#67 - Perek Daled N - Mesilas Yesharim Explained

In two short sessions a week Rabbi Dovid Schoonmaker will elucidate and bring to life the eternal words of the Mesilas Yesharim. Rabbi Dovid Schoonmaker is the Rosh Yeshivah of Shapell's / Yeshivas Darche Noam in Yerushalaim.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

We've been learning in the last three or four uh sessions all about the idea of Midasaddinna Skarvonish and how severe it is. Avram didn't avoid it, Yaakov didn't avoid it. By the way, we didn't mention Yitzhak, which is interesting. But I wanted to give a short session, even just dedicated totally to giving a sense of how we can work with this a little bit. It's hard for everybody, it's hard for me. Um my Tebas to be more on like the positive side. I think most so that's the environment we live in today. We're very much, you know, positive, positive psychology, positive Judaism. Thank you, Hashem. It it affects all of us in good ways. And it's hard for us to get our head around this. So I want to share a practical word that I remember from my great Rabbi Ravleichter, and really his um greatest greatness, at least the greatest greatness that we see in a certain way, is his ability to take ideas and really make them meaningful. Everybody says they do that, but he really does, and tries to always think about the place where high ideas read us in our reality, not just a certain way making things practical, which means you just take the idea and say, do it a lot. People say I'm being practical because I'm telling you to do it a lot. That's um that's something, but it's not sophisticated. He's very sophisticated. So he was describing the idea, I think, uh, of of seriousness and about his shem in general. He might have been speaking about Onesh, I don't remember. But the mushal he gave was imagine you're a servant of the Queen of England, the King of England, um, and imagine that you take that very, very seriously. Today people joke around a lot about these dynasties, but imagine the good old days when uh when Amelech was really Amelech, King of France, Kaiser, and you're their servant. This is you take it very, very seriously. So uh if those who are watching this are watching, and you're bringing the king a cup of water, and your hand is shaking, hand is shaking, hand is shaking until you spill it all over the king. That's what often happens to us with these more serious ideas. We don't know how to hang with them correctly, and we just get nervous by them. But when you just get nervous by an idea, so then you're gonna push it off and not be able to handle it directly, and therefore either have a bad effect on yourself or push it off, which I think what happens to most of us when we deal with these ideas, we just can't deal with them, and there we make it not part of our Yiddishkai, not part of our ashkap, not part of our world, which we lose by doing that. Because these are ideas which are true, and these are ideas which can be inspiring, not in the sense of inspiring the way positive psychology is, but inspiring the ways of pushing us to do the right thing, getting us to be who we want to be. We can use these ideas. So he explained, no, it's the obvious. You take the cup and you're fully aware of what you're doing, but I calm myself and I bring it to the king in a nice orderly fashion, and I place it in front of him with a smile. The king of the queen doesn't want to see my hand shaking, doesn't want me to shake the hot soup on him. The king does recognize the king, and he wants me me to be very sure that what I'm doing is serious, and my actions mean something, and I better be aware that I'm lucky to be serving him, but he wants me to serve him, and the way to serve him is with a calmness and a coolness, and um taking the responsibility and the severity and the seriousness of the moment, but doing it right. That's the king marshal. If you want to bring it to a sports marshal, it would be, you know, this is a very big moment. You know, there is no tomorrow. We in sports they say like there is no tomorrow. There's tomorrow, but there in their world, there is no tomorrow. Like, this is it. This is you're at the warning track, there's no coming back. You hit it or you don't. So if the everybody knows when a hitter is uh in a dangerous position when he gets emotional and he loses his stride, you have to stay calm. I'm too calm to swing the bat. I'm too calm to shoot the ball. I'm too, excuse me, I'm too excited to shoot the ball, and you're not gonna shoot it well, right? So somehow you have to, it's a that's that's what the top performants do. They they I think they do three things. They're naturally obviously extremely good at what they do, and they hop the seriousness of the moment, right? The greatest players play better, but they stay calm. That's an incredible thing. Think about that haircut. They because they what does it mean they get better? And but they stay calm, right? How do they do that? There's a recognition, it's probably their inner systems get that this is a moment when I have to, as great as I'm playing all the time, and these guys are playing great all the time. That's how they got to where they are, not because they are playing great only at the good games. They're playing great all the time, but they go another level, so their bodies, their minds, their psyche understands that this is a moment to perform even better, so they get the severity of the moment. Together with that, they stay calm and don't freak out. Incredible. That's what it is, that's what a Bodhisattva is supposed to be. That's how I understand it. These ideas that we take the idea that life makes a difference and it's serious. And um, no one should think I always like to say, you know, I'm not sitting as someone outside of the maze who's worked it all out and and sharing and parting of my wellspring of ideas. Um I'm there with everybody, um trying to balance things and get it right a little bit. I'm not saying that to be uh normal or I'm saying that because it's true. So, you know, especially ideas like these, which I naturally I see myself as better being like a more in the positive doing than than other stuff. So um my own personal judgment. So and I have to learn how to deal with these ideas better and bring them in and use them in a positive way. So, but that's I think that's the message. We're serious, we're calm, we get it, but we act and we take it in. Life is serious, life is not a joke. Obat Hashem is definitely serious. I mean, Ovid Malach Malchimlach, their consequences, right? They're consequences. We're gonna will win the series, we're not gonna win it. It means something to us. That's what meaning means. There is mishpat, but I take that in a way that it doesn't freak me out or move me in a way or bring me to atsphus or guilt or you know, those negative things, right? Atzvas, we know that just feeling sad or guilty is not gonna get me anywhere. Guilt sometimes does people, sadness doesn't make move people, but it's that I'm always moving back to this state of active, moving, getting done, learning, doing mitzvist, but also being shown of myself from all the things I shouldn't see, aware the severity, you know, the care which has to go in to dealing with people or dealing with mitzvist, how important fillin' is, how important lash andar is, how important not embarrassing people is, how important not to give people bad feeling is, how important Khiloshabisa is, how important how important mukza is, how important Abrach is, all these things with cosmic cosmic um things. I have that awareness, my time, but I stay calm and happy and moving in Vezra Shem. Hopefully that will give a little bit of a uh of a petach, a little bit of a help to bring these ideas into ourselves in a good, healthy way, in a way that we can uh work with and be better people, better Obdeshem.