Bob Schwartz

It’s complicated. Everything. Today as much as ever, maybe more.

Then there is Sodo Yokoyama (1907-1980), known as the Grass Flute Zen Master.

Sodo was a student of Kodo Sawaki. Sawaki was a renowned Zen teacher who had well-known students, including Kosho Uchiyama, and his student Shohaku Okumura.

Less known, Sodo spent the last twenty-two years of his life sitting alone in a public park practicing zazen and playing music on a leaf. Children gathered around him.

Arthur Braverman writes in The Grass Flute Zen Master: Sodo Yokoyama:

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Three days before his death, Sodo-san said, “I am grateful to have been able to study Buddhism, I am grateful to have been able to obtain great peace. I was saved by the sunset.

The sunset
unaware of the sunset
is still the sunset

“If people come to visit me,” he said on his deathbed, “tell them I said ‘thank you.’”

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It’s complicated. Then it’s not.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

Dear ___,

I hope this finds you and finds you well. I came across your name today in an old list of addresses. It reminded me that it has been years since we have been in touch. There are so many memories of the time we shared a neighborhood. I see online that ___ died three years ago. He was a small and good part of our lives. He was an irreplaceable part of yours. We are well and maybe surprisingly are living back here in ___. Anyway, if this does reach you and you want, please do reply.

Bob

Why do this?
To prove that what happened happened?
To show that the connection of
Proximity and convenience
Was more and is durable?
To know that life before and life now
Are all one life
That time before and time now
Are all one time
And if one life and one time
Then life and time go on forever?
Or just to send love and say hello?

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

Among my old correspondence I found a letter that closed with this:

“The 90s are turning out to be the decade when the words “it can’t happen here” are quickly disappearing from the language.”

It doesn’t matter what the topic was. I’m not a forecaster who could see that whatever I meant then is doubled now. Anybody who studies history knows that no nation or society or generation is immune to unwelcome forces. None.

Monty Python was wrong in joking that “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Actually, if you pay attention, everybody should expect the Spanish Inquisition or something like it. Anywhere, any time.

So much good goes on, thank goodness. But people being people, in the 1990s and today, stuff is going to happen. And “it can’t happen here” is never true.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

There are no atheists among baseball fans around the playoffs.

That needs clarifying. “Baseball gods” are not necessarily God in the conventional sense. Some fans will indeed pray to the Abrahamic God for team success, or if not Judaeo/Christian/Muslim, to their own parallel supreme deities.

Baseball gods are where a fan, true believer or not, seeks extra help for their team. Whether your team is an overwhelming favorite to win the whole thing, including the World Series, or your team is a long shot, the principle is the same: talent is not enough.

Twelve teams have survived the long, long season—162 grueling games—yet there are still more games to play against strong opponents. For those remaining games, talent is not enough. Something more is needed.

That’s where prayers to the baseball gods come in. Does each team have its own god? Is each of those gods equally powerful to give their team that extra something, that special boost, that can make the difference? Do those gods have playoffs among themselves? Who knows? Not me. Baseball theology is not my specialty.

It is too risky to leave baseball up to the talent of the players and the wisdom of the managers. If a little extra help is needed and sought, what’s the harm? In the playoffs, we want to enjoy the thrill of victory and avoid the agony of defeat. Whatever we believe, we pray on.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

Today is the middle of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, named after the huts (sukkot) in which we are these days supposed to dwell in or at least visit and share meals in. These structures represent dwellings the Israelites inhabited during their storied 40 years of wandering in the desert. Sukkot is also a harvest festival, and the sukkah represents the temporary huts set up in the fields.

A few wandering notes:

Kohelet (Book of Ecclesiastes)

The Book of Ecclesiastes is traditionally read on Sukkot. In Hebrew, the book is called Kohelet (also written Qohelet), named after the book’s speaker, identified in English as Preacher/Teacher. Ecclesiastes is famous for the King James translation of the opening—“Vanity, vanity, says the Preacher, all is vanity.” Other modern translators choose a different word for the ancient Hebrew hevel, instead of vanity using absurd, meaningless, pointless, wind, breath, etc.

Ecclesiastes is distinct from any book in the Hebrew Bible, and may be the most philosophically puzzling and profound. Here is a summary of its message:

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Qohelet and his audience live in a world of rapid political, social, and economic changes, and it is in such a context that he reflects on humanity’s plight. It is a world full of inconveniences, inconsistencies, and contradictions. Nothing that mortals do or have is ultimately reliable—not wealth, pleasure, wisdom, toil, or even life itself. People try to cope with the situation of anomie in various ways. They worry. They are never satisfied. They are obsessed with discovering any formula that will bring success and happiness. They try give an accounting of all that is happening. They endeavor to straighten everything that is crooked, correct every injustice, fill every void. They strive to gain an immortality of sorts through fame, progeny, wealth, or accomplishments. They try everything to gain some control, if not actually to secure an advantage in life. Nothing works, however, and still there looms the large shadow of death, from which no one can escape.

As Qohelet sees it, humans have no control over the world in which they live, for all is “vanity” (Hebrew hebel). His most persistent counsel, therefore, is to take pleasure in all that one does. Indeed, this call for enjoyment is so prominent that it is sometimes seen as the main message of the book. Yet enjoyment can hardly be the central message of the book. Nowhere in the book does Qohelet say that one should seek pleasure and, when he does speak of his own quest for pleasure, he tells us that he finds it to be, like everything else in life, elusive, fleeting, and as unreliable as wind. For Qohelet, human beings have no control over what will happen in the world, and so one should live moment by moment.

