RABBI DAVID COOPER- 7 DAY MEDITATION RETREAT

LEURA, NSW, MARCH 2005

This is a combined report of the participants’ comments that were made at the closing session of the 7 day silent Meditation Retreat, held by Rabbi David Cooper and Shoshana Cooper, at the Brahma Kumaris Centre for Spiritual Learning, Leura, NSW, from 21/3/05 to 28/3/05. These are the things that were significant for us:

q the integration of Judaism, Buddhism, Sufi and Tao; this allowed us to experience as Jewish major aspects of these other religions which we previously thought were other than Jewish

q the people in our group, who were very warm, and dedicated to learning meditation

q the bush, nature, the walks in the area, the Forest Path

q the silence on the retreat, which was enjoyed by all; its friendly, honest and respectful aspects; the retreat would not have been the same without it

q the way the Coopers facilitated the retreat, with love and gentleness; their individuality and the entertaining dynamic between them; their honesty and the way they lived what they taught; they sat when we sat and practised when we practised

q the Kabbalah teachings such as those about God and the Ein Sof

q the wonderful explanations of States of Mind, the experience of Now and the state of Awareness

q an understanding of Judaism in its universal aspects

q the “rules” of Judaism have changed, e.g. for Shabbat; there was a freedom in this

q the special Shabbat celebrations, which were liberating and spiritual and gave us new experiences of joy

q we could define Judaism in ways that resonated with our consciousness

q the personal insights and transformations we all experienced; the techniques for psychological change such as the two second Awareness meditation to be practised 100 times a day

q the special mindfulness and Awareness meditation techniques, which were so well taught

q the raising of our energy via chanting

q the dedication of our practice to the greater consciousness of humanity

q there was a “minority report” from some who came to strengthen their Jewish practices and found difficulty in doing so in the above context

q the results were life changing to various degrees

q we enjoyed our chores assisting with daily life around the Centre

q the morning yoga classes

q we reached a place of great emotional calmness

Later notes will describe some of the above aspects in more detail. There are some notes below, after the pictures, of the ideas Rabbi Cooper presented in Melbourne in March 2005.

The pictures below show our mediation room (with David, Shoshana and Ben), the Kadosh chant-dance, the meditation group, the view from the balcony and the accommodation and its surroundings.

Rabbi David Cooper - Ideas presented in Melbourne, March 2005

Background:

Rabbi David Cooper is a scholar and practitioner in the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. He is the founder of the Heart of Stillness Hermitage, a meditation retreat near Boulder, Colorado, and the author of an internationally best-selling guide to Kabbalah, entitled God Is a Verb‚.

David Cooper is also part of a movement known as Jewish Renewal, which has developed in the US over the past 30 years, in response to a need felt by many Jews to find their way back to Judaism after exploring Eastern traditions such as Buddhism.

Mystical Kabbalah:

In his book “God is a Verb” Rabbi Cooper writes that the idea of God as some being, in essence as a noun that we relate to, it's me and God, or the creation and the creator, is really not the way mystical Kabbalah looks at the divine. It relates to God in terms of what they call „Ein Sof which can be translated as boundlessness‚, in that it’s not some thing. The word God‚, obviously only appears in an English translation of the Torah, the actual Torah itself has dozens of names to represent the divine force, and each of the names has a different quality. When that gets translated simply into God or Lord in the English translation, its very confusing, because we don’t know what it represents. So there’s a lot of confusion around what are the characteristics of the divine. And in the end, Ein Sof says “everything, everything that happens, everything that can be.” We think that there is good and evil, God is the good, and then there’s the evil. But Kabbalah says its all gathered under one umbrella. Ein Sof is all inclusive. It is like swimming where room is made for the body to step into.

This leads us to think that Kabbalah is universal and that Kabbalah is not just a practice for Jews.

It has been taken on, in mediaeval times, by Christian theologians, and there is a very clear, definitive Christian Kabbalah that has Jesus as part of the Tree of Life. But on a much more mystical level, Kabbalah really is the mystical aspect of Judaism, and any mystical aspect of any tradition, could fit under this umbrella of the Kabbalah.

