Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #26

okay just let's leave it okay what chapter are we on fifteen so we started talking about the bane in the english chapter 13 12 12. and then we continued 13 and 14. and now here chapter 15 we're going to continue to talk about debating what's a banony it's not a toddler he's not a russia that's correct tell me more why he controls his actions um when you say the mind is still going places thoughts like full-fledged thoughts because i thought thoughts are one of the three behavioral garments over which he's fighting we do have free choice and we are obligated to control initial thought maybe the impulse right so not actual full-fledged thoughts that he like fantasizing about sins because he's in control he won't go that far but the impulse yeah that's why he's not outside because he has the impulse but he doesn't indulge it even on a thought level so he's a he's a he's not a russian he's a baitman okay do you remember way back before we started talking about the the bani in chapter 10 when we learned about the tsaddik in chapter 11 we learned about the russia do you remember that there were like different levels of sadiq in russia yeah remember that so they're like two levels of each yes okay you want to hear something cool there is there's two levels of vein in it yes right here is where we're gonna find out okay pedic test of chapter 15. now according to what we've been learning about the benelli that he's somebody who has the impulses of russia but the behavioral control that produces actions of atsadic now we can understand that which it says i saw the difference between asadi and russia and the difference between one who serves hashem and one who has not served hashem what are those categories what are those distinctions shah what's the difference between the vidsadic because he says atari no russia an avid allah keem and a sherlock sounds like four different categories there right yeah yeah not that many numbers sadik russia iva de la kim asher [Applause] right not confusing yet what's the difference between the video and the tsar deck why are they not synonymous sadiq is an evidence i thought it was what the choice the the the choice okay let's find out what that is the difference between the evidence the word ayeved is a present tense verb we use it also in latin kurdish as a noun you refer to the person as an evade but really it's a it's a verb like kohein by the way akane is a title of a priest but really cohen is an action it's it's a verb to serve he's a server yeah so evade is a verb it's a present tense verb he's holding in the middle of the aveda he didn't finish yet he's working on it it's like are you a practicing jew why are you still practicing you didn't get it right no i'm still practicing still practicing how do you get to carnegie hall practice practice practice that's right okay so an avid ala key means i'm working on it i'm working on it literally by the way it means i'm working on it evade means working i'm working on it what's he working on the war with the yetzahara lease gabriella garcia to predominate over the years order and to throw it out of the little city remember the little city from chapter come on a little narcissist i deserve please then look then cheat and look on the map the denizens yes good okay that's good which chapter was the denizens i'm glad you used that word what you have to get up i can't read this you have to get up you have the map there small city nine nine very good chapter nine the small city so this guy who's called oived elekim who's still working on it he's still working on what he's still working on evicting the yetzahara from the ear katana did he get him out yet what well you're asking is this a banany i'll ask you in a moment if it's obeying me that's a good question so he's still working on getting rid of the it's a harder did he get rid of him yet no hence he's called oyvate he's working on it i'm working on it are you ready yet i'm getting ready i'm working yes well that's a very interesting suggestion once you're no longer working on it you're at sadik or russia for me i'm finished oh you you complete it no i didn't say i completed it i just i'm done okay so yeah god forbid that's okay that's one way to be finished with the war is just to give up um no okay but it's interesting you're asking if he would have finished the job that would be a todd okay let's come back to that you're saying over the lake is maybe a bananee you're saying that whatever the is who if you finish being an avid eloquent in a good way and you complete it and you graduate from it you're saying that might be a sadiq i'm not going to answer any of that i let's let it float let it flow okay let's keep going so he's fighting still he's still working on it on what shalom that the it's a harder won't get to express itself in his limbs of his body meaning behaviorally he says it's really truly is a really tough war to constantly wage the hainu and in other words who are we describing this video who's continuing to fight he hasn't finished the fight but he's keeping up a good fight behind you this is what's the next word ha habaneni so you were right wow habenini so the guy who is an oiva de la team who's still working on it he's called abani very good corresponding to the level that we've been studying called banini very good okay avala sadiq but in contrast eizadic nikra is called avid hashem bashem atayer he's not an oiveid hashem still working on it presently he's an avid hashem evan is a pure noun it's not a verb at all evid is a title that's what he is he's a servant in other