Hello Everyone,
Today we continued with the discussion of Rabbeinu Bachya’s chapter on חשבון הנפש.
In chapter five Rabbeinu Bachya asks (rhetorically) how often do we need to perform the self-examination of חשבון הנפש .He answers that ideally it should be done with every breath that we take.
We need to think about what it means to be constantly performing a self-examination. To someone unfamiliar with the חובות הלבבות this would suggest that a life lived by its ideals would not be a life at all. Rabbeinu Bachya’s ideal Jew would be paralyzed with doubt and constantly falling prey to fears that even if she succeeds in actually performing a mitzvah, that mitzvah may be tainted by her religious flaws. It is sad but true that this image of mussar (and חובות הלבבות is one of the gems of mussar literature) is accepted as true. Whether out of ignorance or malice Orthodox Judaism (and mussar when it is mentioned at all) is depicted as an ideology that stifles the individual in the name of adherence to the Torah.
But this is not what Rabbeinu Bachya means at all. Rabbeinu Bachya does view life as something to be taken seriously. When we fly in airplanes we expect the pilots to take their jobs seriously and if we are sick we certainly hope that our doctors take their work seriously. The lesson that we are meant to be learning from חובות הלבבות is that our most important job is our lives. God, who gives us life, gave us the Torah to tell us how to live, or in other words, how to do the job that God gave each and every one of us. To take this “job” analogy further, we can compare the חשבון הנפש to what various professionals do as they prepare for their work. Pilots go through pre-flight checks before taking off, actors rehearse their lines before going on stage and surgeons review their patients’ records before performing surgery. It makes perfect sense for a person to ask himself, “Is this what God wants me to do?” throughout the day.
The question, “What does Hashem want me to do?” is oppressive only to the person who does not want live with God. Accepting the Torah means understanding that one’s actions are not insignificant. God is paying attention, and nobody is insignificant in God’s view. Rabbeinu Bachya emphasizes:
ואל תמעט בעיניך שום טובה שתעשנה לשמו אפילו במלה או בראיה, כי המעט ממך רב אצלו
Far from being a cause of paralysis, the idea of the חשבון הנפש should remind that every act that we perform on this Earth is of stupendous significance to Hashem.
Rabbeinu Bachya describes the spiritual growth that results from חשבון הנפש in remarkably vivid language. He asks that you imagine yourself standing at the base of a wondrous statue. It is impossible to see this statue with the unaided eye. However you then meet someone who explains that if you take a piece of steel, and grind it carefully and then apply special polishes to it carefully you can fashion it into a mirror. Then if you hold the mirror up to the statue you can see its reflection in the mirror and feast on its beauty.
People travel thousands of miles and endure all sorts of hardships to see amazing wonders of Nature. Hashem is more wondrous than any waterfall or any statue. How do we gain greater insights into Hashem’s wonders? It is by refining our souls via חשבון הנפש. If polishing steel can transform it into a mirror, refining your soul can transform it into a medium which allows Hashem’s light to shine into you. This enlightenment will lead to the most magnificent revelations.
This description of the spiritual growth to be had from following mussar seems to me to be incredibly important. As I mentioned above many people think of the Torah as being emotionally stifling. It may be that I am excessively sensitive to these accusations because I am drawn to that most “deadly” of texts, the Gemarah and I feel a need to defend it. It may also be that I am writing with a sense of loss due to the passing of R’ Zalman Shachter-Shalomi and I am feeling pensive about the people who felt the need to travel to India to find an “enlightenment” that they could not find in Judaism (I am thinking about R Zalman’s colleague, Richard Alpert, who became better known as Baba Ram Dass. Mr. Dass’s father, George Alpert, was one of the founders of Brandeis University).
I don’t know what sort of enlightenment Hindus and Buddhists claim to enjoy and I don’t know how they go about getting it. All I know is what Rabbeinu Bachya tells us and I am inclined to trust him. We learned about enlightenment today, in the middle of the eighth chapter of חובות הלבבות, whose title is, as we know, חשבון הנפש. This means, that enlightenment is the outcome of not only observing mitzvoth but of having accepted the necessity of living with the awareness of Hashem’s expectations. This awareness which may seem to be oppressive is the key to enlightenment.
Mitzvot at first glance probably are a burden, especially to a בעל תשובה. It is a great sacrifice to start keeping Shabbat in one’s 20’s or 30’s. The challenge is to find the joy in mitzvoth which means to understand the connection that we have with Hashem. Rabbenu Bachya was one of the great teachers that the Jewish people were blessed to have. חובות הלבבות has some of the most scathing attacks on a Jewish community that I have ever read. He looked around 11th century Spain and saw a spiritually inert Jewish community. He saw the motions of Judaism but no spirit of Judaism. His criticism is not what makes him a great teacher, since anyone can be a critic. What sets Rabbeinu Bachya apart is his ability to guide. Instead of abandoning his community in disgust he decided to lead them (and us) back to Hashem. חובות הלבבות is the book that tells us how to lead a Jewish life, how to find a path to Hashem.
I hope that we can all find the way to live the life that Rabbeinu Bachya says we can lead.