Awakening: Torah Mussar Mindfulness, Vayera

Rabbi Chasya of The Institute for Holiness: Kehilat Mussar leads us in a teaching of Vayera, the Torah portion this past week, and how to learn from our ancestor, Avraham, on his unbalanced and balanced middot/soul-traits, and how to apply this awareness and wisdom to our own lives. She leads us in a guided sitting meditation with 10 minutes of silence before closing with our intention and practice for the week. 52 minutes. Hebrew translated to English. All are welcome. Beginners to advanced.

Transcript

Welcome. Welcome to the Institute for Holiness. I am Rabbi Hacio Ori Alsteinbauer and I am beyond delighted to be with you. Such a privilege and an honor to be able to share this offering with you, And to practice and grow together. We are in the middle of our awakening Torah, Musar mindfulness, Learning and practice. This week we are focusing on the parasha, The Torah portion of the Hebrew Bible called Vayera. It was what we read last Shabbat as Jews, And non-Jews are welcome to join us in reading and practicing. So we read the Torah portion and we practice around it. We notice what is the embodied experience for us, What gets triggered, What does the text have to teach us. We approach it with humility and assume that there is something there to learn. With that, As always, We begin with our kavanah, With our intention for this week's practice, Which is before doing acts of caring for the self, Which I see this practice and this learning together during this podcasts, This audio file that we are caring for ourselves during a radical, Beautiful act of self-care. Then we say, This is something I am doing to strengthen my own soul in order to be of benefit to others in the future. That is the purpose of our learning and practice. We tie this into Rabbi Shimon Shkov's teaching from his wonderful text, Shara Yosher, Where he says that our whole impulse, The minute we get up in life, Is that we are to feel within us the desire, The urge to bring God's good to others. That means to bear the burden of them, To bring good, To be of benefit to them, To feel their needs, Not necessarily what we feel they need, But what their needs are. So with that intention, We enter our learning today and our sitting meditation and practice. So I want to honor as we move into this, How difficult this parasha, This weekly portion of Iyera can be for many of us. When you really go into it and read it as the text of your ancestors sharing with you, And what the Almighty wants you to learn from, It can be unpleasant, It can be painful, So I want to honor that at the beginning, That if you have that experience to recognize it, To allow it, And then over this time and practice together that we will investigate it, And move to some form of either non-identification or actually more healthy, Probably at this point would be nurturing ourselves, Putting your hand on your heart. So like the previous parashiyot, The previous Torah portions, There were always challenging stories of our ancestors, Difficulties that we had to face, We had to face our own clinging to, Wishing that their behavior was different, Struggling with that, Even struggling with God's behavior in the text, All that comes with us. It's not as if it goes away. So we honor that we carry that with us, That we attempt to be aware of it and to honor it. So we move into Vayera. There are many stories in here that we could focus on, But I'm going to follow the theme, Or I should say not but, But and, And I'm going to follow the theme that we've been following in our previous awakening Torah, Musa mindfulness. For instance, Last week in L'chlacha, We focused on the midah of achar rayot, Of responsibility, And looking at Avraham, Who then becomes Avraham, Who as an ish, Sadiq, The tamin, Both righteous and blameless, In a sense kind of pure and innocent, Some similar title given to Noah, But Noah, As we recall, Loses the title, Tabin. He was only considered sadiq later, And we tie that to the fact that we think it's because he didn't argue when God, When Hashem tells him that he's about to destroy the whole world, He just acts with zarizut, With alacrity, To fulfill the mitzvah of building the ark as commanded, And he doesn't argue, He doesn't protest. He doesn't say, God, I don't want you to destroy the whole world. Is there some other solution? Is there something else out there? So he moves from ish sadiq, Tamin, To just ish sadiq, And we assume the sadiq, The righteous one, Stays because he is someone who follows God's commandments. So we then encounter fully Avraham in this text. Our beloved father of many nations and the father of the Jewish people, He obviously really encapsulates the, At times, Really balanced zarizut, Of alacrity, Of enthusiasm. And just to remind ourselves what that actually means in Musar practice, In order to be balanced in zarizut, In alacrity, One has to not only have the kind of get up and go, Like have the energy to kind of do and start a project, Whatever it might be, Or do the mitzvah. And in the case of Musar, When