Day Seven of SIAD Blog Tour - Arjuna Jayawardena
I am excited to share Arjuna Jayawardena's post for Day Seven of the Somehow I Am Different blog tour! Learn about themes of religious differences and similarities, tradition and continuity, finding self in spirituality, community coming together in times of joy, and the art of asking ourselves important questions for our future and the future of our world.
What struck me most when reading Somehow I am Different was the strong tie between being Jewish and feeling embedded in a community.
My own background is in early Buddhist practices and philosophy (I met Alyssa on a Buddhist study abroad program), a tradition that often, at least on the surface, emphasizes self-reliance and solitude. A wholehearted approach to the Buddhist texts, however, will suggest that community and friendship is indeed integral to the more solitary practice of meditation and investigation. As much as the tradition values the transformation and awakening of the heart for each individual, it suggests community to be an indispensable support to the practice. Yet, while there is great detail in the description of the structure of experience and the mind, and great depth in describing the process and practice of navigating and undoing that structure, there is very little said, in detail or in general, about what community is and how to foster it.
In my own life, I have often felt a painful absence of genuine community: most people I see are strangers, and the moments I genuinely feel in tune with another, unafraid of their presence, and free from the need to present myself, are rare and precious. Sometimes, sitting alone in my room at night, staring out the window at the dark blue skies, at all the houses around me, at the trees, the stars, and the lone and lit bedroom windows, I feel such a tenderness; I know, somewhere, that we are all part of the cosmos and of creation. And yet, when I step outside my home into the daylight, I can hardly look at the man who has lived next door for so many years without a slight feeling of dis-ease. I don’t believe that this is the case for myself alone. If it is a feeling shared by many, then I think we can understand the importance of genuine community in our world.
In Somehow I am Different, Alyssa writes: “My own experience with pálinka was mostly connected to my experience with Teleki and closely tied to the cheers, ‘L’Chaim!’ which means ‘To life!’ in Hebrew. When any friend of Teleki experienced a birthday, a raise, a birth of a child, a return from a vacation or any form of good news, the Teleki community celebrated with pálinka… for me, the celebrations demonstrate that a thriving community is about more than coming together in hard times. It is about supporting each other in good times and celebrating the small beauties of life”.
Joy is the emotion that arises when there is an experience of being blessed. It is a very powerful and tender emotion. I’ve never thought much of it, to be honest. I think more often of suffering and sorrow. This is partly because the spiritual tradition I feel most familiar in speaks so often of dukkha, the feeling of being incomplete and missing out on life-as-it-is. This focus on dissatisfaction has been incredibly powerful for me. Just having that sense of never-quite-fully-arriving acknowledged, rather than pathologized, was powerful. Simply seeing that sorrow, opening up to it, and listening to it allows it to unravel and open into an intimacy that holds all the world. The few times I have experienced this clarity in relationship have been all the more powerful; it has strengthened the sense of being able to be unguarded and naked in relationship, which, I have found, is one of the most challenging (and important) contexts of any spirituality.
Like sorrow, joy is also a deeply felt emotion. Think of a young child celebrating unabashedly a gift they received, even the gift of their parents’ unconditional love; think of the joy of making love and forgetting the sense of separation. I am so shy to share my joy with others. I am afraid of they’re seeing my own happiness and celebration. When I feel the overwhelming beauty of the world, I am so vulnerable.
Alyssa, I think, is suggesting that celebration is a communal experience of joy. It’s wonderful for me to think of this because I so often seek to share my difficult emotions and so often forget to share my deepest joy. Both are equally frightening and equally alive, and being so, are equally important facets of community.
András Mayer is one of two brothers who runs Teleki, a small prayer house in Budapest. He speaks about community quite explicitly, saying that “Only in a small community can you see that your contribution actually does something. In a big community, you don’t see it.” He mentions one member of the Teleki community who would donate a bottle of grape juice for each event, always feeling as though it was not enough. But, according to András, it was enough and it did matter: “A lot of small contributions like that make the difference. Small things keep the whole place running. This gives a feeling of community.”
