A student gave me a gift of olive oil soap made in Palestine. It’s a small cube, delicately scented and wrapped in smooth paper printed with Arabic words I can’t read.
The offering of the soap opened a borderless space full of the unspeakable.
“Put it on the altar,” I instructed.
My teacher’s picture is there.
In the sideways darting of my student’s eyes, there was a small hiccup of uncertainty, and in their brief hesitation, the missed beat of an unspoken “Why?”
I didn’t say anything, but I said to everything everywhere: I pray that my teacher take care of this soap, the land it came from, the people who made it.
When I write “praying,” I mean pleading. I mean desperation.
It was the first week of June 2026. I’ve been quieter these past months than at any time since that particular October nearly three years ago. Every attempt I’ve made to describe my relative lack of words lacks words.
I’m not short on feelings, though.
Here is the image that came while I was searching.
An ocean held back by a wall. When the wall is removed, the ocean still holds its place, so full, yet not bursting.
I couldn’t easily say what happened during that June week, or even in a single day of that week, every day full of
another family burning alive in a bombed tent, the brilliant flames make their dark, flailing bodies more visible
and I ask myself:
What if I bathed myself with the soap?
Would it be a helpless gesture or a sacrament?
Could this soap ever again be soap, or will it be
blood and ash and tears and dirty water from a plastic jug,
carried by children with bare feet, hunger, and determination?
Could this soap ever again stand alone, a simple object resting in
the place where I bathe?
Or will it now always be the thousands of murdered people I’ve seen and
all of the pleas of us who are still living?
What was once ordinary has become a kaleidoscope of our own demons.
“Kaleidoscope” brings reflections and mirrors and a hint at infinity, but it is not quite complete.
Add a fan that appears to be one thing and then opens to reveal the multiple, modulated leaves of its full incarnation.
Add immersion in a volume of time and sound and feeling.
In my spiritual traditions, there is a special style of instruction for pointing out what cannot be exactly pointed to. Once having received pointing out instructions, the student must make a kind of leap across the unsayable to touch the real.
Or maybe it is a traverse without a map.
Or the navigation of a river, fully submerged, and how that requires opening all of the senses to survive the swim to the destination.
Pointing out Palestine.
with infinite love,
Shambhavi
Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?
Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.
We all need and deserve accompaniment. xoxo
Thank you for this post. Very few spiritual teachers are willing to speak about Palestine, and this silence has led me into a kind of spiritual crisis, particularly in relation to my former sangha. I deeply appreciate your courage, compassion, and willingness to acknowledge the suffering of others. It means more than I can express. Much respect and gratitude.