Part 4 · Chapter 23

The Role of Pleasure in All the Middot 0:00

וככה בכל פרטי פרטי המדות, and so it is with all of the little minute details of the מדות, all the individual

מדות, עד החכמה והרצון, even including חכמה and רצון, even intellect and desire. הרי עיקר קיומם ומקורם העונג, the main thing that keeps them, that maintains them, the main maintaining force and their main source is the pleasure that a person gets in this.

ולולי העונג שבהשכלה, and if it wouldn't be for the pleasure a person derived from intellect, from getting an understanding of something, or arriving at a new idea, אין לו כח לחדש שום חכמה, he would not be able to originate any sort of חכמה, כנראה בחוש, like we see tangibly, וכמו שאמרו, like it says in the גמרא, אי למלא חדוותא דשמעתא, חדוותא דשמעתא, so if it wouldn't be for the joy of study וכולי, then I would not be able to, I would not be able to learn so well.

This is one of the sages of the תלמוד said it.

Well, it, it's not a matter of being disciplined. It doesn't help you be disciplined, because it's not, you know, like, you can you can force yourself to to do something, but in order to actually in order to actually like be able to be good at something and accomplish, and to really, you know, you have to be invested in it. Now, the the truth is, the the reason why it helps to force yourself to do something is because that's coming from your כח הרצון, which we said is really the same thing as תענוג.

Force vs. Desire: The Power of Will 1:47

The fact that you make yourself do it, that means you invest yourself in it, you connect yourself to it, and the effort you put in will give you a pleasure in it.

But right now we're not talking about that. Right now we're talking straight that if a person doesn't have the pleasure, then he's not going to be good at it.

And this you see that when a person doesn't enjoy a certain subject, their mind is basically off. They're just they're not really there. Their mind is not really involved, they're just hearing the words and whatever, and they're not really thinking about it, and so they're not going to understand well, they're not going to come up with new ideas. But a person that really enjoys it, he puts his whole mind into the thing, and he thinks about it deeply, and he really gets a feel for the idea and, you know, and like it's an intimate knowledge of it, and is able to understand it properly and come up with ideas.

וכידוע בענין חכמת אדם תאיר פניו, and as is known, the idea that it says that the wisdom of a person enlightens his face, that when a person gets a חכמה, an idea, that their face shines, and somebody that's a חכם בעצם, their whole face is like always shining.

The Yoli Liquid: Connecting Pleasure and Intellect 3:13

Why is that? שהלחלוחית שבו עונג היולי הוא המקור המשכיל כל שכל וכולי,

because the liquid, the liquid that's over the brain, in between the skull and the brain, there's there's a liquid, and this liquid is physically is the היולי of תענוג, it's the essence of pleasure. And that liquid is also the source of שכל, of intellect, that's called the כח המשכיל.

And there's membranes over the brain, and when this liquid is filtered through these membranes, it depending on the way it's filtered, it it it allows it to activate שכל, and we'll discuss more about how this works later.

But the point is that that when this liquid hits the brain, it both triggers, activates the brain, the thought process of the brain, but it also gives pleasure.

And so, really, what the intellect is is just like a localized and specific pleasure, that gets pleasure in a certain form, that's the idea of of this חכמה.

And so that pleasure comes out as a shining of the face, that it makes, increases, makes makes the the the face, increased blood flow of the face, and so it makes it shine.

Yeah, when you see a person's very happy or very excited, you see they get a shining, their face shines.

Like when you drink, your face gets red.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Means there's a color in the face.

Depending on what kind of a pleasure, there's different types of colors, you know. So somebody that has that's very wise has a certain glow to their face from this pleasure. And the same thing, somebody's very kind also. You know, they're they're always happy, they have a certain glow.

Because he enjoys life. Even the painful parts he enjoys. ואמנם, however, ברצון בלבד אנו רואים שבלא רצון

Desire (Ratzon) as the Source of All Joy 5:29

אין תענוג. However, unique is רצון among all of the כוחות of the נפש, that only with רצון do we see that without רצון there will be no תענוג.

