Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #9

okay so we're on chapter four of tanya just to uh sum up so in chapter one we were asking a whole bunch of questions about satellite we didn't get any clarity yet we got a little clarity we found out that a bain-need doesn't do any evaders um not even bitter but as far as what's the difference between the benny and the tsadek and the difference between albania and russia we're not really 100 percent uh clear and we said but you know the key to understanding this whole thing has to do with the shtana fascists the idea of two souls which is from the uh lyrianic kabbalah from kiswi arizal the name of rafhaim vital and we started speaking about the two souls in the end of chapter one we said there's an animal salt we didn't call it that yet but there's a vitalizing force um this instinct for self-preservation and it has various different middles different uh emotional attributes some of them are negative and some of them are uh for all intents and purposes are are good uh because it's from clipas noiga it's not jealous clippers and timaeus and then chapter two we said there's this other persona called the nephisha shainis the second soul which is literally a part of god above even in a body and that's called the naf shall accuse the godly soul and its instinct and drive is for oneness with hashem and that is our true truest self and then in chapter three we said let's get into the anatomy of this godly soul we said that the godly soul is comprised of ten capacities which mirror or uh reflect the ten spherois hashem's ten emanations and they these and efficiently refer to them soul powers correspond to the to the astrosphere islamic the ten spheres the ten emanations they have the same names the same relationships between them and uh just to review we said there are three uh cognitive capacities known as kahma bina and das khachema is the father mean is the mother and daus is the connection between which allows them to give birth to emotions and then you have the seven emotions and tifares and their derivatives remember we said that really one seven doubles good job from seifer yitzira so you we have the chassette and ferris once you have the casserole is the right what is the left ferris is the middle and then everything else whether it's fits in as derivatives of those somewhere plotted along those three axes and that's who we're up to okay so here's the thing and again we're in the informational chapters of tanya so there's not a lot of practical instruction that is going to come up here although everything we're going to learn becomes incredibly important later on for practical implementation and that is at this juncture where we know the inner workings of the godly soul we're now going to be introduced to the outer workings of the godly soul in other words how does the godly soul express itself there's the self being expressed and then there's the expression of that self so the self of the godly soul its inner workings we just learned about in chapter three its inner workings the ten faculties two categories of faculties cognitive and emotional so the inner workings of the godly soul are sort of it's it's its perspectives and its feelings right we'll call it's cognitive faculties it's perspectives its way of looking at things and we'll call its middle its feelings the way it feels about what it thinks it's perceived so what is the soul the soul is and we can we can be comfortable with this definition this working definition the soul is a set of perceptions and feelings about its perceptions that's what it is now the question is how do you define what the soul does that's what the soul is what about what the soul does yeah i'll repeat it sure what is the soul so one definition that will work for us here is it's a set of perceptions and feelings namely three perspectives of perception called mabina and das and then seven uh different styles of emotionally reacting to those perceptions and that's what the soul is but that's not what the soul does like i was saying their self and their self-expression so here's how the soul looks at things here's how it sees things here's how it feels about things but none of that tells me what it's going to do about any of that so comes chapter four and introduces us to a very important concept called levusha hanafish levusha mean mean means clothing garments a lavish as a garment lavoshim plural garments and it introduces us to the concept of lavushma of garments telling us what the soul does with its perceptions and its feelings now we're not going to talk about this yet but i just wanna i'm gonna do i'm teaching with the spoilers because i feel like my experience has taught me that to try to keep you in suspense and not tell you how this stuff gets used later actually works against me and i told you this before that most tanya classes fall apart in the initial chapters because people are like well what are we going to do with this information so i'm just going to tell you already it doesn't say this any of this here yet but later on one of the most important concepts in tanya is going to be distinguishing between your insides and your outsides meaning okay you had a feeling but what are you going to do with that feeling i did a an interview a podcast with uh the professor of i think the most popular class at harvard ever they get the class in happiness from talban shahar who wrote the books on happiness a very famous uh expert in happiness he studied it from a psychological neurological perspective and one of the things we discussed that