Balak: Our Donkeys, Ourselves
As is true for many people, my early years of meditation practice often felt like torture. When everything in the outer world became silent, I was left alone with my inner voices. More often than not, those voices were anxious, judgmental, and cruel.
On one particular retreat, in the silence, my critical inner voice was in full force, beating me up at every turn. In the morning: You just let the door slam rather than closing it quietly You probably ruined everyone’s meditation. Later: Pay attention and meditate! Stop getting distracted! You are terrible at meditating like you are terrible at everything. In the evening: The person next to you probably hates you for fidgeting. You are messing up this retreat for her. Towards the end of the day, I found myself sitting by the lake at sunset and trying to take in its beauty Absent-mindedly, I picked up a stone and threw it into the lake. You probably just ruined the entire ecosystem, you idiot.
I laughed out loud – it was so ridiculous! And yet underneath the laughter was a lot of pain. I suddenly realized how brutal and unforgiving I was to myself on a daily basis. I, who always believed I had “healthy self esteem,” saw how deeply I believed there was something essentially wrong with me. I had a vision of the “oneness” of the world - its beauty and perfection, and, try as I might, I could not see myself within it I saw myself as defective and flawed. I saw how it framed my everyday life and shaped what I believed I was capable of. I began to cry and, not knowing what else to do, I said to myself, I’m sorry. I knew it was only the beginning and that I would need to learn a language of kindness and gentleness towards myself if I was ever going to heal. I knew it was going to be a long and difficult journey. I knew it was a small gesture in the face of so many years of self-loathing and cruelty. All I could do, however, was say over and over again, I’m sorry.
Parshat Balak offers a powerful parallel lesson on our relationship to ourselves. At the top of the parsha (Torah portion), Balak, a Moabite king, is frightened by the military prowess of the Israelites as they advance closer to his land. He asks Balaam, a pagan prophet, to ride out to the mountaintop overlooking the Israelites and to curse them. Balaam saddles up his female donkey and begins the journey
God, angry at Balaam, puts an angel of death in front of Balaam’s donkey that only the donkey can see. At each point that the donkey turns away from the angel of death, Balak beats her Finally:
The One opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?"
29 Balaam said to the donkey, "For you have humiliated me; if I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now!"
30 The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden since you first started until now? Have I been accustomed to do this to you?" He said, "No."
31 The Eternal opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the One standing in the road, with a sword drawn in his hand. He bowed and prostrated himself on his face.
– Numbers 22:28-31
The donkey in the story sounds so much like what our bodies and our inner selves might sound like if God “opened their mouths.” Why are you abusing me? Why don’t you trust me? What have I ever done to you? Why can’t you believe I have wisdom that your thinking mind cannot comprehend?
Balaam’s misplaced, murderous rage at his poor donkey also sounds familiar. He cannot understand why his donkey is betraying his wishes. He cannot control the world underneath and around him. He says he is humiliated by the donkey’s actions, feeling a shame for the parts of himself he cannot control. And so he beats down on his donkey, harder and harder, externalizing his frustration and crippling his means of transportation and support in the process.
The story becomes even more poignant if we take into account the Baal Shem Tov’s interpretation that the word for donkey in Hebrew (chamor) also means “matter” , or the physical substance out of which the body is created. Balaam’s deepest inner “matter” tries to show him the way out of danger, but Balaam doesn’t listen. As Rabbi Simon Jacobson writes, “Often when our bodies speak to us, beckoning us to act, we may ignore the voice. Or worse: We may “beat” the body, as Balaam beat his donkey, because it is becoming a nuisance and distracting us from our misguided plans.”
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