It is the period of the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur — that time when the myth (which I do not mean in any disparaging way — there is nothing quite so powerful as myth) tells us we are between life and death, and that we must put all our thoughts towards at-one-ment and return to God.
It is the time when we review all our sins and do the work of repairing what has been broken in our lives — relationships, agreements, our own moral sense. Sin in Judaism does not carry the same meaning as it does in Christianity. In fact, I tend to think it is closer to the Buddhist concept of “unskillful means,” that is to say that the sinful action was an attempt, however misguided, to reach wholeness from a place of delusion.
I find the words of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on the subject of sin and the energy that is locked up in it to capture the experience of what happens in meditation when we awaken from the grip of one kind of delusional thinking or another:
“Sin is not to be forgotten, blotted out or cast into the depths of the sea. On the contrary, sin has to be remembered. It is the memory of sin that releases the power within the inner depths of the soul of the penitent to do greater things than every before. The energy of the sin can be used to bring one to new heights.”
He then goes on to use the example of the life of Resh Lakish, a sage of the Talmudic era who before he came to the study of Torah was a much feared bandit. When he repented and returned, Soloveitchik says (in agreement with all the sages of the Talmud) this is what raised him to the level of the sages, it was the energy from released sin that elevated him to “unimaginable heights.”
Certainly, one of Resh Lakish’s great teachings, recorded in the Talmud, could have come from the mouth of the Buddha:
"No man commits a sin unless struck by momentary insanity"
It is interesting to note a similar story of a bandit turned saint in the Buddhist canon — the story of Angulimala. Angulimala was a highwayman who killed his victims and cut off their fingers, wearing them 
in a gruesome necklace. In fact that is what his name means, necklace of fingers. He had vowed to kill 1000 people. And had reached 999 when he met (and intended to kill) the Buddha, who with a few words enabled the robber to see through the delusion that led him to sin so grievously. And in a moment he became an Arahant, an awakened saint who then went from village to village as a monk trying to repair the damage he had done to others.
As a storyteller I recognize the motif at work here — the archetypal pattern that both reassures us that we can be forgiven and we can attain atonement by showing us how the worst can reach that state. And how these characters also stand in for the ways in which we commit little murders.
Scholars say that Angulimala did not really exist. It seems certain that Resh Lakish did, but who can say? I love one of the quotes ascribed to him in the Talmud as it regards the power of story and myth:
“Job never actually existed; he is only the imaginary hero of the poem, the invention of the poet”
And of course it doesn’t matter that Job didn’t exist, and Resh lakish (if he existed) knew it. Job's story (as well as the stories of Resh Lakish and Angulimala) teaches us something that a biography can’t. It reaches that part of our unconscious minds in the language it understands. Perhaps this quote is even a sly clue in the Talmud that Lakish did not really exist, but was created to tell a story. Maybe.
I digress however because of my love of story. And that’s not what is important here. What’s important is that we all sin. And that we can use awareness, mindfulness and compassion towards ourselves and others to wake up and release the energy of our sins to ride that energy towards unimaginable heights.
May you have an easy fast.
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