he he said the cutting edge understanding of happiness today is that you have to accept the fact you're going to feel all types of things but your power is in choosing how you're going to express those feelings so i told them yeah that's basically tanya tanya is you're going to feel all types of things because we haven't mentioned it yet but just like you have emotions coming from your nephew kiss also you have emotions coming from your nephew obama's emotions are emotions then the question is what it what what kind of expression are you going to give to those emotions and that's where your power is so we're not going to talk about any of that today i'm just letting you know so you understand why this stuff is so important all right so let's let's let's jump in the aid and furthermore meaning why is he starting the chapter with furthermore on top of what we learned in chapter 3 that the soul is comprised of these cognitive and emotional faculties so on top of that furthermore every godly soul has three garments so now we're talking about the garments think about it like this chapter three is the insides and chapter four is the outsides the insides and the outsides or you could call it self and self-expression or you can call it who i am and what i do right insights outside self self expression who i am what i do shahaim and what are these three garments or modes of expression they are namely marshava dibra maiser thought speech and action any thought speech in action no not any thought speech and action because after all what's the context here we're speaking about which soul never shall accuse so when we say what are the modes of expression of the godly soul thought speech and action of godly things so he says thoughts of each and action shalt mitzvos hatoyo thought speech and action which are mitzvahs one of the 613 mitzvahs the godly soul only expresses itself through mitzvos because that's all the godly soul is concerned with when a person performs all of the practical physical action mitzvahs uber deeper and with his speech who is called mitzvah he with his speech learned studies orally the laws of all the different mitzvahs he understands as much as he can from the different levels of torah interpretation so we've we've described action speech thought with his action he's doing all the torah doings and with his speech he's speaking all the torah speakings and with his thought he's thinking all the torah thinkings so when he's doing that you notice i mentioned i use the word doing for all of it even the speaking and the thinking which is important because in tanya speech and thought are behaviors just like action very important to know how to categorize speech and thought speech and thought are behaviors just like action why is it important for later on because i have to know where my free will kicks in i don't have free will over what i feel but i have free will not at least not directly but i have free will over what i how i behave so what's a behavior how do you define a behavior so we define a behavior as any of the three garments thought speech and action so when you're doing all the torah doings and all the torah speakings and all the torah thinkings hare clawles so then all of his 613 limbs of his soul are invested in all the 613 mitzvahs of the title the structure of the soul in addition to being comprised of ten sole faculties that we spoke about is also comprised of 613 limbs so to speak and in fact it makes perfect sense you know is a glove five fingers because a hand has five fingers or is does the hand have five fingers because the glove has five fingers what about mittens what about mittens i'll get out of here you're causing trouble now with the mittens i knew you'd find a way to cause trouble mittens okay [Laughter] oh my gosh okay so is you think about the way that a person is designed a person is designed for functionality so the soul is and i don't mean this in a scary sci-fi type of way but is the perfect machine for executing mitzvos and therefore when we are doing all of the mitzvahs in thought speech and action we are exercising making use of all the different parts of our soul because one was designed for the other okay so now we've established there are three garments thought speech and action which lend expression to the soul proteus now more specifically more specific what does more specifically mean more specifically we're going to get into which garments are lent expression to in which ways bikinis are rather which soul faculties i'm sorry which are given expression in which ways so his cognitive faculties that we learned about last week in chapter three how did they get expressed when he's understanding as much as he can understand of the toyota according to his intellectual abilities and according to his spiritual capacity then he is giving expression to the khabad how by understanding by thinking about torah concepts and then the seven emotional faculties how do they get expressed they say and which are like we said aw and love and their various their various offshoots blue bushes became a mitzvah myself those get expressed through action and through speech what does speech mean speech means a study of torah which we where you're speaking not just that you're thinking that you're speaking it yeah this is applicable to the positive and negative six hundred thirteen target uh yes yes he's saying i mean obviously so 613 is including the 365 prohibitions it works a little bit differently there because then it's passive it's non-action right yeah yeah yeah but yeah we're talking about the whole