In the previous section we studied the proof from the verse "תחת אשר לא עבדת את ה' אלוקיך בשמחה" ("because you did not serve Hashem your God with joy"), together with the sharp language of the Rambam and the Arizal about how serious this is, and we saw that a demand to serve Hashem with joy obliges us to supply both material for thought and practical examples. In this section we turn to the passage beginning "והנה עצה היעוצה" (chapter 26, page 33a), where the Alter Rebbe sets out to explain how a person purifies his heart of every trace of sadness and worry.
The physical causes of sadness:
In the passage beginning "והנה עצה היעוצה" ("behold, the advice that is given"), the Alter Rebbe first addresses the situation in which a person has genuine physical reasons to be down: a lack in parnassah, in health, or in anything else. How does one cope with that?
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "עצה היעוצה לטהר לבו מכל עצב ונדנוד דאגה" ("the advice that is given, to purify one's heart of all sadness and the slightest trace of worry"). This is the good counsel one can offer a person, that his heart should be utterly pure: no sadness in it, no worry, not even a "trace of worry," but complete calm.
Broadly speaking there are two things that can bring a person's spirits crashing down: a spiritual state he is not happy with, or physical troubles that come his way. The Alter Rebbe deals with both in this chapter, but he opens with the more common and more accessible one, sadness over physical matters: "במילי דעלמא" ("in worldly matters"), the affairs of daily life, "ואפילו בני חיי ומזוני" ("and even children, health and livelihood"). Not merely technical matters, but the things that make up a person's very life: children, health and life itself, and parnassah. One's entire existence revolves around them, and when even a small piece of them is missing, a person no longer sleeps at night, cannot think calmly about anything, has no appetite, and nothing interests him. And to such a person we say: be calm, be joyful. How is that possible?
To this the Alter Rebbe writes: "מודעת זאת לכל מאמר רז"ל כשם שמברך על הטובה כו'" ("it is known to all, the saying of our Sages: just as one blesses over the good, etc."). Everyone knows this. He does not even finish the phrase with the words about the opposite of good; he writes "etc.," because everyone knows how it ends. "ופירשו בגמרא לקבלה בשמחה כשמחת הטובה הנגלית ונראית" ("and the Gemara explains: to receive it with joy, like the joy over the good that is revealed and visible"). Even the opposite of good is to be received with the same joy one feels over good that is openly revealed. When something good visibly happens to a person, nobody needs to persuade him to dance; and here he is told that even when it is the reverse, he should be joyful.
Why? The Alter Rebbe states the main reason up front, the headline of the whole subject: "כי גם זו לטובה" ("for this too is for the good"). The thing that looks like it is not good, is in fact good. And how can something that does not look good be called good? Because it is a good that a person has no vessels with which to measure. It is like someone looking into a powerful light who is blinded by it: because he was blinded, is the light therefore not light? It is light, and not ordinary light but intense light; it is only that since he has no vessel able to receive such intense light, he is blinded. One cannot lodge a complaint against the light that it is not good; the deficiency is in the vessels, which cannot absorb it.
It is worth stressing: we are not coming with claims against a person in the midst of his troubles for failing to measure things properly. This is simply what the sages of Israel taught. It is not impossible, but it is extremely difficult, and may no one ever be tested with it. Yet when we want to know the truth of the matter, we must learn the truth as it is; the application is very hard work, and if we manage to apply even one percent of it, then we have succeeded one hundred percent of that one percent.
It should be noted first that many seforim deal with this question, not only chassidus and not only the Tanya, and they offer various answers and approaches. One example: in one place it is brought that when suffering or pain come to a person, something that is "bad," he should think that there is a benefit in the bad: it defines for him what "good" is, since when everything is always good a person has no way of appreciating the good.
A parable: someone who wants to take hold of a table cannot grasp it in the middle of the tabletop; precisely at the edge, where the table ends, there he can take hold of it and know that he has a table in his hand. Everything is grasped at its edges, at the point where it comes to an end.
In the same way, when a person is in the middle of abundance he finds it hard to appreciate the magnitude of the good he has; precisely when the good comes to an end, that is, when he lands in a situation that is not good, he can appreciate the good he had and prepare himself for the good that will come again. According to this approach the bad remains bad, and its only virtue is that it gives a person the perspective to appreciate the good.
The Tanya and chassidus do not explain it that way. They confront the bad itself: one looks at what is happening face to face and examines what it truly is.