we say that you have balanced zarizut, It means that you're doing this for a mitzvah, So you have this energy, This passion to get up and do it. But then there's another element to alacrity, To zarizut, That you have to have follow through. And this is difficult for many people, For many of us, Right? We can have the passion to start something, But it's the follow through and the actual completion of the mitzvah or project that we're looking at. And Avraham is exhibited in this parasha, He is balanced in zarizut in many ways. But of course, Like we noticed last week, He can go too much beyond, Too much zarizut. And what we're finding is this delicate dance, This you can't have zarizut, Balanced zarizut, Balanced alacrity, Balanced enthusiasm without balanced responsibility of achara yot. Now, To just recall and remind you that responsibility from a Musar perspective embedded in the Jewish tradition is that it's awareness of the consequences of our actions and a commitment to bear the burden of the other at the same time, So we're holding both. So when we have a lack of responsibility, When we're not balanced in this midah, In this sultrate, We're not seeing the consequences of our behavior, Or we're not considering and really holding and bearing the burden of the other. And this is where we see our ancestor Avraham really struggle. Is he aware of the struggle himself? Maybe. I just know that we're so aware of it when we're encountering him and how he behaves in the text. So obviously, He's full of balanced zarizut when he gets up to honor and welcome the three men who come to visit him, Which we also see as angels, And when Hashem, When God visits him. We even have in Midrash, Of course, We always try to deal with the simple text if we look and study the text. Obviously, In the previous parasha, He was just circumcised, But we have no idea of the time lapse between last week of Lech Lecha and Vayeira. But the Midrash in our tradition really see that this is immediate, That he gets up in the mid, Sun of the day, The height of the day, The sun from his tent, He's just been circumcised, He's healing, That's a really often painful surgery to recover from for adults, Adult men, And gets up and offers food to strangers, Welcomes them in, Which does an amazing, Beautiful mitzvah of haq nah-sat or rachim, Of hospitality to guests. He even does this while Hashem, When God is right in front of him, Visiting him. He gets up and does this. So we want to honor where we see where he's balanced, And he can be a role model for us in his responsibility in Zarei Zut. So there's something beautiful about his behavior here in teaching us that we are to be present to those around us and to bear the burden of them. But this is where we brought up where something's lacking in our beloved ancestor's behavior. He is so aware of bearing the burden of the burden of them, He is so aware of bearing the burden of the other when that other is a stranger, When the other is not someone under his own household. And this is actually common in practice in our lives today. We know many people, And I've had many students who find it much easier to do chesed and metta, To be kind and bring loving kindness to those that they don't really know who are a stranger. It's much easier for them than to extend it to their spouse or their ex-spouse or their partner or their children or their parents or siblings. And this is reflected in Avraham's behavior. He really is not balanced when it comes to being aware of the consequences of his behavior towards his family members and not really bearing the burden of them. So we're going to hold onto this. He had a bechirah point, What we call in Musar, Where you're really challenged. It's a point, A choice point, Where you really could go either way. And last week in Lech Lecha, We noticed that he had one when he was, Is he gonna choose his new wealth and wealth management that he received from Parov, The pharaoh in Egypt, When he came up after the famine? Or is he going to stay in relationship with his orphan nephew Lot? And he really was a bechirah point. And unfortunately to my pain and others, He chose to do wealth management over remaining physically close with family and working out another solution. So this might be a form of him having an internal conflict and perhaps low self-esteem, If too much humility, A vane va, If he doesn't know how to negotiate with family so well, Doesn't know how to take up the proper amount of space to stand up to them. Here he can stand up to the Almighty over Sodom and argue that at least 10 people be saved. I mean, The whole village be saved on account of 10 righteous people. But he won't have that same argument with his wife, With Sarah, When she tells him to kick out Hagar and Yishmael. He won't even have that same argument with God, When God tells him to take his beloved Yitzhak and to offer him as a sacrifice. It is there and then, And when I talk about this being a painful, Difficult text for people, That tears can even come, Where we can want to scream out to Avraham and even