toronto yeah what we just said we said that as far as how did you plug in the the kaichi-san fish from the last chapter to the levus from this chapter so he says namely the chabad the cognitive faculties the three cognitive faculties from chapter three those are expressed through the the garment called thought when you understand a concept in torah and then the emotional faculties that we learned about last week in chapter three which are seven emotional faculties those get expressed either through speech or through action speech means torah study actually speaking the words and action is you know get up and go give to dhaka okay and he explains a little bit more why oh thank you why the emotions are specifically expressed through behaviors through well they're all behaviors i said through through through speech and action in other words i uh he doesn't explain it because it doesn't even need to be explained why bad are expressed through uh i understand why my intellectual faculties would only be channeled through understanding that i get but why are you saying that the emotional faculties are specifically channeled through speech and action so that he explains a little bit here he says um oh this is where we are because love is the source of all positive to all 248 positive commandments umi from love is where the 248 mitzvahs or the performance of them are drawn forth and without it there would be no true lasting survival of these actions you run out of steam you run out of motivation and he explains anyone who truly does the mitzvahs is the one who loves hashem kabab and truly desires to cleave to hashem the afshaladavka babamus and there's no true way to cleave to hashem except through the 248 positive commandments shaheen which are remark which are also in zarya called the 248 limbs of the king commission is explained elsewhere so in order to do the mitzvos you have to have sufficient motivation what's the motivation for doing love love love is get up and do something for the beloved conversely or is the opposite direction love is get up and go do something get closer yira is the opposite drive in the opposite emotional energy it serves as the source of performing all the 365 prohibitive commandments why how so kiyore liberated by malik because if you have of hashem you are afraid of rebelling against him or even on a deeper level of awe say you are ashamed before his greatness lambre is you wouldn't want to do anything unseemly in his eyes coltay of assassins anything that's hateful to him which is what what's hateful to hashem clippers with that which we refer to as clipper the host of the other side how does negativity get its life negativity by definition in kabbalah say this has no life it's vampiristic so where does it get life from from you it tricks you into nurturing it by doing stuff you ought not do so the negativity gets it derives its sustenance from you from the automata from the person down here how does the clipper get a jew to feed it by engaging in one of the 365 prohibitions well i wouldn't want to do that in front of hashem i wouldn't want to feed hashem's enemies that would be unseemly so what he's describing here is a deeper awe where not only um do i not want to be marked as a rebel right that was the first level but i don't want to do anything that is unseemly something it's like why would you support that which is opposed to hashem why would you why would you aid why would you be caught aiding and abetting the other side giving moral support to the enemy so the sense of impropriety let's call it that like why would i do that why would i support my father's enemies that would prevent me from engaging in the 365 prohibitions so that's how he explains that the emotions the middles the seven middays from chapter three how they get channeled is through speech and and action because in order to do all the torah speech and action you're supposed to do and refrain from all the torah speech and action or non-torah speech and action that you're not supposed to do for that you need to be sufficiently emotionally motivated and more specifically what he says is the motivation for the doing is from the love and the motivation for the not doing or for the refraining is from the awe make sense no what what do you want me if somebody doesn't evade evader like they eat before half dollar okay i don't like to give people ideas of avedas so i pick one that i think most people already are unfortunately cavalier about so that behavior is not a reflection of all of hashem so if somebody's wife says could you please stop humming that song and he keeps humming does he hate his wife no but that does he love her maybe he does i don't know enough information i could i can't conclude whether he hates her and i can't conclude whether he loves her but i can tell you that that particular act was not an expression of sufficient respect for his what respect is a more pedestrian way of describing all all is more intense you know respect is a little bit more accessible version of the same thing but the same thing it's self-containment love is expansiveness i go out of my way for you aw is self-containment so another way we could describe this through respect so his wife says stop humming that too and he keeps humming it i can't tell you he hates his wife but i can tell you that particular behavior was not an expression of respect for his wife so i'm gonna ask you don't do this very very firm thing where we label people because they did in a veda and i'm i think it's a function of our culture can i say this i want to say this i think