(Way# 27) THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston who is teaching us uh the beautiful course the 48 ways to wisdom and today is part 27. he's been bringing us beautiful material these last few weeks and you'll notice everything keeps mounting more and more and more these steps you've got to integrate into your life uh if you are a lover of wisdom and let's face it wisdom is necessary in order to draw closer to hashem it's only how we perceive uh so uh let's just tune right into the rabbi and hear what he's got to say um good day rabbi we know it's late there in israel it's still uh early afternoon here in the pacific northwest where i am uh but we so appreciate you staying up late and your lessons have been just beautiful these last few weeks i've so enjoyed them so i'm looking forward to hearing what you have to share today thank you dan welcome everybody i have to admit this is not my material i mean i everybody can access this this is a book a safer for those who are tuning in just for the first time the footy wasted wisdom the days that we left egypt all the way till the revelation of mount sinai they were all together 49 days uh obviously there's the 49th waves to review um so this i happen to spend bro hashem a lot of time in the yeshiva of asia torah where ravnoch uh taught and it's based on ancient wisdom right even though we're talking about 20th century 21st century uh wisdom that is way back it's so pertinent these 48 ways true wisdom it's towards wisdom and i'm assuming everybody here who is watching is interested in the topic or in wisdom and so this is titled this is the 27th way we're going to say in english it means the secret to happiness which would i would translate it as being satisfied with your lot your portion with your portion uh the roshiva titled it the secret to happiness now based on that title i have to make a disclaimer the disclaimer is this is probably the best and most important topic of all time of judaism meaning judaism right the actual concept of what yiddish kite judaism is about is really truly about having joy now you should know that like i guess you you have indigenous people where you live oh yeah from here we call them eskimos i mean uh i don't know what they're really called but i hope i'm not uh offending any offending anybody maybe there's a new name in this new world culture uh but apparently i mean it may be true may not be true but the cons concept is true that there are many different types of words used to describe snow in eskimo language because there's a type that you use to build an igloo there's another type you use to or you find that you can really gain a lot of speed with your dog sleds right it's certain types of snow or maybe you go skiing whatever it is right there's different types so in judaism believe it or not there's like close to 30 maybe even more words to describe joy so there's obviously a reason for that joy is integral right just to even talk about the curses i don't you know there's blessings and curses in the torah and unfortunately you know there's 98 of them and the sum total of all the curses come as a result of the jew the human being for that matter not serving god with joy i mean specifically to the nation of israel and therefore all wisdom could be gleaned from our god's communication and interaction with the jewish people the uh you know disseminating the the wisdom and the trials and tribulations and the experiences the jewish people have is uh wisdom for all time wisdom for all people and that is part of the reason that we're here on the uh the nocad world center website to share this wisdom and you should take from it whatever it is that is going to be um that's going to relate to yourself just to go back this idea of why judaism i mentioned that word you know the israelite nation is 12 tribes yehudah is or was the largest of the 12 tribes and because of the um the stages in our exile that the 10 northern tribes were exiled first and perhaps a large portion of them are still missing uh never returned and the whole question is well will they return have they returned we're not going to go into that that's not the point the point is that it's not only that yehuda is or was the largest tribe and therefore some people want to say that's why the jews are called the jews today because they're all descendants of yuda it's that's it's fake news it's not true uh meaning that it could be a large significant portion of the jewish people from yejuda that nobody can deny um but that all 12 tribes the northern 12 tribes hopefully whoever did come back learn their lesson do not separate right unity is one of the most important principles in judaism and that we are and i'm going to use this word we are messianic not not in the colloquial term but we really truly are believers in the the monarchy of king david and the promises of the torah that the leaders will come from yehuda the kingship goes through yoda and therefore no matter what tribe you're from hopefully you have come back and recognized that it's the monarchy of yehuda that you are now um you know loyal to as opposed to the disloyalty of not allowing the jews let's say israel the northern tribes to come to jerusalem to worship to pray to be unified under the the king of yehuda and therefore we're saying that today since the second temple onward that there was a unit somewhat we'll call the unification of of israel under the monarchy of yehuda and that's like very important to understand why we're called jews but going back even further leia this a lot of this is repetitive we've discussed this before but it's so necessary to understand leia's fourth child which she named him she named him yehuda because she realized she received much more than she deserved or was maybe in her mind going to be alive to her because through her codes through prophecy she understood that there would be and therefore four mothers and therefore each one should have gotten three children or three schwa team three of the tribes as soon as she let's say went beyond what she thought would come to her she named him yoot and she said i'm naming him you because i am grateful that i have received more than my share so that's what a jew is that's what because yehuda is the of gratitude and that what that's what a yid a yid is a nickname for a jew um that a jew like intrinsically that's what he should be right we all know that maybe we don't all know uh that a jew has to make a hundred brackets a day when you go to a minion you go to the pr the quorum of prayer through the repetition of the prayer itself not only your prayers but the amines all the different things that we do through the day from the time we wake up in the morning to the time we go to sleep we should make a hundred blessings that's a directive from king david the question is did he invent it or did he reestablish it i'm of the opinion that he reestablished what was already known that in what does hashem request or require of us the word if you just take the vowels and change them a little bit it's bamaya with a hundred that's what god requires of us and that's what a yid that's what a jew is and for all those righteous gentiles who want to cling to the jewish people and want to absorb as much knowledge about the relationship that mankind has with the lord god created the universe and um the king of the lord of israel the god of israel that they also would adopt to say or let's say have an attitude of gratitude whether it's verbally expressing it whether it's just in the heart i don't know okay but you take from the jewish people what you can possibly take okay so i mentioned the disclaimer now part of the disclaimer is there's no way i'm going to do justice in this short class so what we're going to try to do is just lay the framework for the major principles and you'll realize hopefully how important this concept is in your life especially as a height or if you're jewish and you're watching this as i mentioned there are many different words for for joy so one of the ideas that there's different levels right because each let's say from for an eskimo as we describe these different kinds of texture different kinds of snow so too when it comes to joy there's different levels of let's say nuances