God, Please protest, Argue, This is wrong, Sarah. I will not send out Yishmael, My son, And Hagar. This is wrong, God, I will not sacrifice Yitzhak. And so then we have to live with that silence. And it's often in the silence that the Torah and God is teaching us something. We have to be very careful to notice the text and in our text, At those moments, When Hagar and Yishmael are kicked out, They will never speak again with Avraham. There's a silence, It's been a breach. And then when Avraham takes his son, Yitzhak, To sacrifice him, When that child is exchanged for Aram and Avraham ends up heading down the mountain by himself, There is a silence. We know that God and Avraham will never speak again. We also know that Avraham will never speak again with Sarah, His wife, And he will never speak again with his son, Yitzhak. There is a breach, There is silence. And if you recall the silence of Noah, Who didn't protest and argue, When God told him that he was about to destroy all flesh, All that breeze, His name of Yish-saddik-ve-tamim was changed to Yish-saddik, Meaning a righteous and innocent blameless man too, Just righteous, Just one who feels the mitzvot. And now we have Avraham, Who really is no longer tammim, If he was at all. And we need to hold that as the descendants of Avraham. We need to bear the burden of that. We need to recognize that in that silence is where our practice is. In the silence is where our practice is. In the silence is where our practice is. In the silence is there somewhere for us to learn. We so desire that our ancestor had behaved differently. What does that reflect about us in the here and now, In the present moment, Which is the only place we really can be? What can we do in our own behavior to be closer to saddik-ve-tamim, Righteous and blameless? Are we one that is able to have balance anava, Balance humility that we, In relationship with those closest to us, Can stand up and say when we feel that something is wrong while still honoring them and maintaining the relationship? Are we able to take up the proper amount of space? Are we able to really treat the stranger and our family members the same with the same responsibility, With the same zerezut alakrity? It is that where we seek balance in our lives and what this beautiful gift to us in vayera will assist us on our own. Will assist us on our journey. That we too need to be on this journey and that we too need to work on balancing our midot so that we don't carry this intergenerational trauma where when we say that I've hurried and not delayed to keep your commandments, God, As we read in Tehillim 1, 1960 in Psalms, That we do so while still honoring the other and being responsible to them. In no way should we be hurrying and not delaying to keep God's commandments while we run over others, While we kick out others, While we potentially cause harm and suffering to others. And actually, I would say did cause harm and suffering. He might not have caused the knife to go to the throat to Yitzhak, But they never speak again. And that boy turned into a man will have to live with that the rest of his life. And Sarah who dies after this event. You know, Our midrash, Our beloved ancestors tell us in stories that it's because she heard what Avraham was about to do. She dies. So there's real harm and suffering caused in Avraham's behavior. And I'm not the first to recognize this and say this. It's there in our rabbinic tradition. It's there among some of the commentators. It's there. But what I seek for all of us to do is to take this and to use it in our mindfulness and in our practice that we recognize what's going on in the text. We recognize our reaction to the text. We allow and we investigate together in a Sangha, In a Vahad, In Kahila, In community together. What we're doing right now, Where we really investigate this and see what is it that is going on and what can we learn from this. And to honor when we want something to be different than what it is, But also having the wisdom and the acceptance and knowledge to know that you cannot change what has happened, What is in this text. Okay? So it comes to really instead really honoring what we can take from it and apply in our own lives. So we now move into our sitting practice together. Thank you for your learning and being here. Honor this moment. Honor your ancestors. Honor God. Honor your teachers. Thank you for Hashem for bringing us to this moment to be able to learn together. Thank you. Come to a seated position if you are able to sit. If you are not able to sit due to chronic pain or any trauma, Please lie down with your eyes open to remain awake and alert. Or if you prefer to stand, Do so with a chair next to you so that you feel held and grounded in case you lose your balance. If you are seated, Please allow your feet to become rooted in the earth if you're sitting in a chair. If you're sitting in a zafu, Be aware of where you welcome the earth, Where the earth is carrying you, Whether it be your buttocks or your legs or your thighs, And feel that you are between heaven and earth. We're sitting in an upright, Strong, And dignified position as we are created in the likeness and image of God, Not West Point stiff, As my beloved teacher, John Cabot-Zinn, Likes to say, We don't want to be like a soldier, But awake and alert. And allow yourself to begin to settle. Three deep, Cleansing breaths allow your eyes to shut if you feel safe. If you don't, Just bring your gaze down before you. In breath, The gift of breath. Out breath. Allow your in breath, The length of it, And time to match the out breath. And now allow the breath to settle where you are not controlling it. And begin to honor yourself with a gentle body scan, Becoming aware in the embodied sense, The felt sense of the body. What is going on for you right here, Right now in this present moment? Do you notice any open or expanse as you move from your head down your face muscles to your neck and shoulders, Down your back and your chest? Notice what is going on, Any tightness, Anything calling for your loving attention. As you move down into your belly and your low back and your hips, To your thighs and your lower leg. Honor whatever is there and gently tell it that you will visit it later, That you will come to your breath in the present moment and to my voice, To your practice. And now we scan our thoughts and our emotions. Anything calling for our attention. Are you doing any planning for the future? Or perhaps focusing on something that happened in the past. Notice that when you become awake and bring yourself back to the present moment, To your breath as your anchor, To my voice and your practice. Notice what today's practice and learning bring up for you. Where are you feeling it in your body? For some of you it might be excitement at what we learn together. For others it might be tension or anxiety, A tightness in the stomach or chest or throat. For others it might be a sense of ease, An opening in the chest, A sense of deep gratitude that we are given this beloved gift of Torah to learn and share, To grow together. Whatever it is for you in this moment, Honor it. No need to be in denial of it or push it away or try to change it into some other experience. From time to time you will hear me fall silent to allow reflection, To allow practice of your own. If you are new to meditation, Please trust that I will return during those moments, That I am aware of the time and will keep track of it, Especially when we move to silent meditation, That you can trust that I am handling it. You simply just bring your attention back to your breath. Once you notice that you have wandered off, Which we all do, That is the practice. My beloved teacher Joseph Goldstein says that the three most important words in mindfulness meditation are simply begin again. And that is what we do over and over and over again. It is like our annual reading of the Torah. We do it over and over again. And if we are in the present moment with it, Which is a gift, We learn something new each week, Each year. A gift from the divine and from our ancestors, From Hazzal, From our grandparents, Great grandparents and onward. Begin to explore where is your own avoda, Your own service, Your Musar work, Spiritual, Religious, Practical work, Where you can bring that beautiful balance of vana-va, Of humility, Taking up the right amount of space and responsibility of akhara yut, Of really trying to be aware of the consequences of your behavior while bearing the burden of others, And the result of enthusiasm to fulfill the mitzvot, To fulfill your work and purpose in life. That beautiful triangle that must be maintained for them to be balanced together. Where right now in this moment is your own work of cultivating this through your Musar mindfulness practice. Allow that to flow through your body and allow it to meet the felt sense. This is where we can honor Avraham and Sarah and Yitzhak and Hagar and Yishmael and Lot and all of our ancestors and say, You've taught me so much by passing down your stories to me, By showing me your mistakes, Your vulnerability, Your unbalanced middot soul traits that I may learn from them, That I may attempt to do better in service of God and others. As we move into ten minutes of silent meditation, I will let you know when your time is up with the beautiful bells, And then we will close our teaching and sitting together today. We move into silence now. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. We are going to close our teaching and sitting together today. Kahila, Your community. Thank you. Thank you for your practice. Thank you for being present. Thank you for engaging in this Torah, Musar mindfulness practice called awakening together. I am honored to be your teacher and to be here together. In order to enable offerings like this, We rely on your donations called dana in the the Pasana tradition of Insight Buddhist meditation and called truma in Jewish Musar practice. So please do give what you can, Any amount. An Insight timer they offer as small as $1. 