In the previous section we learned that the beinoni, the "intermediate" person, is occupied with holiness constantly; it is only that he does not have the capacity to hold the high level of love of G-d at every moment. If he could hold it always, he would already resemble a tzaddik. Now let us look at the beinoni's situation after davening.
What remains of the tefillah:
We cannot say that when davening ends everything ends with it and no impression is left behind. If that were so, there would be no room for the principle we learned at the beginning of the lesson, that the mind rules the heart (moach shalit al halev); for that rule rests precisely on the fact that during davening there was hisbonenus, contemplation, and its impression remains afterward and governs the heart. It is only that the love which remains is in the category of "תוכו רצוף אהבה" (in the words of Shir HaShirim, "its interior inlaid with love"): a hidden love, resting on the floor of his heart in concealment, neither revealed nor active.
This hidden love is not the fruit of his own labor. The love that was aroused during davening is his own avodah; the hidden love, however, is the natural love of the nefesh haElokis, the divine soul, which exists in every Jew, whoever he may be (as we will learn, please G-d, from chapter 18 onward). In the beinoni it is greater than in an ordinary person, but it is not to his credit. For that reason it does not have the power to erase the love of the nefesh habahamis, the animal soul, and that love too remains active.
"As if he had not davened at all":
Consequently, the foolishness of the evil "fool" within him can come out into the open in his heart, and the desires of the heart awaken: all the nonsense of the world can arise in him, and he may come to crave every kind of physical, worldly matter. During davening he had, as it were, risen into another world; afterward he returns to the reality he had before, to the left chamber of the heart, and discovers that he is the very same person. These cravings arise both in permitted matters and in forbidden ones: even a craving for a permitted food, kosher with the most exacting hechsher, when it is not for the sake of Heaven, is a craving. And he feels as if he had not davened at all, G-d forbid.
The clarification: "It does not enter his mind to actually commit the transgression":
The Alter Rebbe immediately clarifies that when it comes to something forbidden, it does not enter his mind to actually commit the transgression, G-d forbid. We are not speaking about a man who passes a non-kosher butcher shop, feels drawn to go in, and in the end restrains himself and does not enter. Someone wrestling with that sort of struggle is not a beinoni at all but a rasha v'tov lo, a wicked man whose good has the upper hand, since he stands in a certain inner readiness to fail. The beinoni never gets there: he may walk past that very shop and see that there is non-kosher food inside, and a thought about the matter may pass through his mind, but not on the level of a desire.
All that arises in the beinoni is a passing thought, and in the very second that the thought comes up he pushes it away with both hands and removes it from his mind. He does not linger over it, does not dwell in it, and does not develop it. Were he to remain with it as a willed thought even for a single second, "just one second and then I will stop," he would at that moment be a full-fledged rasha.
Where do these thoughts come from? The mind is the mirror of the heart. As long as there is a riot of cravings in the heart, the heart keeps firing signals up to the mind, trying again and again. But every such attempt is doomed to fail in the beinoni: he is incapable of taking hold of the thought, nurturing it and developing it; he throws it out at once. He has sinful thoughts because he has a nefesh habahamis; in the tzaddik this does not exist at all.
The definition of chalav akum, the milk of a non-Jew, illustrates the point. The Sages decreed that milk milked by a non-Jew with no Jew standing and watching at the time of the milking is forbidden to drink, lest the milk of a non-kosher animal was mixed into it, and the language of the Gemara is: "חלב שאין ישראל רואהו" - milk that a Jew does not see.
There is a story about one of the tzaddikim who was lodging in a village. When he entered his room and asked for something to drink, the woman of the house brought him a cup of milk and left. A few hours later it came out that there was also non-Jewish milk in the house, the bottles had been switched, and by mistake the tzaddik had been served forbidden milk. The household was horrified and rushed to his room to apologize, and they found the cup standing exactly where it had been left, untouched, even though he had been thirsty and had asked for a drink. When he heard the story he said: "But it says so explicitly in the Gemara: chalav akum is milk that a Jew does not see."
So we have three situations before us with regard to evil:
The tzaddik: he does not see the evil at all. It is not that he sees it and must struggle with it; he simply does not see it.
