The Jewish Art of Meditation by Malkie Schulman

The Jewish Home | JUNE 9, 2022 The Jewish ArT of MediTATion

By MAlkie schulMAn

“If I was able to make one change in our educational system,” says Rabbi Baruch Klein, rabbi and counselor with a spiritual chassidic flavor in Brooklyn, NY, “I would implement 10-15 minutes of quiet time once or twice a day in every yeshiva, where children from the very young to the older ones, would sit quietly with the teacher or rebbe with no distraction and just have the opportunity to go inside themselves and meditate.

“If our children would grow up knowing how to be present and completely focused on what’s in front of them, the Jewish people would look very different. In our world today, we are so distracted and so unable to just ‘be’ that when Shabbos comes, we go crazy, we don’t know what to do with our downtime.”

Jewish Meditation

What comes to mind for many when the word “meditation” is mentioned is the image of someone sitting on the floor in the lotus position, back and head erect, cross-legged, palms up on the lap with eyes gently closed or perhaps open and gazing into a candle’s flame. This, however, is not the definition of meditation; it is simply one technique of one type of meditation.

Some people believe meditation is a non-Jewish concept, taken from the eastern religions.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” explains Rabbi Doniel Katz, Founder and Director of The Elevation Project. There are numerous sources throughout the Torah from the Zohar to the Chumash to Shulchan Aruch and many other holy sefarim referencing meditation. For a start, according to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, zt”l, in his book, Jewish Meditation, in ancient times, when we had thousands of true prophets in our nation, an essential part of their process was the ability to meditate. Actual prophecy comes about through intense meditation.

Even for those who understand that meditation is deeply sourced in the Torah, many are of the opinion that it is solely a chassidic concept. It would not detract from the validity of the approach if that was the case. However, even that’s not true. The classic mussar approach of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, says R’ Klein, includes meditative practices. One method called hispaylus meditation includes the practice of repeating the same word or phrase over and over, fully engaging the body and emoting with the phrase until it penetrates the heart and, in due time, the person’s character and behaviors change.

There are, actually, many types of meditation and many techniques to practicing each of those types. There are also many goals to meditation. For example, do you want to feel more relaxed? The practice of meditation can help. Do you want to learn how to be in the present moment, experiencing everything in your life as it is happening right in front of you? Practice meditation. Do you want to be deeply and spiritually connected to G-d? Do you want to know your prayers are soaring to the Heavens? Learn the art of meditation. Do you want to improve your character traits, develop your personality, enhance your personal relationships? Sleep better at night? Meditation can help with all of these.

For the purpose of this article, however, we will be mainly focusing on how meditation can enhance kavana in prayer. But to figure that out, we need a working definition of meditation.

of time, and then doing it. It is concentrating all ones’ faculties of the mind, emotional being, awareness, senses, to one focal point.

Or no focal point.

A deeper level of meditation is transcending the mind completely and simply “being.” This is the ability to be present without any thought at all, transcending all internal and external distractions, finding oneself in the presence of one’s divine self, one’s soul.

The ability to meditate is within every human, Mrs. Fally Klein, hypnotherapist who specializes in breathwork in Brooklyn, contends. Like a flower that will find the sun even if it means sprouting through the cracks of the sidewalk to reach it, we all possess this innate ability.

“Many of us, however, have difficulty believing we possess this ability, especially in regards to the deeper meditative experience,” says Rabbi Katz.

“People say to me it can’t be what you’re saying is true. They become cynical, believing the true meditative experience is only for tzaddikim. But the Baal Shem Tov,” he continues, “came to teach us that even the potato farmer can achieve this state.”

Think about the limitless

possibilities when you are in control of your thoughts instead of them controlling you.

Not to say that achieving a meditative state is simple. To the uninitiated, concentrating on one point to the exclusion of everything else may sound easy. It’s not. To illustrate this, Rabbi Kaplan recommends a simple exercise:

Close your eyes for a moment and stop thinking.

If you’re like most people who don’t have serious meditative experience, it’ll be impossible to keep your mind clear for more than a few seconds. But with practice in the right technique, it can be done, and when it is achieved, the results are astounding.

Think about the limitless possibilities when you are in control of your thoughts instead of them controlling you. Instead of endless obsessing over why she did that and how could she do that and how will you pass that test tomorrow and how will you accomplish all those things you have to do, you can simply decide that you’re not going to think about that now. Instead, you’re going to gaze at this beautiful rose in front of you in the vase on the table and enjoy its petals, its fragrance, and every nuance of its colors. to attune it to emotionally and tangibly experience the infinite light, wisdom and energy of the divine soul that is within each of us. It means bonding our consciousness with the divine soul, Hashem, and experiencing that as reality, the same way we experience the world below as reality.