there's a function of our culture that we are comfortable and i understand the survival impulse to label people as safe and as unsafe but we say a person did an evader therefore i'm going to label them as something because i'm just more comfortable knowing how to regard them you know whose team are you on us and them like the way political discourse is today nobody discussed an issue genuinely discussed an issue in in 20 years and 30 years it hasn't happened there's nobody who's sincerely discussed a political issue in 30 years since since facebook for sure they haven't what do you do what's every political discussion today you try to figure out using buzz words what side a person's on and that's easy now i can label whether i hate you or i love you and that's it or the politician tell me which team he's on and then that's it and then we support everything they do or we hate everything they do so we're gonna not think black and white we're not to say a person did an evader does he hate hashem how would i even how would i even i don't even have enough information to draw a conclusion all we're saying is the action itself the action itself this snapshot this moment if he's doing something that hashem doesn't like then i can tell you one thing that behavior wasn't an expression of respect for hashem and conversely i think this is equally important what he's saying is if someone does something hashem does like they do a positive mitzvah then you should know that behavior didn't materialize out of nowhere it was the expression of an emotion this is what he's saying here what emotion if somebody does something hashem likes what emotion gave rise to that behavior love that was an act of love and that's what he's saying here to understand the inner workings of the soul the cognitive and the emotional okay the cognitive i get that plugs into hassagas hotel torah and then the emotional aspects which are basically love and awe and their offshoots the love gets expressed as doing things for hashem that's what we call the 248 positives and the awe gets expressed as refraining from stuff because of hashem which we call the 365 prohibit the pro prohibitions that's all we're saying but to draw any conclusions about the person i i don't know about the person i can tell you about that act i can tell you about that act and that's what he's saying here that's all he's saying okay so let's continue here where are we up to okay all right so a little bit of time here we can address this issue now here's a question how would you categorize these uh these garments in relationship with the soul that wears these garments in other words you know if i could save a person or save their clothing if i if i'm if i'm uh i rush into a burning building to save somebody and they yell at me say you ripped my clothes well i saved your life obviously the person is more important than the clothing so here's the funny thing we refer to the soul's expression as clothing which kind of implies that the clothing are of a secondary or what we call there's eaker and toefl uh the main thing and the uh i guess secondary is the word subordinate i don't know i'm just saying fancy words because i can't think of the word i want you might think that the soul's clothing are less important than the soul itself that wears these clothes because that's that's the metaphor of clothing that's what it implies at least at first glance so now you establish she wants you to know that actually these clothing are are in a way greater than the soul itself that wears them let's let's look at the words these three garments and he re-establishes we're talking about toyota and mitzvos this is a very important point because remember we're talking about the garments of the godly soul and the garments of the godly soul are only torah thought speech and action in other words mitzvos mitzvos so the garments of the godly soul are all mitzvahs since they're all mitzus although we use the term clothing which implies in some way that it's secondary to the soul itself ian calls that nevertheless gulf of a godless versailles never sure they are infinitely greater than the soul itself kamehameha that hashem or the torah and hashem are entirely one torah and hashem are entirely one is not hashem's book torah is hashem presenting himself through the medium of a book what does this mean explains it [Music] and hashem is one with his khochma and his lot say like we explained in chapter two because he is the knower and the knowledge commission is we explain the name of the rambam in chapter 2. so don't think that these garments are of a lower category or lower order than the soul to the contrary they're actually infinitely greater than the soul hence they have the power to lift up the soul that's the point we're making that when a soul engages in toyota and mitzvos because the toyota mitzvahs are coming from a higher place it lifts the soul to a higher level than it would be on its own makes sense so it's not just like clothing it's nice to have a nice set of clothes right is that a good joke you left me out of it i just like the name larouche for a good modest clothing store oh don't say that online someone will steal it from you that's a good idea that's very good okay i'm not saying that i don't want someone will steal it i'm not going to say a word it's very good yeah that is very clever i'm surprised nobody did that i'm surprised too okay next week central avenue [Laughter] i wouldn't even be surprised that's very good oh they changed the whole name of the street that'd be amazing okay we could dream okay let's