Three explanations in the Tanya regarding suffering:
As is known, the Tanya has several sections. We are currently studying the first, Likkutei Amarim. In the fourth section, Iggeres HaKodesh, the Alter Rebbe addresses the question of pain and suffering in two places, and in each one he gives a different resolution. We will present them briefly, working backwards toward the one closest at hand, and then we will look at the explanation before us in Likkutei Amarim.
First explanation, Iggeres HaKodesh chapter 22: atonement for sins:
The Alter Rebbe answers simply: how can a person be joyful with suffering? Through contemplating that it is an atonement for his sins. Every person knows himself, knows that he has sins and failures, and knows that he is meant to be clean and pure.
A parable: a small child jumped into the mud and got filthy, and came home from kindergarten with the mud dried and caked onto him. Cleaning him off is not pleasant, and sometimes it involves crying and resistance on the child's part, but in fact the father or mother are cleaning him out of great love: precisely because they love him and want him to be clean, they scrub the dirt off him, even though it hurts.
This is why the verse is brought there: "אם רחץ ה' את צואת בנות ציון" ("when Hashem will have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion"). The Holy One gives a person personal attention and wants him clean and pure, and although it is not always pleasant and enjoyable, that is what is actually taking place.
And what does such a hisbonenus accomplish? After all, a person still does not want suffering, and we are not looking for an explanation that leaves him in his pain and only teaches him to view it correctly; the goal is that he should have no suffering at all. Here the Alter Rebbe adds something fascinating: when a Jew contemplates that Hashem is dealing with him out of love, there is fulfilled in him "as water reflects a face back to a face, so does the heart of man to man". Recognizing Hashem's love awakens in his heart a love in return, and his revealing that love from his side causes Hashem to reveal love to him anew, in a way of revealed and visible good, without suffering and without pain.
This is an excellent explanation, but it has a difficulty: how does one get there? A person is inside his suffering, and at the moment he receives the "slap" it is exceedingly hard to contemplate that it comes from great love; and if he does not arrive at that love, he will not be rid of the suffering.
Second explanation, Iggeres HaKodesh chapter 11: a test:
There the Alter Rebbe explains differently: the suffering is a test from Hashem. And what is being tested? Whether a person is seeking the physical in this world or the spiritual. When something in the physical sphere pinches and does not go the way he wants, does he lose his head, or does he know that the spiritual is the main thing and know how to float above the problem? If he loses his head, that is a sign that the physical is what matters most to him in life, and he did not pass the test, and he may well receive another one. But if he knows that this is a test, relates to it properly and rises above the matter, he has passed the test, and once the test is over everything works itself out.
This explanation is somewhat easier than the first, which demands inner avodah to arouse a genuine love for Elokus; recognizing that this is a test is easier, yet it too is work: to understand that it is a test, and to work on himself so that the spiritual matters to him more than the physical, which is also far from simple. The three explanations are three levels; each has its advantage and each has its difficulty. The third explanation, the one we are learning here in chapter 26, is the work of the mind: hisbonenus into the depth of the matter, what is actually taking place, and the contemplation itself gives a person a completely different way of seeing the whole situation.
Third explanation, "this too is for the good":
The Alter Rebbe establishes that "גם זו לטובה" ("this too is for the good"): even something that happens in a manner that is the opposite of good is itself for the good, except that the good is not revealed and visible to physical eyes, because it stems from alma d'iskasya, the concealed world, which is higher than alma d'isgalya, the revealed world. After stating this he goes on for roughly another fifteen lines of wondrous material to contemplate. Let us first understand the concept, and then try to translate it into practical terms.
If Hashem were to show a person what He is planning for him, what He is doing to him and where He is leading him, he would be thanking Him nonstop. The difficulty is that the deeds are revealed while the plan behind them is not. A person has to know that the One doing this to him is his Father, who loves him and is doing it solely for his good, only that he cannot see it.
And why is the good not visible to physical eyes? Because the good being given to him right now is greater than the good he is capable of feeling. The good that is felt is a contracted, small good, measured in dimensions a person can grasp, and that is fine and excellent; but there is a good that is far greater and far deeper, for which a person is simply not a vessel. And because he is not a vessel for it, he must not remain stuck there and declare that it is bad, but rather say: this is a good that I am unable to recognize, but it is good.
A parable to understand this, not for the feeling of good and bad, but in order to understand the lines that follow: a rav sits and teaches his student a certain sugya, explains the material in a settled, orderly way, and the student understands every word, absorbs it, enjoys it, and walks out of the shiur with a full page of Gemara in his head. An ordinary student would want every shiur to end that way, always to understand and always to absorb. But the student understands that whatever the rav managed to bring down to his level so that he would understand it well involved a tremendous descent relative to the rav's own level.
