In the previous section we examined the avodah of the tzaddik, who drives out and burns away the evil of the left chamber of the heart. Now let us bring the idea down to earth with a parable from ordinary life, and then map out the levels of distance from evil, from merely suppressing a craving all the way to genuine revulsion.
Take, for example, a person who has had it explained and proven to him that smoking is damaging his health. Little by little he develops a distaste for it, until he cannot even bear to stand near someone holding a lit cigarette. But there are stages in this process:
Suppressing the craving: At first he still finds himself remembering "the good old days," and sometimes he is even annoyed at the person who told him it was harmful ("I'd rather you hadn't said anything"). Still, he masters himself: knowing that it is no good for him, he fights the craving, suppresses it, and walks away from it.
Revulsion and disgust: At a higher stage he is no longer merely pushing the craving away and banishing it. He hates the thing itself; it repels him and he finds it loathsome.
The same is true of anything that runs counter to Hashem's will, and of every worldly desire. The avodah of the tzaddik works on the animal "engine" in stages: first cooling the desire, and ultimately reaching disgust and revulsion. That is the meaning of the statement that the tzaddik drives out and burns away the evil that comes from the left chamber.
But doesn't the tzaddik live in this world?
Of course he lives in the world. It is simply that everything permitted serves its true purpose in his hands. We saw this in earlier chapters regarding Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, Rabbeinu HaKadosh, whose table held every good thing, and yet he did not eat out of craving or for bodily pleasure, not "to fill his belly," but because the Torah obligates him to guard the health of his body. He therefore eats what he needs and does not add a hair's breadth beyond it; and if he can manage with less and survive without the extra, he will not ask for it. He is not looking for the pleasure in the thing but for the need and the G-dly intent within it.
A person who reaches this state lives in the world, but he lives in it correctly, using each thing in the way it is meant to be used. This is "בכל דרכיך דעהו," "know Him in all your ways": every act he performs, eating included, is bound up for him with knowing the Creator. And this is what it means that he drives out and burns away the evil of the left chamber.
"ובערת הרע מקרבך" - "and you shall burn the evil out from your midst":
In its plain meaning the verse speaks of a person who committed a forbidden act, whom the beis din is obligated to punish; and when the sinner is punished, "ובערת הרע מקרבך" is fulfilled, the evil is removed from the midst of the nation, from within Klal Yisrael. Here the Alter Rebbe takes an expression said about the nation as a whole and applies it to the individual: there is evil that is literally "in your midst," inside a person's innards, in his very core; and when the tzaddik labors to extract the inclination and the engine that drive him toward evil, he fulfills "ובערת הרע מקרבך" within himself.
It is worth repeating what was stressed at the outset: we are speaking about the avodah of a tzaddik and about lofty levels that are not ours. Even so, studying them is valuable, so that we know what is being spoken of and can draw a lesson for our own avodah.
"Tzaddik she'eino gamur" and "tzaddik v'ra lo":
The tzaddik described here has attained a lofty state: he no longer has any craving for worldly matters, and on the contrary, his animal engine is beginning to form itself anew and to lean toward matters of holiness. Nevertheless, he has not reached the summit, and the evil in him has not truly turned into good, because he has not succeeded in transforming the entire evil engine into good. He is therefore called a "tzaddik she'eino gamur," an incomplete tzaddik, and a "tzaddik v'ra lo," a righteous man who has evil.
In the Alter Rebbe's own words: "יש בו עדיין מעט מזער רע בחלל השמאלי, אלא שכפוף ובטל לטוב מחמת מיעוטו, ולכן נדמה לו כי ויגרשו וילך לו כולו לגמרי; אבל באמת, אילו חלף והלך לו לגמרי כל הרע שבו - היה נהפך לטוב ממש" - "there still remains in him the very smallest trace of evil in the left chamber, except that it is subdued and nullified before the good because of its minuteness, and therefore it seems to him that he has driven it out and it has departed entirely; but in truth, had all the evil in him truly passed away and departed completely, it would have been transformed into actual good."
Both of these terms already appeared in the first chapter of Tanya, and each one describes a different side of the soul:
"Tzaddik she'eino gamur": from the perspective of his nefesh haElokis, the G-dly soul, which has not yet reached its peak. (As opposed to the complete tzaddik, who is called a "tzaddik gamur.")
"Tzaddik v'ra lo": from the perspective of his nefesh habahamis, the animal soul, in which a small amount of evil still remains, except that it is subdued and nullified before the good because of its minuteness. (As opposed to the complete tzaddik, who is called a "tzaddik v'tov lo.")
The Alter Rebbe himself goes on to explain all this, but before we look at his explanation let us lay it out simply, returning to a point that was clarified in earlier lessons.
