Note: This book uses  each of the lines of the Ashrei prayer as guided meditations through many of the central themes of Jewish life and thought.  In each chapter, the book pays close attention to the individual words of the psalm, noting how the different verbs in particular offer multiple perspectives on the spiritual journey.  From annihilating the self in the face of an awesome mysterium tremendum to acknowledging the healing and community-building powers of narrative and myth, the lines of the Ashrei can be used as contemplative tools to imagine what the religious project is about and
how it can enrich our lives today.

Below is the introduction to the book.
 
 

Ashrei yoshvei veitecha, od yehallelucha selah
Happy are they who sit in Your house, and sing your praises: selah!
 
 

What this Book is About
 
 

This book is a contemplative guide to Psalm 145, about which the Talmud makes an 
outrageous promise: that “whoever recites Psalm 145 three times daily is assured a place
in the World to Come.”  What makes the psalm so powerful that the ancient sages made
such an audacious claim?

The Ashrei (as the psalm is popularly known) is almost like an encyclopedia of God and
the world: it tries to include everything, even while acknowledging the impossibility of
describing or even understanding the Infinite.  As the rabbis noted, it is an alphabetical acrostic –
suggesting transcendence, wholeness and completeness – and also contains several lines (one in
particular) that acknowledge the immanence of God and the personal dependence on that Being
which, whatever our personal theology or cosmology, breathes through each of us, every day.

But the Ashrei is much more than that, as well.  Let’s look deeper into this idea of the
‘world to come,’ in light of the meaning assigned to the “World to Come” by the early Hasidic
masters.  For these rabbis, the world to come was not some far-off heaven where good and evil
got their just desserts.  Nor was the Messianic Age something that was dependent on history or a
personal redeemer.  (Like our post-millenial and post-9/11 experience, the Hasidim knew of
Messianic and apocalyptic movements: they arose in the wake of Shabbetai Tzvi, who one third
of European Jews believed was the messiah.)   Instead, they argued that the olam haba can be
experienced now, not through history, but directly, experientially, through meditation.  By
contemplating God (which we might instead call Being, or the “Now”) and by removing the
illusions of our own separateness from this Infinite reality, the Hasidim believed, we could
experience the reality that all of us are, all the time, nothing but God, nothing but the great ayin
(emptiness) itself.

In this light, let me propose that Psalm 145 can bring about the ‘World to Come’ in the
Hasidic sense of the word.  The psalm is a meditative tool, a contemplative device designed to
orient our consciousness in a different way in each line of the prayer.  The Ashrei brings us to the
World to Come in this world, through the re-enlivening of every day experience, and the re-
perception of that experience as motes in the sunbeam of the Infinite.  The psalm is like a series
of contemplative meditations on subtly shifting aspects of the world, human beings, and our
relationship to the whole of Being as, when our minds are quiet, we are sometimes able to
perceive it.  It can lead us to new understandings of ourselves, our world, and what we mean by
the term ‘God.’ 

Of course, on a quick reading, the Ashrei may seem like nothing more than a nice series
of praises of God.  The key to reading the Ashrei more closely is careful attention to its language. 
In the first line alone, the psalm moves us from a ‘mountain consciousness’ of perceiving the
awesomeness and immensity of the world to a lessening of the bounds of our ego to a recognition
of the miracles of our everyday lives.  The Ashrei teaches the unity of awareness of God with
compassion with those who suffer.  It moves from notions of nationhood and history to opening
ourselves to the Ineffable.  Our attitudes towards God and the world shift as we contemplate each
successive line of the Ashrei; we fill our minds with different partzufim (faces, or combinations)
of the Divine as we progress.

At its heart, I think the Ashrei struggles with the fundamental question of whether all of
these different perspectives -- and there really are hundreds of them within the psalm -- can ever
add up to a complete understanding of God.  On the one hand, the psalm pushes the limits of
human expression to convey every form of awe, wonder, love of God, sometimes verging on
glossalia (e.g., “I will discuss your Majesty-Glory-Splendor”).  Its acrostic structure, as I’ve
already mentioned, symbolically represents completion – albeit, in the case of the Ashrei, a
broken or imperfect completion, because of a verse removed to acknowledge the existence of evil
and suffering. 

