Transcript
Good morning, boker tov, welcome back to 10 minutes of meaning. Hope everyone had a beautiful, wonderful, healthy and happy Pesach. 10 minutes of meaning series is generally sponsored by our friends Marilyn and Michael Fedak. Please help yourself in the Rav Sharlo corner to a coffee, pastry, slushie. Enjoy as we delve back into the ninth perek of Tanya. In perek tet, the ninth perek of Tanya, we've been discussing, we began with the struggle of the inner battle, the war inside you. The Tanya is based on the premise that we're made up of two parts. There's the חלק אלוה ממעל ממש, the godly soul inside us. The piece of God literally in us. We are a piece of God which is why, as Rav Tzadok HaKohen writes, we have an obligation not only to have faith in Hashem, but if we believe we're a piece of Hashem, then having faith in Hashem means having faith emuna in ourselves, to believe in our redeemability, believe in our goodness, believe in our purity, believe in our possibility. To believe that there is a piece of God in us, it also gives us and empowers us the ability v'ahavta l'reiecha kamocha. We can love others because we believe there is a God in them, that which is beautiful and redeemable and wonderful, that which is holy in them. So the premise to our relationship with others and importantly the relationship with ourselves is to know we're חלק אלוה ממעל ממש, the piece of God quite literally inside us. We are an extension of the Almighty Himself. But there's also a Nefesh Bahamit, there's also an animal soul and our job, our goal, says the Alter Rebbe, is not to slaughter, not to purge, not to eliminate or remove that animal soul, but rather to train the animal. But this godly soul, the disciplined soul, the soul that's able to regulate ourselves, to reach and to stretch and to strive for higher and higher, is at war. There is a battle taking place with that animal. It happens this morning, when you woke up and you're trying to decide: Do I make it to Kolel Boker? Do I turn over and stay in bed? Am I going to hit snooze and come later or am I going to be on time? Am I going to talk during davening or am I going to focus? That battle is happening from the moment we wake up, till we fall asleep at night, in what we say, what we think and what we do all day in between, our attitude to sleep, eat, what we look at and everything else. That's the battle. And the Alter Rebbe in this perek tet gave us a mashal of a land. Russia and Ukraine, other areas of the world, some are trying to conquer. There's who's going to govern? Who will be the ruler and king? Who's going to be in charge? We have this guf, we have this body. Who's in control? Who's in charge? Who's in charge? Who's in control? Who's deciding? That's the discipline we're meant to live with. Are we going to give in to the impulse of our lower self? Just eat that. Who cares what time, who cares what food, who cares where, when, what? Just look at that, just say that, just go there, just do that. Or we say no, no, no, you're not in charge, you're not in control, that's not... I'm in charge, the godly soul is in charge, the godly soul is in control. And the Alter Rebbe here in perek tet has told us where it emanates. The head or the heart? The heart sends the message to the head, the head sends the message to the heart. The two sides or parts of the heart, we went through whether it's meant to be taken literally or meant to be taken figuratively. But the anatomy of the soul, of where the different parts of the soul are found within the body. And then we got to healing the dark side, לשנותו ולהפכו מתענוג עולם הזה לאהבת השם. This big chidush of the Alter Rebbe, again, that we're not shechting or destroying or eliminating the animal soul, but we're redirecting and we're channeling and we're training and we're using the cravings of the animal soul to our advantage. So even those animal acts of eating and sleeping and the drive for relations, one can indulge that and it can lower and lessen and compromise us, corrupt us, or you can channel it so even what we call those base or animal impulse or cravings can be transformed to lift us, as the pasuk says we say b'chol levavcha, not b'chol libecha. In Shema we want to worship Hashem b'chol levavcha with all of our hearts. Hearts is in the plural. What kind of hearts in the plural? The answer is b'shnei yetzarecha, chazal darshun Gemara Berachot daf nun dalet, it means with both of your... of both of your drives, yetzer hatov and yetzer hara. They can be challenged and redirected in that way. And then the Alter Rebbe, and this is the end of our summary, brings us up to what we're up to, talks about two types of love. There's the אהבה בתענוגים להתענג על השם. There's a love of the flaming fire, there's the pleasurable love which is mein olam haba. There are the different types of love that we can have in our attitude, in our relationship to Hashem. אהבה עזה כרשפי אש or there's the ahava that is the ahava of b'taanugim. So that's what we're up to. הענג הוא במוח חכמה ושכל המתענג בהשכלת השם וידיעתו. See where we're at? You're following inside? We're in the middle of, towards