Esteemed Reader: March 2010

by Jason Stern, February 24, 2010

Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine:

I was visiting with some friends who are self-described Jews-for-Vedanta. We were discussing meditation practice, and Borscht Belt humor. “I’ve got a good one,” one said. “Tell it!” we urged.

Meditators are like that—light-hearted, impulsive, bubbly. Good meditators, that is. You can tell a poor practitioner by his heaviness. He pushes his impulses down, rather than stirring his life-stuff into a pleasant effervescence.

It’s like a story about the Mullah, Nasruddin. He’s carrying a bowl of yogurt along a path in the woods. A wood-cutter looks up from his chopping. “Mullah! Where are you going with that bowl?!” “A spoonful of this stuff can change a gallon to yogurt,” replied the Mullah. “With this bowl I am going to transform a lake!”

But back to the hook-nosed navel-gazers. The joker continued: “So, when I meditate I repeat the original mantra, the primordial sound, ‘The secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord.’ And when it really gets going I feel hot, like I’m sitting on a stovetop. So…what do you call that?”

The meditators looked around at each other. “Ok, what is it?”

“It’s…OM on the Range!”

But the meditators leave our story here. As Rumi sang, If you throw dust at someone’s head, nothing will happen. If you throw water, nothing. But combine them into a lump. That marriage of water and dirt cracks open the head, and afterwards there are other marriages.

There’s a story about King Solomon and some gnats that came to log a complaint against the wind. Their claim was mistreatment, disregard, and precipitous buffeting. The king heard their grievance and said, “To judge this case fairly I must hear both sides. Summon the wind!” But when the wind arrived, the gnats were nowhere to be found.

So it is with complaining. Gnats are tiny metaphors for the voices that whine prettily in our minds.