words he already got his degree he graduated he has a plaque and it says eva hashem he's working on it he didn't get his degree yet avid hashem he got his degree he completed it and that is called etzad so were you right you were right okay a little grammar here like the word or the word malek doesn't mean someone who's being wise means a wise guy a malek doesn't mean someone who's currently ruling like he was ruling no amalek that's what he is he is a male he is a king so there's a difference between the present tense verb which is a description of an activity and the noun that describes someone as already completing that and arriving at that level yeah is there no growth for the tsadik the answer to your question is i don't know anything about siddiquim this is several shall benin but what i can tell you is i'm sure there's some type of growth for a tadic but not growth as we know it not the same type of growth that we understand yeah how does one matriculate from the event to the event to the evidence how does it i don't know because to matriculate from over the evide means to go from being in natak and i i'm and i think he already made it pretty clear to us that that's not a goal i don't think you can yeah maybe you can't i don't know i mean it's not safer shelter i think it would say for sure being in him so i don't know i i i was under the impression that our goal here was to be the best bainini and not worry about the tzadik stuff the today information is just to sort of contextualize the bane any discussion so i don't know i don't know how to go from over to evid why are we interested in using new titles which are synonymous with titles that we already have so obviously it's going to bring out a new aspect that we didn't yet appreciate so let's find out what it is so too you know we said the example of malik someone who already has the title he's not just currently doing wise things he is wise he's not just currently ruling he is the ruler so to hear of the governor he already did the work and he already finished the work of fighting against the yetzer adki we got a shay over yellow clay until he got rid of it and his heart is empty within him like we said in the end of peric all of the david and malik said kilimi kirby i got rid of my tzahara so that's an evid attack he got rid of he finished in a good way he finished now we learned about two levels of today and we learned about two levels of russia now we're going to learn about two levels of what are they david ella [Applause] remember back at the beginning of the paddock he said there's a tadik in russia so it's in russia we know tariq and russia we learned about those over the lakeman and ashley avadaye are two levels of bananee one badani is called avid elekim and one being is called a sherloya vaday means the guy who's currently serving he's currently working on the job he has not finished he'll probably never finish and a shallow body means he didn't work he didn't work and that's a level of banony got to figure out what that's talking about yeah we'll find out we'll find out yeah let's unpack this yeah very good so he didn't he didn't serve hashem this a sherlock literally means he did not serve we thought pk nevertheless he's not a russia i would have thought a guy who didn't serve he must be at russia no he's not a russian how is he not a russian he says he never did innovator not even a little one he never sinned never sinned the second one yeah the second one he never sinned no if he would have sinned he would have been a russia he didn't sin he's not a russia the guam and also in case you're thinking well maybe he never sinned but he didn't exactly do all of the sins of cope the the the mitzvahs you know there's a set of commissions of omission maybe he omitted to do a positive precept no no he did all the positive precepts he says he also did all the mitzvahs that are possible to do with tamated connected coulomb and that includes learning data every possible moment and he's still called the shelley of alde vallee pasek puma megirsa he didn't fight a war with the yates he never had to invoke the brain ruling over the heart thing that we learned about in chapter 12 yeah he never had that much out of life he never had to invoke that because he never had the struggle so he never he never had a conflict right so you say how can it be all right so hold on let's keep reading let's keep reading hashem therefore he never had to fight it he never had that problem so you can't call him an iva de la kim one who's serving because he never had to serve he just rolled out of bed and boom everything was smooth sailing he never had to struggle kagan for instance shuhu mass he's constantly learning he's a bookworm in a jewish way he's constantly learning you know why though not because he says this is the right thing to do and i have to force myself to learn toyota and even though i don't feel like it even though i'm getting bored and even though i want to go and check my email he says no i'm going to learn that's not what happened he doesn't have the taiva it's very easy for him it says he has a predominance of black bile meaning he's a depressive type and so it's it's it's easy for him to sit still and to just to be a toddler maybe a little bit of an introvert yeah but he doesn't have a big temptation to do anything different so when they tell him go learn he goes and he learns wasn't a struggle for him he also doesn't have the distractions people have he says he says typhus norsham i mean we talked about this in the end of peric you're dalid and people get distracted by uh by these things so he doesn't have