the end of perek tet. Haoneg hu b'moach, this delight, this connection that even our animal soul is capable of getting, is experienced in the mental faculties b'chochma u'sechel. in inquiry and intelligence, מתענג בהשכלת השם וידיעתו, by the sheer pleasure of understanding, of pursuing knowledge of Hashem, כפי השגת שכלו וחכמתו, according to the limits. Everyone is different, we're designed different. Our cognitive ability, our analytic ability, our memory; it's all different. I will highlight as I have been throughout that even though Chabad sometimes gets a wrong or a bad rap that it's about farbrenging and drinking l'chaims and other things, which it is too and there's nothing wrong with that, there's room and a place for it. But most fundamentally at its core, the Alter Rebbe's philosophy and ideology, approach to life was chochmah, binah, and da'as. These are all mental faculties, these are all cognitive faculties. The core and the foundation for the Alter Rebbe of a life of service of Hashem is grounded in learning Torah. In learning Torah, learning, learning, learning, knowing, knowing, knowing Hashem. On top of that, you also farbreng and you make a l'chaim and you enjoy a kiddush and you also find within these physical components of life you also find the opportunity to connect to Hashem. But the emphasis and the focus, the priority and the fundamental, the foundation and the non-negotiable throughout Tanya, certainly in the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch, Hilchos Talmud Torah, is learning Torah. See here too he says, what is the oneg haamiti, this ultimate delight in Hashem, this taanug, this anag al Hashem? To get high on God is not to get high on God like l'havdil, chalila, getting high on a substance. The ultimate high you can have on God is getting to know him. Is the delight and the pleasure and the bliss and the joy in the knowledge of him. How do you get to know him? Because the Ribbono Shel Olam gave us access to his diary. He gave us the Torah HaKedosha, this Toras Chayim, the Toras Hashem. He gave us the description of elokus. He gave us his diary. And when we learn it and study it, you walk away elevated and enriched, you are high, you are excited, you are inspired. כפי השגת שכלו וחכמתו. So in contrast to the love of the flaming fire, karishpei esh, which is experienced in the heart, pleasurable love, this other love, ahava b'taanugim, is experienced in the head. They're both high levels. They're both ahava is a high level. Ahava's a higher level than yirah. Love of Hashem is a higher level than awe of Hashem. How do you know that? The Ramban says because mitzvos aseh are avas Hashem, positive commandments are love of Hashem. Mitzvos lo saseh are out of awe or fear of Hashem. עשה דוחה לא תעשה. So עשה דוחה לא תעשה, ahava doche yirah. Yirah is the starting point. Reishis... what's the pasuk? ראשית חכמה יראת השם, thank you, ראשית חכמה יראת השם. It begins with yirah, but the goal ultimately is to get to the place of ahava. With our children, we want them to first listen to us because they have awe, because they have, sorry, a little, a little fear, but we want it to get to a place of ahava, out of love and out of embrace. And within this ahava's the higher level, but within ahava there's two levels. There's the karishpei esh, the passionate love, there's the, the infatuation love, there's the, the love of the heart, but then there's the higher level which is the love of the head. The love of the heart can wear out. If you think about this in the human realm, when a couple are first courting and there's an infatuation and there's passion and there's a love, you know, that can wear out, that can run into a wall, that can grow stale or grow old. But when the love comes from the higher level which is knowledge of values and priorities, of appreciation, of respect, of admiration, that's a love that lasts, that's a love that endures, that's a higher level love. The Rambam writes this in Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, in Hilchos De'os, and the Rambam talks about eizeh avas Hashem, how do you fulfill the mitzvah of avas Hashem? He says to know Hashem. And when you know Hashem, so the commentary on the side of the Rambam, you'll ask who? It just says peirush. The commentary on the side of the Rambam there writes there's ahava hatluyah b'davar, אהבה שאינה תלויה בדבר. When you love Hashem because of the good things he gives you, when you love someone because of the good things they give you, you love them while they give you. If they stop giving you, you stop loving them. But when you love them not because of what they give you, but you love them because of who they are and your knowledge of them, then that's a love that lasts. So similarly here, this is the higher level love. U'hu bechinat mayim, says the Alter Rebbe, this is the element of water. This intense yearning, now I'm reading from Rav Chaim Miller, this intense yearning and passion with love like flaming fire stems from the experience of a distant God. Pleasurable love, the love of taanugim, on the other hand, while representing a more powerful love, is