In the previous section we dealt with the idea of bittush, being beaten and broken down. Now we must add a point: a person should not wait around until someone else comes along and gives him his bittush. He has to do it to himself.
As we learned at length in chapter 30: "וכמו שכתוב לעיל בשם הזהר גופא דלא סליק ביה נהורא דנשמתא מבטשין ליה" (“as was written above in the name of the Zohar, a body into which the light of the soul does not rise, they beat it”), meaning they cut it down to size and soften it. It is like a thick log of wood: the fire cannot catch hold of it because of its thickness, and in order for the fire to take, you have to split it into thin slivers. So too with the body. When it is coarse, pampered and sunk too deeply in worldly matters, it simply does not understand what you are talking about when you speak to it of something G-dly, and its wings have to be clipped and its coarseness brought down.
How is this done? Through thoughts of teshuvah that come from the depth of the heart. When a person grasps the things he has done that were not good, and grasps how far they pushed him away from the truth, something shakes inside him, and that inner shaking is the bittush. Once a person has given himself this bittush, it becomes far easier for him to feel G-dliness. This is the first exertion, what the Tanya calls yegias habassar, the toil of the flesh.
Without this key there is no moving forward, because of sins it is said: «Your sins have separated between you and your G-d.» There is a screen in the way. A person trying to see light through a wall will see nothing at all as long as the wall is standing, and no amount of effort will help him. So first the wall has to come down, those very things that are getting in the way, through thoughts of teshuvah which give the body its bittush. Only then can he connect to the G-dliness contained in that maamar, in that sichah, in that subject he is learning.
Now suppose a person has managed to lower the screens somewhat, and through the crack that has opened in the wall a little light begins to come through and he starts to feel something. Even then the feeling can slip away from him in an instant. That is why a second exertion is needed: "והשנית היא יגיעת הנפש שלא תכבד עליה העבודה ליגע מחשבתה להעמיק ולהתבונן בגדולת ה' שעה גדולה רצופה" (“and the second is the toil of the soul, that the service should not be too heavy for it, to exert its thought to contemplate the greatness of G-d deeply for a long, uninterrupted hour”). A momentary flash is not enough, the “I read it, lovely, let us move on” approach. One has to labor and stay with the subject for a long, unbroken hour.
This does not necessarily mean an hour of sixty minutes. Sometimes the required “hour” is two hundred minutes, and sometimes it is five minutes, or two, all according to the nature of each person's soul. The essential thing is the concentration on the subject: not to pass over it and move on, but to linger on it and go into it deeply.
And this is not easy at all. Let a person try learning something and going into it deeply for twenty seconds, and immediately he will feel uncomfortable and start waiting for it to be over. It is human nature to become absorbed only in what touches him personally, and usually that means physical, material matters. In something that touches him he can be immersed for ten hours, dream about it, sleep on it, and be unable to pull himself out. But when the subject is something G-dly, after a few seconds he has moved on to something else, and going deeply into it is an enormous exertion.
Even so, one does not have to be some “man of G-d” to reach this. There are stories of many chassidim, even in the recent generations, who were capable of it.
It is told of the chassid Reb Itche der Masmid, who passed away some seventy years ago, that once he arrived at someone's home utterly exhausted. The host wanted to give him something to eat, and he declined, saying he did not want to eat but to rest, since he had not slept properly for two or three nights. The host showed him the room, and before resting he stood to say the Shema at bedtime. He placed his foot on the chair and began to contemplate the words of Shema, and when the host came in the morning to wake him, he found him standing in the very same position, still in the very same subject. Out of sheer concentration of thought he had completely forgotten his exhaustion, his body and himself. A man from another world.
And likewise the story the Rebbe told in connection with the well known niggun «Anim Zemiros»: a Jew remained in the shul at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, absorbed in hisbonenus. Night fell, everyone went home, and when the shamash came the next morning he found him still standing there in the same subject. He had completely forgotten that he had fasted the whole of Yom Kippur, so deeply was he immersed.