But at the same time, the psalm seems to indicate that even its exhaustive set of attributes,
attitudes, and trajectories cannot fully convey what it is we mean when we say the word ‘God.’ 
Throughout the Ashrei are references to imperfect communication, to allusion and allegory.  Like
the mystical writers of every religious tradition, the voice in the Ashrei exists in tension between
a desire to say everything and an inability to say anything.

Fortunately for us, the inexpressibility of God means that there is no end to new
understanding.  The well of meditation is never dry, because the “now” is always unfolding in
new and surprising ways, and we can never know everything there is to know.  Really, only a
fundamentalist supposes that he knows the whole story, with certainty and completion.  And the
Ashrei is not a fundamentalist text; it is, or can be, a tool to opening our hearts and our minds to
dreams we have not yet imagined.
 

For whom this book is written
 

This book is written for anyone, regardless of their level of Hebrew or Judaic knowledge,
who wishes to deepen their life through contemplation.  Although I will read many words of
Psalm 145 with very close attention to their context and etymology, this book is not intended to
be a scholarly treatment of the Ashrei.  I am not particularly interested in the authorship of the
psalm or even its cultural context in the First Temple, except insofar as these issues can enlighten
our own contemplative journeys.  I am content to rest with the traditional attribution of the psalm
as a “tehilla l’david,” a psalm that came to King David.  (The first two lines of the Ashrei prayer,
preceding that phrase, are actually from Psalm 144, added by the rabbis as an introduction to
Psalm 145 proper.)  This is likely not true as a historical matter, but it is the literary form the
author of the Ashrei chose, and I want to enter into that author’s world, investigate what he or
she is trying to tell us, and allow the voice of the psalm to guide us to new insights about
ourselves, our world, and the Creator of both.

What my focus will be is on using the Ashrei as a meditative tool.  Sometimes, I will
suggest particular meditative practices that connect with certain words or phrases.  Other times,
I’ll treat the Ashrei homiletically, reading its shifting messages in the light of contemporary
concerns.  Throughout, my intention is to help you use the Ashrei as an entry-point to a more
sensitive and thoughtful spirituality, and to living whatever life you choose to live in a rich and
meaning-full way.

It is my hope that the places the Ashrei takes us will be accessible to people of all
religious disciplines, including those of no discipline at all.  The Ashrei is a specifically Jewish
text.  It has ideas which are different from Buddhist ideas or Christian ones.  But you don’t need
to believe in any particular God, or any God at all, to learn from this book.  I assume nothing; I
ask you to take nothing on faith; suspend disbelief never.  Many times, we will delve into the
structure of the Hebrew language or the historical experience of the Jewish people.  For those
with a Jewish commitment and background, hopefully such passages will resonate with your
experience – I want this book to be as useful to a frum-from-birth yeshiva graduate as to the
novice only beginning his or her spiritual path.  But in all cases, I will translate.  And the
specificity of the Ashrei as a Jewish text should only add to its universal appeal: no one is
without a culture, and the Ashrei speaks from within its culture just as we come to it from our
own.

Thus, at the same time as I want to acknowledge the Ashrei’s roots in the Jewish
tradition, I do not want to shy away from bringing to bear the insights of other traditions, where
they can illuminate the message of the psalm.  The very essence of this project – reading a Jewish
psalm as a series of guided meditations – is an exercise in cultural fusion.  I do not believe for a
moment that the Psalmist practiced the sorts of visualizations or other meditative techniques that
I recommend in the chapters to come.  To be sure, there is evidence of meditative practices and
mystical speculation throughout the Bible.  But whether this or that practice influenced this
particular psalm is not my concern.  I believe that the Ashrei, which schoolchildren recite every
day in a sing-songy tune that sounds like a nursery rhyme, has the capacity to change our lives. 
That is what this book is about.
 

Sitting down in God’s house
 

 “Happy are they who sit in Your house.”  The Talmud quotes this introductory verse to
the Ashrei (actually part of psalm 84) to support its statement that one should meditate for an
hour before beginning prayer.  But, understanding the multiple meanings of ‘sitting’ as
meditation, sitting still, and study, what does it mean to ‘sit’ in God’s house?  What does it mean
for God to have a house at all?