You cannot say that without חכמה there won't be תענוג. So, on the one hand we see the תענוג is the source that keeps all of the כוחות going, but only with רצון we see that רצון is also the source of תענוג, that you also need the רצון for the תענוג.

With everything else it's just one way, that רצון keeps it going and without חכמה you still have תענוג, you don't need the the חכמה have a תענוג. But with רצון you need the רצון.

In other words, if you don't enjoy the חכמה, so you won't have a חכמה. And if you don't enjoy בינה, you won't have a בינה. You won't be able to understand and everything. You won't be very good at being logical and stuff like that. But if you don't have the בינה, or you don't have the חכמה, you'll still have the תענוג. So it's a one-way relationship.

You need the תענוג in order to keep the שכל going and the מדות going, but you don't need the שכל or מדות to have a תענוג.

You could have a pleasure in something without having a חכמה in it.

No, you don't have to be smart to enjoy things. Right? So you see that even if a person, it's not like the more smart you are, the more תענוג you're going to have. So you see you don't need חכמה and בינה to have a תענוג. ואמנם,

but with רצון, if you don't want something, you won't enjoy it, like we said. נמצא גם בכל פרטי המדות,

Will Determines Enjoyment in Every Virtue 7:25

and this we see even with all the also with all the פרטי מדות, also, כמו אם לא ירצה בחסד או בדין אין בו אין בו תענוג כלל.

But we see also that if you don't want חסד or if you don't want דין, you won't enjoy it.

So if a person wants to be nice, then he'll enjoy it. If he doesn't want to, then he won't enjoy it, and the same thing with דין.

So even though somebody normally enjoys חסד, but if it comes a certain time when he doesn't want it, let's say it's going to be bad for him or whatever, so then he won't enjoy it. וכן אם לא ירצה להשכיל, and also if he doesn't want to to study, he doesn't want to come up with ideas now, לא ימצא עונג בזה כלל, you won't enjoy it at all.

וכן אם לא ירצה בניצוח, if he won't want to win, כלל, וכן אם לא ירצה בניצוח כלל, אין לו תענוג בניצוח או התפארות. And if a person doesn't want to win at all, then he won't have a pleasure in winning. You know, like let's say you're you're playing with a little kid, and you want him to win.

So you won't you won't enjoy it if you win, because you don't want to. You want him to win. And the same thing with showing off. If you want to show off and you want people to make a big deal about you, you enjoy it. But if you want to keep things quiet and you don't want people to make a big deal about you, then you won't enjoy it, it'll make you uncomfortable.

וכן גם בשאר תענוגי עולם הזה, and the same thing with the other pleasures of this world, כמו ממון וכבוד וכהאי גוונא, like money and honor and the like, בלא רצון אין תענוג בהם כלל וכלל, if a person doesn't want them, then he won't enjoy them at all.

A person doesn't want money, he won't enjoy having money. What do I need it for? It's a headache. And the same thing with honor. והיינו מפני שכללות ענין זה הוא בהיות שכל עיקר עצם הנפש נמשך אחר התענוג והרצון.

And this is because that the general idea is that with all the מדות, it's really one thing, that the עצם הנפש goes after תענוג and רצון. And so if you have a תענוג and רצון in something, then you put yourself into that thing. If you don't have a תענוג and רצון in it, you don't have a pleasure in that thing.

שהרצון הוא גם כן המשכת כל הנפש, that רצון is also the idea of drawing your whole soul into something. עד שכולה תכלה ברצון הדבר ההוא כידוע.

To the point where a person can be totally obsessed with the רצון for something. They can their whole self can get absorbed in it.

And so that's basically that's what תענוג and רצון means. They mean that you connect yourself to something, that you invest yourself in something. And so the more תענוג and רצון you have, the more that you'll the more that you'll succeed, and the more you'll express yourself in that thing. That's the idea we said that it fills the light of the soul, that the light, the soul spreads more into that thing.

And that's why they say it's like the עצם הנפש, not that the תענוג and רצון are not the עצם הנפש itself, but they are what connects the עצם הנפש to something else.

