Likkutei Amarim Tanya, Chapter 27 - Part 2

00:00 We’re here in Tanya, chapter 27, near the top of page 34, first line. The Alter Rebbe is explaining why a person should not feel sad simply because he is at a level where impure thoughts occur to him in the middle of his ordinary affairs. Why shouldn’t he be sad? First, the Alter Rebbe explains, there is a mitzvah to fulfill here. The first point, the first thing the Alter Rebbe asks us to consider, is that on the contrary, a person should be happy that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given him the opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah, “Do not stray after your heart and after your eyes.” This mitzvah was addressed precisely to a person who is susceptible to such thoughts; that is when he can fulfill it. So he should be happy that he can do so. Now the Alter Rebbe goes further. On page 34, in the first line, at the last word, the Alter Rebbe says the following. He continues: All right, first of all, a person should be happy that he has the opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah. Now the Alter Rebbe says something deeper. A person may think that he ought to be sad because he has impure thoughts, but that very thought is a mistake. The mistake lies in the thought itself. It is not only that you should think about the joy of being able to fulfill a mitzvah. The very fact that a person feels sad and disheartened because he is susceptible to impure thoughts—that thought itself is mistaken at its root. This is what the Alter Rebbe now comes to clarify. He says: “On the contrary, sadness comes from arrogance.” Feeling sad because you have impure thoughts is not actually an expression of serving Hashem. A person thinks, “Oh, I’m a Chassidic Jew, I’m working on myself, I…” It’s just the opposite. He feels bad. At first glance, people who have not learned

02:09 this passage of Tanya might think that the very fact that it bothers me, that it hurts, that I’m distressed and disheartened because I am susceptible to impurity—that is something positive, something good. Here the Alter Rebbe teaches us something remarkable: that very thought is mistaken at its root. “On the contrary, sadness”—the fact that you feel sad about it—“comes from arrogance.” Not only is it not service of Hashem; it is the opposite of service of Hashem. It is arrogance, “for he does not recognize his place.” The person does not know himself. There is an expression in Pirkei Avos, “one who recognizes his place.” So this person does not recognize his place. One of the qualities listed there in Pirkei Avos, among the forty-eight ways in which Torah is acquired, I think—yes, of course—is “one who recognizes his place.” So when this person becomes sad because he is susceptible to impurity, that simply comes from arrogance. He does not recognize his own level; he does not know himself or who he really is. “For he does not recognize his place, and therefore his heart is troubled because he is not at the level of a tzaddik.” He is distressed that he is not at the level of a tzaddik, since tzaddikim certainly do not have such foolish thoughts. If he were a tzaddik, such thoughts would not belong to him at all. And so he is distressed that he is not at the level of a tzaddik. But the very thought that a person should be distressed and disheartened because “I have not reached the level of a tzaddik” is itself undesirable. It itself shows arrogance. “For if he recognized his place”—if a person knew his place, his true situation,

04:09 “that he is very far from the level of a tzaddik, and if only he could be a beinoni and not a rasha throughout his life, even for a single hour.” If a person knew the truth, he would know that he is very far from being a tzaddik. We are speaking here about a beinoni, who is very far from the level of a tzaddik. And the Alter Rebbe adds: if only he could be a beinoni and not a rasha throughout his life, even for a single hour. What is the Alter Rebbe saying here? There are two points. What does it mean to recognize one’s place? A person needs to know his own place, and here that has two aspects. First, he is very far from the level of a tzaddik. He needs to know that his level is not remotely comparable to that of a tzaddik. After everything we have learned in Tanya, we know that the difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni is a difference from one extreme to the other. A beinoni, in his essential nature, still has an animal soul and desires. A tzaddik’s essential nature has become holy; it has been completely transformed, as we learned. Chapters 10, 11 and 12 are where the Alter Rebbe explained the difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni. As the Alter Rebbe indicates, a beinoni, in his essential nature, falls within the category of a rasha. That is what is meant when a beinoni is counted among the wicked rather than among the tzaddikim: in his essential nature, the beinoni is still susceptible to those things. So you are not remotely on the same level. That is the first point: he is very far from the level of a tzaddik. There is no comparison at all. By nature, when it comes to something within my reach, I might feel envious or distressed and ask, “Why can’t I?” Say you are in a class, with your classmates. There is enough confusion outside; we don’t need to add a little

