Our Essence
Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt via hardcopy,
cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail,
Sara and Des Penny, and Maxine Shirts
Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea,
belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit
to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended
family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail
box at any time.
"It is already 9:10 PM and I don't feel like writing tonight.
So I'm not going to write much. Most of this Thoughtlet will
be a copy of an e-mail from Project Mind, which I found
interesting on several levels. I won't attempt to specify
those levels tonight, and it will be nice to get some
feedback from each of you about what you personally think
about David Devor's e-mail.
<![CDATA[ `From: "devor@huji.ac.il" <devor@projectmind.org>
To: The role of intelligence in world transformation -
Tikkun Olam <mochin@shamash.org>
Subject: Learning from the Dalai Lama
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 15:28:54 +0300
B'S"D
Dear Mochin Subscribers, PM Associates and Friends,
The story, below (copied from the Aish HaTorah site) like
many others of its genre has many lessons to teach but the
one that seems to get lost most easily is that the tradition
into which we are born pertains to our essence.
My encounter with the Dalai Lama changed
my life in ways I could never imagine
by Anonymous
I come from a totally secular Israeli home. By secular I
mean atheist -- we held no religious beliefs at all, and no
Jewish traditions and practices were kept. Yom Kippur was
ignored, and I didn't even celebrate my bar mitzvah.
When I was 16, I began to search for some kind of meaning
to life, although at the time I
didn't call it that since I didn't realize what I was doing.
I liked rebels, and I started hanging out with all kinds of
different people. I dressed and acted like a kind of hippie,
and caused no end of embarrassment to my parents. As I
approached the age of 18, what hurt them most was that I did
not want to serve in the Israeli army. Now, my parents may
be atheists but their love for Eretz Yisrael and dedication
to its defense was a religion in itself. I guess you could
say that this was the one remnant of their Jewish beliefs,
and they were devastated that I wouldn't want to be part of
the Israel Defense Forces.
I, on the other hand, had gone farther than they had --
nothing at all was sacred to me. I didn't believe in anything.
Since the army was not any more interested in a weird
character like me than I was in them, I was free to roam
around the country with all the strange characters who were
my friends. I could fill a book with my adventures from then.
At the age of 21, I packed my bags and set off for India --
to look for truth. In my quest for meaning, there was no
commune or ashram that I did not visit. I got to know many
gurus personally. Only someone who has spent time in India
can really understand the magnetic force of these communes.
The average secular young person from the permissive and
hedonistic culture of our day has already experienced a lot
of the materialistic pleasures to be found in the world by
the time he's 21. Some keep on searching for new experiences,
but even they will despair after a few years. They don't have
a higher purpose in life.
These young people have been conditioned to go against their
own traditions, and it doesn't enter their minds to search
for the true meaning in life in "their own backyard" -- in
the eternal values of Judaism. They want to find something
new -- and they discover it in India.
It's true that India has a special power over anyone who
visits. The people have a completely different outlook on
life -- they are never in a rush, nothing bothers them and
they have answers for every question! I met some truly
amazing people there, extremely spiritual people who were
able to exercise total control over their lives. There were
monks who led an ascetic lifestyle and fasted for long
periods of time. One monk I met decided that if a serpent
could hold its breath for many minutes, there was no reason
why a human being couldn't do the same and he spent his days
doing breathing exercises, training himself to hold his
breath for long periods of time. I was very impressed by
their single-minded determination to achieve their aims. My
generation is a spoiled one and never had to work hard for
anything, so such purposefulness was new to me and it really
amazed me.
Yet eventually I became disillusioned with their beliefs. An
inner voice said, "What's the purpose of all this? Even if I
stand in awe of someone who has such self-control that he can
hold his breath for a long time, or keep his hand in a
certain position for hours on end, what's he doing it for?"
The more I admired their abilities, the more it bothered me
that they seemed to be wasting those abilities on what for
me were insignificant matters.
My roaming and searching continued and eventually I went to
visit the Dalai Lama himself.
The Dalai Lama comes from Tibet. During the Chinese invasion
and takeover of Tibet, the Dalai Lama's followers were able
to smuggle him over the border to India where he has lived
ever since.
I was captivated by the Dalai Lama's personality, by his wisdom
and intelligence.
He is one of the few leaders in the world who truly believes
in non-violence, even for purposes of defense. As a result, the
Tibetans no longer have a country of their own. Nevertheless the
Dalai Lama is revered by all, and he received the Nobel Prize
for peace in recognition of his unswerving quest for world peace.
I was captivated by the Dalai Lama's personality, by his wisdom
and intelligence. I would rise early each morning and attend his
daily sermon at 4:30am. As far as I was concerned, he was a
human being without any blemishes.
Back home in Israel, my parents were worried about me. My father
sent me a letter saying he had heard that I had "freaked out" --
afraid that I'd really gone crazy. I sent a polite letter back
assuring him that I wasn't crazy but that I was now at a major
crossroads in my life. As I mailed the letter I realized that
the very wording of my letter would convince my father that I
had indeed gone crazy!
The same evening I approached one of the Dalai Lama's assistants
and asked for a private audience with the Dalai Lama the next
morning after his sermon.
The following morning I entered his chambers. He was a gentleman
who greeted everyone who came to see him. He bowed to me and
offered me a seat. My words poured forth, as I told him that I
saw truth and meaning in his religion and that I decided to
adopt it if he would accept me.
"Where are you from," he asked me.
"Israel."
He looked at me. "Are you Jewish?"
"Yes," I replied.
His reaction surprised me. His expression turned from friendly
to puzzled -- with even a tinge of anger. He told me that he
did not understand my decision, and that he would not permit me
to carry it out.
I was stunned. What did he mean?
"All religions are an imitation of Judaism," he stated. "I am
sure that when you lived in Israel, your eyes were closed.
Please take the first plane back to Israel and open your eyes.
Why settle for an imitation when you can have the real thing?"
His words spun around in my head the whole day. I thought to
myself: I am a Jew and an Israeli, but I know nothing about my
own religion. Did I have to search and wander the whole world
only to be told that I was blind and that the answers I was
seeking were to be found on my own doorstep?
I did what the Dalai Lama told me to do. I immediately flew
back to Israel -- and entered a yeshiva. And, as he told me to
do, I opened my eyes. I began to see the Dalai Lama had indeed
been correct. I discovered Judaism and its vitality, and that
it encompassed everything in life. I embraced its laws and
found many reasons to live -- at least 613 reasons! And I found
joy.
Two years later someone suggested a shidduch -- a blind date.
Anat was a young woman of my age who was also a ba'alat teshuvah,
a returnee to traditional Judaism. She too had been to Goa and
other places in India to search for answers, and she too had
found them back in Israel -- in the religion of Israel. We
clicked immediately. We had gone through the same search for
meaning, and the same return to our roots. Eventually, Anat and
I got engaged.
When I went to offer a gift to the matchmaker, she refused to
accept anything, saying that she didn't deserve it.
"But it's customary to give the matchmaker a gift -- and I want
to do it."
"You are quite right, but in this case I am not the matchmaker,"
she replied simply.
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you. Anat came to me and showed me a piece of paper
with a name in it. She asked me to introduce her to the person
whose name was written there. She knew nothing at all about that
person, but said that she had been given his name by someone she
trusts completely... It was your name."
After the engagement party, Anat and I went for a walk.
"Tell me," I said, "how did this shidduch come about? I want to
know who gave you my name, so that I can pay him."
Anat smiled. "You will have to travel to India to pay him."
"This is your soul mate," the Dalai Lama told me.
Before I had a chance to react, she continued, "I haven't told
you yet that at the end of my wandering, I went to the Dalai Lama.
I was very impressed by him and all he embodied and I decided to
join his religion. When I told him he said, 'Anat, since you are
Jewish you should not settle for silver if you can have gold.'
He told me to return to my roots and then in a whisper, he asked
one of his assistants to bring him a piece of paper. The Dalai
Lama then copied the name that was there onto another piece of
paper, and handed it to me. 'This is your soul mate,' he told me.
"When I returned to Israel, I joined a religious seminary. And
you know the rest. You know, at first it was because of the Dalai
Lama, and only later the much stronger light of Judaism that
attracted me. And only after a year had gone by did I begin to
search for you. I approached many shadchanim, matchmakers, but
no one was able to discover you in the various yeshivas for
ba'alei teshuvah. Finally someone contacted your yeshiva, and --
I found you!
"From the very first date I knew that the Dalai Lama was right."
Anat and I have been married for three years now and we have
been blessed with two wonderful children. I am immersed in Torah
study, and Anat is a wonderful wife and mother. And our parents,
you may be wondering -- how did they accept all this? Our parents
are educated, well-to-do people whose way of life is very
different from ours -- but they are impressed by our lifestyle
and the close relationship between us. And they know the role the
Dalai Lama had in all of this.
This article is an excerpt from "People Speak About Themselves"
by Rabbi Chaim Walder, Feldheim Publishers. Reprinted with
permission from www.Feldheim.com']]>
In terms of my week, it was immersed in Nigerian 3-D seismic data.
The Sister Missionaries came over for dinner on Tuesday night.
Jude is back, and very excited about the interpretation work I
am coming up with. It looks like Andrea and I will be going to
Nigeria in a few weeks. I made what I thought were my three
trips there back in the 1970's, and so it is interesting where
the trail is leading. I am also going to spend Thursday and
Friday this next week in Gillette, Wyoming, where I will be on
a panel (0234.html). Today, our sacrament speaker was a young
man who just returned from a mission to Wyoming, South Dakota,
and Michigan. His family just moved here from Couer d'alene,
Idaho, and Andrea's brother Robert was his seminary teacher in
his senior year of high school. What a small world. I wrote a
stanza for Prime Words, based on comments about tithing in
Gopel Doctrine Sunday School class:
<![CDATA[ `The Lord keeps His word(a)
Satan flls our mind with doubt(b)
We choose to trust His sword(c)
Or we find what the fruit of sin is about'
(a) Marion Pickerd, Nottingham Country Ward Gospel Doctrine
teacher quoting President Hinkley talking about tithing.
(b) II Chronicles 32:9-17 and Gospel Doctrine discussion
about doubt.
(c) Isaiah 49:2; Ephesians 6:17; Hebrews 4:12; Revelations
1:16; I Nephi 21:2; D&C 6:2; D&C 27:18.]]>
I, like many thinking people, have spent my life searching for
my essence. I have found it through my faith in the restoration
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and in He whom I believe authored
this work, Jesus Christ. I can not find your essence for you,
and I do hope you have a desire to seek it out. I believe and
testify peace comes as we find our essence."
I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements
of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how
important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy
it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of
distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets
go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at
rnelson@walden3d.com.
With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)