Purim & the Body
By Rabbi Dov Ber Pinson
On Purim the Mitzvah is to open ourselves Ad d’Lo Yada / until we reach a level of Lo Da / not knowing. Beyond Da'as /conscious awareness.
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As we surrender our Da’as on Purim, a new ability rises up within: to choose Hashem from a place of ‘gut instinct.’
We no longer need our Da’as to choose what is right; our body itself tells us, much like Avraham, whose K’layos / 'deep inners, guided him on the paths of truth and righteousness.
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On Mount Sinai our Da’as, free choice, was taken away by the experiential force of the revelation. We could not refuse the revelation of Torah. On Purim, however, we willingly choose to give up our free choice, and our body instinctively guides us to accept the revelation of Torah.
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If, within the right context, we set the body free from the yoke of heavy thinking and remove its blinds of judgmental thinking, the body will freely, automatically and joyfully choose Hashem. We allow this to happen through the drinking and laughter of Purim.
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When allowed, our Atzamos / bones and essence naturally choose the Atzmus / Essential Self of Hashem — because Hashem has chosen our bodies, and the Bechirah / choice of Atzmus is specifically in our bodies. Thus our bodies respond in kind and choose Hashem.
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On Purim we willfully surrender our Da’as and choose from this most essential place. We ‘choose’ to give up our ‘free choice’ and allow our essential bodily instincts to choose Hashem, the Essence of all goodness.
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Drinking Wine and Living Beyond Da’as
Getting tipsy on wine allows “the elevation of the Nitzutz / spark that is trapped in Kelipah” (Arizal).
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The sage Rava says, מיחייב איניש לבסומי בפוריא עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי / “A person is obligated to become inebriated on Purim until he doesn’t know the difference between ‘blessed is Mordechai’ and ‘cursed is Haman’”.
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He does not say, “...until one doesn’t know the difference between cursed is Mordechai and blessed is Haman.”
In other words, we are not drinking in order to confuse good and bad, but to go beyond the whole paradigm of polarity. And even when we rise above Da’as and do not distinguish or articulate the difference, still, we naturally choose ‘Blessed is Mordechai’ over ‘cursed is Haman.’
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Thus, even when we are ‘inebriated,’ on Purim we trust that our deeper body-consciousness will instinctively choose the good.
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This is a place ‘beyond’ the free choice of Da’as.
We do good because it is who we are; good is not something outside of us that needs to be ‘chosen.’ We do not need Da’as to dictate to us what is right.
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Our drinking on Purim is a Tikun for the drinking of Achashverosh. Because of his drunkenness he became irrational and killed his wife. We, in contrast, drink to go beyond rationality and perform life-giving Mitzvos, intuitively expressing love to our spouse, friends and family — and to every living being.
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‘Not knowing’ is to act more on instinct, on bodily impulse. This is Tohu / raw or even ‘boundless’ energy. We dress up, drink, and act silly; like a child without self-conscious boundaries. We lose our Da’as, our distinctions between people; we give charity without restraint, “to anyone who opens his or her hand.”
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Living beyond Da’as is like the fruit of the Tree of Life, it is meant to be imbibed at certain times and under specific conditions.
During most of the year, people generally need mindful Da’as in order to make good choices and elevate themselves. For this reason, the sages of the generation of Purim were reluctant to put the Megilah in the category of Kisvei haKodesh / The Holy Writings, even after Esther asked them to do so. Its intrinsic holiness was not immediately apparent to them, but then again, that is the ‘whole Megilah,’ the point of Purim.
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When our sages encourage us to drink wine on Purim, they use the term Besumei from the word Besamim / botanical fragrances, alluding to the sense of smell.
Significantly, only the sense of smell was left undamaged by the Cheit Eitz haDa’as / sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge; all the other four senses are mentioned in the account of the Cheit. “Fragrant” therefore alludes to a Gan Eden state of innocence. All this implies that on Purim we are meant to transcend all Eitz haDa’as dualities, to ‘lose’ our dualistic minds a bit, by l’Besumei ad d’Lo Yada / connecting to the fragrant Edenic realm beyond knowing.
