barbara

Today was the funeral service for Barbara Harrison, a deeply wonderful soul. Barbara was a good personal and spiritual friend. She was also a very important person to me at a difficult and transitional point in my life.

When I first met Barbara in 2014, she was the director of faith formations at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church among other things. At the time, I was expanding my spiritual knowledge and exploring new dimensions of religious belief and practices and decided to take their RCIA class. I didn’t know much about Christianity and had been led by circumstances such as a visit to Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist monastery and meeting Dorothy Bruck outside of St. Philip Neri to explore it. Barbara led the RCIA classes, and she loved sharing her knowledge and experiences with others.

I liked her a lot. She was smart and funny and surprisingly open to every question and disagreement I had with Catholic dogma. (The same was true of her husband, James, who was also very active in the church.) In many ways, she had a very Jewish spirit and would wrestle with much of it herself. There was never a time when I felt judged or unsupported in my spiritual journey, and I eventually found myself being welcomed into the community. But not long afterwards, my mom died and my world was turned upside down. I didn’t handle my mom’s death well. And I was already struggling with my own inner demons of depression and anxiety. But Barbara let me know that she was there for me if I needed her. I saw her often on Sundays and we talked a lot then, but I also met with her one-on-one occasionally. Before her role as maven of St. Philip, she’d been a counselor and she helped me talk about my mom’s death and what I needed to heal. I didn’t necessarily make the best decisions then, but it was an important beginning to a long process of putting myself back together and moving on.

The thing I loved most about Barbara was her personality. She reminded me a lot of my mom in the way she didn’t suffer fools gladly and stood her ground when she thought she was right. She was stubborn as hell, yet also patient and always able to find goodness even in difficult circumstances. She had an amazing laugh. And I’ll never forget the look she’d give you and the tone of her voice when she thought you should know better or you said something stupid—it still makes me smile thinking about it. I really enjoyed talking with her, and she helped me find my own path to God.

As I wrote after her husband, James, died since it’s equally as true for her: I didn't know Barbara as well as many, but she certainly had a big impact on my life with her presence. So I know she'll be missed immensely, because I can only imagine the impact she had on those even closer to her. She was a shining example of a true follower of Christ, forever altering my perception of what it means to be one—to be imperfectly perfect, to share the gifts we have with others, to learn from our mistakes, to live a life of love, compassion, and mercy, and to leave the world a little better than we found it.

Looking back through my old writings, this is one of the first references I have of Barbara in my online blog journals, dated 10/8/2014:

The topic of today's inquiry class was pretty interesting: our image of God and what influences that image. Barbara began by asking us to think of some of the names of God we know. She then asked us to think of some attributes that we want God to have and to think of examples in our life where we might see that.

I had a hard time thinking of things besides the typical ones of love and compassion, which were some of the first things mentioned by others. One thing that I thought about was the present moment and the feelings of joy and happiness that I sometimes get when surrounded by solitude and quiet. When those feelings arise, the presentness of everything overwhelms me. But then I thought of the emptiness and loneliness I sometimes feel as well, which I suppose could reflect the absence of God. Or maybe both are God, the latter emptying myself of 'self' so that I can then be filled with the former.

The idea was basically to see how we all see God from different perspectives and how different experiences colour that perception. Using the Old Testament as an example, she pointed out how tribal life was tumultuous, and how God often takes on an angry or vengeful persona based upon the experiences of the ancient Israelites. They were trying to describe their experience of God in that context, and we have to take that into consideration.

It's something to think about, in my opinion. I think we tend to put God in a box, however we conceive the idea, and that picture is influenced by our experiences and biases, how we were raised, the things we've read, the ups and downs in our lives, etc. But the subject transcends whatever box we try to place it in. Our point of view is limited; but at the same time, we want to express how God appears to us in our lives.

Some of the ways she talked about God reminded me a bit of nibbana in the sense that God is something which is always there, and the more we allow our preconceived notions to fall away, the more we experience God. To me, it's similar to the idea that nibbana, the unconditioned, is always there, the experience of it simply being obscured by our clinging to views (think Nagarjuna) and our defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion.

As for myself, from past experiences with conservative Christians and a few unpleasant Bible passages, I've had a rather negative view of God as a fictional, angry, petty old man for a long, long time. But after things like talking to my Orthodox friend about the way he sees God in his interactions with people and reading things like In the Spirit of Happiness and parts of the Philokalia, I started to form a completely different picture.

I'm still not sure if there's a God, but I feel more drawn towards the idea than I ever have before. And the picture I have is growing bigger and more complex, yet simpler. My perspective is evolving. Sometimes I think about my interactions with people and I occasionally see them the same way my friend does. (Barbara said something similar about God constantly throwing us together.) Sometimes, in quiet and solitude, I think I feel what a lot of the mystics and contemplatives talk about. And I liked Barbara's definition of God as what draws us towards virtue.