keep it up let's keep learning and we'll okay all right now here's another question that sort of arises in this having a discourse context hashem that's right that's right oh that's what was your thing hashem yeah that was your yeah now there's another question that comes up here which is how are you equating so one explanation leads to a new question the answer to one question leads to a new question so we explained that the clothing are not of a secondary level they're actually higher than the soul itself and that's why they have the power to pick up the soul um but now we in the course of that explanation we and we beg a new question which is you just said that torah is synonymous with hashem the rise of hashem are entirely one i don't understand because hashem is infinite how can you equate hashem with anything so he explains [Music] hashem is called infinite and there there's no probing his greatness and no thought can grasp him at all and also his will and his wisdom the same thing goes because maybe you would say well you can't grasp his essence but you could grasp his wisdom and his will and we say no you can't even grasp his wisdom and his will just like he is infinite his wisdom and will are infinite which means they cannot be contained by any finite intellect like it says there is no probing the depth of his understanding and it says one who probes hashem investigates will he find will he get to the bottom of it no he won't rhetorical question even it says hashem says my thoughts are not like your thoughts they're categorically different okay so then how do you explain that we equate hashem with his torah and vice versa so in regards to this it has been said to me in the very place where you find hashem's greatness sham thereto atamete you find his humility what does it mean hashem's humility it means that is he compressed the infinity of his will and wisdom into the mitzvahs of torah and their halachas [Music] as well as in the letters of the bible and the tanakh ud as well as in the ways that our sages expound the writings of tanach so hashem compressed himself into something that could be learned and understood by a mortal intellect so that every soul in a body could understand them these words of torah with their intellect will akaim on and not just understand but perform fulfill in action everything that is possible to do through thought speech and action or he actually says through action speech and thought value days that is and through this the ten aspects of the soul are invested in the three garments of the soul so hashem the infinite compressed himself into a form that we could approach and that form is called torah that form is called torah torah is speaking ultimately about the unknowable every concept in torah ultimately is speaking about an infinite truth that being infinite is not able to be contained within a finite mind not even that of an angel but hashem presents a translation of the infinite into the language of the finite and you learn and what you're really doing is learning translated infinity in a language of finitude where you can wrap your mind around it and therefore you can relate directly to infinity now this leads us to [Music] another very interesting point the login therefore i think we're gonna finish chapter four i wasn't sure if we would but i think we will well therefore toyota is compared to water is compared to many things one of the things that is compared to is water why is it compared to water well what's one property of water that bears being compared to water become being compared to toil just like water flows from a high place to a low place everyone knows how water works right water every toddler has experimented with water right you take them to the restaurant and you say why is the whole table soaking wet because he wanted to see how it works because you know the salt you can pile it up in little piles and the sugar but then the water is so interesting it just flows off of the table why does it do that because look everything falls there's gravity but water is funny that it always spreads out and low it you can't pile up water you can't pile it up so water's property of going down not just falling like uh you know a bunch of uh bricks bricks also fall but you can stack them up make a wall out of them you can't do that with water unless you freeze the water and then you make ice like an igloo yeah i said that because i know some some smart al was going to say it right inside okay but at any rate so water flows down so why why do we compare it to water too toyota came down from this glorious place which is hashem's own will and wisdom various nothing no thought can grasp hashem meaning in its source no thought can grasp it came down down down down down level after level of madrego one level to the next bish doucheless through the orderly chain-like progression of world-building until the toyota invested itself in matters of this world you open up a gemara you open up a shock and it's speaking about regular mundane things so you think that it's talking about an ox and a cow but really abhishtein salt said all of a shallom that anyone who learns the gemara and he thinks that it's talking about an ox he's the ox the ox is just uh it's just a metaphor i mean it's also talking about a real axe but there's a deeper principle that the ox is the the code word for describing and there are levels and layers of these deeper principles so on one layer it's talking about a legal principle let's talk about jurisprudence on an even deeper level it's talking about a spiritual principle