"The Duties of the Heart" Gate 8, Ch. 3 (Part 5)

"In Search of Spiritual Excellence"

-- A Reworking of Classical Mussar Texts

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman's series on www.torah.org
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"The Duties of the Heart" Gate 8, Ch. 3 (Part 5)

Then ruminate about who and what you admire and venerate, and why; and what you'd do to reciprocate for his or her attention. For if someone important and admirable were to suddenly pay close attention to you, draw you close to him, and do you favors, you'd certainly love and admire him and do everything you possibly could to draw close to him and return the favor in full. "So, if that's how you'd behave toward some frail mortal," Ibn Pakudah points out, "then how much more so should you act that way toward G-d who loves you so" and who wants nothing more than to draw you close to Him.

But, what has us overlook that and to take G-d's generosity and love for granted? Our yetzer harah (our inborn pull toward the mundane). What would it take to overcome it? First, the realization that your yetzer harah always has something deleterious -- while tantalizing at the same time -- to say; and second, that it works by befuddling your thinking and persuading you to do absurd, destructive things you just *know* are wrong. Where do we go from there, then?

Ibn Pakudah suggests that we take this all very much to heart and to thus "awaken from our sleep" and "cast aside the curtain the yetzer harah has placed before our heart to separate us from the light of reason". After all, "the yetzer harah is like a spider-web woven over a window that (eventually) becomes so thick and dense that sunlight can't pass through it", i.e., it starts out weak and powerless but then lays one filament of rationalization upon another until it grows nearly as strong as the boldest truth. So beware, because if you're too nonchalant and indifferent to it when it first starts its machinations, "it will become stronger and withhold the light of reason from you (from that point on), making it even more difficult for you to banish it from your mind". So, "make every effort to bask in the light of wisdom" from the first, "and to sense the truth of these things in your heart".

Then dwell on the irony of how many plans we make for the future we know so little about. Just think about how much food we buy beforehand without knowing if we'll ever get to enjoy it, for example. Reflect upon the fact that we oftentimes "spend days preparing for a far away business trip and thinking about which products we'll sell there, how we'll travel, how much food and whom we'll take along, where we'll stay once we get there and the like", when if the truth be known, "we don't know what G–d has decreed for us or if we'll even live that long", Ibn Pakudah chides us soberly.

For, as he reminds us, we actually need to be prepared for quite another journey: we always need to "be ready for ... the long journey to the world from which there's no escape and which can't be avoided", the afterlife. So, "how can you ignore the world you're steadily heading to?" he remonstrates us, and yet always prepare for one ephemeral event or another. "Remember your (ultimate) destiny and plan for what you'll need for your stay in your final home" rather than plan for forays in this passing world.

Ibn Pakudah then goes deeper to core and focuses even more so on the daunting reality of death. "Be introspective about the length of your stay in this world" he says darkly, "and ponder the fact that your end is always in sight". Just "notice how suddenly, unwittingly, without warning and randomly others ... die. Notice too that there isn't a single month of the year when death doesn't come, nor is there a day of the month or an hour of the day when it can't". Notice too that death "doesn't necessarily come in old age rather than in middle–age, young adulthood, youth, childhood or infancy; for it can happen any time and any place", we're reminded.

But what's the advantage with dwelling upon death like that, which can be so saddening and debilitating? The truth is that "when you're introspective about life in this world, when you remember that many of your friends have already gone to the next world despite their hopes to keep their connection to this one, and when you realize that you don't necessarily deserve a longer life than they, you'll lower your expectations for the world, and start to prepare for your destiny", which is to say that you'll begin to put things into perspective and to concentrate on what matters most.

Then we're to dwell on our social life to see if we're indeed keeping things in perspective. And we're encouraged to set times aside to be alone, so as to think more about what matters and what doesn't. After all, consider all the drawbacks to regularly visiting with others for no particular reason. You'll find yourself in a situation in which you're forced to "listen to others' irrelevant chatter" we're told --"all their 'he said's' and 'it's been said's', and other such nonsense".

And besides, people tend to speak against each other and to "cite others' faults and insult them" when they get together socially. And as we all know, we ourselves tend to lie when we're with others, to "swear falsely and unnecessarily", to "exhibit arrogance, sarcasm and antagonism ... and to act flippantly", to "act like a hypocrite", to "strut about and exaggerate our knowledge and accomplishments" and more, when we're with others. "The point is," Ibn Pakudah says, is that "most transgressions ... are committed by people in pairs and in the company of others. But solitude and isolation save you from all that, and they're the most effective way to acquire good traits".

