Sukkoth Meditation

 

My favorite feast in the Jewish calendar is Sukkoth, the Feast of Booths. I'm sorry this harvest festival has just ended.

The Bible commands the Israelites to party in the vineyards for seven days after they harvest the grapes to make wine.

They must sleep in the fields where they party, building little vine husk huts to remind them of their roots in the nomadic life. They are to leave the edges of their fields ragged and un-gleaned, so that homeless wanders can find fresh food there. And they must leave their huts ('Sukkoth') filled with grain and fruit for those 'People of the Land' ('Yom ha'Eretz').

This is a festival of paradox, celebrating a life of abundant joy, yet honoring the poor. For all matter overflows with Spirit, and Spirit overflows with matter. The edges of our bodies are ragged, like meadows at the harvest. We are one other, every body overflowing into the fractals of the cosmos.

When we remember this, is there not enough for everyone?

Some speak of the 'gross physical body,' as if it is separate from consciousness. They need to look a little deeper. Flesh is made of pure light. Every photon of matter is an ocean of grace.

Root down in the darkness of Mother Matter until She offers you the wine of unlimited radiance. Honor your body just as it is, its crows feet, scars, cauldrons of cellular trauma boiling over with old stories.

Without clinging, embrace all memories, images, and beliefs about 'me,' letting them dissolve as they arise. Now witness what they really are: sparks of electrochemical energy dancing in the nerves of Presence.

When you meditate on the body, through the body, as the body, without traveling any distance to a 'higher state,' you arrive. You have always already arrived - not at the merely infinite, but at countless golden infinities, clustered in the vineyards of your flesh.