Throughout the book, there is profound awareness of God, although it is not an immanent deity of whom Qohelet speaks. The deity does not relate personally to anyone, does not enter into a covenant with anyone, does not intervene in the history of any nation in any identifiable fashion. God is wholly transcendent, and, indeed, the fundamental dissimilitude between God’s being and humanity’s being is stressed. This is what Qohelet means by the fear of God, a concept that conveys the indisputable distinction between divinity and humanity.

God remains an utter mystery to Qohelet. Although he would speak repeatedly of the power of God and the activity of God, he admits that he is not able to make much sense of them. There is no epistemological system by which to know God. Wisdom cannot fathom the significance of history. Nature, too, reveals nothing save the sovereignty and mystery of God. Neither history nor nature yields any knowledge of God to Qohelet, but Qohelet knows that there is nothing better for humanity than to enjoy the present as a gift of God.

C. L. Seow, HarperCollins Bible Commentary

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Elijah

The prophet Elijah doesn’t have his own book in the Hebrew Bible, but he is a major figure (see 1 Kings 17:1 and following for his unforgettable exploits). Each Shabbat includes the song Eliyahu Hanavi:

Elijah the Prophet
Elijah the Tishbite
Elijah the Giladite
May he soon come to us
With Messiah the son of David

In our real lives, Elijah makes his most notable appearance at the Passover seder. A glass of wine is set at the table for him, the door is opened, and at some point Elijah drops by and drinks it. Or maybe the glass is secretly emptied by a seder attendee, which impresses the kids.

The question: Why isn’t Elijah invited to join us in the sukkot? There is not even a door to open because there aren’t doors. If Elijah is thirsty and drinks at Passover, why not at Sukkot?

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Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu is the purported author of the Tao Te Ching, a basic text of Taoism and one of the world’s shortest and most powerful wisdom texts.

Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching relates directly to the huts, the sukkot of Sukkot:

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11

Thirty spokes converge on a hub
but it’s the emptiness
that makes a wheel work
pots are fashioned from clay
but it’s the hollow
that makes a pot work
windows and doors are carved for a house
but it’s the spaces
that make a house work
existence makes a thing useful
but nonexistence makes it work

Te-Ch’ing (1546–1623) says, “We all have form and think ourselves useful but remain unaware that our usefulness depends on our empty, shapeless mind. Thus, existence may have its uses, but real usefulness depends on nonexistence. Nonexistence, though, doesn’t work by itself. It needs the help of existence.”

Tao Te Ching, Red Pine translation

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Exactly. To rephrase:

an opening is left in the hut
but it’s the spaces
that make a hut work

Is this too far afield from Sukkot and Judaism? From Kohelet and Elijah? When next you ride a bicycle or cook in a pot or stand in a room or in a sukkah, please consider this.

Have a joyous Sukkot harvest.

Chris Christie is never going to be president. Or the Republican nominee.

But he’s had his moments. Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spanning 1,150 miles. It devastated New Jersey, where Christie was then governor.

It was just a few weeks before the 2012 presidential election. Barack Obama, running for reelection, visited New Jersey as part of the federal response to the devastating damage. Christie greeted him on arrival and gave him a warm and appreciative welcome. Christie’s job was to take care of the people of New Jersey and Obama’s job was to help.

Republicans lost their minds, outraged that Christie would appear to do anything positive to help Obama. Even though Christie was just doing his job, regardless of partisan politics.

Christie is now running for the Republican nomination. He will not win that nomination, but he has an additional important role. Set apart from so many high-profile scared Republicans, he is out to destroy Trump as a suitable Republican nominee or president. Whether Christie is doing this to make room for himself or because he is one of the remaining decent Republicans who believes in the rule of law and the Constitution (Christie is a former U.S. Attorney), it doesn’t matter.

A hero, a minor one, but head and shoulders above the rest of his party.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

The concluding service of Yom Kippur is Neilah, the closing of the gates of repentance. We have had our opportunity for introspection and commitment to do and be better. This is it.

Hours of services and a day without food are beneficial. But if we are honest, the mind wanders and the stomach growls.

I stared out the window as the sun set. Poems popped up like weeds. Here are a couple.

1

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where will my help come from?
Psalm 121

Sun sets behind the mountains
Scattered clouds surround it
Obscuring the last light
Or exploding in colors
The hills soon hide in darkness
Until the later waxing moon
Enlightens them and us

2

The gates are closing
No one told the coyotes
Roaming and eating
Four-footed shofars
Howling the holiday out

© 2023/5784 by Bob Schwartz

I daily walk a road surrounded by the spectacular. Amazing things to see and hear.

When we arrived I was convinced that every day these mountains and hills and cacti and birds would take my breath away, my heart soaring to heaven.

They do. But not quite as in those early days. Reminiscent of the way we love people, I suppose. You want that exhilaration to last, but it seems sometimes to settle in to a bit of subdued though still infinite appreciation for the beauty and wonder. Not quite the same thing.

No. None of that, nature or people, deserves to be even slightly demoted. Everything is new now. Sunryu Suzuki’s famous expression “Zen mind, beginners mind” is not just about Zen. About everything. One time it will be the last time. But this time is the first time.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz