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    Wisdom of The Jewish Sages

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    eliz1616
    This document contains summaries of passages from Pirke Avot, a collection of ethical teachings and principles from Jewish rabbis. The passages discuss giving time and space for emotions like anger, grief, embarrassment to subside on their own rather than trying to force comfort during intense moments. They also discuss accepting that reality is complex and does not always align with ideas of morality or justice, and focusing on acting justly oneself rather than trying to explain every situation.

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    Wisdom of The Jewish Sages

    Uploaded by

    eliz1616
    236 views2 pages
    This document contains summaries of passages from Pirke Avot, a collection of ethical teachings and principles from Jewish rabbis. The passages discuss giving time and space for emotions like anger, grief, embarrassment to subside on their own rather than trying to force comfort during intense moments. They also discuss accepting that reality is complex and does not always align with ideas of morality or justice, and focusing on acting justly oneself rather than trying to explain every situation.

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    This document contains summaries of passages from Pirke Avot, a collection of ethical teachings and principles from Jewish rabbis. The passages discuss giving time and space for emotions like anger, grief, embarrassment to subside on their own rather than trying to force comfort during intense moments. They also discuss accepting that reality is complex and does not always align with ideas of morality or justice, and focusing on acting justly oneself rather than trying to explain every situation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    236 views2 pages

    Wisdom of The Jewish Sages

    Uploaded by

    eliz1616
    This document contains summaries of passages from Pirke Avot, a collection of ethical teachings and principles from Jewish rabbis. The passages discuss giving time and space for emotions like anger, grief, embarrassment to subside on their own rather than trying to force comfort during intense moments. They also discuss accepting that reality is complex and does not always align with ideas of morality or justice, and focusing on acting justly oneself rather than trying to explain every situation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Wisdom of the Jewish Sages: A Modern Reading of Pirke Avot

    -----------------------------------Do not seek to calm angry friends


    at the height of their anger.
    Honor the heat of feeling
    by giving it time to cool.
    Do not comfort grieving friends
    while their dead lie before them
    Honor the shock of grief
    by giving it time to find its voice
    Do not question a friend's integrity
    in the midst of making a vow.
    Honor the sincerity of the moment
    by giving it time to flourish or fail.
    Do not seek out friends
    in the moment of their humiliation.
    Honor the pain of embarrassment
    by giving it time to fade.
    What is destined will reach you, even if it is underneath two mountains. What is
    not destined, will not reach you, even if it is between your two lips. - Arab p
    roverb
    here's one makes me think of carving space for a bigger picture...and for me it
    links to Cone's work in black theology too in perhaps a counterintuitive way...m
    ore thoughts on this later, perhaps...
    It is not within our grasp to explain
    the prosperity of the wicked
    or the suffering of the righteous
    All we are called upon to do
    is to act justly ourselves.
    Reality is more complex than we would like.
    If we insist upon it making sense,
    we will find ourselves despairing.
    Reality cannot be neatly packaged,
    bound with the ribbon of morality.
    Reality is greater than our ideas of good and evil;
    Reality is beyond our right and wrong.
    Reality is all that is, and this is often at odds
    with what we imagine it should be.
    Where we can stand up for justice, let us act.
    Where we are confounded by Truth,
    let us keep silent.
    ok two more!
    The world of seemingly separate selves
    is like a antechamber
    to the world of ultimate unity.

    Prepare yourself in the antechamber


    so that you will be able to enter the banquet hall.
    This world of half-glimpsed Reality
    is only a shadow of the world we see
    when we fully attend to Reality.
    If you would taste the wonder of the Real,
    you must attend to this moment here and now.
    The banquet is all around you;
    if you find you are spiritually hungry,
    it is because you refuse to notice the buffet.
    and last one
    Better a single moment of awakeneing in this world
    than eternity in the world to come.
    And better a single moment of inner peace
    in the world to come than eternity in this world.
    Why?
    A single moment of awakening in this world
    is eternity in the world to come.
    The inner peace of the world to come
    is living in this world with full attention.
    The two are one, flip sides of a coin
    forever tumbling and never caught.
    ----------------

    Without courage we can never attain to true simplicity. Cowardice keeps us "doub
    le minded" - hesitating between the world and God. ...And this hesitation makes
    true prayer impossible - it never quite dares to ask for anything, or if it asks
    , it is so uncertain of being heard that in the very act of asking, it surreptit
    iously seeks by human prudence to construct a make-shift answer.
    Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude. (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1956).
    p. 24.
    Thought for the Day
    What is the use of prayer if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little con
    fidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
    Thoughts in Solitude: p. 24.

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