The beinoni: he sees, and a thought may arise in his mind, but he immediately pushes it away.
The rasha: the desire to drink arises in him. Whether he fails or restrains himself, his head is already inside the cup.
And this is the conclusion of the Alter Rebbe's words: "אינו עולה בדעתו לעשות האיסור בפועל ממש חס ושלום, אלא הרהורי עבירה הקשים מעבירה" - "it does not enter his mind to actually commit the transgression, G-d forbid, but rather sinful thoughts, which are harder than the sin itself" - such thoughts can rise into his mind and confuse him, drawing him away from Torah and avodah. We have already discussed the reason that sinful thoughts are harder than the sin: when a person defiles his mind, that is more severe than the defilement of another limb of the body, since the mind is the most delicate instrument he possesses, and damage to it is graver than a break in some external part.
The three transgressions from which no person escapes each day:
As our Sages said, there are three transgressions from which a person is not spared on any given day:
Sinful thought - which comes up in the mind every day.
Iyun tefillah.
Lashon hara - which the Gemara there discusses at length.
From this statement of the Sages the Alter Rebbe cites only two of the three: sinful thought and iyun tefillah.
What is "iyun tefillah," and what does it have to do with our subject?
On the face of it, it would have been enough for the Alter Rebbe to note that no person escapes a sinful thought on any given day. Why did he add iyun tefillah as well?
In the Gemara, Rashi and Tosafos disagree about the meaning of the term:
According to Rashi: a person who davened with life and with kavanah, and it enters his mind that his tefillah was a good one, that it will surely be accepted and that he deserves to be answered. The Gemara in Berachos teaches that one who presents himself that way causes his deeds to be examined, to see whether he is in fact worthy; better, then, not to enter into that accounting at all.
According to Tosafos: the reference is to the difficulty of concentrating on the tefillah and having kavanah in its words, because of foreign thoughts that fall into a person's mind while he is davening.
Both are the words of the living G-d, but here the Alter Rebbe takes the approach of Tosafos. According to this explanation, "sinful thought" and "iyun tefillah" belong to one family: every day a stray thought falls into a person, and every day he struggles to concentrate on his davening because of those very thoughts. Even in a short tefillah of a few lines, to hold the mind on every word is no simple matter. That is why the Alter Rebbe brings the two together. It emerges that the beinoni too contends with sinful thoughts; it is only that he contends with them successfully, and does not dwell on them in a way that leads to failure.
Sinful thoughts and thoughts of heresy:
To conclude, let us bring a point the Rebbe made in one of his sichos. There are matters about which one has no license to speculate at all. The Torah says: "This is the chok of the Torah which G-d commanded, saying," and the subject is the mitzvah of parah adumah, the red heifer. Rashi explains why it is called "the chok of the Torah": because the Satan and the nations of the world needle the Jewish people, saying, "What is this mitzvah and what reason is there for it?" Therefore the Torah calls it a chok - it is a decree, and one has no license to question it.
The meaning is not that one has license to raise the question and must then push it away, but that there is no license to raise it at all, for such a thought is a thought of heresy and a lack of emunah. And the thoughts spoken of here in Tanya are not of that kind: the beinoni does not wonder "what is the point of this matter"; what arise in him are thoughts that touch on practical action, and even in those he is neither thinking nor planning to fail. Thoughts of heresy do not arise in him at all, for that domain is simply not his.
In summary: in this section we learned that the beinoni is occupied with holiness constantly, and that the impression of the contemplation of davening remains within him and gives the mind rule over the heart; but the love that remains is a hidden, natural love that is not the fruit of his own labor, and therefore it cannot erase the love of the nefesh habahamis. Hence, after davening, cravings for the matters of this world awaken in him, in permitted things and in forbidden ones, as if he had not davened at all. Even so, when it comes to something forbidden it does not enter his mind to actually do it, but only sinful thoughts, which are harder than the sin, and these he pushes away at once; a willed thought even for a single second takes him, for that moment, out of the category of a beinoni. We discussed the three transgressions from which no person escapes each day and the two explanations of "iyun tefillah," as well as the distinction between sinful thoughts, with which even the beinoni contends, and thoughts of heresy, which have no place in him at all.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 12 and with the explanation of the beinoni's avodah.