That's not to say that we're to never associate with others, because that's simply not the Jewish way, which is indeed rooted in healthy companionship and human interaction. For indeed, "befriending *generous* and *learned* people is infinitely better than isolation" as a rule. As usual, the solution lies in balance and in forethought -- in weighing the advantages of solitude against the disadvantages and vice versa, and in making wise choices.

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*! You can order it right now by logging onto www.tinyurl.com/49s8t (or by going to www.rowman.com and searching for it). Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has translated and commented upon "The Gates of Repentance", "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). And his new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Judaica Press.
His works are available in bookstores and in various locations on the Web.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled "Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal".

R' Ashlag Ch. 16 (sect. 1)

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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Ch. 16

1.

"But don’t then raise the issue of our free choice being taken away from us, seeing that we’ll inevitably be perfected and experience the third era that already existed in the first. The point is this."

-- Human free choice is a fundamental of the Jewish Faith. And R' Ashlag is suggesting that we not bother thinking that what he'd said till now about the inevitability of our reaching the third era would seem to deny our freedom to choose to do wrong, which would seem to deny us a right to it (better known as a place in the World to Come). But let's explain free choice before we get into the conundrum. Rambam lays it out as follows:
-- “Every person has been granted the capacity to either incline himself in the direction of goodness and to be righteous, or, if he so chooses, in the direction of evil and be wicked .... That means to say that ... man, of his own volition, consciously and with his own mind, can distinguish between good and evil, and can do whatever he wants to do, either good or evil, without anyone stopping him. Don’t think that G-d decrees at birth whether a person is to be righteous or wicked; ... that simply isn’t so. In truth, everyone is capable of being as righteous as Moses, or as wicked as Jereboam; wise or obtuse, compassionate or cruel, miserly or generous, and the like. No one forces, decrees or draws a person in either direction. He alone, of his own volition consciously inclines himself in the direction he so chooses” (Hilchot Teshuva 5:1-2).
-- What that means to say, among other things, is that while all other things in the world are fixed and static in their essence, and the greater part of *our* being is itself fixed and static, too (i.e. our own personal biology, chemistry, and physics), our *ethical* stature is malleable and always in flux. After all, “everything is in the hands of Heaven but the fear of Heaven” (Megillah 25A), which means that G-d furnishes us with everything, but our ethical response to it is entirely up to us.
-- Now, we’re judged in the end as to whether we used our free choice for good ends. And we earn a place in the World to Come/the third era if we’re found to have done that (see Hilchot Teshuva 3:1, 7:1).
-- Yet much of what Rambam has said about the World to Come seems to fly in the face of what R’ Ashlag had said above. For Rambam implies that we don’t each necessarily earn a share in it. But we’ll now see, though, that everyone *will* in fact enter the World to Come/third era one way or another. So, are we free to make ethical choices (with all their concomitant consequences) or not? We are; but in unthought of ways, as we’ll see. For ...

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*! You can order it right now by logging onto www.tinyurl.com/49s8t (or by going to www.rowman.com and searching for it). Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has translated and commented upon "The Gates of Repentance", "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). And his new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Judaica Press.
His works are available in bookstores and in various locations on the Web.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled "Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal".

"The Way of G-d", Ch. 5, Paragraph 4

RAMCHAL

-- A Reworking of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's "The Way fo G-d"

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman's series on www.torah.org

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"The Way of G-d", Ch. 5, Paragraph 4

As any good writer, speaker, teacher, and actor knows, every word we utter -- and every gesture we make -- touches off something conscious or unconscious in our listeners. After all, each word has an outright meaning as well as a world of undertones and implications; and both are fecund with implications that always leave their mark.

Now, that's also true when we pray. Everything we say is "taken in", and things or circumstances are affected accordingly -- whether we know it or not. But just as your words have a greater impact upon someone you're very familiar with than on someone you're not, that's also true of your prayers. The closer to G-d you are and the more familiar you are with Him, the greater the impression your words leave with Him.

Knowing all that, our sages set out to formulate prayers that would foster the sort of effects that needed to come about. And they also encouraged us to draw as close to G-d in prayer as we can. That explains the hidden import of the words we use in formal prayer and all their practical halachic details and requirements.

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*! You can order it right now by logging onto www.tinyurl.com/49s8t (or by going to www.rowman.com and searching for it). Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has translated and commented upon "The Gates of Repentance", "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). And his new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Judaica Press.
His works are available in bookstores and in various locations on the Web.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled "Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal".