From the Yetzer Hara’s Desk - December 2008

ELDERS

by Cindy Mettika Hoffman

with editorial assistance by Bob Evans

(The Yetzer Hara iis a fundamental Jewish concept, usually translated as the evil impulse or the evil inclination. The Yetzer Hara is the force within us that influences us to make wrong choices, which lead us away from God. These are the desires and impulses that lead us toward greed, fear, vanity, anger and the worship of the false. While most of our teachers write that the Yetzer Hara is not incarnate and does not exist outside of ourselves, in the Talmud (Baba Bathra, 16b) Rabbi Resh Lakish says that "Satan, the evil inclination, and the Angel of Death are all one.”

Mettika writes a column for the quarterly Fearless Mountain from the perspective of Mara (the Yetzer Hara) and has allowed us to reprint it here, with a few changes to use Jewish rather than Buddhist nomenclature - rge)

I am Yetzer Hara - King of deceit –deception–fear–pride–ego, vanity and delusion. Master of suffering - of instilling the desire for wanting things we do not have and getting rid of things we do not want. Aging men and women-elders- are the perfect target for my products. With the aging baby boomers I can acquire trillions of dollars without entering those pesky unstable housing, insurance, and stock markets. All I have to do is instill and nurture the fear of sickness –old age- and death. I have special unclean spiritual powers, which make elders disappear from sight as the aging process begins. Their panic and desperation makes them ripe candidates for my products. I hear their thoughts when they look in the mirror- “Whose face is that with all those wrinkles, age spots and wattles on the neck and arms?” Why is the print getting smaller, hearing fading, intake of medicines and supplements increasing, knee joints locking up, memory diminishing, and doctor's visits increasing?

Corporate empires flourish and thrive with my minions on Madison Avenue. Billion dollar industries have spawned products that are devoted to a perceived image of youth and beauty. You look in the mirror one day and see an old person. Who is that? It must be a mistake. Someone else must be in the room that sort of looks like me but can't be. That person is old and I am not old.

There are surgeons who perform surgeries to add and subtract body parts with promises to make you more beautiful, vibrant, and appealing. Where would the sagging, nagging, and dragging, population be without plastic surgeries and poisonous Botox injections? The American Medical Association gives their blessings. All mine.

The hair industry is mine. You are an elder who is old and gray-and maybe a tad ugly. Try our products to dye your hair so that you can try to look young and beautiful. No more gray for you. Just buy and dye before you die. Do you want thicker, thinner, straighter or curlier hair? How about buying a wig or rug for no hair. My products encompass endless arrays for you to hope to re establish the vigor, suppleness, and beauty that was once yours. The media industry is mine. Pictures of products in magazines show you how the perfect elders live. “Sixty is the new eighty.” That motto surely sells the products quickly as I laugh up my sleeve hauling money to the bank.

I, the Yetzer Hara, do not want you to see this truth. The more you see the less you will buy. The more peaceful you are with things as they are the more agitated I become. I hate being foiled and that is what some of you are doing down there, praying, meditating, practicing Gemilut Chasidim, going against the stream, learning, waking up.

DRAT, foiled again!

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Updated 10/31/2008 (rge)