Near the beginning of the class, they gave out copies of the New American translation of the Bible; at the end, Barbara gave us some homework: to ask ourselves every night, Where did I see God today? For me, I think it'll be an exercise in seeing goodness around me. "God doesn't work against himself." Look for the goodness.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, Dayan HaEmet. Yehi zichra mahapecha. (“Blessed are you God, king of the Universe, the True Judge. May her memory be a revolution.”)

After significant reflection, though, the experience highlighted for me the vast distinction between the spiritual traditions of Christianity and Judaism and where I truly belong. As I sat and listened to the funeral mass, I was reminded of all the things I struggled with in Christianity and Catholic dogma. I never felt quite at home with a deified Jesus, but always saw him as a spiritual teacher—a rabbi, a proverbial finger pointing towards the moon. I certainly respected him and his teachings, but always fell short of seeing him as God. And as I absorbed the liturgy after a long, long absence, I knew instinctively that it was always meant to be a stepping stone to something else.

I certainly don’t regret my time at St. Philip Neri or with the wonderful people there. I was where I was supposed to be at that moment in my life. I 100% agree with Fr. Charlie about that point. All the same, I know it’s not where I was meant to stay. But I do owe Barbara a great debt for helping instill in me a love for God and righteousness that’ll forever remain a part of who I am.

the goldfinch

I finished reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt today… Reading it has honestly been an emotionally difficult experience for me. It’s hard to articulate why on a deeper level, but more superficially, the main character’s life contains a lot of similarities to mine—dead mother, abusive and often neglectful father, drug and alcohol abuse to essentially self-medicate and go on living, a self-destructiveness and feeling of pointlessness to life and wishing I were dead that came out most predominantly after I’d had too much to drink, etc… Even though I’m now in a much better place than I was in my teens and early twenties, it brought up some of the most difficult times in my life... Rebecca even mentioned the main character, Theo, reminded her of me a bit. It’s a well-written book, and I loved her other book The Secret History; but it’s just too real for me in ways that are hard to explain even though I wish I could.

Here's a poem partially inspired by it, though, that glimpses an aspect of the nihilistic elements it invokes:

I’m trying to find the motivation to deal with tomorrow and all the pain it has in store for me.
Caged.
Trapped.
Hopeless. Helpless.
Dangling from a wire above an ocean of black with no reason to hold on but no courage to let go.
Weakness.
Brokenness.
Abandoned. Alienated.
Every day deluding myself tomorrow will somehow be different, better, a life worth it.
A person without a people; a place without a name; a road with no destination—nothingness personified.
Apologies.
Eulogies.
Regrets. Resentments.
Digging myself a hole to crawl into to hide, to die, to just rot away for the eternity of punishment due.
Smiles.
Tears.
Sadness. Stillness.
“Life is catastrophe,” and it's only in the space between mind and reality where beauty can be found.

the purpose of philosophy

Insomnia sucks, but at least I’m catching up on my podcast backlog. I just finished one that featured a debate on analytic philosophy vs. continental philosophy and it got me thinking about philosophy in general.

I think philosophy itself is multifaceted. On the one hand, it’s a methodology for approaching truth, and I think both analytical and continental philosophy have compatible characteristics that are unfortunately hampered by the politics of the institutions that dictate who gets jobs in those fields, which is primarily teaching at universities and getting published—thus, the biases of those institutions dictate what ideas and methods are promoted à la Marx: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (The German Ideology).

But philosophy can also be radical, subversive, and revolutionary, making one think and question more deeply than before in their search for truth and meaning. Meaning is inherently subjective, and one can find meaning in many places and different ways, e.g., in relation to one’s work, family, political and social engagement, etc. But truth, I think, is an objective reality, unlike what vulgar postmodernism would have us believe.

I honestly think that the truth is something we’re working towards realizing from multiple angles, scientifically, philosophically, psychologically, etc. Nevertheless, real philosophy isn’t just some kind of intellectual, academic circle jerk of published papers and professors. Real philosophy is also a motivating force, and one of the potential side effects of real philosophy is that it causes you to live your life differently. My philosophical views rooted in Hasidic mysticism and Marxism, for instance, have led me to live a Jewish life and be politically engaged with a critical eye towards dominant power structures and ideologies.

If someone’s philosophy doesn’t discernibly influence the way they live their life, then it’s unlikely a real love of wisdom.

fuck mammon

For a brief moment recently, I forgot just how much I hated Mammon, the idol of greed that personifies the putrid, undead heart of capitalism. My life and job were going relatively well, and things finally felt stable and on track for a better future. But the soul-crushing spirit of Mammon ruins everything eventually. And the way it’s currently corrupting and destroying our healthcare system — especially the way it’s strangling the life out of the nonprofit, Catholic healthcare organization I’m a part of and the one place I’ve loved working and feel like I’m making a difference — cuts me especially deep.

Capitalism only cares about money and how to use it to produce more, not about people caring about, or caring for, people. Almost 60 years ago, MLK, Jr. warned us, in these prophetic words challenging the moral integrity of our nation, about the root of the problem and the need to set it right:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

But in our society, if you’re not making money for someone else to accumulate, regardless of your job, you’re not of any value. Which tells me that our society, and the logic underlying it, is ruled by Mammon—a society where machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are still considered more important than people, and the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism have yet to be conquered.

From a personal perspective, seeing the push from the execs at the top to make providers see more patients and essentially make Providence look and function more like Kaiser while laying off more and more people, taking away printers and monitoring how much each person prints to save money is awful. Even the providers are getting tired of all the money talk, and it’s just another illustration how capitalism infects everything. A religious, nonprofit healthcare provider shouldn’t be acting just like every other for-profit organization. But the logic of the system makes everyone and everything function the same whether they want to or not.

When they say there’s no alternative to capitalism (as Thatcher loved to say), it’s primarily because it actively prevents socioeconomic alternatives from being able to function and survive, and the governing system forcefully intervenes when any large and potentially successful alternative emerges (mostly in the form of economic and military attacks on states experimenting with alternative socioeconomic systems). And while I knew this going in, seeing both the culture and quality of care deteriorate is emotionally draining, mainly because I’m genuinely proud of and enjoy being a medical assistant at a clinic where people truly care about the patients, and I believed in the ethos of ‘know me, care for me, ease my way.’ But that’s increasingly becoming just a meaningless marketing slogan as they try everything in their power to increase productivity, maximize profit, cut costs, and condition future providers to think in terms of numbers and billable codes and not intimately knowing their patients.

And as much as I dislike and blame upper management for this, they’re being compelled to do it by the underlying logic and overbearing economic pressure of capitalism itself. So as much as we target them for blame and criticism, their hands are being forced by something more fundamental, and that’s what we need to target and change. But that level of change is inherently difficult and destabilizing, and the people who benefit from it the most will fight hard to prevent it from happening, so it usually takes a major confluence of events to reach a point where a sufficient number of people, or at least those in key positions of influence in society, are willing to agree to such a change or force the issue. And since I don’t think we’re there yet, it leaves me feeling helpless and hopeless as I watch patients of 20 or 30 years lament how it wasn’t like this when the Sisters of Providence were running things, or how they don’t feel as cared for, or are told all of a sudden that their insurance is no longer contracted and they can’t see their doctor anymore.

I’ve never had a job that I both loved and felt was meaningful and paid a somewhat livable wage. And I’m slowly watching capitalism eat away at all three of those things, leaving me feeling like a cog in a giant, unfeeling money-making machine that doesn’t really care about how the money is created or distributed, only that the machine keeps grinding on and on and on, and sucking up every natural and human resource until there’s nothing left of the world to drain and it dies. I think that’s what anticapitalists like MLK, Jr. fear the most. Even if that future is generations ahead, they can still see where the world is heading and they try to plant the seeds for an alternative future in the desperate hope they bear fruit before that apocalyptic future comes to pass.

And that’s just a long-winded way of saying I’m sad and discouraged and wish I could do something besides continue to care as much as I can, push back against that culture as best as I can, and treat each patient like a person giving them as much of my time, attention, and compassion as I can. But eventually, that’ll make me more of a liability than an asset, and I may be the next to go (or give in, sell my soul, and work for an actual for-profit company and get paid a little more for being a slightly more willing and complicit cog in the cataclysmic, capitalist consumption machine).

god-shaped hole

I found something I must have written around 2014, when working at the Starbucks in Portland State University on the back of a school flyer for the return of Chiron studies, in a copy of Marx’s Capital I was flipping through today. It says:

Some see the existential suffering and yearning for meaning we often experience as proof of God, i.e., of the ‘God-shaped hole’ that no ephemeral, worldly pleasure or success can fill. But could very well be the result of our self-awareness that, when reflected upon itself, finds the natural order of life, particularly as we’ve [materially] organized it, unfulfilling. We want something more, and we look outwards into the unknown for it. Perhaps God is, ironically, an idol that doesn’t fit its own hole—the representation of our existential security blanket.

In some ways, I still agree with 2014 me. I definitely think much of our suffering and unhappiness is tied to the way the logic of capitalism has structured society. But I also think that any leftover emptiness can only be filled by something transcendent, something that we can’t create but can realize or awaken to that points us towards our interconnectedness and motivates us to see and act with compassion. Material comfort and support is important, as I think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs rightly asserts; but so is the peerless comfort and support of things like love and community.

a perennialist's ode to judaism

This was something I'd been working on for a while to express my interest in, and seriousness about, Judaism after absorbing so much in the last few months. I was mainly writing it for myself, but also thought it’d be worth sharing with anyone who may want some idea of where I am, what I currently think and believe, and the experiences I’ve had on my spiritual journey thus far, and I finished it (minus some editing afterwards) the same day as my second Intro to Judaism class.

Reflecting back upon my life, it is clear that my spiritual journey began as adolescent curiosity, a thirst for stories, rituals, and truth that would eventually lead me across time and space and several religious traditions to HaShem, the God of Israel, and back into those past religious traditions with new insights. It was a journey into the dual hearts of mysticism and perennialism.

From an early interest in Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology, I developed an appreciation of storytelling as a means of expressing ideas that are hard to put into words directly, tales that capture our imagination and let us mentally glimpse underlying moral truths, opening the door for our minds to apprehend a reality beyond our five senses, something transcendent. Later, a study of paganism and the occult led me to look deeper into these stories and myself to seek that which was hidden from common knowledge because the transcendent seemed so mysterious and arcane. But abuse, pain, anger, depression, and discontent with the shallowness of my spiritual life prodded me to explore meditation and the teachings of the Buddha. I spent many years on this path, visiting monasteries and meditation groups across the country, finding that taking refuge in wise teachers, ethical and contemplative practices like observing the precepts and mindfulness of breathing meditation, and an earnest spiritual community of practitioners produced much benefit for my wounded yet hungry heart and mind. And Buddhism’s underlying premise is simple, practical, and deeply alluring to many seekers of peace and wisdom such as myself—remove the defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion from your heart and mind and there the door to the deathless stands, and with it, an end to suffering. But still there was something missing from the equation, and I felt drawn towards learning even more. Reading things like Plato and works on Christian mysticism, I started to see what I thought were common themes and experiences that were expressed in different words and through the lens of diverse cultures yet sharing so much. And I slowly became convinced that, if truth is indeed universal, then perhaps what I was truly searching for was the foundation of that truth, a truth that attempts to shine forth in every religion but is difficult to grasp in its essence. More and more, I saw God as that potential foundation, so I sought out God.

I cannot say that even today I know who or what God is. Ultimate reality is something I am not sure one can ever truly know in full detail, but I do think it can be touched, experienced, in a way that gives one confidence, wisdom, and strong moral character. And I think all of the great teachers and saints of every tradition are examples of those who have had some glimpse of the divine, whether through faith, practice, or study, and exude love, compassion, and wisdom as a result. Some have more indirect experiences and generalized understanding of this reality (e.g., through study and debate or mediating upon the unconditioned, uncreated, and timeless aspect of God’s being), and they tend to see God as either a separate but unconditioned reality lying outside of our experience of the five senses or as the ground of being and even being-itself. It is a more impersonal experience of God that is closer to the God of the philosophers or the deathless element realized by Buddhist arahants. And some, on the other hand, have a more direct and intimate experience and knowledge of this reality, and I believe these are the ones who tend to see God as a personal being who, while being unconditioned, still has a presence that is felt in our conditional world, like the prophets of divine revelation and religious saints. But I think that both see God in some way, and I have gone from seeking God impersonally to personally—hence, it is here that I began to dip my toes into the study and practice of the Abrahamic faiths. I found exploring Christianity the easiest and most natural as it surrounded me, has theological roots in philosophers like Aristotle and Plato (although I lean towards the latter), and has a monastic tradition that has similar characteristics to the Thai Theravada Buddhist monasteries I was already familiar with. And I have certainly found much wisdom there as well, particularly in terms of contemplative practices (such as centering prayer) and communities of kind and welcoming people.

Nevertheless, as much as I admire Jesus and seek to follow his example of radical love and compassion, I found that I had trouble seeing him as God, or God as three distinct persons. I always saw trinitarian theology as a simplified version of the sefirot — the ten divine aspects of God that, through which, God manifests in the world — and metaphors for: God as ultimate reality and ground of being (Father); our potential to have an intimate connection with, and speak to, God, being all children or creations of God, as exemplified by Jesus (Son); and the presence of God suffusing the world as it evolves along with our understanding of it (Holy Spirit). Jesus is undoubtedly one of the great spiritual teachers of the world, and has been a personal guide and example of someone who loves God and others as himself because God is love (1 John 4:7-8)—love being a creative and nurturing energy. And I see his attempts to more closely connect us to God as an example of the trinity being more about relationships than ontologies. Richard Rohr, one of my favourite Christian perennialists, has often made a similar connection while also accepting their existence. For example, he describes the trinity as a circular dance and the deepest flow of life, and notes that each ‘person’ of the trinity relates by “living in an eternal self-emptying (kenosis), which allows each of them to let go completely and give themselves to the other. They are simultaneously loving and totally loveable, one to another.” And that love is the very nature and shape of divine being: “This deep flow is then the pattern of the whole universe, and any idea of God’s ‘wrath’ or of God withholding what is an infinitely outflowing love is theologically impossible. Love is the very pattern with which we start and the goal toward which we move. It gives energy to the entire universe, from orbiting protons and neutrons to the social and sexual life of species, to the planets and stars. We were indeed created in communion, by communion, and for communion (Genesis 1:26 calls it being ‘created in the image and likeness of God’).”

Throughout all of this, I always had a fascination with Judaism, but primarily as an outsider, from afar. I would often read books about Jewish thought and philosophy or listen to podcasts and lectures and found much that intrigued me. I remember the very first book that sparked my conscious interest in Judaism was Rabbi David Copper’s God is a Verb, which I read when I was 17 or 18 and introduced me to Kabbalah and the Baal Shem Tov. Nevertheless, not being born into a Jewish family or having any close Jewish friends, I felt like it was not something I could personally be a part of. My understanding was that, even though I knew conversions did happen, it was more of a heritage and not something you could easily leap into as a gentile; and I did not think I would be welcomed into the community in that way, especially since I had no knowledge of Hebrew, which is a very important part of the Jewish tradition. So for decades, I simply admired it from afar, watching TV shows like Srugim and Shtisel, and finding my closest connection within Christianity and reading the Bible, with Jesus continually pointing me back towards the Tanakh, which contains within it the story of a people who, on the one hand, are struggling with the world they live in, full of greed, oppression, and violence, yet dreaming of a world that is filled with equality, abundance, and peace—a story of historical progress towards something better and the successes and failures that a particular people found worth recalling and reliving. And for a time, I suppose I was somewhat satisfied. But when I continued to delve into God, theology, and the various traditions and ideas contained within them, I discovered new Jewish sources such as Zevi Slavin’s Seekers of Unity series and Rabbi Dr. Samuel Lebens’ collection of books, articles, lectures, and interviews and realized that I was not truly satisfied—there was more for me to learn about this religion that I had orbited for years and was only now becoming cognizant of its gravitational pull upon my heart and mind.

Years before my immersion into Judaism, I made the Hebrew blessing that is said before eating any food not grown in the ground as my daily morning prayer: “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam shehakol nihiyah bid’varo” (“Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, through Whose word all things come into being”). I found it beautiful, simple, and containing within it all that I thought needed to be said and reflected upon at the start of the day—God, God’s word, and my place within God’s world. And studying the principles of Judaism, I realized I had already accepted the three primary principles of Judaism proposed by Rabbi Joseph Albo from my previous years of religious study and practice: (1) belief in one God and source of being; (2) belief in revelation, including (but not limited to) the divine inspiration of the Torah; and (3) belief in reward and punishment, which can also be viewed as the cause and effect relationship between our actions and their consequences in this life and any to come. Spinoza takes credit for truly convincing me of the first principle with his arguments in Ethics, with assistance from Rabbi Dr. Lebens and his arguments for Hasidic idealism in The Principles of Judaism, with Spinoza’s substance equivalent to consciousness/God’s mind in my own amalgamation of these two philosophical points of view. But whatever the theological and philosophical nature of God and the universe may be, I am firmly rooted in the belief that God is the source of all things, God is one and wholly indivisible, God’s will/intention/word created the universe and everything in it, and God continually supports existence through said will/intention/word. And in this belief, I am a panenthiest in that I think God both transcends this world (God as Mind or Substance) and at the same time God’s presence suffuses and foundationally underlies it, albeit limiting that presence at the same to make the space necessary for conscious beings to act of their own volition (i.e., reality being thoughts in the mind of God if God is immaterial and idealism is correct, hence God is in God’s thoughts yet God is greater than those thoughts; or else God produces and supports a material world that is infused with God’s presence, because what can exist without God?). This space, created through what Kabbalistic thought calls tsimtsum (divine contraction/hiddenness) is in essence the womb of God giving birth to the best of all possible worlds—a world sitting between that of perfect order (pre-Big Bang) and that of perfect disorder (the entropy at the end of the universe), a world that is ordered by natural laws and also subject to the underlying chaos of quantum level uncertainty, which together allows for the mutable order necessary for life to grow, evolve, and be given the freedom and flexibility of choice within the awareness of God’s omniscience. And I don’t think this act of self-limiting, in whatever form it may take, diminishes God or makes God deficient in any way, as some philosophers do. In fact, I think it highlights the incomparable love of God and God’s benevolent goodness to do something like that for us, much like how the medieval Jewish philosopher Crescas argues for the capacity of God to love and feel joy, and creation inherently extending out of God’s overflowing goodness and joy in communicating a love that is infinite and ultimately reflected in our existence and happiness, with God’s omnisubjectivity and ability to experience temporality and our lives with us forming the possibility for revelation, miracles, the efficacy of prayer, and union with God. This accords, I think, to the Kabbalistic saying, “God is the Place of the world, but the world is not God's place.” God is transcendent yet immanent. Without yet also within. Impersonal yet deeply involved in our lives. God is the ultimate and eternal paradox.

Consequently, revelation and prophecy, what we typically call revealed laws, knowledge, and foresight, is rife throughout creation, from the mysteries of nature to the inspiration of human intuition and imagination. God is speaking to us every moment, and there are some among us who are more attuned to the language of God, those of us who are able to listen more deeply and communicate what God is saying to us—what we call prophets in a religious context, and in other realms, what we might call philosophers and scientists. The laws of nature constitute both the physical laws that dictate what we experience as the material world (whether or not that ‘material’ world has some form of concrete existence outside of the mind of God) as well as the moral laws that dictate conscious experience within it, pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow, satisfaction and regret, good and evil, etc. And what is revealed of the latter type of law, both written in our hearts (Jer. 31:31-34) and spoken of by prophets such as Moses (Ex. 19-31), is a complex web of interconnectedness and causality, a moral law in which our actions are like seeds that are planted and grow, the fruits of which we reap in this life and any life (or lives) to come. Much like the Eastern concept of kamma (action) or moral cause and effect, seeds that are planted with intentions of greed, hatred, and delusion tend to grow into rotten fruit, the taste of which is sour, bitter, and full of decay. With these fruits we reap punishment. Seeds that are planted with intentions of generosity, love, and wisdom, however, tend to grow into fruit that is sweet, delicious, and full of life. With these fruits we reap reward. And life is a mixture of these experiences. The more we plant of the former, the closer we get to Gehinnom (hell); the more we plant of the latter, the closer we get to Gan Eden (heaven). And the observance of halakhic law, the heart and binding tradition of Judaism, is none other than the way the Jewish people strive to live in an effort to bring them closer to God and plant the seeds for the redemption of the world to come.

The story of the people of Israel begins with liberation from slavery and captivity, proclaimed by God and fulfilled through the work of human hands, and has its hopeful end in a messianic age characterized by peace, harmony, freedom from want, and an end to sin, death, and suffering. And underlying that story and driving it towards this estimable goal is a revolutionary spirit suffused with tzedakah and mishpat (distributive and retributive justice respectively, although Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argued for keeping them untranslated) that reflects the reality of our interbeing with each other and the world, and as a result, commands that injustice be protested wherever we find it, whether those transgressions are committed at home or by the entire world:

Anyone who is able to protest against the transgressions of one's household and does not, is punished for the actions of the members of the household; anyone who is able to protest against the transgressions of one's townspeople and does not, is punished for the transgressions of the townspeople; anyone who is able to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and does not is punished for the transgressions of the entire world. (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 54b:20)

And I believe that this same spirit beats within the heart of all religions, the spirit of the golden rule, which psychologist Carol Gilligan summarizes in the Philosophy For Our Times podcast episode “A rule to live by” as, “Act as though you all live in relationship.” If we take both human experience and the teachings of all the major religions of the world seriously, the latter of which I think are seeded with an intuition of God, it is clear that our actions have efficacy, i.e., the results of those actions have effects that beget consequences for ourselves as well as for others. Moreover, we all tend to desire happiness and freedom from what we experience as painful and suffering just as others do; and just as we generally hold ourselves most dear as the Buddha taught, so, too, do others, hence we should not cause harm to anyone (SN 3.8). If our happiness comes at the expense of another’s, they will do everything in their power to upset that happiness. Conversely, if they were to infringe upon ours, would we not do everything in our power to upset theirs? It creates a vicious circle, and one of the ways to break this circle is an ethical framework that takes the happiness and well-being of others into consideration—a framework balanced by our needs and those of others as well as by what actions are appropriate for the situation (e.g., charity, compassion, forgiveness, leniency, etc. vs. abstention, confrontation, rebuke, strictness, etc.). And the world would undeniably be a better place if that spirit, characterized by tzedakah and mishpat, was our guiding light. I have a strong conviction that God’s laws are written into our hearts just as they are written into the very fabric of creation and the physical and psychological laws of cause and effect reflected in our corresponding experiences of pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow, satisfaction and regret, and ultimately, good and evil. And to intentionally cause or even tolerate harm violates the moral laws placed upon the world by God — whether we happen to arrive at those principles through revelation, intuition, or reason — because our lives are as precious to God as they are to ourselves.

Suffice it to say that I have a profound, abiding admiration for Judaism because it has greatly influenced my understanding of God and reality, and I have always been drawn towards it even when I felt forever outside its inner circle of faithful. And I have since come to realize that the spirit of Judaism has established itself within my heart and has never truly felt far from home, finding myself called to it again and again with increasing yearning and reverence. One of the reasons I started considering myself a perennialist is that I began to see an underlying truth seeking its expression through religion, with some of the most beautiful and clearest expressions being found in Jewish mysticism. I saw that God is the author of our stories and the pages upon which they are written; God’s presence is steeped in every time, place, and soul; God guides us to live with compassion and justice, and with loving-kindness draws us close; and I could not help but affirm that, ‘Adonai is God, Adonai is one’ (Deut. 6:4). And I have always valued and endeavoured to cultivate (however imperfectly) the three cardinal character traits elucidated in the Babylonian Talmud that, according to Rabbi Dr. Lebens in the conclusion to his book, The Principles of Judaism, “are posited as essential to the Jewish identity,” traits that “God bestows upon the community which receives [God’s] Torah” and makes one “worthy to join the Jewish people” (293-95):

David said: There are three distinguishing marks of this nation, the Jewish people. They are merciful, they are shamefaced, and they perform acts of kindness.

They are merciful, as it is written: “And He will give you mercy, and have mercy upon you and multiply you”(Deuteronomy 13:18); not only will God have mercy upon you, but He will bestow the attribute of mercy upon you.

They are shamefaced, as it is written: “And that His fear shall be upon your faces” (Exodus 20:17), and the fear that is on one’s face is his shame. They perform acts of kindness, as it is written: “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to practice righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19), i.e., to perform acts of kindness.

Whoever has these three distinguishing marks is fit to cleave to this nation. Those who lack these qualities, however, are unfit to be part of the Jewish people. When David saw the cruelty of the Gibeonites, he decreed that they may never enter into the congregation of Israel. (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 79a:3)

To me, the underlying principles of Judaism and its laws of darkei shalom (ways of peace), which prefigure the peace and harmony of the coming messianic era, are as beautiful as they are practical—finding a perfect balance between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and offering a collective religious heritage for a social species entrusted with protecting, repairing, and improving the world (Gen. 2:15). And the more I learn about them, the more I find myself striving to adopt them into my life and consciously integrate them into my words, thoughts, and deeds. Nevertheless, I do not think that God or truth is limited to only one tradition, even if some may have a stronger connection to, or deeper knowledge of and history with, God. We are all children of God and part of the same whole, and as such, we are all heirs to God’s creation and love. I am no less deserving of truth and love than anyone else. Moreover, I see aspects of this divine reality in so many different and wonderful places, from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and numerous other spiritual traditions. Whether speaking about God, Spinoza’s substance or nature, the unconditioned, ultimate reality, Dhamma, Brahman, or Tao, the words and symbols and rituals may differ, but I believe they are all ultimately diverse fingers pointing towards the same proverbial moon. And I admire, appreciate, and accept all of these various traditions and what they have to offer in their own terms as well as what they offer humanity together—the means by which we are able to reach out and touch the transcendent.

With that being said, out of all the possible fingers pointing towards the ineffable, the one that speaks to me the most is Judaism. The revelations, prayers, religious practices, ethical principles, mystical insights, and communal spirit handed down by this ancient tradition for millennia, beginning with Moses and continuing down throughout generations of sages, scholars, and mystics to the present day, unceasingly call to me and draw me ever deeper into their mysteries, sparking a curiosity and joy and sense of belonging that nothing else ever has. And more importantly, they make me feel closer to God. I spent many years orbiting its teachings, but the moment I heard Rabbi Josh Rose’s concluding remarks during his Jewish Mysticism class (part of the Oregon Board of Rabbis’ Introduction to Judaism course) about everything in the world having its roots in God, encouraging us to contemplate, “Ein od Milvado” (“there is nothing than Him/God”), and then closing our eyes while trying to imagine the absence of anything other than the infinite light of God; the moment of contraction of tsimtsum to a tiny, infinite point; the moment that the infinite point of the light of God that remains emanates across the void with its divine blueprint, planting the seeds of the individual sefirot; the shattering of their vessels due to the overwhelming intensity of divine light flooding into them and the spreading of their light and remnants; the creation of a new, interconnected sefirot feeding each other and sustaining the world; and our creation and evolution within this cosmic story… I never felt closer to God and God’s absolute oneness. I pictured it all and then myself at work, helping care for patients, and literally feeling it as part of all existence, momentarily losing my sense of self and the separateness it creates and just being one with it all—an individual wave in the ocean conscious of the ocean’s oneness, who simultaneously felt itself identical to the totality of the infinite ocean and a small, individual temporal manifestation named Jason… And for just a moment, I did not simply affirm ‘Adonai is God, Adonai is one,’ I experienced a taste of it sitting in the pews of the first synagogue I ever stepped my foot into. And after attending the morning Yizkor Shabbat service celebrating the last day of Pesach led by Rabbi Rachel Joseph and Cantor Rayna Green at Congregation Beth Israel, the second synagogue I ever stepped foot into, I knew that I had finally returned home.

delay, deny, defend... ourselves from capitalism

Since I work in healthcare and have strong opinions on the economic structure of the US and much of the rest of the world, of course I have thoughts about the murder of United Healthcare’s CEO. I honestly don’t think anyone cares about them, but I need to get them out anyway. To start with, I have to include the disclaimer that everyone has to put out that I don’t condone assassinating people. I don’t want to promote or glorify violence as a solution as I think there are always better ways to deal with socio-economic issues. That said, I hope this incident makes people think more about the context of the world they live in and how it affects people.

In general, CEOs are people who run corporations, and these people often jump from company to company, often making millions of dollars whether that company does well or not, then jets off to a different company to do whatever it is they do for millions of dollars. As just one of many, many examples, the CEO of Spirit Airlines, Edward Christie, made $6.6 million last year and received a $3.8 million bonus right before the company went bankrupt. Brian Thompson, United Healthcare’s CEO was making $10-11 million a year in total compensation. No big deal, right? The problem is, many of the companies make their money by exploiting their workers and/or shorting the people they purportedly serve.

Healthcare companies essentially try to make profit from providing healthcare to people. The system makes people purchase insurance individually or through their employer, and then they pay out money to the people who happen to need it. Problem is, it’s hard to make lots of profit by doing this unless you limit what you spend. And they do this by denying care or claims, whether it’s procedures or medications or whatever. And the more they can skimp on reimbursing providers and denying people trying to access their own healthcare, the more money the company makes, the shareholders make, and the administrators make. The people actually providing the care don’t make a killing themselves. In fact, they’re often pushed by their employers to do more, faster, and charge for every little thing by their employers while the insurers are pushed to deny as much as possible and pay out as little as possible. It’s no surprise, then, that it’s the patients who generally suffer.

United Healthcare’s CEO was murdered, and many outlets are reporting that written on the bullets were words like ‘delay,’ ‘deny,’ defend,’ ‘depose.’ If true, they are likely referencing the way insurance companies “delay paying claims, deny valid claims in whole or part, and defend their actions by forcing claimants to enter litigation,” which according to the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It, is the way these companies operate to maximize profit, the “Moses and the prophets” of capitalism as Marx would call this insatiable drive to accumulate. There are countless cases of United Healthcare alone delaying, denying, and defending their limitations of people’s arguably necessary healthcare, many anecdotal examples being shared on social media following the news of Thompson’s assassination. Untold numbers of people have been harmed by the reluctance of insurers to approve or pay for medical needs, and this anger and frustration is shown by the insanely disproportionate reactions on social media in the aftermath of the shooting. Last time I checked before going to sleep last night, there were 20,000+ laugh reactions to less than 2,000 sad reactions on United Healthcare’s Facebook post regarding Thompason’s death. And new articles and Twitter/X are no different.

The sad fact is that our healthcare system alone contributes to unimaginable suffering and death due to delays in care or outright refusals to approve the care needed because it basically costs the insurance companies too much. The purpose of healthcare isn’t the care itself–it’s the possibility of others to make as much fucking money as possible by providing it or denying it. And this simple fact, as much as people try to defend it as being ‘fiscally responsible’ and in line with the supposedly wholesome, benevolent, and enlightened aims of the capitalist market’s invisible hand, is absolute bullshit and an indictment of the very system they seek to defend, much the same as insurers try to defend their delays and denials. It’s a fucking con.

The economy itself – i.e., the way we organize production and distribution – is how we reproduce society; it forms the material foundation on top of which our political and legal superstructures are built. And under capitalism, that foundation is controlled via property rights and other coercive means by capital in conjunction with the state (forming the 'ruling class'), which in turn gives shape to the 'markets' in which the economy manifests itself. But the economy isn't some magical creation of capital or the state or some unseen, guiding hand of Providence beyond our keen; it's created by all the labour of working people–we, collectively, are the economy. And its manifestation isn't preordained, either. Rather, it takes its shape based on how economic life is organized.

I don’t rejoice in this one CEO’s death, even if I detest what he and his company ultimately stands for–making money at the expense of others who lack the power and resources to defend themselves and their health and that of their families. The way our economy is currently configured, CEOs and capitalists are the predators, and workers and consumers are the prey, and I’m sick and tired of it. And I think many others are just as sick and tired as me. My one and only hope is that we can find a way to communicate and come together to change things for the better in a collective and constructive way instead of the resolution coming from the end of guns held by angry and desperate people who have nowhere else to turn.