degrees of joy so this is a work in progress right everyone hopefully will live 120 years and will struggle because it is a hashem yeah you know when we think about the commandments the commandments are meant to now this is not it's it's a decree from god that we have to do it but one of the ideas that we come up with is there's reasons behind them and they're there for tikkun amirs they're somehow going to fix us into becoming better people obviously that's the truth because the idea of a mitzvah means that you're clinging you're actually unifying with god or you're becoming more god-like so this is the struggle that we all have to raise ourselves from our earthly base adam the word adam is from atama okay but we also have the soul and to cling more or less express our soul more having the soul being the real who you know the real i you know the real who you are is is your soul and to overcome your bodily urges and to become more like hashem so this is what god requires of us it's actually an obligation in the torah right at least for the holidays and some rabbi pliskin for one he explains and he brings many sources uh that the idea that even though it says it by the holidays right you have an obligation to rejoice during the holidays that this is a as i mentioned in the curses you god says you know i gave you everything and you didn't serve me with joy so this he proves this means that it's not just the holidays it's really and in fact i can prove that i'm not going to do that right now that the experiences that we actually have during the holidays we're supposed to bring into the whole year okay so there's many ways to try to explain it but try to understand there's no way we can do justice in this short period of time so this is basically a an overview also our health like a side uh benefit okay there is so much science that has proven people are depressed right it affects your whole immune system right there's yes so much so joy really can be very healing uh your emotional state will have an effect on your body they talk about a mind body experience yes words maybe they say a soul body experience there's different ways to express it but let's just say the mind and the soul are somewhat connected to a certain extent so if you have a healthy soul it doesn't guarantee but it means you will be healthier right it will cost less yeah stress less for sure for sure for sure um just also we discussed that the tenth of the ten commandments the acereta de brothe do not covet is according to many it's really a summation of all ten commandments the actual idea really truth be told is that all ten commandments contain all 613 commandments as we discussed before you have 620 letters in the first set in exodus in the first set of the ten commandments and they represent according to your goat and many others the 613 mitzvahs are in the 613 letters but there's another seven letters and there's different opinions some hold like i do that represents the seven no laws and the um and the others opine it's the seven rabbinical principle but the point i'm trying to make is this that if the tenth commandment is like a summation of everything what does it mean to covet right to have a desire to something that you don't have your neighbor has it so this idea you're feeling lack we're going to i discuss one of the uh principal points here and i'll read it now it's in percolvo chapter four verse uh mishnah one where benzoma s i mean he's asking rhetorically you know who is who is uh happy who's rich who's this who's that who's strong so he says um azuhu ashir who's rich he also asked whose wise one who learns from every person but here who's rich one who is happy with his lot now does that make him or her physically rich you know like statistically above the poverty level not necessarily it means that they are truly rich if they are actually satisfied with what they have and that's going to be i think the key to the secret of happiness okay now there's a verse in psalms 128 verse 2 that benzoma brings as a proof and i do want to read some of the context i want to read some of the commentaries on this but we'll get back to that okay let's hold off for a second or maybe i should just read the verse and then we'll talk about the commentary later 128 verse 2 you said yeah yeah says if you eat the toil of your hands you are praiseworthy and it is good for you okay so we're going to discuss that but i want to i want to go through my um my introductory remarks first um so i did mention about this idea of coveting right coveting it's um basically people are saying oh the grass is always greener on the other side right something somebody has something that i would want that i i feel i don't have so that i'm not sure it makes you depressed but it definitely affects your mood your happiness your state of happiness there's no question about it so ingrained in you know embedded in the tenth commandment is this idea of being happy with what you have obviously um lush and hara is a big topic i mean we believe that we're in the state of exile we're in now right with no temple without mashiach without sanhedrin all because of la shanhara that's the reason the second temple was destroyed now what exactly is la shanhara it's evil speech right it's talking negatively about others what ends up happening in theory i mean is the way i see it is that i mentioned before doing mitzvahs working on your character that's work but guess what there's an easy way right i don't have to work on anything i just have to put the other guy down and then i'm automatically i feel raised up right that's it's a shortcut it's counterfeit it's it's uh it's the wrong way to go right and what it does it creates mock locate mcloaker divisions and basically misery loves company right people are not happy we're going to constantly i don't know what where to use it starts with a b and ends with a ch obviously it's not a nice word but that's what people do they're they're constantly you know complaining wine bags they're whining about life right yeah and so they're whining about others you know and they're talking negatively they're bringing the other they're trying to degrade the other person so this this shows you that they're not happy and we want to talk about tonight the secret of happiness so hopefully having a healthy idea of what it means to and whining about this means you're satisfied with whatever it is you actually have um his top could it goes back to the time when we were in in the desert when we were in the desert i hope hopefully you understand what that means it's true i lived 13 years in the desert uh 30 years ago but we're talking about the door hadaya the durha day is the generation of knowledge the generation of knowledge refers to the 600 000 men between age 20 and 60 who received the torah mount sinai so they were a generation of knowledge and they ate mana they ate this bread that descended from heaven i mean in and day out hey they complained it was can you imagine any cardboard every single day okay we're not gonna give it to that but the idea is they were in the desert nothing grew right and being in a desert where there's no distractions there's no i think distraction is really the word i'm looking for but um you did the luxuries are not there there's no luxuries right there's no you there's just plain this is what you see is what you get and um this is a ma la this is actually a virtue to be able to be on that level of the duradeya that was able to receive this wisdom and we're talking about how remember these are the 40 ways to wisdom so having a level hist of being satisfied with what you have is going to play a key part in acquiring wisdom as we saw the door hadayah was the ultimate generation that received the the the torah which is wisdom and the rosh shiva mentions that and this is really hard for us to to grasp and swallow because we are obligated to fix the world and make the world a better place but there is a certain and we're talking about the emotional response if the situation this is his words if the situation could be better right obviously we can complain but if the situation could be better it would be better so the truth is the situation is exactly the way it is for a very good reason so now your job is to