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In this state of innocence beyond the mind, correct choices flow naturally. Just as by instinct you would choose not to sit on a burning coal, in Lo Yada you spontaneously choose the good without the faculty of premeditation. In fact, you do not make such a choice with your mind; it is arguably more accurate to say the choice is made for you. It is a non-choice.
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Ultimately, in Lo Yada, we choose to be in a state where the Divine is choosing with us or through us. When we stood at Mount Sinai, “Hashem placed the Mountain above their heads,” and told them to accept the Torah or the Mountain would be their grave. In this scenario, reception of the Torah was not their choice, rather it was Hashem’s choice alone. However, prior to this apparent coercion, we said Na’aseh veNishmah / ‘We now choose to submit our Da’as and live according to the directives of the Torah, and only later will our minds understand and accept it intellectually.’
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It was their choice to enter that state of choicelessness. Purim is an integration of these two scenarios of choice and choicelessness; therefore there are three levels:
1) Choice; Na’aseh veNishmah
2) Choicelessness; ‘coerced’ at Mount Sinai
3) Choiceless Choosing; the Ad d’Lo Yada of Purim
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In the story of Purim the turning point comes when “The King was unable to sleep that night...” And the Megilah continues, “and they — the chronicles of the King — were read in front of him” (6:1). It does not say, ‘and they read the chronicles’ rather “they were read.” The Zohar says that whenever in a Biblical text an event is described but it does not explicitly mention who is doing the act, it suggests that Hashem alone was doing it.
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When we reach a place of Lo Yada, all our choices are overtly Divine choices. We are not speaking of reaching a place below Da’as, rather a place beyond Da’as. And then the Creator, so to speak, chooses through you.
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Rectifying the Tree of Da’as
Da’as is what separates us from the ‘raw’ experience of the body, and when we surrender our Da’as, there is no separation, but a unified flow of experience. “If there is no Da’as, there can be no separation”
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Imagine a child eating ice cream with no self-consciousness, free of discursive intellect, purely in a state of ‘flow.’ On Purim we need to be like that child — innocent and carefree, as if we are naked in the Garden of Eden, prior to eating from the Tree of Da’as. The only problem is, this temporary state can become a dangerous ideology if misapplied; if it is not authentic, it can justify harmful lifestyles as well. A person can always argue, ‘I am being guided to act this way, I am doing this from a place of being, not mere calculative thinking.’
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The origin of all sin and negativity in the world is eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Zohar writes that when it says they ate m’Piryo / from the fruit, the Satan grabbed the Mem of m’Piryo and because of that Maves / death came to the world.
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What does this mean? The letter Mem as a prefix before a word means from; “from the fruit.” Since they ate m’ / from the tree — they took ‘from’ it — their eating brought about a sense of separation. This sense of from, a departure from the state of flow, was vulnerable to the Satanic force, allowing it to be converted into death, the ultimate separation.
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Purim is a Tikun for the Cheit of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. The Tikun for the Cheit thus comes about through a person whose name starts with a Mem, Mordechai. (Incidentally, the Geulah from Egypt was also initiated by a person whose name starts with Mem, Moshe; so is the Geulah in the Chanukah story, Mattisyahu; and so is the final Geulah, Moshiach.)
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On Purim we don’t approach life from a place of ‘taking from’ — there is no m’ in our eating. On the contrary, we must give without calculating how much a person ‘deserves’ (אין מדקדקין במעות פורים אלא כל מי שפושט ידו ליטול נותנים לו).
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We must give gifts of food and drinks to friends. We don’t even drink wine for our own gratification, rather, to serve Hashem beyond the boundaries of Da’as, and as a part of giving joy and laughter to others.
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Truly, we have no ability or vessel to contain the abundance of the Shefa / flow of Divine love that is bestowed upon us on Purim. All that we can do is open ourselves to receive it, enjoy it, and attempt to carry it forward by giving it to others...
TO LEARN MORE, PLEASE SEE:
"The Month of Adar: Transformation through Laughter and Holy Doubt"
https://www.amazon.com/Month-Adar-Transformation-through-Laughter-ebook/dp/B084S8X7NR/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
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