ironically less enthusiastic. It's like cold water as the beloved is more real and immediate. Pleasurable love being derived from elemental water is a greater force against physical desires which are from water. So pleasurable love parallels or offsets the pleasurable pursuit, meaning passion, pleasure. So we have passion in the pursuit of the physical pleasures and it can be replaced or offset by the pleasurable love of Hashem that's from water. וזרע אור זרוע שבקדושת נפש האלוקית and seed sown light, pasuk in Tehillim is within the divine soul's holiness. I'm going to read to you from Rav Chaim Miller now. The parts of Tanya which I think, I think I understand and I'm happy and excited to share and there are the parts that I lean on and rely on others as I'm still trying to understand. Probing deeper into the psyche, the Tanya here draws on the kabbalistic descriptions of man's origins, commenting on the five-fold mention of light on the first day of creation and water on the second. Let me repeat that. Commenting on the five-fold mention of light on the first day of creation and water on the second, the Zohar notes quote, \"When a person comes to be, he is first seed, which is light, for that seed is the light of all the limbs of the body. Afterwards that seed, which is light, spreads and becomes water. By the moisture of the water it becomes further detailed and the form of the body expands into these waters, growing in all directions.\" So in other words, within the seed of our creation was all the possibility. The fingernails that are growing, as he says elsewhere, the little fingernail that's going to grow on your small toe was also included in the DNA and the design of the original seed that would later become you. Then that became—that light spreads and becomes water. I don't know what percent of the body is made up of actually water? Some large percent. By the moisture of the water it becomes further detailed into the forms of the rest of the body growing in all directions. Since light, seed, precedes water in the order of creation, through accessing the higher power of light of the divine soul, you're capable of transforming the water of the animal soul for the good. Okay, I said the words. I think, I think I understand a little bit. But let that sink in. The light seed precedes water in the order of creation. So by accessing the higher power of light in our soul, we're capable of transforming the water that is the animal soul, the passion, the pursuit of pleasure, for the good. Back to Tanya. המהפכת לטוב את בחינת המים שבנפש הבהמית שמהם הם תאוות תענוגי עולם הזה מתחילה. The divine soul's light transforms the source of all desires for pleasures of this world, the element of water in the animal soul to good. Forget the exact formula or mechanism, or don't forget it right now, but what I think he means to say is the following: This nefesh habehamit, this desire, this craving, this drive we have—food, sleep, intimacy, the base animal physical material pleasures of this world. Our goal is not to extinguish them, our goal is not to transcend them, our goal is not to live an ascetic life where I don't sleep, I don't speak, I don't procreate. That's not the goal, that's not a Jewish value, that's not a Jewish view. Our goal is to take those very drives, those very passions, those very animal, the animal soul, the drives of the animal soul, but to redirect and re-channel them. כמו שכתוב בעץ חיים שער נ' פרק ג' בשם הזוהר שהרע נהפך להיות טוב גמור כמו יצר טוב ממש, that the impulse to wrong can be transformed into pure good to be on par with the impulse to good itself. The yetzer hara can serve you so that the yetzer hara and its drive is serving you as well as the yetzer hatov. He writes here a practical lesson: Your animal soul's not evil, it just has crude taste. Through meditation, the study of Hasidic wisdom, the study of, I will add, wisdom, chochmah, maybe through learning Gemara too, you can teach your animal soul to appreciate sacred and spiritual things too. So now that drive for food has a yearning for a Shabbos meal, a Yom Tov meal, has a yearning to make a bracha on that food, has a yearning to find chayus and Elokus in that delicious food, that you're not indulging in some animal act of eating. You're not fressing, you're not stuffing your face, but now you're holding a piece of Hashem in that food, you're going to make a holy bracha on it. When you eat it, you're going to do it with the mindfulness that this is giving you life, so the Ribbono shel Olam is in this food because it's giving and extending me life. I'm taking that yearning, that hunger, that drive, that appetite for food, an animal urge, but I'm using it as a conduit to achieve something holy, sacred, something elevated, so it's serving me now as well as the yetzer hatov. If this art is perfected, it's possible to completely eliminate the lustful desires of the animal soul and transform them into spiritual yearnings. That doesn't mean you've given up on the pleasures of life, you've replaced them with even greater pleasure. You know what's even better than fressing on food? Eating food with