The Tao of Solomon: Unlocking the Perennial Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

By Rabbi Rami Shapiro

In The Tao of Solomon, Rabbi Rami Shapiro unravels the golden philosophical threads of wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes, reweaving the vibrant book of the Bible into a 21st century tapestry. Shapiro explores the timeless truth that we are merely a drop in the endless river of time, and reveals a path to finding personal and spiritual fulfillment even as we embrace our impermanent place in the universe.

The Tao of Solomon is not a new translation of Ecclesiastes; rather, it is a re-visioning of the sacred text that acknowledges that the only constant in life is change, that nothing lasts forever, and that only by releasing our hold on permanence can we finding personal peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Yehuda Press
• Release date: Sep 22, 2023
• ISBN: 1934730688

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The Tao of Solomon

Unlocking the Perennial Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

Rami Shapiro

BenYehuda Press

Teaneck, New Jersey

Advance Praise for The Tao of Solomon

Rabbi Rami’s translation and re-interpretation of Ecclesiastes has been life changing for me. It has opened up the deep and exuberant wisdom that is at the heart of my tradition. The Tao of Solomon gives us back an ancient text that has been misunderstood through the dulled lens of pessimism and despair. Rabbi Rami returns that treasure to me, now sparkling in its clarity, wisdom and joy—a celebration of life.

—Rabbi Shefa Gold, author of Are We There Yet? Travel as a Spiritual Path

We give thanks for this fresh rendering of the wisdom of Solomon’s Ecclesiastes, brilliantly revitalized by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. He points us toward the ‘essential unity of all things in, with, and as God, the Source and Substance of all reality.’ Through The Tao of Solomon, we are encouraged to awaken anew, moment by moment, breath by breath, in loving awe. ‘So when all is said, remember this: open your mind to wonder, your heart to compassion, and your hand to justice, that you fashion a whole and holy world.’

—Camille Hamilton Adams Helminski, author of Ninety-Nine Names of the Beloved: Intimations of the Beauty and Power of the Divine

For everything, there is a season, and this season of diversity, pluralism, and inter-spirituality calls for bold new interpretations of sacred texts. Rabbi Rami can always be counted on for fresh takes that incorporate the cross-traditional wisdom of the great mystics and the emphasis on direct experience that they insist upon. In The Tao of Solomon he does not disappoint. The book is illuminating and instructive, pragmatic and provocative—a text that will surely promote both spiritual growth and dynamic debate. I suspect that King Solomon, or whoever wrote Ecclesiastes, would applaud.

—Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda and The Life of Yogananda

We need the wisdom of Solomon today like we need fresh air. Rabbi Rami Shapiro makes it possible for us to breathe in that wisdom, experience it, and let it change us. That’s the Zen of it. The Tao of Solomon is a masterful gifting—a transformative verb of living wisdom as universal, and as vital, as the air we breathe. It’s not often that a book this wise comes along to wake us to joy. Don’t miss it.

—Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian, author of The Jewel of Abundance: Finding Prosperity Through the Ancient Wisdom of Yoga

Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) is the most contemplative text in the Bible, and Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s The Tao of Solomon brings a contemplative lens to its teachings. The result is a fruitful meeting of East and West, impermanence and eternity, speech and silence.

—Rabbi Jay Michaelson, author of The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path

Dedication

To all those whose quest for wisdom

leads them beyond the fixed boundaries of parochial opinion

to the infinite and ever-flowing river of truth.

CONTENTS

Preface 

Introduction

Part I: The Text

Part II: The Teaching

About This New Edition

About the Author

PREFACE

As someone who translates and comments on biblical texts, I find the Hebrew Bible endlessly fascinating and terribly frustrating. Fascinating in that the language of the text gives way to so many interpretations, and frustrating because these readings never quite manage to say what I believe the author intended to say. This is especially true when it comes to Ecclesiastes.

Whoever the actual author of this text was—and, for tradition’s sake, we will call him Solomon, without pretending that the author was in fact David’s son and King of Israel—he was limited to the language and metaphors of his day. Like any writer, if he wanted to be read and understood, had to use the linguistic tools at his disposal. And—perhaps more than any writer, given his understanding of life’s transience—he was not concerned about posterity. He expected to be forgotten. He had no idea that we would be reading Ecclesiastes thousands of years after he wrote it. And even if he did, he could not have written it other than the way he did: using the language and images of his day.

But what if he could rewrite the book for us? What if he were asked to share his wisdom with a 21st century reader and was empowered to use 21st century English and metaphor? And, more importantly, what if he were to rewrite this book for a specific reader: a spiritually independent seeker of truth who has read a bit of Eastern, as well as Western, spiritual wisdom?