figure it out meaning it's a challenge don't look at it don't look at it as if it's a problem that you just cannot get over look at it as hashem is giving it to you exactly the way you need it in order to solve or fix something yeah the problem you could become depressed you can be sad but no you should actually grasp it with and up like with fervor and passion to do something about it now i want to stop here for one second because i have a very dear friend her name is rifka lampert adler she actually uh she's a well-known author at this point she writes also for the jerusalem post i believe if i i'm embarrassed if i quote the the title of the book wrong um 10 from the nations and i'm in that book by the way right next to rabbi tovia singer the chapter i think right before him right after him and uh it was a fantastic book at the time i'm sure it still is um it was about the ten people who are now interested in total judaism all kinds of different people some kosher some not kosher whatever it is anyway so she i noticed she was putting on her facebook uh page or wall whatever you call it uh she was doing 100 days 100 days she wanted to put across this idea of 100 blessings a gratitude a journal okay that's a jewish gratitude journal and so i asked her knowing i'm doing this class if she could just put together a short paragraph of a very short paragraph what what what motivated you and what did you get out of this gratitude journal and she's actually going to write a book so you can look it up i don't know when it's coming out risk of lampard adler um i think it's going to be called a hundred days of thanking hashem a jewish gratitude journal so i'm going to read her words i hope i'm doing this right but also i i do this anytime i feel stressed or bored or anxious i just start thanking hashem for specific things in my environment i also thank hashem when i see someone suffering from something which i do not suffer right there is this idea i mean wow i'm so thankful that i'm not in that position i thank hashem for the specific challenges he hasn't given me right imagine a million dollars or five million dollar what are you gonna do oh god for the people that would come out of the woodwork yeah i also thank i also include thanks for things that are still hard as in thank you hashem for the troubles we're having with our neighbors because it's all from god and i want to let him know i know that that's really deep deep stuff here i still do 100 gratitudes at a time she has a whole list here i'm not going to read her list i'm just reading another two two lines and then we're going to go back to my introduction i still do 100 gratitudes at a time but not every day always on show about more shabbat morning after i've darvened maybe i prayed and i'm at the shabbos table on friday nights we go around and ask everyone to name something they're grateful for that happened to them since the previous shabbat meaning over that week she writes i hope that helps and i'm very grateful that you did write that um i'm glad i read it and we god bless you and we did this in our in our shabbos table this friday night with all of our it was very nice call it an icebreaker right not everyone knows each other we know everyone at the table but not all of our guests know each other so this way um and my wife i think she wants to do this every week now so if you come to our shabbos table you better come prepared we even have one person who wasn't someday hashem willing he actually apologized for not sharing at the end but that's okay remember this is still all the introduction um he asked the roshiva asked would you rather be happy or rich how do you think most people would answer i mean hopefully king solomon he he he wanted to be wise so there is an equation seemingly between wisdom and happiness he chose wisdom over riches um the truth is the question is really would you be rather happy or rich he wants us to know that happiness is not about survival oh yeah yes how you doing i'm surviving you know i'm getting by um right just know that in terms of happiness it's it's a means it's not an end right it actually helps motivate you to get further on to be creative right to get more um so once you experience real and i'm going to use the word pleasure and happiness also in a certain sense on this on the same level you experience this happiness or this pleasure of happiness you want more why and that's where we're going to go with this wisdom because wisdom also is going to be equated to the idea once you have a little bit you want more you want more and more and more so it should be this whole idea of happiness not an end but it's a motivator if i if that's the correct word along the path of life to get more okay now he mentions about youth now youth meaning i think he means really young babies um he he claims and i you know i don't know if it's true but i think it is they're basically happy i mean obviously they're in a dirty diaper for a long time you're gonna cry amazed yeah they're amazed but they're basically happy cr um curious looking around the world but they're taught unfortunately at a very young age that the more you complain or cry about something the more likely you're going to get the result and that's a mistake it seems to be a mistake so um i guess as as we get older if we should learn that and i mean that's uh because you can just what's the word like uh it could paralyze you we talked about this before and it can paralyze you and you can just sully yourself and never move on but if you take the time the good times you know you can do it and you know have pleasure and have happiness so you can get out of the rut right we put ourselves in a rut unfortunately and we think like as kids that if we well babies that if we cry enough that would change it but that's not really going to change anything um well said happy people don't want to hurt other people right i mentioned earlier misery loves company it's a theme right all right he talks about a lot that when you see miserable people i mean the truth is it's also contagious right moods energy is very you know there's osmosis going there's contagion i mean now we're learning all about the pandemic and keeping mass going or washing your hands or using alcohol isolation whatever whatever they the politicians decide right so but the idea is that when you're hanging around happy people uh healthy people they're they're it's going to help you so you have to choose your friends wisely but anyway happy people don't want to hurt other people so people that are you know like i said earlier but lush and heart degrading others to bring them down it's a it's a sickness it's such a sickness i mean i i wanted to mention about people today i don't know the statistics i only heard it so that legalized you know legal prescriptions for antidepressants and the derivatives things are similar it's rampant i mean forget the opioid problem that people are actually going and getting legalized right prescriptions because of depression right i mean i don't want to talk about that because i don't really know that i don't really know that much about it other than it's a big problem and that people are hurting crime is high people are hurting each other people are depressed and i guess they feel it's just an assumption that the more i bring other people down the more i'll bring myself up but that's the shortcut that's the counterfeit way right work on your character work on your relationships and with that i will now begin okay so i i said i don't know well maybe we'll have to put this into a few different uh i'll try to keep it 27b yeah whatever you need rabbi you're the teacher just know that we're this is a lifelong endeavor let's begin uh when you open the safer right and you come to chapter 27 he actually tells a few stories so i'll just start with the first story so you know he talks about you're on the 770th floor of the empire state building and you see this huge guy probably a big like you six foot seven how big are you i'm six six in the nearly 300 pounds the truth is he says a six point five six foot five guy and he's perched on the window of the 70th floor of the empire state building is about to jump and you looking at him you say oh my god please stop no what are