Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #23

morning welcome to the weekly text-based tanya sheer today's sheer is dedicated in honor and loving memory of tsupi's father this is the second yard site today today and surely he has a lot of knackers from the tanya shir from his daughter learning tanya and uh it was a yid who was his whole his whole mathias was davening and learning and so this is a perfect place to mention him and i'm sure that he's involved in this he gets a lot of knockouts a lot of pleasure from it okay so and uh tippy told me by the way that when when she pictures the bane and he she says she has a good visual reference to wow imagine who this banony that the altar keeps talking about is so you could you could you could see pictures on zippy's iphone of the picture of the banany if you want after class we'll have a show-and-tell okay all right so we're in the middle or actually not in the middle toward the end of which chapter 13. very good actually that's a chapter i say every day for already a few years you say chapter 13. every single day that we finish the time you know every day a group that does all the chapters of tanya collectively what collectively the the group does all the chapters they're very nice okay so this is your chapter okay now if you remember we're talking about the fact that the banane internally has all of the issues of russia and yet because of merchandise which is something we all have but he uses it he's able to maintain perfect behavior we also mentioned that there are times specifically uh during deep meditative prayer when he gets into a zone where it's as if he's a tsadek and he has no tahra and he has a respite he doesn't have to struggle there's nothing to struggle against for those for those periods of time and then unfortunately as soon as that's over and he goes back to regular life then he's beset by the struggle again he has to be vigilant once again because the it's a heart is trying to uh issue its opinions in his ear like we're describing at the beginning of this chapter that he has two judges who are giving their ideas and he has to pick the right side and then hashem comes and is the uh the tiebreaker okay so that's where we left off last week today is our last class before we're gonna break for pesa as we mentioned before class but i'll mention again tonight especially for the youtube audience is uh if you're watching this live or you're watching the the day of which is uh gimmel nissan tough shin pay there's another class tonight eight o'clock at the pavzner's spiritual spring cleaning that's part of our monthly lecture series here at chabad of the five towns then i'm gonna run from the pavz news back to my house to the soul word studios in beautiful downtown cedarhurst and we're going to do backseat so and we're going to have our 30 letters in 30 days class um tonight and i think tonight is class i think it's 23. yeah 23. okay tonight's 23. and also please remember that class number 30 will be earlier nissan the night going into udall of nissan derby's birthday and there's going to be a special women's fabregan at the oil we have a special it's a monday night it's a week from tonight it's a we have secured a venue for a women's gathering a block from the aisle there's a there's a venue there it's a block away from the oil so the women will have their own space their own event and that's where we'll do class number 30 30 ladders 30days.org and uh yeah there's a carpool and uh we're renting a party bus so our next monday april 25th it's a joke it's a joke why no no no i'm all excited toyota camry is the party bus do i have a camry no it was just a guess april 25th sounds right yeah yeah april 25th we'll re-convene the weekly tanya class okay [Music] yeah okay so i think we'll probably be back to class by then all right so velocin and therefore we're about to get an answer to a question we had back in pedical if back in chapter one we had this question when we were trying to figure out what did santa garani are we asked a question about a story where rabbah the amoira rabba said kigaina no benini for instance if you want to know who's abandoned yamabaynini and we had a question what are you talking about we know that abba never stopped learning today to forgive forget about the fact that he didn't do avedas we know he didn't do evaders but not only he never did nevada he never stopped doing mitzvahs because he was constantly doing mitsubishi he was constantly learning even when the malacha movies came to get him he couldn't take him because he was isik bermitzvah he was constantly learning toyota and this is a banony that's a big how could that be abated that's crazy then what's higher than that so we had that question back from chapter one like if if that's the description of a a banany then what's a toddick and uh yeah we weren't really sure well now in pedigreed gimmel we're getting an answer to that question took us 13 chapters but we're getting an answer the answer is this is why rabbi thought he was obeying me no he wasn't being humble he really thought he could have been a bananee after lay possible even though his mouth never ceased from torah study he knew and if you would have asked him siraba wouldn't have been unsure of the facts he knew the facts like you would ask him do you ever stop learning totally he would tell you no i never stop oh so you're a tad no no i wouldn't make that assumption i wouldn't assume that i would tell you it could be obedient i think it probably i'm abandoning he why why did he think that so why did rabbi think he's a beni even though his mouth never stopped from torah study or potato and his soul was constantly yearning for hashem with great intense love like happens to the banony when he's saying or davening but except he was having it all the time it never stopped the nightmare of it seemed in his eyes