Hayom Harat Olam.
That is what we say on Rosh Hashanah: Hayom Harat Olam.
On this day the world was born. Or on this day the world is born. Today is the birth of the world, whether we think of that as a point in the past or a process in the present.
But it is this birthing-of-the-world motif of Rosh Hashanah that grabs my imagination and keeps me coming back every year with something cosmological to share. I remember one year I told you a Jewish creation story in which the world is a tree, the roots of which clutch Infinity and the blossoms of which are our souls. Another year I talked about the Nahar di Nura, the River of Light, which is both the Milky Way overhead and the primordial river flowing from the Garden of Eden. And last year I shared some thoughts about what a galactic Judaism in an expanding universe might look like.
But I don’t think I’ve ever stood here on Rosh Hashanah to tell the story of the Shattering of the Vessels, even though that’s a Jewish creation story that many of you know. It comes from the mysticism of the 16th Century Rabbi Isaac Luria. I will tell it to you now.
In the beginning – and I mean the beginning of the story, not the beginning of time, which had not quite yet been set in motion – there was just Oneness. Oneness that preceded time and space. Oneness: uniform and all-encompassing.
Within the Oneness came the ripple of an idea, a wondering about what it might be like if, instead of Oneness and Allness, there were a kind of many-ness. Separation, individuality, specificity.
So the Oneness sucked in its gut. A kind of spiritual contraction to make room for something different to come into being!
In that space, which wasn’t really space, but more the perception of space, the One poured light, and the light was thick, first like pudding, and then like clay, which hardened to form ten vessels, ten pots. And into these vessels, the One poured even more light! So much divine light! So much pure aliveness!
It was too much. The vessels were too full. And they shattered in a great burst. Was it a mistake? An experiment gone wrong? Or is shattering the way that new things come into being?
The vessels shattered and the light went everywhere and became everything! Every person, every plant, every sandwich, every rock, every river.
Why don’t these things look like light? Because the broken shards of the vessels cover them and encompass them. The light is hidden.
We are all primordial light come to rest in these physical bodies. At least so goes the story. And what is that light if not God, for lack of a better word, or the Eyn Sof – the Ancient Infinite Oneness?
The implication of this story is that our physical world, our physical bodies, are masks over something deeper and wider and older. This is the intuition that our mystics and the mystics of other traditions have bequeathed to us.
Is it your intuition too? It’s hard to know because these are not masks we easily take off.
There are plenty of masks that we wear beyond the physical, of course. Some voluntarily, some involuntarily. I wear masks to convey some element of identity. Jew. Queer. Rabbi (that is a very dense mask that people around me keep reinforcing). Son. Brother. Nerd. Whatever. I wear those masks, but is that who I am?
And there are masks that convey who I wish I was and am not. Capable. Confident. Or even just the mask that suggests that I’m okay; that everything’s okay. And you all fall for it.
But sometimes our masks just shatter.
Maybe it’s circumstance or timing or I don’t know. But sometimes if I get myself off the grid; away from the devices; away from the routine that is propped up by my masks; even for a little while. Like just in Bolinas, at the little shack called the chapel that sits on the bluff at Commonweal. Sometimes even in the car on the way to get there is enough, and my masks shatter. I find myself bursting into tears. Not because anything happened to me. But suddenly all of the holding it together that I do, suddenly all the holding it together that my masks make possible for me; all of it – shatters.
When the masks shatter, my heart shatters with them, and I find myself in a state of deep grief. I could point to any number of real-world reasons for the grief. Climate. War in Ukraine and elsewhere. Israel. Palestine. Attacks on people like me and like my loved ones. So many things to break our hearts. When the mask shatters there is nothing between me and those things.
And sometimes it feels like I’m touching into something even deeper than that. Like I’ve tapped into an underground river that flows through this Creation. And it carries sorrow, for sure. But sorrow is not the only thing there. There is joy alongside sadness, and a vague sense memory of a time before the Shattering of the Vessels, when existence was Oneness, and the consequences of separateness – loneliness, hope, misunderstanding, fear – did not yet exist. A vague memory of when we were not beings but were simply being. In Alison Luterman’s words:
When we were protoplasm,
When we were cells of dreaming dust
When we were part of God and didn't know we were God.
If our bodies and our egos are masks, over something old and oceanic, what would it feel like to look behind those masks?
I propose an experiment now. Close your eyes and let your body breathe in a slightly deeper-than-normal way. Ask yourself the question, “Who am I?”
Many answers might arise. Choose one answer that rises in your attention. Now imagine whatever arose to be a mask. In your mind’s eye, remove the mask and carefully place it to the side. And breathe.
Now ask yourself, “Now that that is gone, who am I?”
Let another answer arise in your attention. Imagine whatever arises to be a mask. In your mind’s eye, remove the mask and carefully place it to the side.
Let’s do this one more time, although you could do it many times on your own. Ask yourself, “Now that those are set aside, who am I?”
Let an answer arise in your attention. Now imagine whatever arises to be a mask. In your mind’s eye, remove the mask and carefully place it to the side.
Remain, if you can, in this state, in which the “I” no longer hinges on those things. Feel this state. Notice what feels new here. Does anything feel deeper? Lighter? Looser? Soupier? Notice if you feel closer to others in the room or in your life? Do you feel closer to other beings? To plants? Stones? The stars overhead? Do you feel a little closer to the Divine?
As we set aside the identities we rely on, even if they are beautiful and proud and useful, as we set them aside, can we notice feeling less contained, less constrained. More like ancient light beaming or blazing.
Take a couple more breaths and then gently bring your atoms back together into enough coherence that you can open your eyes and be back with us.
And here we are, embodied again. Here we are, God in a mask; God in drag as Irwin or Suzanne or Sheridan or the Ner Shalom Singers or you.
It’s Rosh Hashanah. This time of year is the time for splitting open. So let us take the risk to let our masks shatter, let our hearts break, if only for a little while. Let our soft innards be exposed oh so briefly. Let’s fall out of the habit of being discrete bodies in space and remember more and more of what Oneness felt like. Let us bring that memory into all the ways we strive to heal ourselves and heal the world. The Ancient Oneness that we were – the Light we still are.
When we look at each other, let’s see Light. Even when it’s hard to see, even when our mood is clouded, even when we’re busy or angry. Let’s see the Light in ourselves and each other, in every creature, in the Planet itself, and the stars beyond. And then let’s treat everyone and everything with the reverence and wonder that we would treat Beings of Light.
Which brings us back to our story of the Shattered Vessels, which now I realize is an unfinished story. So if we were to write the next chapter, it might go like this:
In time, as the world unfolded, the Light forgot it was Light.
And then it began to remember.
All the beings began to look at each other and see Light again. And as they looked they felt themselves becoming Light. Slowly the fabric of Oneness began to repair itself, but only loosely, because the world had become so precious. And Oneness was pleased, and the many looked at each other in delight.