Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --
Circles 4 (from Life of the Future World) By Rabbi Abraham Abulafia English version by Jerome Rothenberg and Harris Lenowitz
& the secret
 / Photo by striatic / |
| ============ Thought for the Day: The awakened heart ============ | Here's your Daily Music selection --  Wah! Savasana |
Hi Omss -
It is the end of the Muslim month-long observance of Ramadan and also the beginning of the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashana. For today, I thought something by the Kabbalist Rabbi Abulafia...
Rabbi Abraham (or Avraham) Abulafia was an important figure in Spanish Kabbalah mysticism, founder of "prophetic Kabbalah." He was born in Zaragosa, Spain.
His father was his first teacher, instructing him in knowledge of the Torah and Talmud.
His father died when he was Rabbi Abulafia was 18. He then began to travel. He went to Palestine, but in the chaos following the Crusades, he found it too dangerous. He then traveled through Greece and into Italy, where he settled for a while and studied philosophy, including Kabbalah and the works of Maimonides. During this time he also gained notoriety as a teacher.
Rabbi Abulafia eventually returned to Spain, where he deepened his esoteric study. He delved deeply into important Kabbalistic texts, like the Sefer Yetzirah, as well as the writings of other Jewish mystics.
Rabbi Abulafia is especially associated with the Kabbalistic tradition of meditating on sacred words. Because each act of creation in the Torah begins with the phrase, "And God said...," he understood words both as keys to manifestation, but also signposts pointing the way back to the Divine Source. Rabbi Abulafia taught a meditation practice in which the letters of sacred words are manipulated and rearranged as a way to gain deep insight into the true nature of creation and oneself and, ultimately, to reconnect with God.
He continued his travels, returning to Greece and Italy, teaching and writing. While teaching in Italy, he was condemned by some of the local Jewish communities for his unorthodox views. When important rabbis in Spain heard of the controversy, it became clear he was no longer welcome in Spain. He spent his remaining years traveling and writing in exile.
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These lines are the culmination after several pages of circles of words, literally words written in circles that declare the nature of God and reality.
Notice the powerful sort of divine... collapse this Kabbalistic meditation evokes. Right and left reflect each other until they are the same. Image and name, tangible form and conceptual form, merge until we recognize the truth of the initial statement that "it has no image -- skies".
"& its birthplace -- being from non-being / fathering from nothing --" sounds almost like a Zen statement.
This work has that quality of certain intense Kabbalistic meditation practices of overloading the intellect by organizing and reorganizing the names of the Divine, concepts of reality, mathematical variations. Doing this over and over again until they fold in on themselves to reveal a central unity. The intellect, in exhaustion, comes to rest and finally sees this collapsed reality as a single point of Truth.
...Have a beautiful (and safe!) weekend.
Ivan
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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2010 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.
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