The difference between a human being and an animal:
Intellect versus instinct: In a human being, all of his deeds and emotions are built on intellect and reasoning, the mind rules the heart, and the intellect gives birth to the feeling. In an animal, everything is built on nature and instinct; it needs no contemplation and no study in order to decide what it loves and what it wants.
Measure versus breaking all bounds: A person's cravings and desires come with measure, with limits, with restraint. An animal, when it wants something, wants it here and now, and looks neither right nor left.
Sometimes a person behaves like an animal and simply does whatever his heart desires, but we are speaking about the essential distinction between the two. And note that precisely in the animal there lies a certain advantage, a raw and simple power. Sometimes that is a drawback, but when one knows how to use it properly it becomes an advantage.
This same distinction exists within a person himself, between his nefesh haElokis and his nefesh habahamis. The animal soul, when it wants something, wants it immediately and does not look to the side; the G-dly soul wants according to reason, according to intellect, according to contemplation.
And what happens with the tzaddik? He certainly has an animal soul, but he has stripped away its animal "skeleton" and left its engine, its power of desire, intact. Only that instead of craving trivialities, that craving is now aimed at the loftiest things. (So too with what is said of David HaMelech, that through his fasts he killed the "skeleton" and not the engine.)
How does the tzaddik know whether he has transformed the animal or merely put it to sleep?
The very fact that he no longer struggles with himself proves nothing about having reached the peak; it may be that he has only lulled his animal soul to sleep, and it lies dormant yet fully intact and present. Transforming the animal and putting it to sleep are two different matters. By what, then, should he test himself?
The test lies in that very difference between a human being and an animal. With an animal, when it loves something, the love comes naturally and with full force. So the tzaddik should examine the manner of his love for the Holy One, blessed be He: does it flow simply and naturally, or does he need contemplation, and only out of that does he arrive at any arousal? If the love comes with complete simplicity, that is a sign that his love is whole, that even the animal within him loves. But if love of Hashem comes to him only as a result of contemplation, that is a sign that the animal is still exactly as it was, and that until now he has labored on the G-dly side alone and has not harnessed the capacities and the raw strengths of the animal soul for the positive.
This is what the verse hints at: "משכני אחריך נרוצה" - "draw me, we will run after You." "We will run" is in the plural, meaning that the animal soul too should run along with him.
This is also the difference explained in the previous lesson between a love like flames of fire and a love like water:
Love like fire: Fire comes with noise, because there is an opposing force present, moisture and air, and it is that resistance which produces the noise. So too in love of Hashem: the "noise" indicates that the animal is still there. It is not kicking, it is not even awake, but it exists.
Love like water: Water is quiet and penetrates quietly. This is ahavah b'ta'anugim, love in delights, in which a person loves Hashem with such simplicity that even the animal within him loves.
This is also the difference here in chapter 10 between the tzaddik gamur and the tzaddik she'eino gamur: the complete tzaddik, whom we will learn about further on, has reached a state in which everything within him is ahavah b'ta'anugim, flowing with complete simplicity, while the incomplete tzaddik has not yet arrived at that summit.
And if the incomplete tzaddik should ask himself: how am I to know that evil still exists in me, when I have no craving whatsoever for evil desires and the whole matter is entirely dormant in me? Indeed, on the side of craving for evil he has no way to measure, since he has no such craving at all. But the absence of the craving is no proof of the absence of its existence.
To what may this be compared? A person sitting in a good environment, in a yeshivah or in a shul, has no craving at that moment for worldly desires. Does that mean those desires do not exist in him? They exist and they stand ready. Take him outside, and he will immediately crave like someone who is out there all the time. But someone who goes out into an environment that is not good and nevertheless feels no pull and no craving, of him one can say that he has genuinely distanced himself from evil. And here too there are levels: the very fact that he feels no attraction to evil still does not prove that he has transformed the evil into good.
To sum up: In this section we learned the parable of smoking and its stages, first suppressing the craving and afterward revulsion and disgust, as a tool for understanding the avodah of the tzaddik, who cools the animal engine to the point of loathing, and who nonetheless lives in the world and uses everything in the right way, in the spirit of "בכל דרכיך דעהו." We saw how the verse "ובערת הרע מקרבך" is transferred from the nation as a whole to the individual; the two terms "tzaddik she'eino gamur" and "tzaddik v'ra lo," each describing a different side of the soul; and the difference between a human being and an animal as the key to testing whether one's love is complete, a love like fire as against a love like water.
In the next section we will take up the Alter Rebbe's own explanation of all this, and the distinction between the levels of tzaddikim, the tzaddik gamur and the tzaddik she'eino gamur.