petya was completely gung-ho to go to war and kill Frenchmen, but the night before his final battle he has that transcendent experience of a symphony of oneness in the forest. He still goes into battle, and we sort of observe his death, but at that moment we’re removed to someone else’s vantage point, and don’t realize at first what has happened until the almost casual statement that he had been shot. (As explicit as that final statement was, I had to go back and reread the whole paragraph to believe it.)
• Platon Karataev: A relatively minor character in terms of page time, but very significant to Pierre’s personal transformation. All we ever see of him, really, is a figure of sweet, simplistic enlightenment, but the night before he gets shot we get to hear him tell his story that ends with “God had already forgiven him—he was dead.”
• General Kutuzov: The commanding general died after “Russia was delivered and placed at the highest degree of her glory,” as he saw it. “And so he died.”
• Countess Helene Bezukhova: She’s a little trickier, but one could make the argument that her conversion to Catholicism was a positive step in spite of it being done cynically, to forward her own agenda. I’m thinking here of all the ancient Vedas of India that give prayers and rituals for every situation in life, even the fulfilling of selfish ends, on the theory that people should at least get used to turning to God for help, even if they aren’t ready to lead an otherwise more spiritual life.
• “Little Princess” Lise Bolkonskaya: Again, somewhat tricky, in this case because she died in childbirth, and it’s not clear that she herself had any sort of transcendent experience here. But the birth itself is received by the whole household in a spirit of awe in the presence of a sacred, miraculous event, so that’s the context in which we the readers experience her death. (If you wanted to make more of an effort, you might also say that, for someone consistently described as so childlike, giving birth was a particular rite of passage into womanhood for her.)

As for the marriages, Natasha and Nikolai are the ones we’re following the most in this respect over the course of the whole book. Honestly, I was a bit annoyed with them much of the time, with Natasha for so easily falling in love with everybody, and for Nikolai for so easily falling out of love (especially, repeatedly, with Sonya). I was really worried when he started getting interested in Marya, who I felt deserved much better (as did Sonya, but at least she knew what she was involved in). So I was actually pleasantly surprised when Tolstoy managed to bring us to the final pairings with everybody matured enough to be believable and to leave me content and satisfied in both their cases. Sonya is the only one I’m really sad about, and I wish things could have worked out better for her. I guess she was never enough of a “main” character to get more of her own arc, but I always felt she should have been.

Other beautiful things:

• Natasha’s singing, gorgeously described in several different scenes. “She did not think of anyone or anything at that moment, and from her lips composed into a smile sounds poured forth, sounds that anyone can produce for the same lengths of time, at the same intervals, but which leave one cold a thousand times, then for the thousand and first time make one tremble and weep.”
• The chapter describing the results of Pierre’s spiritual transformation—his inner state of consciousness, other people’s reactions to him, and even how it manifests in practical matters. “[H]e did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people’s merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.”
• The nearly divine rapture with which the army receives their emperor. “He stopped, looked about, and illuminated everything around him with his gaze.”
• Denisov dancing the mazurka. And in spurs, no less! “Only on horseback and in the mazurka did Denisov’s small stature not show, and he looked like the fine fellow he felt himself to be….”
• The simple elegance of the shortest sentence in the book: “Drops dripped.”

Swami Kriyananda talks about having an impression of the spiritual light emanating from the works of great authors. He never mentioned Tolstoy in that context, but in reading War and Peace I feel for the first time that I’ve experienced a bit of what he’s referring to. Throughout the book I very often had a sense of a sort of white-blue glow behind everything, which I feel is perhaps Tolstoy’s consciousness guiding the whole experience. This book is truly remarkable.

New Online Harmonium Course

I’ve just recently launched a project I’ve been working on for the last several months: a new online beginner’s harmonium course! Find out all about it at www.HarmoniumChanting.com.

The course includes 5.5 hours of video, 33 pages of PDF handouts, and seven complete chants to learn, with both melodies and chords. Full contents are listed here. And here’s the trailer:

Also on YouTube you can find the first introductory video and a demo video of Door of My Heart in four languages.

Happy chanting!

Transition Time

Those of you who have been following the East West saga know that for the past year and a half Ananda was considering selling the store. In a sudden plot twist, barely a month ago, several puzzle pieces fell into place for several people and we now have a new plan: Ananda will be keeping East West, David G. will be the lucky new manager, and I will be moving on to work at the Ananda Palo Alto Church itself. Everybody involved feels extremely positive about all of this, and doubly so after such a protracted period of uncertainty.

The past 6 years have been a great adventure, both fun and challenging. I am immensely grateful to all the wonderful co-workers and customers and friends and advisors who have helped me through it. I learned a lot, and I think if I were to do it over I would do many things differently (and hopefully better!) but for the current run, I feel like I’ve about maxed out with what I could do. It’s a good time for a change, both for me and for the store.

My last day was yesterday, on our annual Inventory Day, which makes it the exact 6-year anniversary of when Nooshin and I took over as co-managers from Tushti and Surendra. I find that very satisfying and orderly. I will continue to help out, of course, such as maintaining a few small website duties in the short term, but that’s fine and I’m happy to do it.

Everybody has been asking me what I will be doing at the church, but for now the answer is still pretty vague. Shanti has lots of ideas for me—and apparently lots of other people have been sending her ideas for me as well!—but we will keep it pleasantly fuzzy until I actually get there and see how I fit in. (On a side note, my angel card for the year was “Trust.” So I’m sure it will all work out fine.)

Before I get there, though, I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical—at least for the month of January, and probably some amount of February as well. I probably won’t really go away, except for maybe a short seclusion, but a protracted staycation really just sounds pretty nice right now. I hope to do more writing (probably poetry, more blogging, maybe even some stories), I want to start drawing and painting again, and I’m going to start re-learning 5-string banjo for the upcoming school play that I’m accompanying in March. So there’s all that for starters. Plus, I’m still teaching Raja Yoga, meditation, and Kriya prep classes as they come up. I don’t believe in being bored!