The Alter Rebbe is not demanding that every person reach such a level. But what he does ask is that every person have such an “hour”: if not hours, then at least minutes, and in our generation, even one single minute.
"כי שיעור שעה זו אינה שווה בכל נפש" (“for the measure of this hour is not the same in every soul”). On the one hand, "יש נפש זכה בטבעה", there is a soul refined by nature, "שמיד שמתבוננת בגדולת ה' יגיע אליה היראה ופחד ה'" (“that the moment it contemplates the greatness of G-d, awe and fear of G-d come to it”), because this is what it is immersed in all the time. And "כמו שכתוב בשולחן ערוך ארח חיים סימן א'", as written in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim, siman 1, which the Alter Rebbe quotes here: "כשיתבונן האדם שהמלך הגדול מלך מלכי המלכים הקדוש ברוך הוא, אשר מלא כל הארץ כבודו, עומד עליו ורואה במעשיו" - מיד יגיע אליו היראה וכו'" (“when a person contemplates that the great King, the King of kings, the Holy One blessed be He, whose glory fills the whole earth, stands over him and sees his deeds, immediately awe will come to him”).
The two editions of the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch:
As is known, the Alter Rebbe wrote his Shulchan Aruch in a first edition, and afterwards began writing the whole thing again in a second edition, more detailed and more expansive. We were not privileged to receive that second edition, apart from the first four simanim. Anyone who opens the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch will find at the beginning simanim 1, 2, 3, 4, and then siman 1 again, because those first four simanim at the beginning are from the second edition, and they are the only part of it that reached us.
It is fascinating to compare the halachah quoted here in the two editions:
In the first edition: «A person should take to heart that the great King, the King of kings, the Holy One blessed be He, whose glory fills the whole earth, stands over him and sees his deeds,» and he brings a verse on this, and continues, «immediately awe will come to him.» No other possibility is mentioned at all.
In the second edition the Alter Rebbe expands and speaks to every type of person. After «immediately awe will come to him, and submission, in fear of G-d and shame before Him always,» he adds: «and if it does not come to him immediately, let him contemplate this matter deeply, a great deal, until it does come to him,» meaning he should keep thinking about it more and more until he arrives. And if even after contemplating and contemplating again it still has not come, he adds a further piece of advice: «and let him also do complete teshuvah for all his sins, for they are what prevent awe from coming to him,» for as long as he is carrying around a bundle of sins, he will not get there.
In Tanya the Alter Rebbe brings both of these together: first the thoughts of teshuvah over one's sins, and then the exertion of deepening one's mind.
In contrast to the refined soul, "ויש נפש שפלה בטבעה ותולדתה, ממקור חוצבה ממדרגות תחתונות דעשר ספירות דעשייה, ולא תוכל למצוא במחשבתה האלקות" (“and there is a soul that is lowly by its nature and birth, from the source from which it was hewn, from the lower levels of the ten sefiros of Asiyah, and it cannot find G-dliness in its thought”). This is a soul hewn from lower levels within G-dliness, and its owner is not to blame; this is simply his situation. Such a soul will not manage to contemplate and feel G-dliness easily, "כי אם בקושי ובחזקה" (“but only with difficulty and with force”), with a great deal of work and effort. And this is so even if he has never sinned and has remained clean and pure from the start, since his soul comes from a low source. "ובפרט אם הוטמאה בחטאות נעורים - שהעוונות מבדילים כו [כמו שכתוב בספר חסידים סימן לה]'" (“and especially if it has been defiled by the sins of youth, for sins separate, etc.”), where the sins are added on top and make the difficulty greater still, and his situation is lower yet.
"ומכל מקום בקושי ובחזקה שתתחזק מאד מחשבתו באומץ ויגיעה רבה" (“and nevertheless, with difficulty and with force, that his thought should strengthen itself greatly, with courage and much toil”). Both the one whose soul comes from a low source and the one who has sins on his record should push and be stubborn about it: even though it is hard, even though it is not working, even though he only managed to hold on for two seconds, he should come back and try again and again.
