DO YOU BELIEVE IN A SOUL?
No. There is no individual soul anymore than there is an individual you. There is only God, the One Thing that is everything.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU DIE? IS THERE HEAVEN AND HELL?
Heaven and hell are states of mind right here and now.
If you imagine you are apart from God, in competition with everyone and everything; if you believe that life is a zero-sum game and your gain must come at the expense of others; if you believe that God is judging you and preparing eternal torments for you or someone else, then you are in hell already. The opposite of this is heaven.
As far as what happens when you die, there is no you in the absolute sense, so nothing happens. What happens when you awake from a dream? Can you say that the “dream you” is dead? What happens when a wave folds back into the ocean? Yes its form is gone but was it only that? Or was it always the ocean and it is still the ocean?
As the body dies the illusion of the separate self fades and you know yourself to be what you always were: God.
YOU ARE JEWISH AND A RABBI, AND YET I CANNOT HEAR ANYTHING JEWISH IN WHAT YOU HAVE SAID SO FAR. ARE YOU A JEW?
Judaism is my tribe, my culture. It influences the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the languages I speak, the books I read and the way I read them. I am proud to be a Jew and would not choose to be anything else.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RELIGION OF JUDAISM? DO YOU FOLLOW THAT?
It is a mistake to imagine there is such a thing as a fixed Judaism. There is the Judaism of Moses, the Judaism of the Prophets, the Judaism of the Priests, the Rabbis, the Kabbalists, the Hasidim, the Secularists. Judaism isn’t fixed. It is a living system that changes as the people who shape it change. I draw from all of these forms, but I am not limited by any of them. I take what speaks to me, and practice what awakens me.
WHAT ABOUT KEEPING KOSHER OR THE SABBATH. DO YOU DO THAT?
In my own way, yes. Kosher means aligning all my consuming with the wellbeing of person and planet. Shabbat means standing apart from the addiction to work and learning to play. I do both as best I can.
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I want to respond to this question of "no soul." The wave metaphor for non-duality is a beautiful one, and certainly effective at conveying the sense the unity in variety that a non-dual perspective fosters. However, I've often felt that there is something peculiarly unsatisfying about it. It undervalues the wave.
Non-duality aside, "I" am the wave. I take a particular shape and smash, or lap gently, against a particular shore. No other wave will take the shape I take, or ebb and flow the way I will. To me, that matters. And, I think, that it tends to matter more in mystical literature than it is usally given credit for.
For example, let me quote a brief story form the Zen tradition:
"Kosen studied Zen with master Ryoten, trying to meditate on emptiness. Ryoten admonished him, 'Intensive Zen meditation must be like a mute having a dream. You are too intellectual to study Zen.'
Far from being discouraged by this, Kosen stirred himself to make even greater efforts. One night as he sat watching the rain, a young monk called to him in a loud voice. Kosen responded, and all of a sudden experienced an awakening of insight.
Later Kosen went to study with Zen master Hakujun. One day the master quoted a famous line of scripture that says, 'Don’t dwell on anything, yet enliven the mind.' Then he asked Kosen, 'What is ‘the mind’?'
Kosen said, 'Not dwelling on anything!!!' Hakujun punched him six or seven times and said, 'You ignoramus! You still don’t know the meaning of the words ‘yet enliven,’ do you?'
At that moment, Kosen attained liberation."
Emptiness, not dwelling, self-lessness, is only the first half of liberation. The other half lies with the Kosen's bruised body and injured ego. With his punch-enlivened mind.
At both moments of awakening, Kosen is called out of contemplative practice, called out of self-lessness and pulled suddenly back into the world. The first awakening occurs when Kosen's meditation is interrupted by a monk calling for him. Calling his name. In a sense, this calling conjures Kosen out of selflessness, out of water and into wave. But it is only after he responds to the other monk's call, only when he acknoweldges his identity, his shape, that Kosen achieves insight.
Similarly, Kosen's liberation depends not on his awakening to emptiness, but on his awakening to self in the form of the body--the recognition that body is mind, is soul. Symbolic and physical selfhood, called up out of emptiness (or chaos if you're Jewish), is the heart, if not of reality, then of living.
One last example, this time from Genesis. When God creates (or rather, shapes) the universe, he/she/it does so by acts of discernment, of naming and seperation. Without this imaginaed, linguistic overlay of duality, the universe is "formless."
I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that, while the wave may be full of ocean, it too is transcendent. In fact, without the waves, what ocean could there be? To quote Whitman: "What good amid these, oh me, oh life? Answer: that you are here, that life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."
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