you doing so the guy looks at you and says you try to stop me i'm taking you with me so you back up and say excuse me sir i'm really sorry i bothered you have a nice day no so then the guy turns around and he says you know what i'm gonna tell you all my troubles and he lists horrible right my wife left me my kids won't talk to me i lost my job like a bad country tune and on top of that i'm blind what are you gonna say to the guy why should i go on living so look you wish you could say something you pray hashem let me say the right thing at the moment nothing comes and all of a sudden a miracle happens and the guys turns around and says i can see a miracle just happened he forgot about all his troubles he's not going to jump anymore he wants to go out and explore the world see the colors right what happened nothing changed gratitude it's inside obviously he can now see but it's a emotional psychological thing now now life is worth because one thing changed so what just happened he still has all the same problems that led him to the ledge in the first place but he has a phenomenal gift of sight so this is something to focus on focus on what we actually have right okay a miracle took place is a story but if we can focus on what we actually have and how grateful we are for what we actually have is this it's going to i guess you know make our other problems seem much smaller [Applause] so what about you did you wake up this morning did you dance did you say how happy you were that you're alive right i'll just say i mean my day it was shabbos morning forget the fact that we had a nice amount of guests went to sleep at one o'clock in the morning i don't use an alarm clock i get up at six i gave a class at one of the synagogues at eight in the morning when that was over then i went to my synagogue and prayed there then we had um we had the guest again twice second meal the third meal third meal we had about 12 people i don't know i didn't count but it was significantly 14 people i gave the same well what i talked about on thursday night from the clear car for the parsha i spoke about like so many times you know it's energizing you know you engage people in thoughtful you know meaningful things uh you know i'm professional i did get a small nap this afternoon but the the happier you are the more motivated you are um so i don't know if i woke up exactly dancing i did say oh i want five more minutes but when i did i finally did get up and i was i think i was from six to so that quarter to eight i was learning i mean i really i felt i felt energized and i wanted to learn more so that was that was how that was my morning um so basically this is the secret to happiness the perciavo chapter four one we just read who is rich he who is happy with his proportion meaning focusing on appreciating and taking pleasure from what you have you will be energized with happiness now if you do focus on what you don't have you'll be miserable yeah if you take your blessings for granted then nothing in life will ever truly give you joy oh that's the way to put it yeah um so he mentions happiness is a state of mind you know people commonly make the mistake of viewing happiness as a pursuit an outcome of what you believe and acquire meaning it's an ends like if only i would meet the right person and get married then i'd be happy or if i only had the right car a new house or whatever it is you fill in the blank right or i just need a better job then i'll be able to relax and be happy so you get all that what happens next right you're walking on air for a week right you get used to the car you go right back to being unhappy so there is a uh madrish in cohes in ecclesiastes um and this is a true ism you know this is a concept that we say that one who who wants a hundred when he gets the 100 now he wants 200 right he wants 200 when he gets it he wants 400. you you die i forget the the concept where the verse is but basically you die with half of your desires fulfilled you never right so this is a big problem happiness is not happening it's actually a state of mind right you can have everything in the world and still be miserable or you can have relatively little and feel unbounded joy we all know people who have very few things i'm sorry we all know people who have the very things we ourselves desire yet they are very unhappy happiness is obviously not dependent on the car or the spouse or the dream job in fact there are plenty of people who do not have any of these things but live very happy lives um happiness is a choice it's it's to appreciate what you have that's why our morning prayers so um again i don't know what the noahide prayer book looks like i know that there is such a thing but they've got one called brittle alum this is the basic concepts and our morning prayer is a series of blessings and we think we thank god for the obvious right but it's it's simple and obvious but we have to thank him we're thanking god for giving me a new life for my life every day thank you for making me who i am as a jew thank god i can think it's very important right thank god i can see thank god i can use my hands and my feet thank god i have clothes this a jew has a whole series of things that we thank god for every day it's part of the hundred blessings that king david had uh reestablished as i'd like to say so basically pay attention and appreciate um the daily blessings that surround you i'm so thankful for air conditioning we've been in a heat wave unbelievable anyway here's another story now this is a little bit harder for me to relate to because i didn't have this when i was 11 years old but try to imagine a young man came to see the roshiv in jerusalem and he mentioned that when he was 11 years old he received a gift of happiness and so the roshiva wants to know his secret so he's talking to this man a young man but he this person woke up he was woke awoken right to happiness at a very young age so he told me that when he was 11 years old he received this gift of happiness from god now this may sound terrible what i'm about to tell you but it's a true story that when he was riding his bike and he was hit by a big gust of wind and then the car hit him and removed his legs he became i guess i'm not sure paraplegic but he became uh incapable of walking he was wheelchair-bound and um his parents came to visit him obviously right away and basically uh saw the situation as it was and wanted this young child to realize that he is crippled paralyzed or whatever it is and he will never be able to walk again and that um probably depressed now he these are his words i laid there bleeding looking at my severed leg and i began to feel depressed but then i realized that being depressed wouldn't bring my leg back so i decided right then and there not to waste my life despairing what's the point so the parents come to the hospital they were understandably distraught oh our poor son this is terrible what's going to be so he told them um you you're going to have to get used to it so what does that mean says we're going to get we have to get used to it you have to get used to it he says no i won't i'm already used to it this was his gift of happiness ever since then i see my friends getting upset over the littlest things their bus came away they got a bad grade on a test somebody insulted them but i just appreciate that i have life i'm alive and i can enjoy it so some summing this up at age 11 this young man attained the clarity to recognize it's a waste of energy to focus on what you're missing and the key to happiness is take pleasure in what you have another similar story the roshiva talked about meeting a real paraplegic and the the person told them that when when he became crippled is that okay to use i don't know if that word is uh allowed to be used anymore but that this was the happiest day of his life that he was pursuing all the wrong things in life and that he really i guess could only focus on uh meaningful things at this point and not all the meaningless uh things and it's very hard for us to put our mind into such a situation but these are you know these are really high souls if they can come to these conclusions and actually be happier than they were before it happened and not be depressed and not be down so i think the