quebec he thought hey i'm just a bane who's darvaning all day if only a person could daven all day long now we have a new understanding of what that saying is we we we normally read that oh if only i could just darvin all day long if i were a rich man right i could just dive in all day long right but did he want to just dive in all day long no but a sinister rich guy would say if i'd be independently wealthy you know if i would be rothschild be richer than rothschild because i'd do some tutoring on the side so if i were independently wealthy i would just they'll be beautiful i wouldn't even check my portfolio i would have a guy who would check on a guy who would check my portfolio and i would just dabbing all day long okay that's what we normally take it to me but here we have a deeper understanding of if only a person could david all day long it means like this remember we said that a bananee has a tsadik-like reprieve when he's daving okay so just don't stop davening if in theory in theory the baneny would go into the diveting zone and then just not stop then effectively his experience would be identical to that of atsadic now also in theory if he were to stop davening he would revert to his banany condition his regular ability condition and be beset by the distractions of the yatzahara but as long as he would stay in the davening zone then effectively for all practical purposes his experience would be like a tsatix experience so rabba was singing was he was thinking like this he said listen i know that i don't have a actual experience with the it's a hudder that bothers me but you think it's because i don't have a yeah sahara you think i'm at sonic no i think i'm a banony and i just go into that zone where even a bananee has a temporary reprieve from the azahara except my reprieve isn't temporary it's prolonged because i keep maintaining it but if i would stop maintaining it i would be subject to all that distraction and that internal noise just like all the other bane in him so that's why he said i'm a bananee and he meant and he meant it he really meant it why are we categorizing it so you're asking a very basic fundamental question about the entire premise of the book you realize okay yeah and so so you're comfortable with that all right fine all right i just want you i just want to make it clear this is not a specific question but right now you're questioning the whole premise of the because the premise of the book it's called safer shall bane in him okay yes what's the difference okay so since you're asking and you know that you're asking a very basic question but basic doesn't mean a dumb question it could mean a very big okay just it's very very basic this is you you're questioning the entire premise of the of the approach okay nope no no problem all right so i've not it's not a problem we will accommodate i've said this before and i'll say it again but perhaps a little bit differently um apparently the al-taraba thinks it is incredibly important and useful for us to understand these categories now the category he really wants us to understand well is the banini and that sadik and the russia are sort of for context right and the reason that the altar wants us to understand abandoning all these nuances as far as how has abandoned the like russia but not like russia how is albanian like assadic but not like it's addict the important the importance of those ideas are for ultimately for our own um our own goal setting like you said why do we have to know all this so why can't we just serve hashem well you're free to do so that's what we were doing before we started tanya remember we were also trying to serve hashem before we started the alternative says in the hakadama i'm speaking to people who are already trying to serve hashem they're going about it on their own i've been working out without a trainer and i'm getting mixed results so now i went to my trainer my trainer says i want to talk to you about uh about physiology about biology i'm like no no just give me some give me a routine give me a workout routine he's like i want to explain to you how the body works now i don't want to know how it works just give me a routine well you know i want you to understand how things work so you can start to sort of understand where you need to focus your efforts so apparently it's very important for me to understand for instance that behavioral perfection is attainable as much as it may seem unattainable the fact of the matter and it's very important apparently for me to accept this the behavioral perfection is attainable not only it's possible but actually i'm obligated to to attain it or at least to pursue it on the other hand it's it's apparently very important for me to understand that emotional conflict and confusion and internal distraction is unavoidable and that my goal should not be to um to become free from to become free from that and i shouldn't feel like a failure when i continue to experience that so these categorizations it's not just a taxonomy like you're going to a museum and here's debating the exhibit and here's the today exhibit here's the russia exhibit this is these these are models for me to use to evaluate my own progress and to understand which direction to work so i want to work behaviorally and i want to be extremely exacting and demanding with myself as far as behavioral goals i also need to be incredibly forgiving when it comes to my emotional goals because my condition my unavoidable inescapable condition is that on an emotional level inevitably i'm going to it's going to be fraught with with conflict so this is all important for my own self-evaluation as i am progressing okay all right so yeah so i remember you said that dhamma wasn't in the pamphlets but it was in natanya is there anything of the 53 chapters that was changed or added there's a lot that was changed between the pamphlet