Description: Introduction to Mussar 04
Heaven forbid, when people go through a difficult period in their life, they are faced with a challenge or sadness, and they face it as a Jew faces adversity through turning to Hashem in Tefillah, they will learn new depths of emunah and bitachon. They can now talk for hours on the topic! Where before their struggle ‘emunah’meant belief, and that was about it, now they can expound on the application of emunah, the extent of emunah, the difficulty in acquiring emunah and how to work on it, how it affects every area of your life, and how it changes your outlook on so many things! Emunah turned into a ‘sugya’, something which requires full-time devotion and study! This is what Hashem demands of every Jew – learn the topic – acquire emunah – don’t fear me ‘melumadah,’ with the default, knee-jerk, reflex answers that one heard as a child!
We tend to think of mussar either as a sefer chastising us for being bad, or encouraging us to do what’s right. As far as what we need to do itself, we say, “I know that this is what I’m supposed to do!” But our knowledge is very basic, and the question we are dealing with, namely, our lives, is a complex question! Is that called knowing?
Would anyone ever fool themselves in life that way? It’s like, should someone have a serious medical issue, something is really paining him, what does he do? He goes and googles his symptoms - and thinks that googling a question in medicine is sufficient – self-medicates and treats himself! How long will that fellow be healthy? Without dedicating the time to learning mussar, we are applying the short two-line results we get from google – without even reading through the whole article!
Like everything in life, superficial knowledge only goes so far. How more so in Torah and Avodas Hashem!
To address the last question, how does mussar directly affect us. Does sitting and learning mussar, or listening to a five-minute clip change us? How will that have an effect on my life? More than anything else – when we learn mussar we begin to think. We begin to take life seriously. The value of that can’t be underestimated. We begin to ponder what we are doing, what’s really happening around us, why do we do what we do. Once we begin to think – everything improves! As the Mesilas Yesharim says in the first chapter of ‘zehirus,’ the Yetzer Horah, that expert on human nature, knows that if a person would stop even for a short moment and think – he would begin to ponder and question everything he does, until in a short while he’d become a total baal-teshuvah!
What’s more, we will learn in the sefer be’ezras Hashem, that we need an approach to Avodas Hashem. We can try to tackle different areas of mitzvos and avairos, we can focus on our weak points, but it tends to be without direction and without a plan. Avodas Hashem is a life-long work, and it needs a blueprint and an approach. Every house has a foundation, and when that’s done properly – we can build upon it. Eventually, when the house is constructed, we can focus on specifics like light fixtures, window dressings and so on. But there has to be a construct to work around and to work with. That’s mussar – it gives us a framework and an approach to life.
How will our middos improve? How will we develop more patience? If our whole approach to life changes – if we start living with certain key points to guide us, we will have the inspiration and motivation to change every aspect of our lives.
To summarize: Yes, we know the basic concepts – but we don’t really appreciate them, we don’t feel them. We don’t truly understand their depth and their relevance. We also have to develop methods of acquiring these yesodos. Are the concepts simple? Yes – superficially! Once we begin thinking about them – we can go on for years! Why do we need to prioritize mussar – because it’s the ultimate obligation we have – to fear Hashem, to love Hashem, and to connect to Hashem – and without learning how it’s done – it doesn’t come naturally! Lastly, how will this affect us on a day to day basis? Through learning mussar we’ll develop a plan and approach to Avodas Hashem which will change our whole outlook on life, and make us into different people.
Iy”H next week, we will begin to learn the first chapter of Sefer Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh, which is titled, Birur Tachlis Hachaim – Clarifying the Point of Life! A pdf file that contains the first chapter is available for download on our website, www.dvarmussar.com, if you want to learn the content inside. We won’t be reading the actual language of the sefer. Have a good Shabbos!
Heaven forbid, when people go through a difficult period in their life, they are faced with a challenge or sadness, and they face it as a Jew faces adversity through turning to Hashem in Tefillah, they will learn new depths of emunah and bitachon. They can now talk for hours on the topic! Where before their struggle ‘emunah’meant belief, and that was about it, now they can expound on the application of emunah, the extent of emunah, the difficulty in acquiring emunah and how to work on it, how it affects every area of your life, and how it changes your outlook on so many things! Emunah turned into a ‘sugya’, something which requires full-time devotion and study! This is what Hashem demands of every Jew – learn the topic – acquire emunah – don’t fear me ‘melumadah,’ with the default, knee-jerk, reflex answers that one heard as a child!
We tend to think of mussar either as a sefer chastising us for being bad, or encouraging us to do what’s right. As far as what we need to do itself, we say, “I know that this is what I’m supposed to do!” But our knowledge is very basic, and the question we are dealing with, namely, our lives, is a complex question! Is that called knowing?
Would anyone ever fool themselves in life that way? It’s like, should someone have a serious medical issue, something is really paining him, what does he do? He goes and googles his symptoms - and thinks that googling a question in medicine is sufficient – self-medicates and treats himself! How long will that fellow be healthy? Without dedicating the time to learning mussar, we are applying the short two-line results we get from google – without even reading through the whole article!
Like everything in life, superficial knowledge only goes so far. How more so in Torah and Avodas Hashem!
To address the last question, how does mussar directly affect us. Does sitting and learning mussar, or listening to a five-minute clip change us? How will that have an effect on my life? More than anything else – when we learn mussar we begin to think. We begin to take life seriously. The value of that can’t be underestimated. We begin to ponder what we are doing, what’s really happening around us, why do we do what we do. Once we begin to think – everything improves! As the Mesilas Yesharim says in the first chapter of ‘zehirus,’ the Yetzer Horah, that expert on human nature, knows that if a person would stop even for a short moment and think – he would begin to ponder and question everything he does, until in a short while he’d become a total baal-teshuvah!
What’s more, we will learn in the sefer be’ezras Hashem, that we need an approach to Avodas Hashem. We can try to tackle different areas of mitzvos and avairos, we can focus on our weak points, but it tends to be without direction and without a plan. Avodas Hashem is a life-long work, and it needs a blueprint and an approach. Every house has a foundation, and when that’s done properly – we can build upon it. Eventually, when the house is constructed, we can focus on specifics like light fixtures, window dressings and so on. But there has to be a construct to work around and to work with. That’s mussar – it gives us a framework and an approach to life.
How will our middos improve? How will we develop more patience? If our whole approach to life changes – if we start living with certain key points to guide us, we will have the inspiration and motivation to change every aspect of our lives.
To summarize: Yes, we know the basic concepts – but we don’t really appreciate them, we don’t feel them. We don’t truly understand their depth and their relevance. We also have to develop methods of acquiring these yesodos. Are the concepts simple? Yes – superficially! Once we begin thinking about them – we can go on for years! Why do we need to prioritize mussar – because it’s the ultimate obligation we have – to fear Hashem, to love Hashem, and to connect to Hashem – and without learning how it’s done – it doesn’t come naturally! Lastly, how will this affect us on a day to day basis? Through learning mussar we’ll develop a plan and approach to Avodas Hashem which will change our whole outlook on life, and make us into different people.
Iy”H next week, we will begin to learn the first chapter of Sefer Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh, which is titled, Birur Tachlis Hachaim – Clarifying the Point of Life! A pdf file that contains the first chapter is available for download on our website, www.dvarmussar.com, if you want to learn the content inside. We won’t be reading the actual language of the sefer. Have a good Shabbos!