LEGACY OF WISDOM
www.legacyofwisdom.org
Project Director:
Jay Goldfarb
Mostackerstrasse 11
4051 Basel, Switzerland
Tel/fax +41- 61-361 5375
Team & Sponsors: Ram Dass, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Roshi Joan Halifax, Harry Moody,
Dr. Sarita Bhalotra, Dr. Rodolfo Musco, Mickey Lemle, Judy Goggin
Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment
The quest to understand and fulfill life’s mission has stimulated Philosophical and Spiritual literature for millennia. Each of us is faced with the issue of re-examining what we have done in our lives and reflecting upon “Who am I, Why am I here… and what is there still to do?”
Question:
How can I find my “mission” to gain a sense that I have fulfilled my life’s potential?
YouTube Video Title: Legacy of Wisdom – Reb Zalman Schachter - Mission & Fulfillment
YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAHfis-CiIQ
Length: 10:31
Interviewee: Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi – commonly called "Reb Zalman". I was born in Poland in 1924 and raised in Vienna where I was simultaneously immersed in both traditional Judaism and secular modernism by attending a yeshiva and a leftist-Zionist high school. After fleeing from Nazi advance and imprisonment by the Vichy-French government, my flight from Europe led me to New York City when I was 17. I entered the Lubavitch Yeshiva and was ordained in 1947. I received an M.A. in the Psychology of Religion (Boston University, ‘56) and a Doctor of Hebrew Letters (Hebrew Union College, ‘68).
For 20 years I was Professor of Religion and Head of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at the University of Manitoba, Canada. In 1975 I became Professor of Religion in Jewish Mysticism and Psychology of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia where I am currently Professor Emeritus. In 1995 I was called to the world Wisdom Chair at Naropa University and later joined the faculty in the Dept. of Religion. I retired from the faculty and am now also emeritus at Naropa University.
My own experience of aging and eldering compelled me to found the Spiritual Eldering Institute in 1989, encouraged and assisted by professionals and colleagues in the field of aging. I have since developed and taught workshops to many thousands of individuals seeking to expand their awareness to match our extended life span.
Question:
How can I find my “mission” to gain a sense that I have fulfilled my life’s potential?
Transcript:
Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi: Zalman: This is such a wonderful question because this is hindsight. You know, I thought my mission was this and it turns out I was deployed in a different way. So when I have the hindsight that’s when I find out what my mission was. Remember the Vonnegut book that he has about the “Bookenonians” “I can’t wait until I find out what my Wampeter was, who the people were in my Karass”. These are the kinds of things we see at the end of life.
And, I just came back from a meeting in St. Louis. Travel is hard on me and so that’s the result of that – I am not feeling too well in my body at the moment. But, there were over 150 people who I had ordained. This was a Rabbinical association of the people who are Jewish Renewal Rabbis. And you can understand how wonderful it was for me to see what they are accomplishing. Because about 12, 13 years ago I started to turn things over more and more to them. Because I had watched some other Gurus, leaders who were in the saddle until they died. That wasn’t such a good idea. I felt- I’ve seen how they go to seed when they can’t (turn it over to) - the people are eager to work. I’ve moved back and back and back all the time and they have been making fun of me how many watches I have for retirement.
But it’s working. So that gives me a sense that I have done something, which was to make sure that there was another option for Jews who are more Universalist to also be Jewish. So one of my books is called “Jewish with Feeling”. And the publisher didn’t have “Sechel” (intellect/mind) to follow me. I wanted it to be called “If you are so Universal why be Jewish”. That’s a real question for people today. They’ve read the Upanishads, they’ve read Quantum Mechanics, they’ve read this and that – depth Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology. The question always comes up “Why should I remain a Jew?” “What is there that I have to do?”
So I’ve been teaching the people that, every religion is a vital organ of the planet. Once we saw the planet from Outer Space we understood that the only way to understand Cosmology is Organismically. You can’t see it mechanically anymore. So if we are part of the organism Earth then there can’t be such a thing as triumphalism in Religion, saying that Meschiach will come and all the Goyim will know that they are wrong. Or Jesus will come again and say “you Jews didn’t listen to me”, or the Imam or the Avatar, or whatever.
But if you understand that the same way as a body couldn’t be made all of Liver, it needs a Skeleton and it needs Lungs and it needs arms and legs so it is with the body of Earth. It needs all of us we are indispensible to that. Jewish Renewal is really saying that there is a new way of looking at Cosmology and our place in the order of this organism called Earth. When I see the fruits of that, that gives me great satisfaction.
If the question is “Is there still something left for me?”, I’m working now on several things that I want to complete before my time comes. One is, when I wrote this book “From Aging to Saging” I really spent a lot of time on what I called “the October months” of life, the November and I sketched in, there’s such a thing as the December years. And now I am sitting with a person who interviews me like “Tuesdays with Morrie” thing about the December years. What does it feel like when you become aware that your mitochondria are getting tired? That your body, that there is a steeper curve of descent as it were of body stuff. And how does mind go at that point? And it goes in two directions. It goes larger, vaster, and at the same time when you are not feeling well there’s this regression into the “ouchy body” at that point. And as I have been counseling with people from time to time in Hospice and so on, the most important question for most of them was “Am I tired enough to let go?” Because as long as I have something that I still want to do I will overcome the tiredness. I want the child to be married, I want the book to be completed – so that is part of the December work. So I am now carving out this material by introspection; how I feel and how it’s happening to me. Looking at the colleagues who are one after the other going at this time – and my reflections on my interactions with them is also good. Sometimes with regret and sometimes it is wonderful that I shared so much with them.
So that’s one part. The other part is that I have been working, ever since I began, on what I call “Davenology” (=Prayer-ology). What is davenology? Most of the time when people go to the Synagogue or Churches, they spin their wheels. They are being told such-and-such a page, recite such things; and they are reciting but they are not worshiping or praying. In other words, the experiential thing isn’t there. And that is what I have been working on all this time. But, I haven’t yet produced the book of that. So I have over 2000 densely written pages that have to be condensed into a book. The working title for me at this point is “Handbook for the Davener” – so the person - Davening - the word by the way people don’t know what it is derived from, but I believe that it is from the word “Devinum” – to do the Divine thing). So I want to do this Davenology thing. Those are the 2 things that are urgent.
A third thing is a conversation I had with his Holiness the Dalai Lama. In Buddhism you talk about the turnings of the wheel. There’s there Theravada, the first turning, there’s the Mahayana, second turning, Vajrayana third turning – and I confronted him and I said isn’t it time that you should do the fourth turning of the wheel? Because your previous incarnation or the Dalai Lama before you was not friendly to people outside of Tibet. – he was quite xenophobic – white devils and stuff like that. Now, you are going Madison Square Garden and doing initiations in the holy of holies of Tibetan – the Kalachakra - and what is it that you want to accomplish? Is this not the beginning of the fourth turning? And he says, “for this you need to have Gautama himself to come back”. There were people there and I couldn’t say as I would want to say, “hey Tenzin Gatsyo, we are just talking to each other”. You are it, you know? Look, you took Buddhism out of a corner of Tibet and made it Universal. So it’s the same situation. If I’m so Universal, why should I be Buddhist? Right? So, that has to do with the fourth turning.
Chasidism has had 3 turnings. The first turn of Chasidism was the sons of the Prophets and the Dead Sea Scrolls – that was the first part. The second one was the Medieval people in Germany and in North Africa. In Germany it was Yehuda the Pious in Ratizbon – Regensburg and the children of Maimonedes who continued the work of Bachirim Bakuda were doing as they in Germany were doing like a kind of how Christian Monastics do it, so Jewish Monastics do it in this form, and they were doing as Sufi’s are doing so Jewish Sufi’s are doing. So I am also doing a book on the fourth turning of Chasidism.
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