the principle try to try to get the principle right hopefully these things will never actually happen to us but it's an amazing idea so again the height the idea of appreciation is to is to be a motivator so he says that some people mistakenly think if i become content and satisfied with what i have i might lose my motivation to achieve more he says no that happiness doesn't drain your energy it actually adds more energy that happiness is the great energizer right again if you we talked about money like if you have 200 you want 400 you want you have 400 160 we're talking about wisdom replace the financial or the goshmes the the material uh wealth think about wisdom and you know things that will really truly bring you joy once you have that you want more of it you know that you're not satisfied with it that's why when you're really sitting and learning torah you must have more questions and those questions will lead you to hopefully ask a torah scholar open up a book maybe today in this world you know you google the question we have to really be careful who's answering it for you right has to be a kosher site and not a uh a missionary christian or idol worshipping sites but anyway you know ask a happy person do you want to go fishing in my boat he'll say yeah great let's go ask someone who's down in the dumps come let's go fishing he'll say no i'm too tired maybe tomorrow right happy people are energetic people and they're very ambitious there's never enough time to do everything they want to do and you can see it you know people they're they read how many great people they read a whole book every day or they i don't know whatever they do there they do with gusto right they do with oomph they do with all the vigor yeah uh we talked briefly about hot happiness being an obligation um i think i i covered that idea i don't think we need to go over that again habits right a hard habit to break if attaining happiness is so simple then why don't we all just do it so it's possible it is possible for a person to understand how to attain happiness and then never put that knowledge into practice so this is again why this woman this great author rifta lampard adler you know made an effort to write every single day like a journal almost right to put together do it do it break that habit focus on what you have focus on what you're grateful for it's uh it's really this is part of the secret to happiness um i think i pretty much covered a lot of this stuff now i want to go into some of the source material okay so in psalms 128 too and i told you i wanted to look at some of the commentary on it if you eat the toil of your hands you are praiseworthy and it is good for you okay one second 28 here it is okay my translation i have like this is very similar to yours um but in hebrew the effort of your hands right that's the labor of your hands when you eat so when you eat the labor of your hands you're praiseworthy but there's another statement we're talking about king david he adds and it is well with you so basically we're talking about in addition to the previous the previous verse talk about someone who fears god so fearing god is one thing the next verse says when you eat the label your hands that's going to make you happy we'll see you're praiseworthy it's even better for you it's even better so this idea of having gratitude is a a step up above having fear of hashem and we know how important it is to have an awe and fear of god so here in the comment it says like this when you eat the labor of your hands benzoma which is the mission of yavo which you read who is rich he was happy with his lot so scripture says in our verse when you eat the label of your hands then you are praiseworthy that's referring to in this world it on all is well with you in the world to come and that we do one so honest labor benefits both the body and the soul right you ever see people i mean i went through a small depression you know whatever i went through some called life changes like they call midlife crisis and it was hard for me to get out of bed it was just hard right so therefore a person should always strive to support himself by his own efforts rather than live on charity right whenever i was out of work for a while and it was it was a little depressing here you're talking about getting up and taking a job just get out of bed and do something that maybe even below your dignity i was cleaning houses for a while you know i mean it's uh whatever you got to do it getting up and doing something and feeling that you're earning your keep right when you eat the labor of your hands do some work so literally means exhausted fatigued so the man who performs an honest day's work is physically worn out by his efforts but if he puts his heart and soul into his work he will discover at the day's end that while his body is weary his spirits are high because he is exhilarated by his accomplishments this idea when says when you eat the commentators infer the commentaries infer from this that the ideal man exerts himself only enough to earn as much as he needs to eat so in other words this is true right we unfortunately we just work together more and more and more and more and for what you know with the tahoe for example and many other great rabbis they work the minimum amount in order just to gain enough food so they can sit and learn right so here is the same idea and no more the person who is satisfied with the bare necessities of life and does not squander his energy on attaining luxuries will utilize his spare time to serve god and to study his torah right you go into some of the great rabbis homes and you want to see where's all the furniture where all the beautiful pictures and artwork and you'll see that their walls are lined with books and they just have a table in the middle and maybe a few lights right you need light and such worthy pursuits will surely earn this man fortune in this world and goodness in the world to come what does it mean when it says you are praiseworthy and it is well with you the talmud states that he who enjoys the fruit of his labor is praised more than the god-fearing man as we saw from the previous verse so concerning the god-fearing man the psalmist that's king david says only that praiseworthy is each person appears god but to the man who toils for living the psalmist directs double praise as we saw in the verse you are praiseworthy in this world and all is well with you in the world to come and that's a quote from the gemara um another verse in proverbs 28 22 28 22 reads he who hastens to acquire wealth is a man with an evil eye and he does not know that want will come upon him okay so he's looking for wealth he wants to acquire physical wealth it says he has an evil eye so in the commentary here we said it's verse 22. so one over in my translation is one over over what's this word overeager he's over eager for wealth has an evil eye someone who's not generous he harms himself right this is actually it actually hurts us and you actually incur hashem's disfavor his miserly behavior alan alienates others and people respond to him in kind in other words the energy that you give off it's going to come back and haunt you alternatively a person too eager to gain wealth may may hesitate to give charity fearful that it will diminish his own capital but he doesn't realize that it was hashem who increases the wealth of those who give charity the more you give the more you get in return accordingly in the hebrew it says the word means to diminish so only when a person diminishes his own funds and gives charity anu then wealth will come to him and the term evil eye in ra has three connotations in other words three i don't know definitions but three concepts to think about i in is an i raw what does it mean evil eye we talked about bilum having such a thing it's a stingy person who doesn't care about others an envious person who wants to damage others and a person blinded to reality and the effect of his actions now these are important concepts we need to get beyond those we have to have if we want to be a student of avraham who has an iron tov who has a generous eye as opposed to bilum one of the missions of perky available because we should be like smoothing and learn from abraham who had a eye in tove and of course he was extremely generous he spread the good news right he was looking for guests to tell them about god um he was a true missionary for god and not one of these false missionaries who try to get people to believe in idols anyway so we should be more like abraham the eerie applies the verse to a person's pursuit of wisdom and i think this is key here because we're talking about pleasure the real pleasure of of gaining wisdom right so if he rushes and he does not gather information carefully and methodology methodology that's how you pronounce it his torah knowledge will always be deficient so you have to review you have to find a system that works for you right to digest okay so this in other words when you're in business you have think about like business right you have a chart of income of expenditures and hopefully the income should at least match or over you know be go beyond right obviously you want to make a profit so you know you have to take inventory you have to know what to order you know who owes you money uh you have 30 days to you know someone has 30 days to pay or not you know you're making decisions a very good customer you might want to grant him more favor and then especially he's paying in cash at the end if he's paying you know i mean there's different things that you need to do in order to make your business successful we'll use the same methodologies to gain wisdom you know to sit through a class i know people make fun of daf yomi da viomi is where you learn a whole page of talmud every day takes seven years that for a lot of people by the time they get through the dof the next day they forgot everything from the day before i if and i have done daffy me it's a three hour project for me one hour of preparing one hour of listening to the class and a whole another hour of focusing on review of the important points and you have to come with a methodology right don't just let it it's it's it's gold it's it's wealth it's a real deal don't let it hang on to it like water actually ingest it okay okay now let's continue there's another verse uh in ecclesiastes and let's go house five nine five verse nine reads whoever loves silver will not be sated with silver and he who loves a multitude without increase this too is vanity so when we talk about whoever whoever loves silver we're not the silver it's if you love the commandments remember the commandments are an opportunity to cling to hashem if you have that opportunity and you see you you experience a spiritual pleasure some kind of like i don't know it could be an epiphany it could we're talking about on the soul level why wouldn't you want more you would course you would want more you're never going to be satisfied with the amount of mixes that you have you'll find you'll find opportunities you'll seek them out like silver and he would love multitude he's talking about the commandments the multitude of commandments i'm reading rashi by the way and without increase none of them have has a specific and recognizable commandment such as the building of the temple the synagogue or a beautiful sacred torah okay this is idea you just want more and more and more the next idea i want to go to is psalms chapter 16 verses 5 and 6. psalms chapter 1 6 verses 5 and 6 5 reads the lord is my allotted portion and my cup you guide my destiny six portions have fallen to me in pleasant places even the inheritance pleases me now this happens to be a verse the rambam quotes about a gnocchi not just a jew that anybody can raise themselves up to the level of levy if they dedicate themselves to turtle learning there's different ways to look at it true learning could be for the jewish the entire torah for the non-jew it's the torah that applies to them but they really dedicate themselves to trying to gain wisdom and they could uh by basically dedicating themselves to this great extent hashem will alleviate much of the the tirha much of the problems and burdens that come from the government taxes supporting a family hashem is your portion hashem will basically you're turning your life and the will over to the care of god and god is actually taking care of you and that's what king david says the lord is my allotted portion of my cup you guide my destiny i want to read the commentary because it's absolutely beautiful here um what does it mean hashem is my allotted portion in my share david now emphasizes that he has taken god as his only portion in life not like those who seek material forms of worldly success happens to be a comment by rabbi avraham foyer who spoke for uh yibbani bate midrash he's in our archives unbelievable and he spoke about truly being born again that was the basic title profound yeah is this it is this verse the rambam sites i mentioned already when describing how someone can choose to dedicate his life to serve hashem and therefore become the holy of holies as is mentioned by a non-jew who's dedicated his life to the study of that torah which is permissible to him hashem will then become his eternal portion and also provide for his physical needs just as he did for the khonim and the levites and you can find this in the laws of shemitah and yoga the sabbatical and jubilee chapter 13 mishnah halatha 13 and that's in the mishnah torah of the rambam what does it mean you guide my destiny the midrash offers a parallel a parable and i think it's a very apropos a king once held a banquet invited many guests the king's friend was sitting near him and the table was laden with all kinds of food the king hinted to his friend to take something good from the table and when the king saw that the friend was not getting the hint the king took the friend's hand and put it on a really uh nice uh piece of food um he placed it down over a particularly good delicacy and said take this similarly hashem has put me on the path to a blissful destiny by advising me to choose a torah way of life hashem is guiding every one of you who are watching this you have an opportunity take advantage that's what the verse says right you guide my destiny okay and then the mitsutos adds you have inspired me to place my faith only in you this is what king david was saying and david was worthy of this it says as it's basically says in the gemara hugh comes to purify himself receives heavenly assistance god will guide you in the way you want to go you want to go in the right path to your sharp path the correct path hashem will guide you as a cardinal rule of jewish theology is the existence that we call the free will this means that only this means only that hashem does not force people to act in a certain way leaving them with no power of self-determination that's not what happens however he does help to influence someone after someone has made the decision to go in a particular direction all you have to do is make up your mind you want to do it if the man is himself inclined to repent to return to god god will certainly help him to accomplish this worthy goal and plant in his heart the courage and fortitude to overcome all obstacles now all we did was read the comments on verse five on sixth where it says portions have fallen to me in pleasant places even the inheritance is beautiful to me king david simply is expressing his utter satisfaction with his portion which is hashem himself and his complete lack of interest in any other and any other person's portion this is what we said about covet number 10 of the 10 commandments not desiring somebody else but only what hashem has given me i am so satisfied with his complete lack and interest in another person's portion however rabbi hirsch explains that since david was aware of god's all-embracing love for him he would accept happily whatever situation or status god would arrange for him i mean this is a very difficult thing for all of us i mean the first reaction is to kick and to moan and to groan and say ow right i didn't like that it's not nice i'm not satisfied with that results when you hear what i'm saying but king david would say no and uh ramosha hagi appears in the verse and let's see where one second we're saying verse verse six right khawalim nafluli bin so it's basically like this like portions it's a very strange word why they translate as portions have fallen to me in pleasant places really he's talking about pains pains have fallen to me in pleasant places so he translates it like this that the word khalim the birth pains the birth pangs are labor pains and usually means inheritance but it's also without the nun as if it was added for grammatical reasons khali is sicknesses so all the pains and suffering and sicknesses is what he's actually speaking so thus david expresses his happiness with even the tribulations of life his pains and diseases for these serve to atone for man's sins which this is a jewish concept we talked about this a lot in the past i hope you're getting the point it's very hard i i'm not saying it easy this is a i told you this is just the beginning you're going to have to experience a lot of these things and get to the point where you realize this is for your good this is for your benefit and to be if someone gives you a gift you say thank you right i know wow if if i'm sure spitting on the roof it was probably a good line somewhere right if this is you know why couldn't you have chosen someone else right what did he say like if this is what it means to be the chosen people why couldn't you have chosen someone else well you know the whole world wants to be the chosen people take the christians they say we're israel take the the place they know replacement theology same thing with the muslims you know the jews had it now they lost it right that's all the different uh sex that basically come up with this idea so let's go now to psalms 19 9. psalm 19 verse 9 says the orders of the lord are upright causing the heart to rejoice the commandment of the lord is clear and lightening the eyes okay so what does it mean the orders of hashem like the visitations of hashem this word is related to like a piccado deposit hashem has incorporated and deposited into the very soul of man the tendency to appreciate the importance of these divine orders as well as the intellect to naturally and instinctively understand their significance so there's almost no excuse i mean nobody's going to be excused now right when hashem does something we have to understand this is going to be for our benefit and to appreciate whatever is coming down and this intellect emerges when a person reaches you know bardas basically for a jew bar mitzvah it could be for a nanjo even earlier in terms of um those of makalokas when they become a bardos but obligated to do the the commandments but let's say at a young age anywhere from you know six seven eight nine ten as they're developing um before that there's obviously there's reason to be lenient but anyway you're sharing to be upright they're called upright because intellect is naturally attracted to them man's innate mindset is yahshuas now just think about the jewish people called israel el this is what every human being would like to reach the level of israel of yahshua even in islam they call it sharia law sharia is it's based on yahshua's on being yesha on being straight or taking that true path so i'm not advocating for islam what i'm saying is that it's based on judaism jewish concepts that man has this innate mindset to be to be yashar it's the most important and central of all characteristics and all other virtues are dependent on it even hashem himself is lauded with being yashar you can find that in deuteronomy chapter 32 4. anyway here's the important part that this will glad in the heart um we're in verse 9 right the orders of hashem are upright gladdening the heart is the topic of how to achieve happiness the wise man will rejoice when his straight and upright intellect will dominate the lowly passions of his body and steer him properly again the idea of this is one of the 48 ways to wisdom is to be happy right what does it mean how can one achieve that so it may sound very uh lifish and yeshivish and all that but basically to get your intellect in line with the torah with what god wants and this will bring true happiness god's commands glad in the heart by fulfilling god's word word but his own commands his own torah studying the torah will gladden the heart unlike the sun s-u-n um that can bring fear and weary into the heart for a man is concerned lest the heat of the sun harm him now aside from the joy of performing the commandments the the potent message of this phrase is that the study of torah provides a pleasure and an ecstasy that is unmatched by anything in this world can you imagine how lucky i feel that i get to study torah and i have to make sure that i'm not taking advantage of my position right it's um i get some free time what am i free time what am i going to do with my free time i do need down time you know my mind is working overtime sometimes so i can work i'm almost embarrassed to say 10 12 hours straight without taking a break and then like i just need some relax i just need to like now i have to decide how i'm gonna do that you know what i mean so now one thing that many people in yeshiva worry about he said maybe i shouldn't enjoy my learning because then i'm not learning for learning's sake and that's a big mistake so lest one think that if he enjoys his learning it's somehow flawed there's no flaw we actually make up rock in the morning that we should enjoy our learning right the hour of gnaw that we actually ask hashem because remember it's a motivator i should enjoy it and go deeper and want more and like you know like a real nice steak like la have deal uh you know it's not a nice comparison but when you have like some an ice cream sundae you want you want to get to the last drop road too when you're sitting and learning a book you want to go and go further and deeper so the igly tal teaches us that on the contrary the best way to study is with enjoyment because then the scholar becomes attached to the tories learning it becomes part of you it's like in fact the word time throughout the talmud throughout the the books it's the word what's the reason we don't know what's the reason but the word tom which means taste is the word being used what's the taste what i want to consume it i want it to integrate i want it i want to swallow it i want to breathe it i want it to become one with with what i'm learning and that's why tom it's a very interesting reason at least the way i understand that why tom and reason are interrelated taste taste related now this verse has halacha gramification because torah's study gladdens the heart and tisha of is coming up very shortly now we always pray that this could be last ishmael was the last day of fasting and the prophets promised us that in the future there will be it will turn into a day of feasting uh but in the meantime there is a halacha we're not allowed to learn torah or certain torah things that depress us but destruction the temple laws of lash and hara things like this there are certain things you can study on tisha ba but basically torah study is prohibited the general concept it's prohibited on tisha buff because when one undergoes shiva morning period is forbidden as well what does it mean the command of god is clear every command is flawless and free of imperfection what torah clarifies or enlightens the eyes the era it causes a shine in your eyes but those who live without the commandments stumble in darkness for only god's commands light commands light the way for him torah lights up the eyes beneficially and never hurts them but prolonged staring at the sun would injure the eyes okay i have two more verses to go through and then we'll again this is just preliminary stuff this is just to motivate you to know that joy is talking about like a transcendental joy of gaining wisdom and what you're going to do with it should be a motivator in psalms 1 19 162. verse 162 reads i rejoice over your words as one who finds great spoil i mean this really you know speaks for itself i don't know if we need to go into too much of the explanation um i hope this was self-explanatory and then the last verse is um 119 72 it's the same chapter 72 reads the instruction of your mouth is better for me than thousands of gold and silver i think this is also self-explanatory we spoke about if you had a hundred you won 200 if you have 200 400 this is how you should look at the wisdom hopefully i mean if you're not feeling it dive into hashem pray to hashem i want