Community is foundational to Jewish experience and to a wholesome meditation practice.
Oftentimes when one thinks about mindfulness or meditation in today's world,
It may be in the context of self and iterated through a societal impulse to pull inward,
Working on the self,
Often at the expense of creating and maintaining meaningful relationships.
We may also individually feel an impulse to pull away or to create walls.
Buddhist taught teaches a concept of mudita,
That of sympathetic joy.
This concept is somewhat foreign to current popular culture,
Which places inordinate value upon garnering joy when we learn of someone's difficulty.
In fact,
An entire industry of reality television is based upon exploiting this impulse.
It is natural,
But is it wholesome?
Within Yiddish culture,
We have a beautiful example of sympathetic joy that is expressed through the word nachas.
When we feel nachas for another person,
We are filled with our own joy on account of that person.
While the Yiddish word nachas comes from the Hebrew word nachat,
The meaning shifted within the context of Yiddish culture.
In Hebrew,
Nachat means contentment.
In Kohelet,
We hear,
Better one handful of nachat,
Contentment,
Than two hands full of toil and strife.
Even better is the word that we use before nachas.
We often say that we are shepen nachas for another person.
I always thought that shepen was like schlepping,
As in carrying,
But it's not.
Shepen means scooping,
So when we experience the sympathetic joy of nachas,
The Yiddish language acknowledges that it's something we do actively and that it isn't bestowed upon us.
We can go out and scoop that nachas up.
Culturally,
Nachas is usually experienced as a kind of pride,
But often we can feel nachas for a loved one just for being themselves,
And the second kind of nachas is the kind we should strive to cultivate.
If we can do that and extend that feeling of nachas to others around us,
We can truly create a holy community.
I invite you to find a comfortable sitting position and to notice the place where your body touches the floor or the cushion.
Take a moment to make any adjustments and find a comfortable way to be in the body without adjusting the breath,
Noticing it,
And allowing it to enter and exit the body naturally.
Dearaud,
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