Now suppose we were to ask that same student whether he would like, once in a while, to be granted a glimpse of a lofty spiritual experience, the kind for which he has no letters to grasp it and no vessels to cope with absorbing it, but which is something awesome and not of this world. Who would refuse? And afterwards, if we ask him what he understood from what he saw or heard: nothing. What did he take away: nothing. And still he wants it, because he understands that it is deeper and higher. Not all the time, since it is hard to live that way constantly, but from time to time he is ready for it.
From here we say to a Jew: every time he receives something that looks to him like a "slap," what he received at that moment was a greeting from a higher world, and that is exactly why he cannot digest it. As we have said before, a slap is a concentration of many caresses at once: one caress is one caress, but when many caresses are concentrated together, it is felt as a slap, and a person cannot absorb it or receive it.
A story from the house of the Tzemach Tzedek:
One of the chassidim of the Tzemach Tzedek, Reb Shmuel Ber, a very great chossid, was once sitting near the Rebbe's room. Suddenly he heard the Rebbe call the attendant and ask him to summon his youngest son, the Rebbe Maharash, who would later be his successor, to come into the room. Realizing that something was about to happen there, he decided to slip closer and listen.
After the son entered, the chossid heard the Rebbe say to him: "In a little while the grandfather will come here," meaning the Alter Rebbe, long after his passing, "and he promised me that he would learn a certain mishnah with me, and I called you so that you too would be present when it happens." The chossid began to tremble at what was about to take place. After some time he managed to make out something, and immediately fainted from the sheer shock.
When he came to, the Tzemach Tzedek called him in and told him that one who listens in where he is not supposed to pays a price for it. And in fact, one of this chossid's sons deteriorated badly in spiritual matters. Because his father had peeked in and was harmed by it.
Still, let us dwell on the first half of the story: what was that chossid thinking at the time? He did not think he could be like the Rebbe and sit and hear the Alter Rebbe, and he did not imagine that he was a vessel for such revelations. But he wanted to have some part in something he knew was above his vessels, and he knew as well that he would pay for it, and he asked for it anyway. This is an example of a situation of being privileged to catch hold of something from a higher world.
If a person were offered the chance to see, for a few minutes, a farbrengen of the great tzaddikim in Gan Eden, without understanding a word of what they are saying and without managing to hear, but he would see something, and it comes with a price, an ordinary person would say: I am ready for that, I want that. I know it is beyond my vessels, and still I want to peek, to see, to feel something.
Along comes the Alter Rebbe and says: this very thing is happening to a person all the time. When he receives suffering, when he receives a "slap," he has received Gan Eden right here below, and that is precisely why he is not a vessel for it and cannot contain it, and therefore he experiences it as pain. The pain is only because he is unable to hold the intensity, but it is not bad at all; rather, "גם זו לטובה" ("this too is for the good"), and in essence it is good.
In summary: we opened with the physical causes of sadness, b'milei d'alma and even children, health and livelihood, and with the advice given for purifying the heart of all sadness and the slightest trace of worry. We saw the saying of our Sages that just as one blesses over the good so one blesses over its opposite, and the Gemara's explanation that it is to be received with joy like the joy over good that is revealed and visible. The headline of the entire subject is "כי גם זו לטובה" ("for this too is for the good"), and the parable of the blinding light taught us that the deficiency is not in the light but in the vessels that cannot receive it. We underscored how hard this is to apply, and the difference between the approach of other seforim, where the bad defines the good for a person, as in the parable of the table grasped at its edge, and the way of chassidus, which confronts the bad itself face to face. We listed three explanations in the Tanya: atonement for sins in Iggeres HaKodesh chapter 22, a test in Iggeres HaKodesh chapter 11, and the explanation before us, the work of the mind in hisbonenus, that the good comes from alma d'iskasya which is higher than alma d'isgalya. The story from the house of the Tzemach Tzedek and the image of the farbrengen of the great tzaddikim in Gan Eden brought home that a person wants a glimpse even of what is beyond his vessels, and from here that the pain is nothing other than an inability to contain the intensity, while in essence it is good.
This is only the beginning of the subject, and in the next section we will expand on it, im yirtzeh Hashem. This line of thought, whose source lies in the world of Kabbalah and the hidden Torah, gives a person the ability to shift his perspective somewhat on the suffering that comes his way and to relate to it more correctly, and through that to be in a more elevated frame of mind despite all the apparent reasons to the contrary. We will also look at what makes this explanation unique compared with the other explanations in the Tanya.