06:12 [unclear]. No need. Don’t get confused, guys, about coupons. So the second level concerns the beinoni. Here is an example: you are in a class, and one student learns more while another learns less. We say, “The envy of scholars increases wisdom.” Sometimes a student is distressed and says, “Why can’t I learn the way he learns? Why can’t I?” The Rebbe Rashab, of blessed memory, explains in Kuntres Eitz Hachayim what good envy is and what bad envy is. Good envy is when you envy the other person’s effort: Why don’t I work as he works? Why don’t I serve Hashem in the way he does? “Rachel envied her sister”—she envied her good deeds. When you see someone else behaving well and doing good things, you want to do the same. You want to learn from him. That is healthy envy: wanting to learn from his actions and from his efforts. But envying someone else’s level is no longer good envy. That is what Chassidus explains. One thing is to envy someone’s efforts: he works hard and applies himself, so I too want to work hard and apply myself. But as for being on someone else’s level—everyone has his own level. Does it make sense to envy someone else’s level? He is on his level, and you are on yours. If you apply yourself as he does, you may reach more or less. You will reach what you are capable of reaching. A person needs to seek his own maximum. As is well known from Reb Zusha of Anipoli: In heaven they will not ask me why I did not reach the level of the Baal Shem Tov. They will ask me why I did not reach the level of Zusha—why I did not become myself. So that is the first thing he says: Don’t display arrogance. The fact that you feel disheartened

08:06 Feeling down about yourself comes from arrogance. You are fooling yourself about your level. You want to be on the level of a tzaddik, and you do not understand that you are nowhere near it. That is the first thing. So there is no place for sadness. Sadness comes from despair. What, then, should you be striving for? What should be the desire, the goal, the wish of a beinoni? A beinoni’s goal should be: “If only I could be a beinoni.” That is the very goal itself. Right now, I want to be a beinoni through and through. In the words of the Alter Rebbe, “If only I were a beinoni and not a rasha, even for a single hour, throughout my life.” That means now, in the present. The Rebbe explains in a note to the Tanya in Lessons in Tanya that the Alter Rebbe did not say this for no reason. He meant: this is the avodah; this is what is being asked of me now. What is being asked of you now is not to think, “Why am I not a tzaddik?” You need to think, “How can I make sure that I am a beinoni and not a rasha, even for a single hour—even for a single moment of that hour?” That must be the goal and the avodah. What should a person expect of himself? Since his goal is to be a beinoni—that is what he wants: “If only I could be a beinoni every day and not a rasha even for a single hour”—then, says the Alter Rebbe, this is [unclear] within your power. The avodah of a beinoni is that when an impulse from the yetzer hara rises from the heart to the mind, he diverts his attention from it completely and rejects it with both hands, as explained above. If the goal is to be a beinoni, then on the contrary: having thoughts and impulses, working on yourself and struggling to reject them with both hands—that is precisely the avodah of a beinoni.

10:02 This is what we learned in chapter 12, where the Alter Rebbe explained the avodah of a beinoni. Foreign thoughts rise from the beinoni’s heart to his mind. There are two kinds of foreign thoughts. As the Alter Rebbe explains in chapter 12, there are two kinds of impulses, of thoughts. Some thoughts come automatically, because thought—as is known and as is written in the sefarim—is a mirror of the heart. Thought is the reflection, or the mirror, of the heart’s emotions. So what the heart feels immediately rises to the mind, and thoughts and desires occur to him. That is the first kind of thought. A beinoni cannot prevent it; he has no control over that, because he is not a tzaddik. Those thoughts come. What is the beinoni’s avodah? As we explained in the previous class, the moment he realizes that this is an improper thought, he absolutely does not allow himself to entertain it willingly, G-d forbid. The beinoni’s commitment, his identification with G-dliness, is so strong that the moment he notices that this is something improper, he immediately rejects it with both hands. That is avodah. That is what you need to be focused on now—not feeling depressed because you are not on the level of a tzaddik, and asking why, why you have desires in the first place. So this is the point the Alter Rebbe adds here, an extremely important point in avodah: a person needs to know that sometimes feeling down comes not only from despair, but also from arrogance. This is very fundamental. The Alter Rebbe is speaking here about a beinoni, but if you think about it, this idea is a very fundamental one in avodah generally. It happens all the time with bochurim who sometimes feel down because of various things.

