15. There's nothing wrong with life

I did a retreat in India many years ago in Tiruvannamalai. I rented a very small room in an ashram next to another ashram where a Vipassana retreat was being taught by Jaya and Ajai. I wasn't part of that retreat, but I was nearby. I spent six weeks in this tiny room, which just had a bed, a small table, and a carpet. Every day, I would walk a little and then sit for many hours.
During this time, I felt a growing sense of an abyss next to me, a void that represented the emptiness and the undoing of my self-identity. I was desperate to jump into it and let go of the person called Stephen. Every time I touched this feeling of disappearing, fear would come up, and I would jump back into the known. This happened repeatedly.
Ajai, the teacher next door, would come by every two or three days to say hello. We talked a little, and I told him about my experience. He said, "To jump into the unknown, what you need is happiness. If you're happy, you can go beyond fear. Your happiness will take you to places that are otherwise scary. Do it again and again, feel the fear, and go back. Touch it many times, and slowly the fear will get less and less."
He asked me about my life, and I said I was basically a happy child. He said, "Your happy child will help you jump into the unknown." However, it didn't happen as I expected. Instead, one morning I woke up and thought, "It's all nonsense. I don't need to jump anywhere. Life is fine as it is. What's all this push to drastically undo myself?" At that moment, everything changed. I stopped intensely practicing and spent the next ten days lying on a hammock outside my little room, just spacing out and talking with friends who came by.
This experience showed me something very profound about spiritual life and practice. If you set yourself goals and drive for them, you lose something. You're in a self-determined and self-limiting world according to your need for this. I realized that there's nothing wrong with life. Life is good enough as it is. The inner freedom to allow life to be what it is, is the spiritual goal.
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I never intended to become a Dharma teacher; it simply wasn't on my radar. My life was already full of writing books and lecturing on herbs and plants, and I continued to use science in my work. I earned my living through the herbal world. Then one day, Ilana from the town of Carmiel reached out to me, she mentioned her group was interested in Buddhism and invited me to give a talk. I agreed, and they enjoyed it so much that I started visiting weekly.
The group consisted of about 15 middle-class professionals, and despite the abundance of cakes and goodies, which felt a bit anti-Buddhist, I appreciated the opportunity to share my knowledge. It was fulfilling to see my private insights have an impact and bring about change. Gradually, more people asked me to teach, and it happened organically. I was never trained to teach; it wasn't necessary. At Tovana, we believe that when someone has enough Dharma, they will naturally teach.
The practice itself guides understanding and helps in translating spiritual Buddhist truths into everyday language. Teaching retreats for Tovana became a default role for me, as there weren't many others available. It all unfolded naturally, driven by the interest and requests from others.
Initially, we only had foreign teachers and no Israeli ones. I was the first Israeli teacher, and gradually others joined. I found myself in a position where I had to decide who could be a teacher. Despite not being a naturally dominant figure, I led from the back because there was no one else to make these decisions. People wanted to teach, but I had to assess if they were ready, which required a subtle understanding of their practice and their handling of greed, hate, and delusion—the three poisons.
I needed to know them well to judge if they were free enough to teach. It wasn't just about their years of practice in India; they had to demonstrate their readiness. We had some teachers, both foreign and local, who didn't meet the standards, and I had to tell them they couldn't return. This judging role was challenging and not easy for me.
I've always felt like I'm dancing at different weddings, inhabiting various worlds that don't necessarily fit together except by chance. My life is filled with diverse activities, like peace work and my work with herbs and science, which don't integrate seamlessly. It's more like these elements arrive in my life without my control. Karma leads me, guided by the unknown and invitations.
Despite the diversity, I feel a deep sense of emptiness and lightness. There's no strong, self-defining personality directing me. I move playfully through life, whether I'm dealing with vegetables, chickens, scientific papers, or deep meditation. These activities don't need to fit together; life is playful and diverse. I don't worry about losing capacities with age, like my diminishing Hebrew skills after 40 years in Israel. Capacities come and go, life arrives, and life goes. I hope that I'm going to be feeling like that with my death as well and I will let it come in its time and be light with that as well.