that struggle it's not like he has to make any deliberate effort to to behave he just i don't know if he's a hermit because a hermit would imply that he stays by himself and he's isolated i don't know if he's isolated he's just um you know there's a term and i don't want to use this actual term because it's a clinical term so i don't really mean this but there there's a term i forget if it's called i think it's called um and hedonistic yeah maybe someone could google that for me but anhedonistic or maybe it's a hedonistic a hedonist is a pleasure seeker but there's a clinical term anhedonistic means somebody who does not have a natural drive for pleasure oh that's the name of an illness okay but i don't want to say that that's what he has but i'm saying if that example helps you to wrap your mind around this picture then it doesn't matter that's not the point the point is he doesn't have the temptations he doesn't get excited about the things that people normally struggle with so it's fairly not fairly easy it's it's completely easy for him to just behave and to do the right thing and all other physical pleasures he doesn't have the capacity to enjoy them so to tell him go learn and you know don't get up and don't go do anything okay fine no problem because it's not like he's sitting there being like oh i really want to just go and get some ice cream it just doesn't doesn't tempt him doesn't excite him so look you got to look in her definitions the guy never did in a veda so he's clearly not a russia he clear i mean he's obeying me but on the other hand he's not abandoned by any work or effort which is sort of to us i mean until now i understood that mainly these are guys working very very hard this guy's not working hard so it's not the typical banany that we've been learning about he says you're right it's a different category between me i share loyalty that's what we're saying he's called the shelly of others called one who did not serve hashem comes easy to him never without feeling but lack right now he doesn't do it because it's exciting to him but he doesn't not do it because other things might be exciting to him nothing's exciting to him he just does it um because it's the right thing to do even that would be some level of motivation where he'd have to say i'm not going to do the easy pleasurable thing i'm going to do the right thing he just for him it's it's default i mean he's going to talk a little bit about how he got this way but um maybe let's continue actually a little bit more about this guy oh this is not a common person yeah yeah for sure this is a concept don't worry about if anyone is actually being described here the point is this concept is important for us for one reason to understand that if you are struggling if you are having a hard time serving hashem that's not a bug that's a feature it's not it's not a problem that you're struggling to the contrary it's a problem if you don't have a struggle so that's why we're learning about this guy that's that's why we're learning about him let's continue to learn about him yeah the work the struggle that it's hard work yeah right okay so he doesn't have these pleasures so he doesn't have to meditate in order to create some feeling for hashem in his in his mind doesn't do that he doesn't have to do that normal person to get some you know oomph to get some motivation he's got to go meditate about god and start making himself care about god this guy never had to do that he doesn't need extra meditation to get him to not transgress on a prohibition believer he doesn't have to meditate to create love of hashem so previously talk about fear he doesn't have to give himself a boost of of fear of hashem to to not transgress and he doesn't have to give himself a boost of love of hashem ladavka became a mitzvos with automatic negative coulomb in order to get himself to do mitzvahs and to learn theta allah but rather die he skates by just with the natural innate love which is the default factory settings of all jewish souls so he can get by with just that and without working on enhancing it by any type of deliberate work whatsoever even clown therefore he is not at all called an evade one who is serving because this love that he's using which is the latent love he didn't create it it was installed already in the jewish soul it's not the product of anything he did it's an inheritance that every jew was bequeathed by our obvious accommodation is she is common like we're going to explain at length later chapter 18 19. now hold on a second there's nature and there's nurture what if this guy is not this way by nature so far the model of this asher loya vaday is somebody who was born that way you said that basically that's his personality that's his his temperament right mitsunen bitiva means he's naturally cold so okay he was born that way what about someone who wasn't born that way what if it wasn't nature it was nurture let's see here so what if it wasn't nature rock but rather what happened she here go at smelly he habituated himself he accustomed himself to study constantly the nasa hergolay tavashini and that habituation became like a second nature so it wasn't his inborn nature but he did it so much that it became like a nature meaning it no longer required any conscious effort dai loi ba ava misinterazu now again he's able to skate by and rely just on the latent love that all jewish souls possess allah unless it would so happen that he would decide to do even more than his habit but as long as he's just doing his habit he doesn't need to muster any extra motivation he can just skate by with the momentum of