We are in Maseches Avos, chapter 2, mishnah 16 (in some versions this mishnah appears as mishnah 11). Before us are the words of the second of the five students of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, the advice of Rabbi Yehoshua:
"Rabbi Yehoshua omer: ayin hara, v'yetzer hara, v'sinas habriyos - motzi'in es ha'adam min ha'olam" - Rabbi Yehoshua says: an evil eye, the evil inclination, and hatred of one's fellow creatures remove a person from the world.
What does "remove a person from the world" mean:
Although in everyday speech the expression "out of this world" may sound like a compliment, in Jewish thought it is a very severe phrase. There are two ways to understand it:
Literally: this is how most of the Rishonim explain it - these three things cause a person to die before his time.
Figuratively: a person is brought into this world with a one time opportunity to build a relationship with the Holy One, blessed is He. When these three factors distract him completely from that purpose, he misses the opportunity entirely and is effectively outside the world - like a person in a coma or in a daze, cut off from his surroundings. Such people are disconnected, missing the whole point and the opportunity of life.
It is worth being precise about the terms "ayin hara" and "yetzer hara": the word "ra" (reish-ayin) does not necessarily refer only to wickedness. "Ra'ah" (reish-ayin-hei) means evil, while "ra" can be understood as something inferior, unstable or temporary. The Ramban in Bereishis describes how the Holy One, blessed is He, evaluates various aspects of His creation as "good": what is good? Something that has permanence, that will endure and is not temporary. Something temporary, by contrast, is not good.
The esoteric work Sefer Yetzirah describes the world as a universe with five dimensions:
Three spatial dimensions: side to side, up and down, forward and back.
The dimension of time: past and future.
A fifth dimension: movement along a moral continuum, either toward the Holy One, blessed is He, or away from Him.
Just as one can rise higher and higher without end, or descend lower and lower without end, so too one can move toward the good, toward the Holy One, blessed is He, or toward evil, away from Him. "Good" means attaching oneself to eternity and permanence, and "evil" means detaching oneself and becoming more and more temporary and fleeting. Things called "evil," then, remove a person from this world, because they make him less and less connected to permanence and more and more of a temporary phenomenon.
With this understanding we will explain each of the three pieces of advice in the mishnah, and how each one removes a person from the world, both literally and figuratively. It is worth noting that at the end of chapter 4 there is another mishnah, from Rabbi Elazar HaKappar, which lists three different things that remove a person from the world, and we will discuss that in its place.
The first: an evil eye:
The Bartenura explains that "ayin hara" here is identical to the "ayin ra'ah" mentioned earlier in the words of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurkanos as the worst of traits. Although these are not exactly the same words - there it says "ra'ah" and here "hara" - the Bartenura understands that they refer to one and the same thing: just as there an evil eye means that a person is not satisfied with what he has, but focuses on what he lacks and envies others, so too the evil eye that removes a person from the world is a mindset focused on what is missing and failing to appreciate what is there.
Every person should reflect on this: he has in his possession an infinite number of things and blessings, and alongside them an infinite number of things he does not have and wishes he did. That is the nature of the human condition, and there is no person on earth who does not want many things that are not yet his. Life, then, is a choice between focusing on what one has and appreciating one's blessings, and focusing on what one lacks and feeling a constant sense of deprivation. The second approach is a recipe for a miserable life.
As the head of my yeshiva, Rabbi Noach Weinberg, put it: someone capable of being bored by the eyes he sees with is capable of being bored by anything. The marginal benefit of a new car, a new air conditioner or a knee that does not hurt pales beside the difference between a person who has eyes and a person who cannot see - and yet we give no thought at all to the fact that we have eyes, and we take it for granted. A person must therefore focus on what he does have and learn to appreciate it, and regarding the eyes our Sages indeed instituted a special berachah.
In general, a person must count his blessings. Rabbi Noach used to advise keeping a gratitude journal every evening before going to sleep: writing down two new things each night - one physical and one non-physical - for which one is grateful to the Creator and which one appreciates in one's life. This habit naturally produces a happy person, and directs him to focus on his blessings rather than on his deficiencies.
Here is another suggestion, different but related: every person should have a personal siddur, and on the inside cover he should write down, each time the Holy One answers his prayers, the thing for which he was answered. Over time the inside cover fills up with all the occasions on which his prayer was answered, and this directs him to understand that the Holy One is present, that He responds, that He can be relied upon - and that his prayer is effective. These are different kinds of blessings: the blessing of the Creator's presence in one's life, alongside the material and non-material blessings. Focusing on them points a person in a positive direction and leads to emotional health and well-being. This matter is extremely important, because without it a person is rotting on the inside, and that destroys him.
A bitter spirit exacts a heavy price, including a physical price. The Meiri explains it literally: a person who feels deprived will take risks upon himself in order to obtain what he does not have, and those risks will place his life in genuine danger. But the figurative reading seems preferable: a person who is always focused on what he lacks misses out on life entirely, and for that reason it removes him from the world.