it's talking about the inner workings of the soul and that's with everything in toyota the language is an accessible language it's talking about stuff of this world particularly you know uh practical halacha is talking about stuff that you see every day and yet it's a it's a code it's a it's a translation of infinite spiritual truths being conveyed in terms that a mortal mind can appreciate so that's why we compare toyota to water like water fl you know no matter how high it is it'll always go as low as it possibly can it'll always find the lowest the lowest elevation so the toyota comes down which the toyota is made up primarily almost entirely of physical stuff i mean toyota is talking about how to do physical actions or conversely toyota comes down as stories but those stories are written as actual ink on actual parchment ashram the 24 books of tanakh and why does tata come down into this form this accessible form they should take kolmach fisa began so that that which normally no thought can grasp now our thought can grasp and in fact not only can i thought see if you think about the three levushi annaphish obviously they're different from each other that's why they're categories they're categorically different from each other so if we were thinking about which one is more rarefied abstract ethereal obviously thought is that obvious that thought is the most spiritual of the levation and then deeper is a little more concrete and action is obviously the most concrete that makes sense right that doesn't require a lot of explanation so the fact that we say even one of the levushim can grasp hashem in this uh in in this condensed form that's already a marvelous idea but we're saying now no not just one of the the levushim the most rarefied levush but even the lower quote unquote the lower levushim of of speech and even uh of action which is the coarsest lowest most concrete even that can grasp the infinite how how does how does action act as a as a as a as a vehicle for the infinite action is the lowest thing it's the most concrete it's most limited you can only do one thing at a time you can't do two things at a time you can you you thought you can you can project yourself all over the world you can think two things that are impossible to to really see in real life and put them together thought is is uncontained but but action is very limiting action is is the most limited is the most uh the lowest level how can action contain infinity so how does our action convey infinity any mitzvah yeah but any mitzvah because any mitzvah that you do you are taking hashem's will and wisdom and manifesting it as a physical action so it could be an act of acid it could be um putting on filling it could be mitsubara like lighting shabbos candles or lighting the manure the point is that hashem lends himself and his infinity to be expressed in finite form through the performance of the mitzvos so you appreciate that the mitzvahs are an incredible opportunity to attain something that really is quite paradoxical that the infinite could be manifest within the finite okay so he says um where are we up to kadesh take omaha right yeah and even even speech and thought which are lower shall imagine which are lower than thought feast of behemoths speech and action can act as vehicles for torah for infinity um and then when the person is actively doing toyota mitzvahs what happens what happens is that toyota and mitsubis our malbesh our clothing are surrounding all of his ten soul faculties and all of his 613 spiritual limbs from head to toe both figuratively and literally so what imagine that the person is doing toyota and mitzvahs and he's being enveloped he's being surrounded from head to toe by infinity harakula he is literally being bound up in the bound in the binds of the bounds the binds the binding of of life and the light of hashem is literally encompassing him from head to toe commission kosovo like it says suri aksabe i will take refuge in hashem in my rock meaning like literally i'm going to get inside i'm getting inside he'll um he'll crown you like a helmet of favor like a helmet think about you again the idea if you're going into hashem you're wearing hashem you're taking shelter in hashem which are what what are we talking about hashem's will and wisdom hamlet which are invested in the state of mitchell so when you're doing tater mitzvas you are getting inside of being enveloped encompassed by hashem's will and wisdom that's the relationship okay so anyways to sum up chapter four we were introduced to three garments of the soul thought speech and action whereby the soul is able to give expression to its inner perceptions and feelings but do not think that because they're only expressions they're only outgrowths that they are secondary no to the contrary what are we talking about when we're talking about how the soul expresses itself we're talking about mitzvahs which are infinity because hashem compressed his infinity within toda and mitzvahs so what's happening is when the soul is expressing itself when it's allowing its perceptions and emotions to come out as behaviors and we said behaviors can mean thought speech or action when the soul's allowing its its perceptions and emotions to come out as behaviors the soul is actually being lifted up and bound up with infinity pretty cool stuff yeah okay we did it okay yeah it's a good day for it but we didn't finish it yeah that was chapter four is there a little more yeah oh i thought we finished it we didn't finish okay so we'll start okay fine so we'll start next week whenever we didn't finish