no not over the years between the pamphlet versions that the altar ever made and the published version that was as a bound book there are many differences there's actually something called the madura kama which the rabbit directed to be put out which is a uh replication of the the text at exactly as it was in the pamphlet versions and it highlights any of the textual changes and amendations the most notable one is the insertion of the entire chapter 32 which was not there in the pamphlets which we'll talk about manchester when we get to 32. yeah yeah yeah yeah i was under the impression that those definitions were originally no he says very clearly in in chapter one that the the terminology comes from the gemara right so i mean that that's an interesting question you could also ask about david malach because it says in fact in chapter one it uses david melo as the the example of a tsadik right okay so [Music] not necessarily it doesn't have to be no no terms can mean different things in different contexts but according to the balatanya's understanding of the gemara the balatanya can explain that gemara about rabbah in the way that tanya understands these terms and the way that this gamut about rabbi could be understood consistent with the terminology that tanya uses in the way that tanya uses it is that rabba was saying that i can never really know if i'm a tadic because i'm constantly maintaining a condition that even for a baininy alleviates the internal struggle okay are there other ways of learning the gemara of course there are yeah okay now we're going to talk about something else which is what's this i know this seems kind of like i don't know maybe i don't know i i'm assuming that this discussion about the bananas sadik like reprieves might seem kind of like well one when is this ever gonna happen for me why are we learning about this but uh we're gonna go into more depth about these about these periods of complete relief from any internal conflict vegemite these um times when the bananee is relieved because he's darvening and he has this predomination of his nephesha kiss and he's bringing out this love of hashem compared to the tsadikim who are truly serving hashem he says true true serving hashem truly truly serving hashem so this bananim their love of hashem is not called avedis amis it's not called true me because it goes it passes after davny you have to understand that the word emes we translated as true but it means more than true you know mark twain said if you never lie you never have to remember anything the truth is consistent the truth is always the truth whatever the truth was yesterday that's the truth tomorrow so you don't have to remember you just think what's the truth right now and if you were telling the truth a year ago so you have the same answer a year ago as you do today the truth is eternal the truth is also constant so for something to be called true alpi toyota it has to be constant so if you say i love you but not all the time well that's not true love if it's true then it's constant so if the banana says to hashem oh at this moment i have no foreign loves no attraction to anything else my only desire is hashem but then he puts away his toss and phil and he walks out into the street and he starts getting interested not that he'll do it god forbid because of any but he starts getting interested in other things other things that seem interesting or fun or pleasurable well then what were you telling me you're standing in shul telling me hashem says that you love me but then 15 minutes later you're standing outside you you're interested in other things so how true was it wasn't true it wasn't true okay well that's fine to say that it has some value maybe even you could say has greater value because of the struggle but don't call it true because true is a word that's reserved for that which is eternal don't say hashem was hashem today but not yesterday why because i had a bad day yesterday so hashem was not hashem hashem was not running the world come on i'm using that as an example because i think it's enough of a strong statement that you all realize how silly it is if something is true hashem runs the world then don't pick and choose and tell me that when i like how my life is going hashem runs the world and if i'm having a bad day hashem doesn't run the world if something is true it's always true it's always true okay so here's the deal it's a good way to look at it yeah it is well the altar is very smart yeah yeah so listen to this he says like why are you worried when it's a hard day why are you worrying the bananee loves hashem and only loves hashem when he's darving when he's in that zone but then after he's finished happening he has other loves not that he acts on it because he's obeying you but he he feels it feels it he's struggling he's struggling so then how is it true it's not true okay so it's not true okay is not is not okay with calling it not true but he's not just gonna it's very problematic because according to everything we know about the word true it's not true but the altit doesn't want to say that why are we using the word true is true you want to use another word other than true real are you fooling yourself maybe you're fooling yourself and you use davening to fool yourself that you only love god so you get yourself into this zone when you dove in that you think that you only love god but apparently you don't only love god because ten minutes after the oven and you start loving other things so you don't only love god is in that struggle too in that other thing that i'm loving god all right let's find out what the alcohol says because we're smart we are very smart but not as smart as the altar ever and also to be fair not yet the altered had long he had a longer amount of time to write to tanya so maybe he had he had a while to think about a good answer so maybe by the end of the course it will be as smart as the outfit ever okay maybe if that keeps you going then that's a great it does yeah all right so let's see what the altitaba says all right it says where does it say this where is that plastic from nobody knows you guys aren't bucky in tanakh no no would you say it again the lips of truth or the language of truth is eternal meaning if it's true you say the same thing every time you don't change your story the ad our gia but only from fleeting moment lashing shucker is a tongue or a language of falsehood kahalas is a great guess and you're almost correct and you share sham is also a great guess now you're getting colder called michele very good king solomon the wisest of all men said that the truth a true word is forever and a false word is for a moment so when the mainly says i love you hashem yeah but after you finish dabbing you love other things well that contradicts lush and horror with the feathers all going in the air with the fathers i don't know that's not a chabad story we don't tell the feathers i don't know okay all right anyway listen to this king solomon the wisest of all men says that something that's true is forever a word that's true it's forever in a lie a word that's a lie is only for a moment or maybe you can say it conversely if it's only for a moment that is proof that it is a lie so if you say i only love you and then 10 minutes later you love other things as well then stop with the feathers okay if you ever heard me tell the feather story you could hold it against me anyways now someone's gonna dig up i promise you i never told that feather story anyways i use a foam pillow i do have this hard damn blanket no i don't i don't like the down blanket no and the little goose feathers they i have sensory issues i can't take it i can't sleep in hotels either because the the mattresses are mushy you can't change the mattress i try to change the pillows even they don't do it even in the fancy five-star style hotels no they don't change your phone because i'm allergic to down they always change it for me they didn't do it for me okay [Laughter] okay do not get me do not get me down blankets or feathers or pillows nothing with feathers not a quill not nothing nothing with feathers not a bird i don't want any no feathers no nothing with feathers nothing that's right what do i eat chicken i don't even like chicken except chinese chicken because i'm jewish okay oh that was the one dish you made for your family you said that chinese i made kung pao chicken okay guys this class is getting crazy and look at my rings you know where it started with your feather story okay with your pillow and the feather so this this train wreck okay all right back back back okay back king solomon the wisest of all men said that if you say to hashem i love you and i love only you and then ten minutes later you're loving other things in addition to hashem then how true was it when you said i love only you right okay so this is bothering the altar by the way al-thadev personally doesn't have this problem only loves hashem all the time so the fact that this is bothering him is because he cares about you well he was a toddler he doesn't need this so on his for for his personal uh use he doesn't need to find an explanation for this because i'm good i i i do have true love for hashem he's working now as a defense attorney to build a case for regular people who who will not be able to achieve that constant love of hashem and yet he doesn't want to call their love of hashem a lie and he's working hard to prove that it's not a lie yeah so here's what he says the alphapique nevertheless even though even though something that is true has to be eternal and if it's fleeting it's false he says it's relative first of all it's not absolute it's relative what they're feeling at the times of davening is called a pure service and it is called true and it's called their truth is their truth it's relative each one according to their level in other words it's not just a collective relative truth it's an individualized relative truth where each and every individual betany has an individual relative truth by the way this is the only place in tanya where the al-taraba speaks in first person i hereby proclaim i hereby proclaim announcement that the love of god that the bane in them feel while they're davening it is also called truth eternal truth rather how could you call it eternal truth the minute he stops dominating he walks out of the street and he sees other things that interest him as well i'll explain to you says the altar ever why i call it eternal truth holy because their navigation has the ability to go back and rearrange this love forever predominant over the next obamas on a daily basis whenever they dive in by preparing with the proper preparations according to their level so here's what he says yes truth has to be eternal and constant but there are relative definitions of eternal and constant one definition of eternal conflict means in actual fact i am constantly feeling nothing but love for hashem okay that's definitely true love of hashem and that's a today or alternatively you could say like this i'm not actively currently always feeling love for hashem but i always have the ability if i put in the work required to re-arouse that love so that's also called constant and therefore also called true you understand what the alternative is saying what's called constant not that they're actively in a state of exclusively loving hashem all the time that's only ethadic but they're constantly able if they put in the work to get themselves into that place is it giving us any tools not yet not yet not yet but he's making a statement which is apparently extremely personal to the altar because it's the only place where he speaks in first person so this is very important to the al rabbi that regular