How does one actually do hisbonenus? Contemplation begins with the subject mattering to a person, and he is the one who has to generate that caring. The more he clears away the sins that get in the way, the more refined and clear he becomes, and then, as a matter of course, when he learns he will think about what he is learning rather than hear one sentence and move on. For example, today we learned in the chapter that there is an aspect of Moshe Rabbeinu in every generation. One has to stop on that and think about it. And out of the thinking, questions start to arise: how does this actually work? And the more he contemplates, the more he wants to broaden it, so he gathers more information and goes deeper still. To contemplate something means to take the subject and enter into it in depth, the way a person enters into his own business.
Staying with it is also a matter of habit and practice: the first time he will manage twenty seconds, the second time twenty two seconds, and little by little he gets used to it. And before all that, he has to pass through the stage of yegias habassar and clear away the initial obstacles. The prime time for all this is the time of davening and just before it, when a person has both the inspiration and the tools, as the Tanya discusses. But practically speaking, permission is granted at any opportunity that presents itself.
To a person who says «I am not capable of this,» the answer is: Shulchan Aruch, siman 1, rules that every person must come to yiras Shamayim, and that applies to each and every one. This is not some “approach” that suits one person and not another. One can contemplate for an hour, one for a minute, one barely for a short stretch, but yiras Shamayim, which is in the heart, is an obligation on every person, and in order to reach it, hisbonenus is required. How long should one contemplate? That depends on the individual. But since every single person is obligated to reach yiras Shamayim, it must be that every single person is also able to reach it.
It is worth emphasizing: we are not talking about collecting information. We are used to putting the emphasis on the world of binah, gathering understanding and knowledge, another shiur and another topic. Daas is something else entirely: not adding another piece of knowledge, but taking what a person already knows and hammering it into his head again and again, until he becomes connected to it.
As we have discussed before: which is more useful, learning one maamar fifty times, or learning fifty different maamarim? If the goal is accumulating knowledge, let him learn fifty maamarim. But if the goal is that the thing should get driven into him, then a person needs to have his maamar, the one he stands over and goes back to again and again.
In plain terms: let a person take a passage in Tanya that spoke to his heart, learn it by himself, say each word and explain it in his own words, and explain the point to himself. Finished? Tomorrow morning let him take that same passage and explain it to himself again in his own words, and again and again, like a nail being driven in and going deeper and deeper, until the thing becomes literally one with him.
This is how the Previous Rebbe explains, in one place, the intent of the Alter Rebbe's expression «a long, uninterrupted hour»: to go over the subject again and again, without end, until it becomes part of him and he cannot be separated from it. And this is not easy, because a person says: «I already know this, let us move on.»
One more point. Very often a person learns something new and is excited by the novelty: «What an interesting thing!» That excitement is good and blessed, and thank G-d that the Holy One blessed be He made it so that there should be something new in the world, and it is also what makes him want to come back to it. But here we are speaking about something else: not being excited by the beauty of the idea, because whoever is excited by the beauty, when you learn the same thing with him the next day will say, «My dear fellow, I already know it, let us move to a different subject.» Here the avodah is to come back to that very same point again and again, until a person begins to feel not the intellectual brilliance in it but the G-dliness in it, and connects to that.
In summary: in this section we learned about the two exertions required of a person. First, yegias habassar, the toil of the flesh, the bittush of the body through thoughts of teshuvah from the depth of the heart, which remove the screen of the sins that separate, like the thick log that must be split so the fire can take hold. Second, yegias hanefesh, the toil of the soul, to contemplate the greatness of G-d deeply for «a long, uninterrupted hour.» We saw that the measure of this hour is not the same in every soul: there is a refined soul to whom awe comes immediately, in the language of Shulchan Aruch siman 1, and there is a soul lowly by its nature and birth, which arrives at this only with difficulty and with force, with courage and much toil. We looked at the addition in the second edition of the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch, «let him contemplate this matter deeply» and «let him do complete teshuvah,» and at how hisbonenus works in practice: the avodah of daas, going over the same point until it becomes part of the person, and connecting to the G-dliness in the matter and not only to the intellect in it.
In the next section we will continue with the explanation of the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 42.