Good Yom Tov,
I think that over the past week, we’ve seen how much we can learn from children’s books. We’ve learned a lot from Jon J. Muth’s Zen Ties and Zen Shorts, and this morning, following our pattern of bringing in gems from our children’s bookshelves, I wanted you to hear a story written by Kobi Yamada. I heard about Kobi Yamada during my time at Chautauqua this summer. He is not only the author of many children’s books, but also the president of Compendium, an online store that sells inspirational and positive thinking items. His children’s books are beautiful looking and illustrated by Mae Besom, who is based in China. The two books that caught my eye in the Chautauqua bookstore were What Do you Do with an Idea? and What Do you Do with a Problem? Today, I want to focus on the latter, What Do you Do with a Problem, and follow in our minds the journey of a young boy:
I don’t know how it happened, but one day I had a problem. I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for it. I really didn’t like having a problem, but it was there.
“Why is it here? What does it want? What do you do with a problem?” I thought.
I wanted to make it go away.
I shooed it. I scowled at it. I tried ignoring it. But nothing worked.
I started to worry about my problem. What if it swallows me up?
What if my problem sneaks up and gets me?
What if it takes away all my things?
I worried a lot. I worried about what would happen. I worried about what could happen. I worried about this and worried about that.
And the more I worried, the bigger my problem became.
I wished it would just disappear. I tried everything I could to hide from it. I even found ways to disguise myself. But it still found me.
And the more I avoided my problem, the more I saw it everywhere.
I thought about it all the time. I didn’t feel good at all.
I couldn’t take it anymore. “This has to stop!” I declared.
Maybe I was making my problem bigger and scarier than it actually was. After all, my problem hadn’t really swallowed me up or attacked me.
I realized I had to face it.
So even though I didn’t want to, even though I was really afraid, I got ready and I tackled my problem!
When I got face-to-face with it, I discovered something. My problem wasn’t what I thought it was.
I discovered it had something beautiful inside.
My problem held an opportunity!
It was an opportunity for me to learn and to grow. To be brave. To do something.
It showed me that it was so important to look closely because some opportunities only come once.
So now I see problems differently. I’m not afraid of them anymore, because I know their secret…
Every problem has an opportunity for something good. You just have to look for it.
The End.
Now, imagine sitting and reading that to your toddler. Maybe they’d get it, maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d understand parts of it. You, however, would come away having learned something! Is this book just for children? Definitely not. Dealing with a problem is something that breaks generational, racial, religious, cultural, and geographical lines. Is there anything more universal than the fact that each one of us encounters problems in our lives? And what better time is there than the High Holy Days, than on Yom Kippur, to face those problems and find the opportunity inside?
We often forget that Yom Kippur, indeed all of the Days of Awe, are days of self-improvement, times to make ourselves better than we were than the year before, by asking forgiveness and forgiving, and by looking inside ourselves and finding the strength to overcome the problems in our lives. An Orthodox colleague of mine, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, recently recommended a book entitled Cheshbon HaNefesh. The work is by a 19th century intellectual, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Levin of Satanov Podilia, now modern day Ukraine. Rabbi Levin was a leader in what we call the Haskalah movement, the Jewish enlightenment which occurred when Jewish thinkers of the 18th and 19th century incorporated philosophy, science, and logic to traditionalism and theology. The Haskalah was, in many ways, the birth of both the Reform Movement and Modern Orthodoxy. Levin’s book, Cheshbon HaNefesh, was published in 1809 and is what he called “A Guide to Self-Improvement and Character Refinement.” Cheshbon HaNefesh is a term we hear in this season, and it means taking an accounting of our souls, so it was indeed an appropriate title for this work. The book’s introduction begins with a mental picture:
You are walking along the riverbank and you come upon a valley full of reeds…all of them standing straight. Not one of them has the ability to move even a hair’s-breadth from its position. Suddenly, a brief gust of wind comes and the entire upper surface is swaying to and fro like the waves of the seas. Not one of the reeds…has the ability to withstand the wind and maintain its position even for a moment.
Rabbi Levin calls this situation a characterization of the “nefesh ha-behamis – the animal spirit.” He explains that reeds, and animals, lack something that we humans are imbued with: our nefesh, our soul. Now, for all the pet owners out there, Rabbi Levin, I do not believe, is telling us that animals are soulless, but rather that humanity, according to theology, was provided with a unique soul, and that science sees our brains working differently than that of animals. Because of this belief, he states that the nefesh ha-behamis, the animal spirit, “lacks the will to exercise choice, the concepts of positive or negative precepts cannot be applicable to it at all.”
Humanity, on the other hand, “who is wise, crafty, and who controls his will – can move the ‘animal spirit’ to serve his own needs. He can stir it by providing it with desire or pain.” Rabbi Levin teaches that humanity, at a certain point in development, “becomes capable of exercising free choice.” In other words, we are not simply reeds standing immovable until a gust of wind pushes us to move; we are not controlled by the fate of the world, set to perish or thrive based upon the weather or the will of God. Indeed, according to the sages in the Mishnah, our 2nd century Rabbinic text, “Everything is foreseen, yet free will is given. The world is judged with goodness, and all is according to the majority of deeds.” (Pirkei Avot 3:19)
We have the choice in life to change our minds, change our deeds, change ourselves; we have the choice to do what the little boy does in Kobi Yamada’s book, to yell out “This has to stop!” We have the choice to face our problems, look closely at them, and see what beauty lies inside: the opportunity. We make these kinds of choices each and every day, sometimes without a second’s thought, not knowing that they soon begin to define our lives. It is a choice to forgive, it is a choice to allow yourself to be forgiven, and it is a choice to change your ways. It’s not easy, as our children’s book teaches. It’s easier to just worry about a problem and do nothing. It’s easier to attempt to shoo the problem away, to scowl at it, or to ignore it. But by doing so we miss out on a learning experience that we are encouraged, if not commanded, to engage in. It is the journey to gain experience and wisdom.
And so, I will end where we all began, with a story:
After a long, hard climb up the mountain, spiritual seekers finally found themselves in front of a great teacher. Bowing deeply, they asked the question that had been burning inside them for so long: “How do we become wise?”
There was a long pause until the teacher emerged from meditation. Finally the reply came: “Good choices.”
“But teacher, how do we make good choices?”
“From experience,” responded the teacher.
“And how do we get experience?”
“Bad choices,” smiled the teacher.
This holiday season, as today continues and as the gates close this evening, let us remember that every choice, good or bad, carries with it a gift. The good choice, such as to face a problem, yields the beauty of an opportunity. And, even a bad choice provides us with experience, so that eventually we can face the problem differently. As we all engage this day in cheshbon hanefesh, the accounting of our souls, let us do so with optimism, knowing that we all carry within us the nefesh God provided to us, which allows us to choose our adventure in life. And tonight, after break-fast, pick up a few children’s books, and see what else you can learn.