to feel your wisdom i want to see the impact it has on my life um i think i hopefully that would again this is just the beginning we have the whole life but this is one of the most important principles in judaism god expresses from the very beginning and the blessings and the curses you know i gave you everything and you did not serve me with joy and therefore all the worst of the worst calamities that fall the jewish people happened because we didn't serve hashem of joy so we we have it's not an easy subject i'm not i'm not saying it is what i'm saying is fundamental and it's a basis for everything we're going to do in life and please put the proper attention to exploring this further on your own see for yourself the difference when you are trying to appreciate that which you have in your life your physical your emotional health um your relationships with other people as opposed to when you're miserable and you're trying to hurt other people because misery company see how that has an effect on your relationships with other people and pray to hashem to do you can be honest with yourself because that's one of the most difficult things and that's the fundamental principle so you can't really move in advanced life if you're not being honest with yourself and your relationships with other people so in bizarre hashem we should have an irish nayim enlighten our eyes to the truth and to really gain a sense of happiness for ourselves it will take a good toll a positive toll on your health and your relationships especially with god and with that we'll uh call tonight and so we this could be there's volumes and volumes but we're not gonna we'll go to the next uh i feel like you just injected gasoline into the tank of life and uh yeah hopefully it's enough for people out there to carry them forward help propel them uh but yeah you can't go wrong with joy folks in your life just being satisfied and happy i mean uh just you know on the on the flip side for a second just imagine all the wickedness that goes on based on the desire of wantonness i mean it's it's the opposite right is so you know you've got to be satisfied with your lot in life you know the grass isn't always greener on the other side and and and if it is uh learn you know learn to work with your lot uh make it better um uh i love the opportunity as a banana to make the world a better place we can't look at it as we're missing out on anything but it's all opportunity um you know to step out in the world and and actually impact it uh in a positive sense if you're really learning what the rabbi's teaching here you can be infectious with your joy and happiness and i've known people over the years that were like that you know they almost seem phony but in reality um people gravitate to them uh they can't help but be drawn towards uh happiness and you know ask yourself what are you really finding happiness in and i think you brought out some beautiful stuff today uh especially with the number of verses you shared in in tanakh it's a joy to hear each and every point and i know that going forward from this point uh we're going to get into some beautiful more material uh as this course keeps progressing towards the 48th way um we hope you're enjoying it so rabbi hashem willing are we on for next week hashem willing is your schedule allow for it yeah yeah we're going to be do next week but the following week we don't know it could be a feast either way if it's a fast it's not going to be possible if it's a feast it's also not going to be possible so who knows let's just say next week we're on okay next week we're on so tentative folks that's what we're aiming for so well we hope you'll join us uh please like this video on youtube and and facebook feel free to share it out there we so appreciate it uh uh we're still aiming to go live with uh the international noahide network on roku uh soon and we hopefully be showing these uh whole series of beyond the seven going all the way back we've been doing quite a while now rabbi you went through the whole six cost in mitzvot with us uh and now we'll be going into part 28 next week i mean yeah it's been just a joy to meet you and to hear the solid uh sharing of uh the way you've learned torah and the way you deliver it honestly and i'm sure you're doing wonderful work there in jerusalem with ibne uh folks you can always find uh rabbi poston on his website gibbon a.com plus he's uh out there on social media all over on facebook and youtube uh you can find them yibbonay.com you know feel free to support them they're always doing caring and loving work there in jerusalem and so thank you so much rabbi and also i want to bless you and hopefully see that the roku station that you're putting up for the nokia world center should be successful and that the other like-minded people could contact you and put up uh give you some material also to put up i know you're looking for more material yeah fresh stuff but we want some good quality content uh something that's really because it's got a chance to reach up to you know 50 million uh homes and more and uh you know we don't want it to just be you know a duplicate of of youtube we want it to be something that uh those that watch television is actually impact the homes uh you know i'm trying to find uh cooking material i'm trying to find you know children's content uh that's always such a hard thing to find uh people got to produce it folks you know i i could uh do such animation but it takes a lot of time and i find you know so many people out there nobody wants to pay to have it done and uh you know you do it then you've got something that's copy written and you know uh you know i've got all the 2d animation tools set up in in adobe after effects i mean i just got you know bone structures for characters i can take that split it up and boom and then of course they've got adobe character animator which is just phenomenal i mean complete you can read your voice your face you know facial recognition and talk just as you talk as a cartoon character you know the development of this stuff is so advanced in this day and age it's not like uh back uh you know in the days of looney tunes where they actually had to hand paint every cell you know so if you've got something that's uh hashem honoring a you know a children's book or something it can be taken to another level and um and reach a broad audience and you know i i i'm shocked rabbi today like you mentioned about about joy it's amazing how many people just refuse to have joy but also even in in in in life when it comes to even their service on hashem so many people are afraid to step forward in and blossom and bloom and you know i just want people to be encouraged that it can be done but you got to take steps forward if you've got ideas or something exciting reach out to me uh dan barwell on facebook or you can my email is dan.ca at brit alum dot community uh with the noahide world center and um one of them easy to find one thing one more thing just it's important to know that it's possible like in other words if you never met some happy people it's like it's not even realistic and it wouldn't even be within reach but when you meet happy people and you can happy people that have gone through heart just as harsh situations are even worse and they're still happy and joyful it's then you know that it's within the realm of of reality and possibilities then it um i'm not gonna say it's then you realize it's attainable again this hard work but uh it is hard work and consistent work but it's attainable and when you know it's attainable it changes the playing field a hundred percent right by a hundred percent yeah there's nothing worse than those that feel beaten down and that it's unattainable hey i mean they're lost when they see it as unattainable and uh thank you for the good words uh in due season and encouragement i just told you we're here to share the good news you know beautiful stuff rabbi all right folks so we're gonna step out for now we hope we'll see you next uh uh week at the same time we thank you rabbi poston for staying up so late in jerusalem to continue this wonderful series of the 48 ways to wisdom as you were talking about earlier so folks we're going to sign up for now have a great week [Music] is