11:56 A bochur falls into a bad mood—depression, sadness, and so on. Why does he have a yetzer hara? Of course, on lower levels, each person has this in his own way. Here we are not talking specifically about improper thoughts; everyone has his own struggles. Sometimes a person actually fails and commits a transgression. We are talking about someone who is not on the level of a beinoni, someone on the level of a rasha. There, too, the same sort of problem exists: we sink into sadness and feel down because we failed at something. What is that sadness? Does it really come from teshuvah? It is not the sadness of teshuvah. It is sadness that comes from arrogance. “I wanted to be a one-hundred-percent pure bochur, and now I’m soiled. I feel that I’m not.” So what bothers me is not my service of Hashem. It is just my own self-image, and this whole feeling of being down comes from arrogance. There is an interpretation the Rebbe cites in the name of the Alter Rebbe in Likkutei Torah: gasus haruach does not simply mean pride. The Alter Rebbe cites [unclear] and says that the meaning of gasus haruach is “coarse spirituality.” The translation of gasus haruach would be spirituality and coarseness—coarseness in spiritual matters. In other words, this is about spirituality. He feels bitter and sad. He wants to be a tzaddik, he wants to be a beinoni, he wants to be a chossid, and he feels bad that he has a desire, that he has a yetzer hara, that he feels a certain sourness. So it is spiritual. He feels that he himself is spiritual, that he... But that is gasus haruach. It is spirituality with coarseness—the coarseness of his spirituality. As the Alter Rebbe explains here, you are fooling yourself, and that is why you are being arrogant. If you knew the truth—what your avodah is—

13:49 your avodah is to serve Hashem where you actually are. You need to serve Hashem in precisely that place, because that is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants from you. There is a paradox here. We are discussing this this week: in this week’s Likkutei Torah there is a maamar, “Sos Tasis Vesagel Ha’akarah Bekibutz Baneha Lesochah Besimchah.” It is a wonderful maamar; I suggest everyone find time to study it. It contains one of the most fundamental principles of avodah, as they say. The Rebbe also cites “Sos Tasis” in a maamar about shlichus. There the Alter Rebbe explains this point, using very strong language. He discusses “Sos Tasis Vesagel Ha’akarah Bekibutz Baneha Lesochah Besimchah”—avodah with joy. He explains there that joy breaks through all harsh judgments and all of that. Even if a person does not serve Hashem with complete perfection, if he serves with joy, “joy breaks through barriers.” Ordinarily, the pattern is “When a woman conceives and gives birth to a male.” He explains the meaning of that verse: when one’s avodah is as it should be, one reaches the level of “male,” representing strength in avodah, attachment, cleaving to Hashem, and so on. She gives birth to a male—avodah that endures. But when one’s avodah falls short, she gives birth to a female, representing weakness, something that does not endure. When does that apply? When one follows the ordinary order of avodah. But if one serves with joy, joy breaks through barriers. Then, even if his avodah is not as it should be, he is also given from Above without calculations, and so on. But look: there he is speaking about serving with joy, and he makes a tremendous point, along the same lines as what he says here in Tanya. There, though, he speaks specifically about a beinoni. The Alter Rebbe says that

15:40 Someone whose spirits sink, a person who falls. The wording here is strong, but we’re talking about a person who has a setback and feels sad because he isn’t where he should be in serving Hashem. So the Alter Rebbe says that this comes from arrogance: he wants to be like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. That example is interesting—he wants to reach lofty spiritual levels. And this is one of the fundamental teachings revealed by the Baal Shem Tov and his students: in serving Hashem, a person must not be looking for an image of himself. “I want to be on a certain level. I want to be on the level of a tzaddik, or a beinoni. I want to fit a certain picture.” And when I don’t quite match the picture I drew of the sort of chossid I want to be, I feel that I’m not that person, and so I fall. A person needs to serve Hashem and ask what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants from him. What does Hakadosh Boruch Hu want from me right now? That I do a mitzvah. Ah, but I’m a coarse fellow; I’m in the middle of... Well, that’s where you are. But Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants a dwelling in the lower realms. This is discussed in many maamarim, particularly in a maamar of the Alter Rebbe: a person should think not about what he is or where he stands, but about what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants from him right now. Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed me in the lower realms, and in this case I am that “lower realm.” It is there that Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants a dwelling for Himself. So I need to do a mitzvah, and I need to do it with joy and a glad heart. That is the work of...