However, some people have a problem with this concept when they have been taught that Judaism looks at God as a Biblical God, the God of Torah, and not the universal God of Kabbalah. Traditional Judaism requires a teacher. This also applies to traditional Kabbalah.

Rabbi Cooper believes that is fine, as long as we understand that there‚ is something bigger, which really cannot be characterised. The Kabbalah very explicitly says don’t call Ein Sof by any name, and it says very explicitly don’t call it the creator. Now that is a very unusual, because in traditional Judaism God is the creator. But the Kabbalah says we really should not refer to Ein Sof as Creator‚ because that would suggest that there is some force that created it. This is the dynamic, and it becomes paradoxical, as most of these mystical teachings are, it’s paradoxical to understand the boundlessness as non-dual. Its one, it is completely one, and yet all of Judaism is built upon a dualistic relationship between creation and creator. If we limit ourselves to that aspect we are going to hear arguments over whose God, and what God, and our God is right, and your God is wrong. When we get down to ideologies, and beliefs, by definition when you have a belief it means that there is something that does not fit into that belief, which is the basis for most argument, and it is part of the phenomenon of the human process to draw lines and then decide what is inside and what is outside.

In the 13th century Abraham Abulafia, a Jewish mystic, represented a different kind of Kabbalah, which is far more contemplative. Abulafia’s practice was not something that he learned from the teacher; he would sit down and he would gaze at letters and turn then around and transpose them, and he would just sit there in a quiet room, which he describes as a dark, quiet place, where he would gaze at these letters and as they turned around in his mind, new words and phrases would form, and he had an ecstatic experience doing this. So he is known as the father of ecstatic Kabbalah. And for him, the transmission was coming directly from the source of being. He was connecting with that. So rather than seeking out teachers and sitting with text, and learning encyclopaedic replications of different teachings, he would just sit quietly doing his practice, and be receiving what he felt was the ultimate, absolute truth. This is the school that Rabbi Cooper associates with. He encourages people to learn how to meditate, and be willing to sit for extended periods of time in reflection and in essence in communion with the divine. This is the kind of Kabbalah that he works with.

Eastern Approach:

The mind is dual. Kabbalah sees the Ein Sof as boundlessness that transcends duality and non-duality. It is a paradox by definition. What Buddhism describes as the Unconditioned is another name for Ein Sof.

An analogy is the concepts of Yin and Yang. There can only be light with shade, figure with ground, parent with child. There is a unity. With Ein Sof there is infinity to the power of Infinity, which is beyond our conception. There is no duality.

Kabbalah might look like a Buddhist practice, when we see a group of people sitting quietly, maybe with their eyes closed, maybe open. They look very much like the group next door, who is in a Buddhist retreat, and they’re also sitting quietly. However, when you go inside, the people that come to Rabbi Cooper’s retreats are usually working with material from Torah, or that would be in the prayer service. For example, it might be contemplating certain phrases, they might be working with a parsha, which is the Torah portion for the week, trying to understand one particular nuance of that. There we have a different experience, because whereas one is trying to understand what the Buddha meant, we are working with the Torah.

Buddhism has been concerned for 2000 BC with how the mind works. Judaism has been concerned for 3000 BC years with what is our relationship to God.

Meditation;

Meditation is a practise that increases our awareness of how the mind operates, and changes the way you interact with others.

Meditation practice requires concentration, mindfulness, and a refocus of awareness on your mind.

Meditation practice:

Pay attention to your breathing. Follow the in breath and the out breath. Pay attention to your body, feel the parts that touch your chair etc. Come back to your breathing. Say Yah on the in breath and Weh on the out breath. This does not replicate a Christian concept of God because we break it up into two words. Continue saying silently to yourself, on the in breath Yah which is another word for God and on the out breath Weh. Now imagine that God is breathing his breath into you and you are returning that breath to the source on your out breath. Now become aware of the space in between the breaths. Continue the practice. If thoughts enter, become aware of the fact that you are thinking, then come bock to your breathing and Yah etc. Aim for the space between that is where boundlessness occurs and you may become one with the universe. After a practice of 10 to 45 minutes bring yourself back to this room.

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