habit and that's called a sherloya vade even though it seems from this description that he originally he originally had to habituate himself it wasn't automatic first nature it was second nature but by this point where it becomes second nature he's no longer serving because he got himself to a point where he can just do this by route and there's no struggle so now he's called he's he hasn't served hashem yeah if this is our default settings why are we in the vein why are we not at a lower level the default setting if what is the default setting if this what you're describing this guy this concept yeah what about him it's our default setting and all human beings doesn't say it's everyone's default setting what you were hearing as i said he's able to get by with just the default love that every jew has as opposed to most other jews you cannot just get by with your jewish heart you understand every jew has a certain default baseline love of god but that's not enough to keep you observant to be observant you're going to have to enhance that you're going to have to build on it you have to put in some work there's a default built-in love that every jewish soul has yes no i'm asking a question i'm telling you a statement it says in tanya every single jew has built in a certain love of god you agree with that statement or at least you agree that it says that every single one every single jew has a certain baseline love of god built in built in they didn't have to acquire it it's built it okay is that alone enough to get a person to keep the mitzvahs no you have to enhance it by putting in some effort whether but he alluded to it by meditating or other methods so nobody can just get by on that you can't just get by on that this weirdo happens to not have any temptation so he gets by on that but that's a fluke that's a total fluke he actually gets by on just the baseline love of god that every jewish soul already has but no one else can do that is that normal does he really exist doesn't matter it's a concept i explained already it doesn't matter if he exists what matters is for you to understand that if you're not him which you're probably not that's not a problem that's a good thing being like him is the problem being like you is not a problem fourth group why is he with the bank why is he with debating him because okay you're asking a valid question why is he obeying any because we said perfect behavior that's it bain needs perfect behavior okay that checks out perfect behavior the problem is he's he's producing perfect behavior not through struggle oh but you didn't tell me struggle was part of the definition of obeying me okay technically you're right struggle is not part of the definition of abandonment but you know something abeni who's a mainly without struggle it's technically a bananee but you think that's the point of this book you think that's who the altareb is speaking to right now no yeah either he's born that way or he got himself habituated to the point where it requires no present effort oh we should have such problems how do we make sure not to become like that oh we should have such problems okay you're asking a wonderful question how do i know it's a wonderful question because it's that the next thing that the altar says is an answer to that question okay how do we make sure not to fall into that trap where we were working and then we came to a certain level of achievement and now we don't have to work anymore it's just we're in orbit and the momentum is carrying us and we're resting on our laurels and we're still producing perfect behavior so technically technically everything's okay but emotionally inwardly there's no struggle anymore so how do we not fall into that trap right okay so he hinted to it already a little bit but now he's going to expand on it we said that after he gets himself habituated and he has a second nature he can coast and learn and learn and learn without any extra effort unless you remember the last words we read unless he learns more than his custom more than he has been habituated to learn whatever that number is one more watch what he explains here oh yeah yeah we get up to move on oh okay yeah um now we can understand what it says in the gemara de avid elekim who is in vidal it's somebody who studies their lesson 101 times can you imagine that if we said every time you class we're going to teach it 101 times you would know it really well this bomb only learns a hundred times imagine if we did every tiny class a hundred times okay so hold on hold on the guy studied a hundred times didn't serve hashem the guy started 101 times he did serve hashem it's a one percent difference it's a one percent difference you're telling me the difference between 100 and 101 oh that's day and night it is it is he's gonna explain he's gonna explain because in their days in the times of the gemada the custom was to study every lesson 100 times that was the norm that was a normal thing how many times if you say i studied something that means you studied 100 times that's how it was done that was the methodology like it says over there in the gemara marshall a an analogy or yeah an allegory mushum from the donkey driver trade think about today the uber drivers or the taxi drivers shiny skoda bazooza you could hire them to take you ten parses for one zuz let's just use it's not a real the correct conversion rate but let's just use uh terms that we're more familiar with you could hire the driver a flat rate to take you 10 miles for a hundred dollars flat rate ten miles hundred dollars any trip doesn't matter up to ten miles it's a hundred dollars but if you