17:24 There’s also a maamar about this. The Rebbe cites a teaching of the Alter Rebbe from the abbreviated notes of the maamarim delivered before Petersburg. The Alter Rebbe explains what it means to divert one’s attention. We always say, yes, you need to divert your attention. In letters to young men asking about all kinds of distracting thoughts and improper thoughts, the Rebbe writes time and again: divert your attention. So the Alter Rebbe explains what that means. What does he say? It’s the point we’re learning here. A person thinks about himself, and the sadness comes from thinking about yourself. That’s why you fall into sadness. You say, “Who am I? What am I? Can I accomplish anything? I’m such a coarse fellow, so full of desires. My service is worth nothing,” and so on. Whatever work I’ve done, I feel this overwhelming sense of failure. So what does it mean to divert your attention? Stop thinking about yourself. Think about what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants from you. Diverting your attention means pulling your mind away from those thoughts, ceasing to think about things only as you see them, and seeing them from the perspective of how Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees them. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants you to serve Him right now, as you are, where you are. That makes it much clearer. Let’s return to our subject and to the meaning of what the Tanya says here. The Alter Rebbe says that this is the distinction. Why is sadness over having desires and improper thoughts fundamentally wrong? Because it comes from arrogance. The Alter Rebbe’s expression here, “If only I were a beinoni,” is well known. The Rebbe also cites in his sichos the story of Reb Hillel of Paritch. Reb Hillel of Paritch was

19:13 one of the great chassidim. Earlier, he had been connected with Rabbi Nachum of Chernobyl and Reb Mordechai of Chernobyl. Later he drew close to Chabad and became a chossid of the Alter Rebbe. He said that what changed when he began studying Tanya was that before then, he had thought he was a tzaddik. Reb Hillel, as is known, was a holy person from birth. Before he became a Chabad chossid, he thought he was on the level of a tzaddik. As soon as he began learning the first chapter of Tanya, he said, “A tzaddik? Certainly not. If only I were a beinoni.” For him, that was the beginning of the path of Chabad Chassidus: Tanya opened his eyes to see that the level of a tzaddik was beyond him. “If only I were a beinoni”—that expression appears here in Tanya, chapter 27. This is its source. In any case, this is what the Alter Rebbe teaches us here: a person needs the right outlook on serving Hashem. He needs to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu with joy and not become upset over his own state. Since today is 2 Iyar, the birthday of the Rebbe Maharash, here’s a teaching from the Rebbe Maharash. There’s a story told about him that relates somewhat to what we’re learning here in Tanya. One of his chassidim lived in a certain place, and he came to the Rebbe Maharash and said he wanted to move elsewhere. He didn’t want to stay there. The Rebbe Maharash wanted him to live there, rather than move. So the Rebbe Maharash asked, “Why do you want to leave?” He answered that the meat there—the shechitah—wasn’t entirely up to standard. He wasn’t so happy with the shechitah or the shochet. He was a G-d-fearing chossid.

21:29 In short, he wanted to move to a place that was more chassidic and more G-d-fearing. So the Rebbe Maharash told him, “Who says you have to eat meat? You can live without meat, too.” He said to him, “The Gemara says that an am ha’aretz is forbidden to eat meat.” Yes, that’s the wording: an am ha’aretz is forbidden to eat meat. The Rebbe Maharash interpreted the word “forbidden” as meaning “bound.” Forbidden, in the sense of... Then the Rebbe Maharash told him that he wanted to enter into a partnership with him, and gave him a donation: “You go to the market, and you...” In short, there’s more to the story, and part of it is also in Hayom Yom. He told him, “I want to be your partner.” Afterward, another chossid came in. He was a rabbi in the city of Polotsk, in Russia; the account even gives his name. He came in to the Rebbe Maharash, who asked him, “How are things?” He told him that he had a kollel, with married men sitting and learning a great deal of the revealed parts of Torah, [unclear]. Then the Rebbe Maharash asked him, “And what about tzedakah? What about—” He answered, “No, not so much.” What about their middos, excuse me—their character traits? He said their middos were like those of wealthy men’s sons-in-law; they weren’t so refined. So the Rebbe Maharash told him, “Tell them to bring me half their dowries. The next time you come, they should bring me half their dowries.” The rabbi said, “I won’t be able to persuade them. I don’t

25:22 think that will happen. I won’t be able to persuade them.” So the Rebbe Maharash told him, “Tell them that if they don’t give half, they won’t keep the other half either.” Before he left, the Rebbe Maharash told him, “I hope that next time you’ll have better news for me.” The Rebbe Maharash said that this second chossid had caused him distress, while the first chossid had brought him satisfaction. That’s a powerful teaching. It’s about arrogance and bittul—thinking about another Jew. What brings satisfaction is a chossid who can put himself aside and think about another Jew. A chossid may be a scholar, and that’s all well and good, but if he cannot put himself and his sense of self aside, that is what caused the Rebbe Maharash distress. In any case, may everything be...