I've been absolutely slammed with work the last few days, leaving little time for religious contemplation. But for a short while this evening I sat down to celebrate a recent purchase of a printer and the concomitant return to pre-digital days, by reading an anonymous insurance agent's explanation of what happens when the big Chinese Weimar-style Renmibi bubble pops.
Next into my hands came a copy of William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience", borrowed from my parents, its dust cover pleasant to the touch. After Shavuot I'd been exhorted to read selected chapters, and hopefully the whole book, because doing so would be important and answer some questions. I'd read the chapters on Conversion, a bit of Saintliness, and Mysticism, but through habitual laziness never continued.
However, some of it stuck, for anytime I was tempted to discount religion completely, the words of William James rose up as a counterweight to such thoughts. I don't have the temperament to be converted, or maybe the "religious psychosis" just hasn't hit me yet. But I can't deny that it exists, is powerful, and can drive people to do crazy things against all sane or rational thought.
Recently, especially in the spirit of this blog, I considered taking it up again. And just now I have an extra impetus.
For several years now, I've not davened with tefillin every day. The habit of unbroken supplication first faltered in 2013, and accelerated from there, to the point where I pass weeks at a time without praying except on Shabbat. (The odd exception is during travel and vacations. A discussion of why I make such an effort to pray in airports, and whether that's a form of religious voyeurism, can be left for another time.)
Now, if daily prayer is a religiously-obligated form of meditation, as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan discusses in the first few chapters of his book on Jewish Meditation, then why not a radical idea? What if, instead of guiltily not praying each day, I were to substitute reading 20 pages of "The Varieties of Religious Experience"? Instead of uttering words without feeling to a God I merely capitalize, why not put on tefilin and learn about broader religious experiences? I will read something different, something with a greater amount of belief. It will be a form of meditation, a search for some form of truth.
At the pace of 20 pages a day the book will be finished in five weeks or so. Perhaps I'll start over afterwards.
Next into my hands came a copy of William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience", borrowed from my parents, its dust cover pleasant to the touch. After Shavuot I'd been exhorted to read selected chapters, and hopefully the whole book, because doing so would be important and answer some questions. I'd read the chapters on Conversion, a bit of Saintliness, and Mysticism, but through habitual laziness never continued.
However, some of it stuck, for anytime I was tempted to discount religion completely, the words of William James rose up as a counterweight to such thoughts. I don't have the temperament to be converted, or maybe the "religious psychosis" just hasn't hit me yet. But I can't deny that it exists, is powerful, and can drive people to do crazy things against all sane or rational thought.
Recently, especially in the spirit of this blog, I considered taking it up again. And just now I have an extra impetus.
For several years now, I've not davened with tefillin every day. The habit of unbroken supplication first faltered in 2013, and accelerated from there, to the point where I pass weeks at a time without praying except on Shabbat. (The odd exception is during travel and vacations. A discussion of why I make such an effort to pray in airports, and whether that's a form of religious voyeurism, can be left for another time.)
Now, if daily prayer is a religiously-obligated form of meditation, as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan discusses in the first few chapters of his book on Jewish Meditation, then why not a radical idea? What if, instead of guiltily not praying each day, I were to substitute reading 20 pages of "The Varieties of Religious Experience"? Instead of uttering words without feeling to a God I merely capitalize, why not put on tefilin and learn about broader religious experiences? I will read something different, something with a greater amount of belief. It will be a form of meditation, a search for some form of truth.
At the pace of 20 pages a day the book will be finished in five weeks or so. Perhaps I'll start over afterwards.
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