99 to any amount that you wish. Through other mediums you can be in touch with us at kahilatmusar at gmail. Com or kahilatmusar. Com. I thank you for your donations. We also accept sponsorships for our weekly teaching and sitting. That will be in honor of someone and it can also be in memory of someone. May their memory be for a blessing. Any amount also is welcome there. Usually it ranges between $18 and $50 for a sitting. Any questions or concerns please do be in touch. We love hearing from you how this practice is going for you, How it's working. Of course we want to carry with this with us as a practice. So in closing I will say that our mindfulness practice of integrating the wisdom of Musar from Judaism and of Insight from the Dharma from the Theravada Buddhism that I offer, We do not vilify any of our ancestors. There's no need. We can do what's called and instead of but in our practice. We can hold both that Avraham with both righteous and someone who lacked balance, Responsibility, Lacked balance, Alacrity, Lack the balance, Humility from time to time and other times he was so balanced. He was such a role model and to keep that in mind we also practice insight and awareness into his situation and we try to see things from his perspective by putting our feet into his shoes. Realizing that he probably got caught up with a much unbalanced mida of yirah, Of awe and fear of God and following through with that mitzvah of sacrifice of his son which thank God did not happen, Brochashem, That any of us can get caught up in our religious or spiritual practice where it becomes unbalanced, Where it ends up that we're not mindful of others and not responsible to them and not taking up the proper amount of space on our relationship with those closest to us. We have to be mindful that we don't allow our practice to get to that point. So in order to do this and bear the burden of everything that we carry and learn and others to extend compassion and less judgment to integrate these beautiful lessons we now are ready. You have been sitting and practicing with me long enough in our fourth week we move from bereshit to noach to lech lecha and then vayera that we now are ready to really begin to apply this besides on the zafu or the city meditation cushion. I would like you to begin with your kavanah, Your intention in the morning and it can be the one where you set your intention to bring God's goods to others to be of benefit to others in God and to allow that zarei zut, That felt sense of alacrity, Enthusiasm to run through you while at the same time calling to mind to whom you are responsible, To whom that you need to anticipate your behavior will have consequences. We obviously are doing our best to remain to not cause harm or suffering. So with that setting of the morning intention I would like you also to begin to do what's called the cheshbon hanafesh diary, Accounting of the soul journal. It's five minutes a day usually it is done right before bed but it can be done at any hour where you are going to record your words, Thoughts and deeds is how they relate to how you relate to yourself, Others and God and in the other category since this is where we're focusing these last four weeks of the Torah learning is on responsibility and balanced responsibility and we're noticing that some of our ancestors were much more balanced towards others that were not close to them to the stranger. Of course a stranger is never really a stranger but someone who doesn't live under their roof or their tent. So when I ask you to look at your accounting of the soul practice I want you to have two categories for other. The stranger, The person that is an acquaintance or someone you don't know or haven't met to those living under your roof or those closest to you or family members even extended and how you treat them, How you think of them, How you feel about them and notice where you are balanced and where you're not and this is all done with compassion, It's all done with curiosity, A beginner's mind, It's all done with nurturing of yourself as a witness to yourself. God gave us the ability to witness ourselves and our behavior and so we do so in a way that we can benefit from it. We're not here to beat ourselves up, That's not going to be how we benefit from our practice. So we do so with loving kindness and generosity of spirit. So I leave us with this closing thought. Dr. James D. Nicole Antonio shared today and his Instagram posts that the eight most influential factors of your life. Number one is your self-talk, Number two is your self-worth, Number three are your habits, Number four is your family, Number five is what you read, Number six is what you eat, Number seven are your beliefs and number eight who you associate with. So we will be looking at our self-talk, Our self-worth and our habits as it relates to our family and to others and this will come out in our daily journal. Five minutes, No more no less. I thank you again for your practice. Honor yourself and honor others. Thank you so much today. Shalom, Shalom, Shalom. God bless.

Reviews

This was a gentle and powerful experience. I am so glad I found you, Rabbi.