The inspiration for this book came on July 26, 2001, the Sixth of Av, a few meters from
Goff Key, just off the coast of Belize.  It was, as Lou Reed says, a Perfect Day.  The sky, at first
threatening and overcast, had turned a brilliant, clear blue, mirrored by the Caribbean water.  I
had snorkeled a bit among an underwater forest of coral reefs, teeming with iridescent tropical
fish.  We’d had lunch.  And with the waves lapping against the white sands of a hundred-foot-
long island, to which our guide welcomed us by saying “Welcome to paradise,” I lay back in the
water and felt alive in a way I had not for many months.  I felt moved to express my gratitude, to
somehow acknowledge the beauty all around me in a way other than taking a picture of it.  I
searched for the right means to do so – I didn’t want to write a poem, I wanted to stay in the
water.  Then I realized it had come time for mincha, the Jewish afternoon prayer.

 It was an unorthodox mincha – me in a bathing suit, floating in the water.  I wasn’t sure
which way was East.  But as I started the words of the Ashrei, I realized that I now knew what it
meant to be happy to dwell in God’s house. 

And so I went slowly through each line, considering each word.  I noticed the succession
of verbs – arromimcha, avarcha, avarchecha.  I wondered, was this all just a literary trope? 
Tripping through Roget’s Thesaurus to show off poetic dexterity?  I went more slowly.  It
seemed as though each verb was subtly different.  They weren’t synonyms – each had a different
valence from the other, a different emphasis, a slightly different way of seeing God.  I was
reminded of the pluralistic midrash that at Sinai, each listener heard a slightly different message
in the thundering revelation.  I thought, maybe it’s possible to sit with God in the Ashrei the way
you sit with the Buddha in the zendo.  Just as “sitting” is a euphemism for meditation in many
cultures, the word for ‘sit’, yoshev, has many distinctive meanings in Judaism.  To yoshev is to
stop what you are doing and pay attention.  To learn, as in a yeshiva.  To sit and have a meeting,
whether in a corporation or in contemplation.  To dwell; to pay attention.

You don’t yoshev when you’re doing other things, and squeezing a moment or two for
spiritual sanity into a hectic schedule.  To yoshev is a commitment.  It is to put the object of your
attention at the center of your life, at least for a moment.  In English, we say “stand up and pay
attention.”  In Hebrew, we sit down.
 

How to use this Book
 

Ashrei ha-am shekacha lo, ashrei ha-am she’adonai elohav. 
Happy are the people who have this, and whose god is the One God
 

There are many ways to use this book.  Each of the chapters that follow reads closely a
different line of the Ashrei.  (Each line of the Psalm, in turn, is written in two – often contrasting
– halves.)  As I’ve said already, I will sometimes have occasion to suggest specific meditation
exercises arising from or using the words of the Ashrei.  Other times, you may want to read over
a part of a chapter, put down this book, and ponder the words of the Ashrei itself in whatever
mindfulness practice you engage in.  Such practice might be twenty minutes of mindful breathing
followed by a slow, focused contemplation of one of the words of the Ashrei.  You might make
one line a focus of a week’s daily meditations, taking five (or ten, or thirty) minutes each day to
contemplate a single line (or even word) of the Ashrei, and using the thoughts in this book as
jumping-off points for your own speculations.  Or you can use the suggested visualizations and
meditations in these chapters as starting points for your own inner explorations.  Or the lines of
the Ashrei may be used as mantras, recited and repeated, slowly, many times, with the intention
being to deepen, rather than broaden, your understanding of the words, using the insights in this
book as a guide to your own reflection.  Whatever your mindfulness practice (and if you are only
beginning to cultivate such a practice, this book can help, and there are more books on the
subject listed in the back), you will find that applying it to the words of the Ashrei will be
immensely rewarding.  The difference between reading through the Ashrei “normally” and
reading through it attentively, contemplatively, and with attention to our breathing,
concentration, and kavvanah is like the difference between black and white and color.  Like most
revelations of the Infinite Present, the Ashrei is a hidden treasure lying right in front of us. 

Goethe said, “What matters most should never be at the mercy of what matters least.” 
The Ashrei is a tool to the project of religion: to put What Matters most to you at the center of
your life.  It invites us to stop standing, shouting, and rushing; and to instead sit and listen. 
Happy are the people who take possession of this gift, and who make the One God their god. 
Happy are they who can center themselves and their lives around that which is everlasting.