go 11 miles now you have to pay 200 that's how they did it that's how that's the way that the donkey drivers used to charge the flat rate for the first 10 parsers if you go over even one parser now it's double now you're in a new scale that's how they used to charge so you could pay double the amount just for the one extra parser yes because that was more than their habit their habit was they would do ten parser trips all day therefore this time when the person studies the 101st time which is one more time than the habituation that he was accustomed to from his youth school of connected coulomb that one extra time is as valuable as all the previous hundred times together yes in fact that one extra time is even greater than all the hundred times it came before it's greater liaisonicra or evadella keem and that one extra time is what puts him in the category now of ayva de la keem so to answer your question what do you do when you habituate yourself to a point where it does not take extra effort to constantly do the right thing and like i said if only we should have such problems but let's say we had such a problem what do you do you go one little extra drop more than your habit and going past the habit even if it's one drop already puts you out of your comfort zone it doesn't matter how far out of your comfort zone once you go over 10 miles the 11th mile is already a whole new category a whole new ballpark so if you're accustomed to study a hundred times how do you break out of your habit study 101 times just one extra one extra time one little thing and that already pushes you past your comfort zone and now you're just like the other day hashem who are struggling okay so the regular typical hashem they were struggling during the first hundred times this other guy it doesn't start the struggle doesn't start until the hundred first time but the point is to get to that stage where it starts to be a struggle muhammad ali said they asked me how many sit-ups do i do when i train he said i do them no no he said how many sit-ups do you do when you train so i'm gonna google this and find the exact quote muhammad ali said how many sit-ups do i do when i train he said whatever the number is plus you start counting when it starts to hurt he didn't count the sit-ups that it took to get his muscles to burn that doesn't count you start counting when it starts to hurt so how many sit-ups did you do one sit-up because if you had to do a thousand sit-ups until it hurts those sit-ups aren't the sit-ups that count that after it hurts and you do one more ah that's a sit-up you know he was the greatest of all time that's what he said a thousand times he made sure we know it yes what did he say i don't count my sit-ups i only start counting when it starts hurting because they're the only ones that can't wait let's say that again muhammad ali said i don't count my sit-ups i only start counting when it starts hurting because they're they're the only ones count what makes you a champion okay for then he that us we'd be counting at one first okay wherever you start counting i don't understand sometimes counting is so important like this and other times people say oh i don't even count my children or grandchildren oh that's a different thing that's a different that's because of ain't it not not counting children is a different thing because that's an ein order but counting how many times you study a lesson it's not a nine hundred it's for tracking your progress it's very important that would be like not if you ran a store and you didn't count inventory well you got it you got to know what you're up to you got to be able to assess for sure so that we know that we're we're struggling all right should we continue here so your question is is it possible that somebody was in avid eloquem and then he became an asher loyavarde and then he kept pushing until he became anointed like him again yeah i'm sure yeah yes it just depends where you stop you didn't get there yet so that's a very deep philosophical question which is and i had i don't know the answer to this it's a very deep question what is the category of someone who's doing the first hundred sit-ups and he hasn't yet gotten to a hundred and one it doesn't yet hurt it's not inconvenient for him it's his habit and technically if he were to stop at that point he would remain a sherloya vaday but if he keeps going one past his comfort zone now he's in iva de la keem the question is what you're asking it's a very deep question what's his status during those hundred getting up to the point of of difficulty and i don't know i don't know if it matters but it's a cool question i told you why we have the concept and i told you why we have the concept i actually said it twice today and now i'm going to put you on the spot why is it important for us to understand that our struggles are normal no no no no more than that you said so we know our struggles are normal it's more than that necessary and valuable and if you didn't have it it would be a problem it seems to be that this person therefore that person cannot get off the ground because those are the weights right oh the interesting point you're making yeah yeah you're referring to chapter 38 and that's a very interesting that's a high-level question um okay that's a that's a very deep question okay i have to think about that no that no that's really that's obviously a question that based on someone who's been through tanya and understands yeah that's very good i don't know i i never thought of that before it's a very thought-provoking question okay now because i i if i'll repeat the question i won't be