mindfulness that you're enjoying its delicious taste, your delight in the delicious taste, while also simultaneously Simultaneously doing it in a disciplined, regulated, elevated, mindful, conscious, intentional way. Now that food not only tastes good on the tastebuds, that food tastes delicious in your soul as well. The impulse to evil is not irredeemably evil. It is a force for desire. By training it to appreciate the greater pleasure of immersing in Hashem's wisdom, it can be transformed. So that notion of drive, of desire, that's good. There are people who lack it who don't have it. There's people that that fire is extinguished, that flame is running so low, there is no drive, there is no appetite. When you have it that's good and wherever you have it is a window, it's revealing where you have the potential and possibility for the greatest good. בהסיר הבגדים הצואים ממנו שהן תענוגי עולם הזה שמלובש בהם. This is done when we shed, when we take off those bigadim tzo'im, the soiled garments, which is a reference to Zechariah, which are the pleasures of this world in which it is clothed. If we're indulging in those drives, whether it's for money, for things, material pleasure, material objects, if we're indulging in them in a this-world way, then we're giving in to that animal soul, animal impulse. But when we take that drive, that appetite that first expressed itself through that animal soul, but we now capture it, redirect it, channel it, pivot it and use it in the pursuit of good, now that's a... we've now... that animal soul's great, we can redirect it, we can redirect it. And with that, the Alter Rebbe is going to go back to this battle, the war that's happening in our body about who's in charge and who's in control. So we'll just finish with this, it will take us to the fourth and final section of Perek Tet. וכן שאר כל המדות שבלב שהן אנפי היראה ואהבה לה' לבדו. The divine soul desires other emotions of the heart that are the derivatives of Ahava ve'Yira, be devoted exclusively to Hashem. וכל כח הדבור שבפה והמחשבה שבמוח יהיו ממולאים מלבושי המחשבה והדבור של נפש האלקית לבדה. The divine soul, the nefesh, the chelek Eloka, nefesh ha'elokit wishes to have full control over the words of your mouth, the thoughts in your head, should be dressed only in the divine soul. So there's a battle. What are you going to think? Lower thoughts or higher thoughts? What are you going to say? This week's parsha's Tazria-Metzora, are we going to waste, misuse and abuse the power of speech or are we going to use speech to elevate, to build, to compliment? Our actions similarly. שהם מחשבות ה' ותורתו להיות חסיקא כל היום לא פסק פומי מגירסא. Topics of our conversations are our mouth should never cease to study. Are we going to talk about people, gossip and slander? Are we going to talk narishkeit and waste of time? Or are we going to talk about ideas? Are we going to build a world? Are we going to energize? וכח המעשה שידו ושאר רמ\"ח אבריו. The divine soul wants to have full control of all the actions of our hands, the 248 limbs. יהיה במעשה המצות לבד שהוא לבוש השלישי של נפש האלקית. We learned earlier a couple perakim ago that the just like we're wearing a garment, you're wearing clothing, and we express ourselves through the clothing that we wear, so too the souls wear clothing, garments. What are the garments of the soul? Thought, speech and action. Speech and action we understood were garments. The big chiddush is that thought is also a garment of the soul, even though it's in our inner world, it's a garment of the soul. So who controls what garment you wear? When you go to your closet and you're putting on the garment, who's in charge? Who's in charge? So these garments of the soul, speech, thought and action, which are the garments of the soul, who's deciding what garment you wear? What you say, what you do, what you think? Is it going to be the godly soul or the animal soul? Who's in charge, who's in control? Now the Alter Rebbe referenced 248 because that's a Mishna Ohalos, that's a Chazal, tradition of Chazal, we have 248 parts, delineated by the bones of the skeleton and surrounding flesh. Now he points out here of Chaim Miller, a person is born with 270 bones and through ossification of cartilage, the number eventually falls to 206 in adulthood. So why does the Mishna Ohalos talk about 248 bones? So he quotes here from Ha'Talmud ve'Chokhmat ha'Refuah, Berlin 1928, that the Mishnah's count of 248 refers to the skeleton of a 16 or 17-year-old. Between the 270 bones that you're born with and the 206 that you have in adulthood after ossification, your age 16 or 17 when you have 248 bones. So whenever Chazal talk about 248 bones, they're talking to the 16-17-year-old or the 16-17-year-old in you, the 16 or 17-year-old in you. That's an interesting footnote. Okay, we'll pick up with section four, what the animal soul... We covered what the godly soul wants. What the godly soul wants is to be in control. Godly soul wants to be in control of the body and of the garments of the body. What does the animal soul want? We pick up with Im yirtzeh Hashem next week. It should be a day of besuros tovos.
