Mah-yafit u’mah-na’amt ahavah batanugim

How beautiful and how sweet is Love
In all its pleasures! (Song of Songs 7:7)

In a Birkat HaMazon I composed many years ago, I wrote, “Pleasure is a doorway to expanded reality.” Allowing pleasure to be a doorway means that we must commit to walking through… which is very different than the usual patterns of grabbing on to pleasure and pushing away pain. The Songs of Songs knows love as the highest and most profound pleasure. Its profundity is rooted in the fact that it is indeed a doorway and a force of beckoning. We are called through that doorway of pleasure into an expanded reality, where we can know ourselves as part of the greater whole. Called by beauty, we walk through, tasting each sensation, and letting go, opening into the greater mystery.

To view context from Shir HaShirim through the Love at the Center project, click Shir HaShirm (Eikev).

To hear the chant, use the audio players. To download a chant, right-click the note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

• Pleasure as a Doorway (melody)  
• Pleasure as a Doorway (harmony)  
• Pleasure as a Doorway (mix)  

To download the PDF file for this chant, click Pleasure as a Doorway PDF. For the musical notation, click Pleasure as a Doorway notation PDF.