He goes through highs and lows. On the highs, during moments of prayer and study, he touches Godliness, the smallest taste of the state at which Tzaddikim exist all the time. On the lows, he stubbornly refuses to give in to the persistent nagging of his yetzer hara, refuses to taste what it is that makes resha'im who they are.
How does he survive this roller coaster? Intellectual rigor on the one hand, he wants no part of what the evil will give him, and on the other hand, the reservoirs of spiritual energy he manages to hold onto after the spiritual highs.
This is represented in two ways:
When it comes to the spiritual benefits of the highs, it is called an imprint that is left in his heart. In the high itself, the Baal HaTanya explains, his heart burns with Godly desire, but afterwards only an imprint of those feelings stay with him.
At the lows, the goal of the Beinoni is only to avoid clothing himself in evil. In his heart and mind he is tempted, but he doesn't pursue those temptations, he staves them off, rejects them utterly and strives to do their exact opposite.
So through cherishing that imprint of good and rejecting the clothing of evil the Beinoni manages to hash out an existence every moment of every day.
Still, the Baal HaTanya says, the beinoni never roots evil out of his heart.
This imagery paints a picture for me, a Beinoni has a pure core, but is surrounded by darkness trying to encroach on that light at the center, still the gray halo surrounding the core doesn't have the ability to expell the darkness with any finality, at most it can hold it at bay.
The Tzaddik is different, the core is surely pure but the halo surrounding that core has been so refined that the darkness can't even come close. In fact, when the halo, or skin, becomes especially pure, the darkness is transformed into light merely by being in contact with it.
The difference between a Tzaddik and a Beinoni, to me, is the difference of skin. Both flee from evil, but the Tzaddik isn't content with victory, instead the Tzaddik must transcend the evil altogether, even his skin is made holy.The most important thing to note is when and where the front lines of the battle are located. Thinking inappropriate thoughts is something a Beinoni refrains from, but only once he becomes consciously aware that the thoughts he is thinking are inappropriate. [It goes without saying that if a Beinoni doesn't think inappropriate thoughts, he doesn't speak inappropriate things, or act in an inappropriate way. -- as the Baal HaTanya makes clear.]
ps. I sat on this chapter a long long time, and didn't publish this for months. I'm publishing it now after rereading what I wrote a month ago, if not more, and being impressed by what was written here. The imagery in the middle seems less relevant, but I left it in (indented) because it seems like something true which I no longer fully understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment