For Reflection (Page 1)
Reaching Out to God

Wake up to your inner courage and steep in divine contentment.Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, New Year 1997 Message.

Reflection after internment in Auschwitz:
One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. Larks rose to the sky and I could hear their joyous song. There was no one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks' jubilation and the freedom of space. I stopped, looked around, and up to the sky--and then I went down on my knees. At that moment there was very little I knew of myself or of the world--I had but one sentence in mind--always the same: "I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space." Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning at 96.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning at 75.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life--daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. . . . These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning at 85.

[The Dalai Lama,] affirming his connection to Jewish history, on Yom Hashoah 1993, Holocaust Memorial Day (April 26), . . . became the first official visitor to the Holocaust museum in Washington, entering it moments before the doors were thrown open to the general public. According to one account, he moved through three floors of exhibits, "his monk's robes lightly touching the floor, his head occasionally shaking in what appeared to be dismay. In the Hall of Remembrance, a chamber reserved for solace, he stood for four minutes in silence, his hands clasped to his chin in meditation." In a Pool of Nectar, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India at 277, Rodger Kamenetz.

A renewed Judaism will be more porous--more willing to acknowledge that Judaism has borrowed from other cultures in the past, and more willing to borrow techniques and practices from other religions today, reassimilating them into a Jewish context. Sufi dhikr and Buddhist meditation on the breath are influences from the Eastern prayer mode that can be easily absorbed by Jews. In a Pool of Nectar, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India at 286, Rodger Kamenetz.

We know that in the third century B.C., the Indian emperor Ashoka, a committed Buddhist, made a determined missionary effort. He sent emissaries to Syria and Egypt to teach dharma. A Last Secret, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India at 273, Rodger Kamenetz.

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