Two Warsaw Heroes & the Thisness of What Is
[Continued from page one]
“Shapira’s Hasidism includes transcendent meditation—training the imagination and channeling the emotions to achieve mystical visions. The ideal way, Shapira taught, was to ‘witness one’s thoughts to correct negative habits and character traits…’ He also preached ‘sensitization to holiness’, a process of discovering the holiness within oneself and the natural world.”
“The task of this meditation was to open the heart, to unclog the channel between the infinite and the mortal, and to rise into a state of rapture known as ‘Great Mind’.”
Hassidic teacher Avram Davis writes, “There is only one God, by which we mean the Oneness that subsumes all categories. We might call this Oneness the ocean of reality and everything swims in it [which abides in it] the first teaching of the Ten Commandments, ‘there is only one zot, thisness.’ Zot is a feminine word for ‘this’. The word zot is itself one of the names of God—the Isness of what is.”Rabbi Shapira’s “message was that even in the ghetto, common people, not just ascetics or rabbis, could temper their suffering through meditation.” A similar message was given by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, when he wrote, "opportunities to grow spiritually beyond oneself do exist even in a provisional existence. Most men in the concentration camp believed that the real opportunity of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge... the way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances, to add a deeper meaning to his life."
Rabbi Shapira suffered the same losses, fears, pain and suffering during the war as the other residents in the ghetto, yet “his mission was compassion—to project the supernatural powers of kindness into the realm of speech, so that they might take on concrete, specific form."
In 1912, Henryk Goldzmit, [pen name: Janusz Korczak] “abandoned both his successful literary and medical careers” to found an orphanage for 100 boys and girls in Warsaw. In 1940, the orphanage was forced to move to an abandoned club in the ‘district of the damned’ when the Jews were ordered into the ghetto. Goldzmit had several chances to escape to freedom, but he refused to leave the children. He taught the children mindfulness meditation to focus their thoughts on other than their suffering, starvation and pain. In August, 1942, escorted by German soldiers, he was seen in a photograph marching hand in hand with a group of children and 192 other children as they boarded one of the small red deportation boxcars. He joined the children because “he said simply, he knew his presence would calm them”.
“In 1971, the Russians named a newly discovered asteroid after him, 2163 Korczak… The Poles claim Korczak as a martyr, and the Israelis revere him as one of the Thirty-Six Just Men, whose pure souls make possible the world’s salvation. According to legend, these few alone, through their good hearts and good deeds keep the too-wicked world from being destroyed. For their sake, all of humanity is spared. The legend says that they are ordinary people, not flawless or magical, and that most of them remain unrecognized throughout their lives, while they choose to perpetuate goodness, even in the midst of inferno.”
This is about the recognition of the Thisness of what is and transcending the suffering of self and others through this recognition.
[Source: Diane Ackerman - Shambhala Sun Magazine, March 2008]
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