able to answer i i never heard this question before but i'm hearing it and i'm like yeah that's actually a good question but to formulate an intelligent answer i can't do it on the fly okay okay so let let's continue maybe we can finish the chapter we don't have that much time okay so now he explains a little bit more the particular mechanics of what happens when he gets 201 when he gets to the point of 101 and he goes into aveda keem mode in order to get himself to do the one extra to do the first hundred he didn't have to do anything he just does his habit but to do the one extra he's gonna have to give himself a push somehow and he says basically what he's going to do he's going to have to think about hashem and from thinking about hashem produce some emotion some love of god some aw of god to push him to do that one extra and in that moment where he's actually forcing himself to think about hashem and generate some some more feelings more than just what was already installed in his neshama so that's called the work of a banany in other words this guy was obeying me by by default not by work but when he gets to lesson 100 and then he does one more with that one more now he suddenly has to do the work of a banana he need to be a banana until then he could be a he could be a bananee without the work of a bananee but when he gets to lesson 101 now in order to be obeying he has to do the work of abandoning but do you think he even wants to is he capable he doesn't sound like he cares well if there is such a guy and he's learning this chapter then i think he would take this to heart and he would say you know i've been gifted i've been blessed i'm pretty lucky i'm able to be a bananee without really any effort and now i understand what dalton i was saying he's saying that uh i gotta do one more than my comfort zone and in order to do that i'm gonna have to do a little meditation to get myself pumped up and okay so a regular banana typical bendy is going to have to pump himself up even to do lesson one or less than two so this bendy won't have to pump himself up until he gets to lesson 101 but the point is at some level he's going to have to think about hashem and inspire himself and that's called the work of obeying the work of romania is you think about hashem and inspire yourself or and by the way right here in this these few lines he's hinting to two methods in tanya that we're going to be studying at length so the first method how to get yourself pumped up is what what do you say work it's well what's the work meditate meditate and produce some extra love and all of a sup okay fine or and he says this is like the second thing it's like not the highest but it's also acceptable he could trigger the natural love limbs molly to rule over the nature of the left ventricle shizunik naveda which is also called acceptable work to fight against the proclivities of the yetzer by arousing latent love in the heart this is different the first method is to meditate and create new feelings for sherm this is not as drastic this is more to summon or evoke and to bring out emotions that were already there why were they already there because those are the latent emotions we mentioned it earlier so what's the difference now with what we're saying now than what we're saying before because there he wasn't even evoking it he wasn't even arousing it it's like you know do you love your mother yeah of course well did you think about it now if you think about it you're only arousing something that was already there it's not a new emotion you didn't have to meditate to create it you're just arousing something that's already there but that's different than not arousing it at all and just coasting by on the natural latent state where it's sort of just in the background does everyone follow we're saying hold on i want to make sure everyone understands this in order to do the work of a baneny this has to come to muscle failure has to get to the sit-ups that start hurting hundred and one lessons why is that going to make him in avid illegal because at that point he's going to have to do one of two things either method number one he's going to have to do what meditate and meditation will evoke new feelings and generates yes he's going to create new love and awe or [Applause] at least evoke natural feelings that are latent in the heart of every jew the natural love and awe of god that are just the baseline of every of every jew which is different than what we talked about before where he didn't even arouse those feelings he just sort of got by on their existing quietly in the background and that was enough you understand okay let's finish off the chapter just we have like one line however this is not so if the person has no war enough assume it's if he just uses the love that was automatically there he doesn't summon it he doesn't do anything to think about it he doesn't do anything active that's not called aveda whatsoever okay that's the end of chapter 15. so bottom line one sentence summary there are two levels of banony distinguished by the degree of effort that they have to put forth to be a banany and therefore we can take comfort maybe even take pride in the fact that we have struggles because this is what constitutes service of hashem that's the summary yeah that we could take pride in the fact that we have struggles in the actual text machine can but if his love of hashem is just the natural love that was already installed and he's not doing anything active to enhance it or or or bring it out that's not called service so there has to be some level of service struggle fight or it's not called