“You have to understand,” continues Rav Katz, “deveikus is not just an experience. It’s a bandwidth, a spectrum of experience. For example, your experience of deveikus may translate into feeling like a drop of water in a vast ocean of unified divine light (of G-d). For someone else, the experience of deveikus may be accessing amazing, deep insights like gematrias and other Torah wisdom. A third might have an out of body experience, moving up through the upper worlds, speaking to tzaddikim or malachim.”

Two of the techniques used to achieve deveikus are called hisbodedus and hisbonenus. These techniques are designed to achieve different aspects of deveikus.

Hisbodedus has been practiced for thousands of years by both simple and holy Jews, and it requires separating oneself from the external world in order to concentrate solely on one’s inner world. Daily, weekly, or monthly, a person would take themselves to a quiet room or a peaceful place in the forest perhaps and commune with G-d. According to R’ Avraham (son of Rambam), says Rav Katz, you don’t have to go anywhere externally to experience hisbodedus. It’s simply isolating the internal deepest part of your consciousness and separating it from your external thoughts about parnassa, yesterday, etc. It means quieting your mind, enabling you to go into the deepest light within you.

Hisbonenus is a technique from the Ba’al Hatanya which is composed of different elements but essentially consists of contemplating about Hashem being within and surrounding all things. Once an individual is completely immersed in these ideas, they will feel tremendous divine light and energy being downloaded into them.

These techniques to reach deveikus are different paths with the same essential goals: to transform your heart and open your mind to experience a greater sense of self, a greater realization of reality, a deeper state of consciousness, and a direct connection to Source.

Avodah Shebalev

Perhaps that is why tefilla is called

avodah sheba-

lev, service of the heart. The external actions we take during prayer are there to arouse the deep inner emotional feelings of love and awe towards the Ribbono Shel Olam.

The potential pitfall of attempting to describe a spiritual experience in words is that we often end up ruining the organic nature of the experience, comments Mrs. Fally Klein. For instance, it would be a disservice to the experience of eating ice cream to try to describe how it tastes. The nature of an experience is that you have to experience it to know what it feels like. This is true with the spiritual nature of meditation.

We can begin to ask the right questions though that can direct us to looking into this practice more seriously.

“For example,” Fally asks, “have you ever thought about the three steps back and three steps forward that you take before reciting the Shemoneh Esrei? Most people don’t, but there is a reason Hashem gave us those steps. We’re taking three steps back from the physical world and three steps forward into the spiritual world. Three small steps. It’s very simple, but simple does not mean easy,” she stresses.

“Actually, my most basic tip for people interested in getting into meditation is very uninspiring and very simple yet in all my years of encouraging people to do it no one has yet come back to me and said, ‘OK, I did it, what’s your next tip?’

“And the tip is,” she shares, “to commit to practicing three deep breaths three times a day. Thoughts can come in – that doesn’t matter – but no holding a cellphone or anything in your hand. Just do that three times a day for month, and I guarantee it will help you with your kavana. ‘What if I don’t do it right?’ You may ask. Stop. Just do it. Period.”

Important steps to any meditation practice is: the awareness of the constant noise, aka thoughts we have running through our minds 24/7, most of which is found in our subconscious which we’re not even conscious of. The second and difficult step is to work on quieting it. Deep breathing helps with that.

Set aside a specific time, find a comfortable place to sit, and breathe deeply. After a few deep breaths, it is helpful to conduct a body scan. This means mentally scanning the body from head to toes, simply being aware of each part of your body.

What follows these preliminary steps depend on your meditation goals. For enhancing kavana, the next steps will involve working on arousing the emotions of love and divine awe in your body and learning how to tune into your divine light within.

Although these steps, according to Rav Doniel Katz, are not difficult to do when you have access to the right techniques and skill sets, it is not something that can be learned from this kind of venue (an article in a magazine). From this point on, Rav Katz suggests, meditative techniques should be learned within the context of the experiential learning process, which means taking advantage of the kosher meditation instructors and classes available today.

As Rav Katz says, “We can work hard, or we can work smart. The Torah way is the smart way. You choose.”

The true power and purpose of our prayers lie within the deep emotional connection we forge with Hashem during that time.

Nevertheless, how many times do any of us feel that intense level of alignment with Hashem when we daven? asks Rav Katz. Some people never feel it, some people feel it sometimes, but very few feel it all the time.

“But,” he asks, “what if you could feel that closeness to Hashem every time you prayed three times a day?”

According to Fally, prayer is talking to G-d, and meditation is listening for His response. They’re both two sides of the same conversation.