people who experience contained moments of of love of hashem that that that that moment shouldn't be dismissed as irrelevant or fleeting or false just because it's not constant and he says yes ms has to be constant but i'll tell you what's constant the ability to tap into it is constant so they don't always have it but they can always call it up they can always summon it if they're ready to do the work required to make it happen yeah there are moments pain i don't know that this is this this is a this excludes a russia okay maybe it could be a person who's in the prog in the process of becoming a banini the point is he made a statement any time you put in the work you can get yourself into this zone okay well that's probably true for everybody for everything so therefore he calls it true now i want to point out something to you that's kind of like this is i don't know how to uh explain this this is like fan fiction a little bit um you know like like star wars nerds who have like non-canonical uh stories about their favorite star wars characters okay you know what i'm talking about okay so i don't have a real real real source for this but this is something that sidim say i heard this from uh haim shaw brook from lahak he told me this and it's not from the rabbit it's not but whatever it's just really cool and i'm going to share with this very geshmak you know there's a minute that after you davishman esther you say a posik that has your the first and last letter of your name right you know that yeah yeah it's a minute after yeshua yeah yeah yeah yeah that's why i'm a night owl because it's about yeah well maybe find out what your posse is yeah we can look it up but right um so if your name is schneider valtteri's name was schneider zalman so what pasek does someone named schneer say at the end of davening starts with the shin ends with so according to this minig every schmonast three times a day on regular days four times a day shabbos and yamato virus five times a day annyeong kippur wow at the end of the night the al-taraba was saying no he's also said this almond but the point is like this think about it like this every time the altar abaddavant he dived like a tzadik and in the end of his sardic davening he says aposic which is his scriptural proof that even what a regular person is able to muster can also be referred to as truth and the al-thadav is saying here in tanya vahrehn i had any credit means i hereby read i hear hereby pronounce he's describing something that he did not just once in tanya but several times a day every day i pronounce i say this pasig i shner zaman say this pasik and in saying this pasik when i finish my topic davening i make a statement about everyone else is davening that it should also be considered true even though when they finish starving they're going to get distracted with other things it's a beautiful concept yeah you follow this you understand not really you don't follow it what don't you follow i know you say the puzzle at the end without the author of his head what does the mean means that something that is true is forever which seemingly means that unless you're at sadiq and you say you love hashem you're a liar that's what it seems to me takes that same passage and says no actually the pussic means that when you say you love hashem even though you're not a tsadic and that love can come and go it's still true why because when you put in the work you're always able to get back into that place where you only love hashem so you you're tapping into that so he uses that pasik the pa he uses that plastic itself to prove that even regular people their love of hashem is real so when he's darvaning he doesn't need that pause he doesn't have to invoke that puzzle to save his david and his daughtering is real love of hashem but every time he finished davening he'd also have in mind regular people who are davening with a love that isn't going to stay active after they're finished right well he was also saying the with his name as i said his name was almond if your name is schner you say fast amos that's why i saying i read this he says i read this pussac yeah three times a day he reads that bossic he finishes doubting like it's addict and then he says that buzzing about the rest of us so that's why you know by heart but you say it three times a day i don't say it you know why don't you say it because i say of well i say that possible four times a day because uh it's in it's in my of it's the beginning of my first month [Laughter] we announced that was the first thing we said tomorrow that was the first thing we said spiritual spring cleaning at the pebster house that's right yeah you know what the rabbis is that's from anakim and it's confusing that's that's mandel but you want to know that possible about marijuana mcleave so that's a plastic also from micheli and so on that passage um the doc says what does it mean means the clarity of vision is it it it rejoices the heart so he says over there en simcha there's no joy like putting aside doubt getting clarity after you were in doubt a lot of people know that maim people don't know where it comes from it comes from this radak on that passage so basically that is pasek or one of the sukkam that have his name means that there's no greater joy than having clarity and resolving doubt and if you've been learning 30 letters in 30 days and learning not what did ever said about things but how they'd ever said it and well that to whom is not so important when you learn the how because the to whom is only important if you're fixated on the what people who fix it well that ebba said to do such and such yeah to that person he didn't tell you to do it but that's irrelevant how did the debit address this person there's a style i'm not going to get into it because if you're learning 30 lives in 30 days you know that i talk about this all the time there's a style there's a mahalaka makshava certain you call it a derekhalimud really it's a way of understanding and dissecting and analyzing and and coming to conclusions and it's something that you can learn something i believe that ever modeled for us and that you can learn and you can use it to understand your life anyways myer named samuklev that there's no greater joy than having clear mental vision so that's one of the rabbis and it's very much i think personification of the rabbit at any rate the alt rabbit used to say swastika literally saying it three times a day and he explains because they always have the ability to bring it back not that they're in active states of love of hashem all the time but that potentially they always can bring it back when they choose to put in the work to do so okay uh let's finish the pederkijin the attribute of yankovino the third of the others is called the middle path like the long stave of the the pole of the mishkan that wrapped around from one extreme to the other um miles madregas had safe called dargan something that goes from the top to the bottom of a home and then on every level hits the center what are we talking about we're saying that something that is really ms it starts at the beginning it ends at the end and it goes right through the middle of every level if it's a little here a little there that's not amiss and that's why the center path midos yankovino is called amis why is he called amis because the middle path which goes from the the lowest to the low to the highest of the high and hits through the center of every level that's called emis in other words something that has a context and is compartmentalized it's only true in certain places like listen okay when we're at the playground and you have a basketball we're friends but if you see me in the hallway at school please do not acknowledge me suspicious what do they call it suspiciously specific at any rate right that's cold huh and it was something that has a context like hey hashem if i see you in shul and i have like i've been davening you're my only love but if i'm in the middle of business there might be some other things that i have to uh take care of at the moment right something that only has a certain place where it is true is not called amis ms has to be true everywhere all the time in every situation so that's why it's called the center bar that goes from the lowest to the highest and goes through the central point of every level that's the acronym yes yes correct yeah the the first letter the last letter the center letter yeah very it's connected yeah what are you going to say right right this is this is he he doesn't mention that it's ferris but yes correct that is different okay let's let's finish here no beginners everything that is the center everything that is true on every level is called the truth um the truth is limitless and it is uh it has no has no limit i'm saying the same thing twice but the homeless he says however all the higher levels um compet when you compare lower levels to higher levels the lower levels become like insignificant compared to the higher levels in other words this he's going back to his idea of relative truth again okay remember he was saying and it was very important to him to explain that there are different definitions of truth even though the definition of truth is that it's constant and yet that itself has a relative definition what does constant mean constantly active no but constantly potential yes so he says there could be a level where compared to a higher level that that truth of that lower level is considered not truth if you compare it to a higher level of truth but if you compare it to itself it is truth so he says you want to compare a banini to azadek okay fine it's very easy to to disqualify the bani in that case but if you look at the baini and compare the benny to his own truth then you'll see that his love of hashem does conform to a certain definition of truth which is constancy and what's the constancy he's constantly able to re-awaken it if he puts in the work okay de genes is known to the kabbalists know that the head or the brains of a lower level is lower than the heels and the feet of a higher level or like the sages say that the feet of the highest angels are greater than everything else the type of angel that's not the point the point is that if you look if you compare something from a higher level to a lower level then that higher level obviously is going to outclass the lower level all right in in forget about us and it's not the point here talk about sadhaka if you compare the the the love that attack has for hashem to the love even on the best day that abandoned he has for a shop obviously that sadik is going to completely outclass the baini because it's like it's like saying like the best high school football player playing you know some third string professional player who who got cut well it's still incomparable it's still incomparable the pro is going to cream the the high school player okay so you're going to compare the the greatest moment of love of hashem that ebani has to what uh to what a toddler has obviously the tardic is outclassing the banany his feet are higher than the other's head but don't do that look at abani what's what's truth for obey what's true love of god for abandoning not this impossible criterion of do you constantly feel nothing but love for god no he's going to tell you i don't i don't but rather what's the criterion are you able if you put in sufficient work are you able at any time with sufficient work to reawaken that feeling yes yes if i have the time and if i have you know my schedule i clear my schedule for the day and i doffing properly yeah i can get myself back into that headspace of loving no one but hashem okay good so that's called constant and that's called true on the level of a banana okay