Rabbi Stephen Weiss
Shabbat Vayera 2019
Jewish tradition long ago realized that our mindset affects how we see the world.
Two Zen Buddhist monks were arguing about a flag blowing in the wind. One monk said, “it is the flag that is waving.” The second monk said, “No, it is the wind that is waving.” They argued back and forth for some time. Finally, they went to ask the great Zen teacher Hui Neng. He answered, “My fellow monks, you are both wrong. It is not the flag that moves, and it is not the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves.”
Our minds affect how we see the world. We learn this same lesson from the story of Hagar and Ishmael in this morning’s Torah reading.
Depending on how we translate the text, Sarah fears that Ishmael either will be a bad influence on Isaac or actually hurt him. At Sarah’s urging, Abraham expels the child and his mother from his tent. Hagar and Ishmael wander in the harsh wilderness. They quickly run out of water, and Hagar despairs. She is convinced that there is no water in the wilderness and that the two of them will die of thirst. Ishmael is crying, and she cannot bear the thought of watching him die. She sets him down under a bush, so he will be hidden from her view, and removes herself a good distance.
God hears the cries of young Ishmael, and God opens Hagar’s eyes. She now sees that right before her is a well of water. It was there all along, but Hagar did not see it. The boy is saved and will grow up to be a great nation of his own
The question is, why did Hagar not see the well of water that was right in front of her? Why did God have to open her eyes? Perhaps she was so convinced that everything was lost, that her son would die, that her mind would not allow her to see the water.
“It is your mind that moves.” Our minds affect what we see.
In 1054 there was a huge supernova explosion, an explosion that eventually became the Crab Nebula. Astronomers in as far flung places as China, Japan, Arabia, and even the Americas recorded the event. Yet strangely, there is no recorded record of this gigantic event anywhere in Europe. How could that be? Is it possible that Europeans did not see it?
One probable explanation is that such an event went against the mindset of Europeans, under the influence of Aristotle and the Catholic Church. To these Europeans, the heavens were rotating spheres that were unchangeable. Heavenly bodies did not explode; they simply circled the earth for eternity. Such an explosion would go against their very belief system. Due to their belief system, European’s did not see it.
In the same way, Europeans for centuries could not imagine that the world was round, or even that there was any land mass, other peoples, cultures or empires beyond their known world. In his sweeping history of the human race, entitled Sapiens, historian Yuval Noah Harari reproduces copies of world maps made shortly after the discovery of the New World. For the first time, these maps showed a portion of North America’s east coast blending into nothingness – empty parchment – north, south and west of that coast to indicate that they did not know what was there. Harari points out that this was a major paradigm shift. Until that moment in time Europeans could not imagine there was anything beyond the world that they knew.
In more modern times, we have learned that many phenomena we perceive are not as we see them. What appears to us as solid objects are in fact composed of whirring sub-atomic particles spinning around and interacting with each other – energy, not matter – and that what appears impenetrable is actually permeable. Similarly, Euclid’s eyes told him that parallel lines never intersect, but the nuclear physicist, but a renown physicist by the name of Rogers developed a system of geometry that helped us see that parallel lines do in fact intersect. We are so unable to see that because of our mindset. Yet mathematics proves it to be so. What’s more, that insight made nuclear fission possible.
It is the same phenomenon – we see what the mind sees – that leads some to not see climate change as real or man-made despite overwhelming evidence and scholarly consensus. It is that same power of the mind that leads many to not recognize the effectiveness of steps to reduce gun violence despite statistical evidence from around the country and the globe that shows that such steps work.
Jewish tradition long ago realized that our mindset affects how we see the world. The French-Cuban novelist and essayist Anais Nin (1903 – 1977) famously wrote that the Talmud teaches, “We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.”
The Talmud never actually says this, but it says something close. “A man is shown only what is suggested by his own thoughts” (Berakhot 55b). Too often we do not see what we is really there, but rather see what our mind suggests is there.
“It is your mind that moves.”
In the same way God opened Abraham’s eyes to see that there was only one God who is the Creator of all. God opened our ancestors’’ eyes through the Exodus experience to see the meaning of freedom and of covenant.
When our eyes our opened – when we can recognize that what we are seeing is in our mind and is not – or does not need to be – reality, we experience a paradigm shift. From that moment, we never see the world the same again.
The founding of this country was such a moment, when we came to realize that freedom requires a government that is in Lincoln’s words, “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
The civil rights movement brought another paradigm shift, as did the feminist movement and the movement for the rights of those who are LGBTQ+.
The same can be said of the birth of Conservative Judaism. Seeing our sacred texts as divinely inspired but written by human hands led to combining a commitment to traditional observance with an openness to change. Similarly, the move to egalitarianism in Jewish law and ritual, and the ordination of women rabbis and rabbis who are LGBTQ are all examples of paradigm shifts.
In each of these cases, as our mindset shifted, so did the way we saw our world. “It is your mind that moves.”
So, if it is true – as the Zen teacher expounded and as the Torah teaches through Hagar – that we see only what our mind sees, what does all this high flying and abstract sounding philosophy matter in our daily lives?
First, knowing the power of the mind to shape our perceptions can free us from being trapped by the past and make us receptive to new and higher truths. Never assume that the world is as you see it.
Maimonides makes this very point in a powerful way. He lived in a time when a debate raged, among those who were scholarly in Jewish, Greek and Arabic philosophy as to the nature of the world’s origins. Some held by the teachings of Aristotle that the world was never created and existed eternally. Some held by the view of Plato that the raw matter of the universe – the four elements – was eternally existent, What Plato calls the demi-urge – we might say the Divine artist – created, that is shaped, the world from that pre-existent matter. The great Torah commentator Rashi, held by Plato’s view.
Maimonides holds fast to the view we consider most mainstream in Jewish thought today – that nothing existed before creation, and that God created the world yesh mi-ayin, ex nihilo – that is, from nothing.
But in his Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides offers a caveat to this position: Were science to prove this idea wrong, says Maimonides, we would have to re-think the meaning of the first chapters of Genesis. Think about that. Maimonides, a man of deep faith who viewed the Torah as God’s word, felt that if science contradicted our understanding of Torah, it is our understanding of Torah that must change to match science, not the other way around. If the Torah represents Truth, says Maimonides, it cannot contradict scientific truth.
Maimonides understood that what was presented as eternal truths is on some level a projection of our own minds, that the world can be different from what we perceive.
Second, having been set free from the shackles of our pre-conceptions, we can allow our minds to imagine worlds different from what we see. We can lift ourselves up above our current reality and choose to see the world differently. When we make that choice, we become empowered to change the world to match our new vision.
Our task then, is to heed God’s call to Hagar, to open our eyes, to see the world not as it is, but as it should be.
If we are pessimistic, believing that everything is going to go wrong, then that is what we will see in the world.
If we are optimistic, seeing a world where positive things happen, we will see the world in that way.
If we see our world as unchangeable, then we will resign ourselves to the world as it is.
If we can envision a better world, we can make that better world our reality.
For, as we learn from the story of Hagar and Ishmael, our minds have the power to shape our reality.
It is true that flag is not waving, the winds are not waving, but it is our minds that are waving.
May we learn to be open to seeing the world in new and unexpected ways. May we strive to see the world as it should be, and to do our part to make it so.