In the previous section we studied the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 28 about the foreign thoughts that fall into a person's mind during prayer. In this section we will begin with the preparation that must precede prayer, distinguish between two different kinds of thoughts and the way to deal with each of them, and learn why it is specifically during avodas Hashem that the disturbance grows stronger.
The preparation that precedes prayer:
A person has to awaken his kavanah (his intention and focus) in prayer and clear away all the thoughts that are pulling at him, "until his thought and intention remain pure in his prayer." To do this he should say to himself before davening: the time for prayer has arrived, and all these thoughts are being set aside now. A brief pause from every other matter.
And here is what he should think before prayer: if he were about to speak before a king of flesh and blood, he would arrange his words and weigh them carefully so as not to stumble. A person going in to a minister or a king considers a thousand times how to phrase what he will say, what comes first and what comes after, and even in what tone of voice he will say it. How much more so before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, before whom one must direct even his thought: a king of flesh and blood hears only what is spoken, while the Holy One, blessed be He, sees the thought as well.
It is worth clarifying: the Alter Rebbe is not speaking here about someone who never made this preparation at all. A person who never stopped the thoughts that are tugging at him has not actually begun to pray, and it is no wonder that they go on distracting him. The chapter is speaking about someone who did do the work: he put aside all his concerns, came to shul, erased all the thoughts and dedicated the entire time to prayer, and nevertheless thoughts fall into his mind in the middle of davening.
Two kinds of thoughts that fall during prayer:
One particular thought that is nagging at him: A person has put all his affairs aside and wants to concentrate on his prayer, but one specific thing is bothering him and will not leave his head: the bank statement that arrived that morning before davening, or something that happened to him. The Tanya is not dealing with this type here, but elsewhere in Chassidus there is advice for it. Let him stop even in the middle of davening and reflect: after all, when bedtime comes he manages to fall asleep, because he knows that sleep is something he needs, and so he calms himself down and says, "It will be fine, tomorrow we will see what to do." And if for the needs of his body he can find that calm and say, "Not now, the thought goes to the side," then all the more so at the time of prayer, which is a time of the greatest need, vital for the soul.
Random thoughts that come one after another: Not one particular worry sitting on his head, but every moment another thought and another thought, like a ship at sea that the waves lift and drop, over and over. This is what the Alter Rebbe is addressing here, and the advice is hesech hada'as, simply turning the mind away: with every wave that comes, divert your attention, and do not stop for even a single moment to engage with it.
"And let his heart not fall within him":
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "ואעפ"כ אל יפול לבו בקרבו להיות מזה עצב נבזה בשעת העבודה" ("and nevertheless, let his heart not fall within him, to become from this depressed and despondent during the time of his service"). A person should not become sad over the very situation he is in, over the fact that waves of thoughts are breaking in his head. And why? "שצריך להיות בשמחה רבה" ("for one must be in great joy"). During avodas Hashem a person has to be joyful, so how can he be sad in the middle of it?
"אלא אדרבה יתחזק יותר ויוסיף אומץ בכל כחו בכוונת התפלה בחדוה ושמחה יתירה" ("but on the contrary, he should strengthen himself more and gather extra courage with all his strength in the kavanah of prayer, with gladness and abundant joy"). The opposite is true: when he finds himself in this situation and the thought drops in, he should invest himself even more in the words in front of him. In the language of Chassidus this is the attribute of netzach in the soul, the quality whose whole content is victory over the difficulty, with no reasoning and no intellectual wrestling, just a simple decision to throw the thought aside.
"בשומו אל לבו כי נפילת המחשבה זרה היא מהקליפה שבחלל השמאלי העושה מלחמה בבינוני נגד נפש האלוקית שבו" ("when he takes to heart that the falling of the foreign thought comes from the kelipah in the left chamber of the heart, which wages war in the beinoni against the nefesh ha'elokis within him"). A person has to recognize that the thought is coming from the yetzer, and all the yetzer wants is to confuse him. Once he has identified that, he should not stop and should not give it any answer.
The parable of the non-Jew who comes to distract:
A person is standing in the middle of his prayer, and a non-Jew comes over and starts distracting him. How should he react? It depends on what the man wants:
If he comes and asks where a certain street is, and that is all he wants, then stop, tell him where the street is, and go back to davening. He has not come to confuse you; something genuinely troubles him and he is looking for a solution.
But if he comes as a pest, and his whole purpose is to throw you off, then if you answer one question he will ask a second, and after that a third. The only solution with such a person is not to respond at all.