This reminded me of something I read in Charles Eisenstein’s The Ascent of Humanity (apologies in advance for the lengthy quotation!): "Underneath even the most well-motivated social gathering is the knowledge: We don't really need each other… In many of my adult relationships I feel diminished, not enlarged. I don't feel like I've let go of boundaries to become part of something greater than my self; instead I find myself tightly guarding my boundaries and doling out only that little bit of myself that is safe or likeable or proper… The feeling "We don't really need each other" is by no means limited to leisure gatherings. What better description could there be of the loss of community in today's world? We don't really need each other. We don't need to know the person who grows, ships, and processes our food, makes our clothing, builds our house, creates our music, makes or fixes our car; we don't even need to know the person who takes care of our babies while we are at work. We are dependent on the role, but only incidentally on the person fulfilling that role. Whatever it is, we can just pay someone to do it (or pay someone else to do it) as long as we have money. And how do we get money? By performing some other specialized role that, more likely than not, amounts to other people paying us to do something for them. This is what I call the monetized life, in which nearly all aspects of existence have been either converted to commodities or assigned a financial value".
The anonymity that our current societal structure affords us in the name of practicality and efficiency equates to the breakdown of a true sense of community. In a small community, small contributions make a difference –they are needed and the smallness of the community, according to András, allows the contributor to be personally received by the community. She does not remain anonymous.
I do think, however, that the question of need in relationships is a complex question. For instance, when does heartfelt need or appreciation become dependency? Also, does need simply mean financial or material need, i.e. I need to paint my shed and Chris, my next door neighbor, is skilled in painting; he offers his help and so I am indebted to him and will one day reciprocate his kindness; a cycle of offering and receiving has been established and laid as the foundation of community. This sort of need is important, but the need to truly be seen by each other –of entering our vulnerability collectively- is equally (if not more) important.
András’ brother, Gábor, says: “It’s interesting to think about what you were and how you were. When I started, Judaism was new for me… I feel now that I am trying to do as much as possible to take from the past and to bring it into the future so we will have a lot to embrace from the old times. This is our last chance to do that. It’s frightening, actually, that people living now don’t know much about the old things, and the people who do know and who do remember are dying.”
Gábor, who along with his brother oversees Teleki, is speaking of a connection with one’s ancestry. In the Buddhist world, one might use the word lineage. In modernity, this might seem as an outdated idea and even be taken as an oppressive and limiting subservience to the unbreakable and unquestionable authoritarian dogmas of the past (neatly called ‘tradition’).
But then again, what does it really mean to be connected to the past, to something ancient? I think the deeper meaning that Gábor is suggesting here is rather a reverent and sacred sense of being part of an ancient stream that is not defiant of the future, or of creativity and newness, but rather, blooms into what is fresh and needed. When we feel within our hearts the so-called lineage… and I think, in the most fundamental sense, our ancestry and our lineage is all of life, all creatures, and all of time… it is not a limitation or a prison. It is a profound opening into the all-inclusive and indefinable community of all time and all life. Now, I don’t believe this is exactly what Gábor is speaking of when he mentions his felt duty to connect the new generation with the past, but I do think that it is implicit therein.
My meditative practice has, in little moments here and there, touched on this sense of community: this sense of perfectly belonging within a timeless stream of creation that includes everything and stretches to the very edge of existence. As abstract as this may sound, it is not an abstraction; it is a deeply felt and directly experienced dimension of reality that, surprisingly, has little to do with our beliefs and views. But, even with some familiarity with that sense of community, there still remains the more concrete questions of how to form an actual, physical community.
For instance, who grows our food (or makes our pálinka)? How do I get to know my neighbors? How can I live in close quarters with the same people for an extended amount of time (without losing it!)?
Our personal communities may one day reflect the cosmic sense of community. At the very least, I believe this is the direction to be heading in. This is a direction filled with questions that can be answered not readily, but with time, experience, and many surprises. The answers will be felt, not formulated. We will know the truth of our journey, the rightness of our direction, by our feeling more and more at peace and a part of each other. We feel will our uniqueness and our inseparability, like two puzzle pieces whose differences make all the difference.
We will be, as Alyssa was during her trip to Budapest, “reminded that despite [our differences in] nationality… and [religious] identity, [we are] not alone.”
Thank you for sharing your past, present, and hopes with us, Arjuna!
If you would like to learn more about Somehow I Am Different, please visit our website at www.somehowiamdifferent.com.
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