Ingratitude That Removes a Person from the Garden of Eden:
Let us bring a remarkable Rashi here. When the Holy One turns to Adam and asks, "Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?", Adam answers, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate." And Rashi comments there: "Here he denied the good done for him." On the face of it one should ask: what is Rashi teaching us, is this not obvious? The answer is that until that moment Adam could still have salvaged the situation and not been expelled from the Garden. But once he denied the good, the Holy One understood, as it were: there is no point in doing more good for him; leaving him in the Garden of Eden will not help, since he is ungrateful and does not appreciate what is done for him, and the more he is given the more spoiled and corrupted he will become - and therefore the only option is to expel him from the Garden. His ingratitude, his failure to recognize the good, is what removed him from his Garden of Eden. And so it is with us: if we do not appreciate what the Creator gives us, there is no point in His giving us more, which would only increase how spoiled and corrupted we become. We must appreciate what He does, and one who does not manage to hold on to this good eye and see the good in his life - that removes him from the world.
A Second Explanation of the Evil Eye:
Some understand that the "evil eye" in our Mishnah is not a synonym for a "grudging eye," but a separate matter: the traditional, well-known evil eye, through which a person arouses the attribute of judgment against his fellow. He looks at his fellow and says, "Why does he have a big house and all this money that I do not have?", and by doing so he incites and arouses judgment against him in Heaven, as though the question is raised up there whether he is deserving of it, and that man is liable to lose what he has. The evil eye is a real phenomenon, as brought in Bava Basra and in the Gemara elsewhere, and in certain circles within Jewish culture - such as among Jews of Moroccan descent - it is a very central matter.
According to this explanation, a person who arouses the evil eye against others through his envy of what they have - this removes him from the world: either literally, in that the moment he makes enemies for himself they come to take revenge on him and shorten his life; or figuratively, in that the grudging eye itself exacts a price from a person. And it is already stated in the book of Mishlei: "and envy is the rot of the bones" - envy rots the bones. It eats a person up from within and hollows him out, in that he wishes ill upon his fellow and looks at others with a grudging eye. Therefore, one who seeks to live a long, healthy and happy life, and to realize life's opportunity to connect with the Creator, must have a good eye and not an evil eye.
The Second: The Evil Inclination:
The evil inclination is the pull toward evil. As explained above, evil can be understood as distance from the Creator, but in practice it refers to all temporary things - attachment to the affairs of this world, of the sort that animals desire. When a person has an inclination, a pull and a drive toward temporary things, such as the enjoyment of physical desires, of eating and drinking and the like, this is liable to kill him literally. The World Health Organization reports that roughly five percent of deaths worldwide are alcohol-related: those who drink excessively destroy their livers, cause themselves accidents, damage their mental health and develop cancer. Obesity and overeating are likewise responsible for an enormous number of deaths, even greater than that. The enjoyment of physical desires thus costs a person his very life, and this is a danger to life in the plainest sense.
The same applies to venereal disease: a hundred years ago, in the developed world, a significant portion of people - somewhere around ten percent, with a considerable margin of error - died of venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea. Today medicine has improved and these diseases are no longer the factor they once were, but drug addiction certainly is. The basic point, according to many Rishonim, is that excessive indulgence in physical desires costs a person his life, and that is why it removes him from the world.
In the figurative sense this is easy to explain as well: a person focused on satisfying his physical cravings is distracted from his opportunity to forge a relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, which is incomparably greater. There is nothing wrong with eating and drinking and the like, but they should be done within the context of a fuller experience - relating to the Holy One, blessed be He, and making a berachah over these opportunities and over the ability to enjoy this world - rather than chasing after these things as an end in themselves, as the verse says, "and you shall not stray after your heart and after your eyes."
The third: hatred of one's fellow creatures:
The Bartenura, based on Rashi, compares hatred of one's fellow creatures to baseless hatred. The point is not that hatred of one's fellow creatures - hatred of the human race - is identical to baseless hatred, but rather that there is a time and a place for hatred: there is nothing wrong, and in fact there is value, in hating people who are morally corrupt. One need not feel guilty about harboring negative thoughts toward terrible people, wicked people and murderers. But that is not what the Mishnah is addressing. It is addressing a person who has a general hatred of humanity, who does not like people as such. That is a terrible orientation, and it destroys the one who holds it.
There are three approaches to explaining this:
The Magen Avos: a bitter person pays an emotional price for it. Since he does not like people, he lives in a sad and sullen world, and this mental health problem exacts its toll.
The Bartenura and the Meiri: a more practical explanation - a harsh person who does not like people and looks at them with hatred will be repaid in kind, and they will not like him either. In this way he makes enemies for himself, and those enemies will harm him, so he ends up endangering himself.
The Rambam: the natural reaction of one who hates people is to head out to the desert or the forest, find himself a cave and live there alone. And once he is living in a cave by himself, he is exposed to all sorts of dangers.
All of these approaches understand the words literally: someone who does not like people places himself in real physical danger.
It is worth mentioning here the longest study ever conducted on human happiness - a longitudinal study out of Harvard University that has been running since 1938, that is, for nearly ninety years. One of its most striking findings is that the single greatest predictor of people's happiness, and of their longevity as well, is their social relationships. A person who fails to develop deep and meaningful social connections - friendships, marriage and the like - pays dearly for it, not only in his happiness but in actual years of his life, and this is a precise confirmation of the words of the Mishnah.
And on a more figurative level: life is not meant to be lived in isolation, and we have already discussed the idea that a person should not separate himself from the community. If a person's orientation and sense of self is "me against the world," then he has missed the main agenda that the Holy One, blessed be He, set out for him - to be part of a community, to build it and to play a role within it. By cutting himself off from that, he removes himself from the world, since he has forfeited the opportunity of his lifetime to be part of something far greater than himself.