“Just as there’s an art to learning to communicate

with Hashem, which is the art of prayer,” she explains, “there’s the art of learning to listen for His response. And it’s a craft we all can learn.”

The problem is that many people look at kavana in prayer like another box to check off on their checklist. I said my brachos today, I recited Modeh Ani this morning, I washed netilat yadayim, check, check, check. Kavana (and truthfully, none of the mitzvos) work that way. It’s a practice, an avodah. Time needs to be taken out of our days to work on it. It’s not about mouthing my thank yous to Hashem, then hopping into the car, and doing my grocery shopping.

The true power and purpose of our prayers lie within the deep emotional connection we forge with Hashem during that time.

“What kavana in our prayer means,” says Fally, “is having presence and intention. It means davening with no distractions like a mother looking into her child’s eyes and talking to him without texting on her cellphone at the same time. Having kavana means transcending both internal and external distraction so we can make eye contact with Hashem.”

“When we pray with kavana, it implies deveikus,” says Rav Katz. This, in turn, implies that kavana is an emotional experience; it’s not about simply understanding the words on the page but having the emotional and spiritual experience of talking to and being heard by Someone.

“There are three aspects of kavana,” continues Rav Katz. “1) Having the intent – choosing to do something consciously; 2) Attention – focusing my entire consciousness on my prayers; and 3) Emotions – experiencing and feeling the words I’m speaking to the Being I’m speaking to.

“The prayer experience is no longer between me and my prayerbook; it’s between me and Hashem. When a person can do that, they become able to raise their consciousness with love and fear so much so that they feel flooded with shefa, brocha and chiyus as they pray.”

Kavana in Prayer

According to R’ Klein, there are two ways to connect to Hashem in prayer. One is through bakashas tzerachav – asking Hashem to meet our worldly needs. From this physical world, we ask G-d to give us health, livelihood, good relationships, etc.

Another way, he explains, is transcending this physical world and attuning oneself to the higher realms, the world of unity, connecting experientially with the soul world, with Hashem, and praying from there. “It’s a different experience,” he shares, “than when we’re down below, asking Hashem for money for tuition. When you’re up there, none of our materialistic needs matter. According to the Ba’al Shem Tov, it all boils down to, ‘We want to be in Your presence, Hashem.’ If we don’t have that, then nothing really matters.”

The Ba’al Shem Tov approached prayer through direct conversation with G-d, going straight to the Source as opposed to reaching the Source through the work of character trait refinement which is the way of the classic mussar approach. Depending on one’s goals, needs and personality, the approach will vary.

“But the true goal to keep in mind,” continues R’ Klein, “if we think deeply enough about it, is to understand that the root of all sorrow in the world is a result of the body and soul not being in alignment.”

Deveikus on any level addresses that.

The Benefits of Meditation

“We live in a world full of distraction,” says Mrs. Fally Klein. “Not just with the insane amount of technology at our fingertips and the fact that many of us live in big cities but even dealing with our own five senses, we are distracted from our inner world.” Our senses are constantly multi-tasking, and the world celebrates that. The truth is we don’t do anything well when we multi-task. True art happens through dedication and focus on one detail at a time. One of the myriad benefits of meditation is helping our five senses to stop multitasking.

“When we learn to release our attachment to the distractions of life,” shares Fally, “then we develop the natural ability to focus on one thing at a time. When we commit to enjoying each detail of our lives – one sensation, one thought, one prayer, one breath – each one moment we live becomes like a piece of art to appreciate and cherish. We learn that every thought that comes up doesn’t have to be taken care of right this minute.”

It’s about focusing on “now” rather than what needs to be done now. One is “being” based and one is action-based. And it’s the way we release anxiety which is always future based – what will be….?

When a person masters his mind, he has more emotional control, more resilience, more inner peace. He is less overwhelmed and has more emunah.

“If you’re joyful,” says Rav Doniel Katz, “you learn better, your relationships are better, you’re more focused, more compassionate and productive. The psychological benefits of self-mastery are enormous. You’re more of a mensch and live a better and wholesome life.

“Meditation is about helping the individual release their negative tendencies, their anger, fear, doubt and pain. When someone is in pain and feels like a failure, they can do every aveira. When the same individual feels empowered, they can push through anything and do things they never thought possible.”

Other benefits include an enhanced ability to make decisions that comes with being proficient in clearing the mind so completely. When you remove ego and all the fears, through meditation, you can go to the shoresh of your soul and understand this is what Hashem wants from me; you can access very deep insights. We become more objective.

On a purely physical level, the physical world becomes so much more beautiful and pleasurable. Gazing at a rose without the filter of your mind and all its distractions becomes a breathtaking experience.

People sleep better at night when they learn how to meditate and feel more refreshed in the morning.

And the list goes on…