I like to think he would rewrite his original book in a manner similar to the version you are now reading. This is the conceit of The Tao of Solomon: I believe the author of Ecclesiastes was a Hebrew Buddha, an Israelite Lao Tzu: a person awake to the impermanent nature of reality and the implications of that awakening on how to live.

The Tao of Solomon differs a bit from its first appearance as The Way of Solomon. As my contemplative life has deepened over the years, I have become uncomfortable with the notion of havel, emptiness or impermanence, as a noun. The more I examine things, the less I think things exist. There are verbs everywhere, nouns nowhere. Life is a process, a happening. When Torah in Exodus 3:14 defines God as Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, I am becoming what I am becoming, she is revealing the nature of all reality. Everything is part of the unending becoming of Reality, what Solomon calls Ha–El, The God—not the Iron Age god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the infinite and endlessly manifesting God who is all that is. Nothing is fixed, static, or forever. Everything is in flux, rising and falling, and endless becoming. What lasts isn’t any thing in particular, but the process itself, and the process isn’t a noun but a verb. In Hebrew, God is literally a verb. So I have done my best in this new edition of Ecclesiastes to speak not of emptiness but of emptying, not of nouns but of verbs—and in this way not to lay a trap for the reader, allowing them to imagine that emptiness is a state, a place, or a something to be grasped.

While I believe the author of Ecclesiastes, like his contemporaries Siddhartha Gotama and Lao Tzu, shared this deep and liberating insight into the nature of nature, I cannot prove it. This is simply how I read the Hebrew. More importantly, it is my reading of the Hebrew that informs my writing of this book.

The Tao of Solomon is not a translation of Ecclesiastes. It is a reimaging of Ecclesiastes. While I root my writing in Solomon’s Hebrew, I allow the text to yield insights that I believe Solomon would recognize as true, but are in fact mine alone.

Since the word tao is essential to the title of this book, let me take a moment to explain how I’m using the word. The Chinese word tao has a variety of meanings. In traditional Chinese philosophy tao refers to the natural order of the universe. In the Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu says that the tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao, (1:1) which is to say that Tao cannot be known as an object. Tao isn’t some thing among others, but rather the nature of all things. You can experience Tao but the tao you speak of when you seek to relate your experience is no longer the Tao experienced. Outside philosophy, the word tao translates as way, path, road, doctrine, and teaching. In this book I use tao in its general sense: the Tao of Solomon is the teaching of Solomon.

What you are about to read is a transmission of wisdom from Solomon to you through me. I make no claims to anything esoteric or supernatural—only that what I share in The Tao of Solomon is what I hear when I read the original Hebrew text for myself. Ecclesiastes, more than any other book of the Hebrew Bible—perhaps more than any other book I have ever read—has been my constant companion and guide. I hope to make it yours as well.

Rabbi Rami

2018

INTRODUCTION

There is a secret to life and living well. Chances are you have heard it many times. It is one of those secrets that isn’t lost, or stuffed in a clay jar and hidden in a cave, or kept pristine in a mountaintop refuge or desert monastery. Nor is it one of those secrets packaged in a book or film, or revealed at a high-priced retreat or motivational seminar. You don’t build a church on this secret, or a cult around it. It gives no special power to those who know it, because everyone knows it. It is secret because even those who know it deny it, run from it, fear it.

The secret is this: nothing lasts. Everything is dying, decaying, falling apart and fading away; everything, and, most importantly, you.

This is not something we like to hear, so we stop up our ears every time we hear it. No, we don’t walk around with our palms pressed against the sides of our head. That would be silly and inefficient; so silly that it would in fact remind us of the very thing we want to deny, which is why it is so inefficient as well. No, we are too clever for that.

Our method for blocking out the secret is faith: faith that insists that what seems inescapably true is in fact false. We insist that there is something about us that doesn’t die. We insist that God or nature wouldn’t go to all the trouble of creating us—the most fascinating creatures in the universe—just to have us blink out of existence after a few short years of life. What would be the point of that? What is the purpose of our life, the meaning of life itself, if life is so impermanent?

Which is another secret we don’t want to learn: there is no purpose; there is no meaning. Purpose and meaning are not inherent to life. They are the inventions of a certain kind of life: human life; and a certain kind of human life: yours. You invent purpose and create meaning, and you do so in the face of life’s :mpermanence. This is the genius of human existence: we have the capacity to see the truth of impermanence and use it as a canvas to create extraordinary beauty. And we do all this while largely denying we are doing it at all.

We can’t escape the fact of impermanence—we all die—but we can pretend that death rather than life is impermanent, and take refuge in any number of theories about reincarnation, life after death, or ongoing life in heaven or hell or some other planet or plane of existence. We invent any number of alternatives to reality, and become so