The same applies to thoughts. A thought that is genuinely weighing on him, because something specific is troubling him, is like the non-Jew asking a question that really bothers him; it has to be answered, as described above with the reflection about sleep. But a thought that simply drops in, when all of a sudden he remembers this and that, there is no place and no point in starting to answer it. Any answer he gives, even the slightest one, is precisely what the thought was after: the main thing is that he should stop praying. Therefore he should pay it no attention at all.
"And the way of those who fight is known":
"ונודע דרך הנלחמים וכן הנאבקים יחד" ("and the way of those who fight, and likewise those who wrestle with one another, is known"). When two people are fighting or wrestling with each other, when one of them gains the upper hand, the other exerts himself to overpower him in return with all his strength; he does not sit quietly. And with this a puzzle is resolved: why is it specifically during prayer that all these thoughts come, until a person despairs and says, "I cannot daven two minutes in peace"? The answer is that you are not seeing the whole picture. You have within you a nefesh ha'elokis and you have a nefesh habahamis. The nefesh ha'elokis prays, and immediately the nefesh habahamis throws in a thought.
"ולכן כשנפש האלוקית מתאמצת ומתגברת להתפלל, אזי גם הקליפה מתגברת כנגדה לבלבלה ולהפילה במחשבה זרה שלה" ("therefore, when the nefesh ha'elokis exerts itself and gains strength to pray, then the kelipah too gains strength against it, to confuse it and bring it down with a foreign thought of its own"). And here is the proof: why does the yetzer not bombard him with these thoughts in the middle of his business affairs or in the middle of a meal? Because there it does not feel that the person is standing against it. In prayer the person stands against it, and so it comes out against the person. It turns out that the falling of the thought is nothing other than proof that he has finally begun to pray. From here a person should take heart and say: this is a sign that I have started davening, so let us keep on davening.
"ולא כטעות העולם שטועים להוכיח מנפילת המחשבה זרה מכלל שאין תפילתם כלום" ("and not like the common error, in which people mistakenly prove from the falling of the foreign thought that their prayer is worth nothing"). People make this mistake, and anyone can fall into it in his own private reckoning: "Every day I daven and the whole time there are foreign thoughts, a sign that my prayer is worthless and is not accepted." The root of the error is the assumption that if he were praying properly no foreign thoughts would fall at all, and that the prayer would flow for a full hour quietly and smoothly. Out of that assumption he despairs and sinks into sadness.
"והאמת היה כדבריהם אילו הייתה נפש אחת לבדה, היא המתפללת והיא המחשבת ומהרהרת המחשבות זרות" ("and in truth it would be as they say, if there were only one soul, the same one that prays and the same one that thinks and contemplates the foreign thoughts"). If one soul were praying and that very same soul were thinking idle thoughts, then there would indeed be room to say, "What is happening to me? I cannot stay in one place for a single moment." When you see a person jumping from here to there, you tell him: stand still in one place already. But when there are two people, one standing here and the other standing there, there is no one to shout at, since each of them is standing in his own place.
So it is in the soul. The nefesh ha'elokis stands in its place and prays, and the second soul stands in its place and tries the whole time to interfere. Our "screen" is one screen, and at every moment the other one is trying to grab the stage and get on the air live. The moment the nefesh ha'elokis succeeds in getting on the air during prayer and davening properly, the nefesh habahamis immediately tries to pull the audience its way and push itself in. This is not a sign that the person is not praying properly; on the contrary, it is a sign that he has begun to pray properly, and that is exactly why it is trying to disturb him.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "אבל באמת לאמיתו הן שתי נפשות הנלחמות זו עם זו במוחו של אדם" ("but in absolute truth, they are two souls waging war with one another in a person's mind").
In summary: In this section we learned about the preparation that precedes prayer, the awakening of kavanah and the clearing away of distracting thoughts, drawn from the kal vachomer from a king of flesh and blood to the King of kings, who sees even one's thought. We distinguished two kinds of thoughts that fall during prayer: one particular thought that is nagging, which calls for reflection and an answer, and random thoughts that come like waves of the sea, for which the only advice is to turn the mind away, as in the parable of the non-Jew asking a real question as against the non-Jew who is a pest. We learned that one must not fall into sadness over the falling of a thought, but on the contrary gather extra courage with gladness and abundant joy, recognizing that the thought comes from the kelipah in the left chamber of the heart that wages war in the beinoni. And finally we saw that "the way of those who fight" is that when the nefesh ha'elokis grows stronger, the kelipah grows stronger against it. Therefore the falling of a thought is no proof that the prayer is worthless, since there are two souls here waging war with one another in a person's mind.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 28, in his explanation of the war of the two souls in a person's mind.