That's the whole idea of רצון and תענוג, is connecting yourself to something. And they're two sides of the same coin. רצון, the only difference is that רצון is when you're going out to something, and תענוג is when that thing is going back to you, is what you get from it in other words.

So רצון is expression of you wanting to go connect yourself to something, in other words that your connection to something is expressed in like a void, and so you're like rushing to to fill in that form that you chose, and then when you get it, when you've reached that, when you've got what you wanted, and you fill that form, then you get the pleasure that you feel yourself.

Pleasure means that you feel yourself in this thing, that you feel that ah, it expresses me. על כן גם בכל פרטי כחותיה,

and therefore also with every one of the soul's powers, עיקר קיומם הוא תענוג ורצון, their main קיום, their main existence comes or continuance comes from the pleasure and the desire. והעדרם הוא צער מדבר זה.

And when the תענוג and רצון are missing in something, then that that's idea of that this thing is painful. היפך העונג, the opposite of pleasure. ודבר המנגד לרצון, and so and we see that something that opposes a person's desire, גם שאינו צער, even if it's not essentially painful, יצטער ממילא, he'll automatically be very pained.

So let's say like you're in a rush to go somewhere, and you really want to go do this thing, and you want to do it very quickly. Even if it's not something that like you're going to miss, even if it's not like a meeting that you're going to miss, but you just you really are excited to do something, and somebody stops you and they you know, even if it's like your friend, he stops you and he wants to talk to you for a minute.

And it's not a painful thing to talk to him, you enjoy talking to him, but because you right now don't want to, he's stopping you from getting what you want, because he's delaying you, so it's very painful. You're like you know, eaten up.

So it's automatically painful because it's stopping what you want. כמו אם ירצה לאהוב שונאו, יתענג ממנו.

For example, if a person wants to love his enemy, he'll take pleasure in him. ולהיפך אם לא ירצה באוהבו, or if somebody doesn't want his beloved, יצטער ממנו, then he'll get pain from him. So if for some reason a person wants his enemy for something, so then he'll enjoy being with him. And if a person doesn't want to be with somebody, even if it's somebody that they like, like the example we just gave, where you're like you want to go do something, and they're right now you the person's company is stopping you from doing what you really want to do, you'll get pain from it.

וכן אם יתענג בשונא לו המזיקו, ירצה בו.

Similarly, we see with pleasure that if a person enjoys something, even if it's something that's that's hateful to him, that hurts him, he'll want it.

That if somebody finds oh some sort of pleasure in something, even though it was really a bad thing, and it's it's bad for him, he'll still want it.

Like we see people develop a pleasure in drinking alcohol, or in like drugs. That even though like it tastes bad at first, so it's like a disgusting thing, and it totally messes you up, but because there's some pleasure that comes from it, so then you want it.

ואם יצטער באוהב לו, and if a person gets pain from something that's that's beloved to him, something that he likes, לא ירצה, he won't want it.

One example would be like like let's say

somebody that's very kind and they want to, let's say, donate blood, but it hurts. Or not let's say it doesn't necessarily hurt, but like let's say, you know, they did it, and it makes them faint a little bit, you know what I mean? So because of the pain, then like they don't want to do it anymore. It like takes makes them like kind of afraid to do it.

כי מהות אחת הן, התרצות ותענוג, because the רצון and תענוג are really one thing. It's really just like that that you're connecting yourself to something. ולא נודע מי קדם, and we don't know. It's it's not that we don't know, it's it's not known. In other words, it's impossible to know which one came first.

Internal vs. External Nature of Desire and Pleasure 15:28

ולפעמים זה פנימי וזה חיצוני, ולפעמים להיפך. And sometimes one is internal, the other one is external. Sometimes you see one is like manifest and the other one you see as being like the hidden cause, and sometimes you see the other way around.

Sometimes looks like the רצון is the is the חיצוניות and the תענוג is the פנימיות, sometimes it looks like the תענוג is the חיצוניות and the רצון is the פנימיות.

ולא ימצא אחד בלא זולתו, but you'll never find one without the other. שאם אין תענוג אין רצון, ואם אין רצון אין תענוג. If there's no pleasure, there's no desire, and if there's no desire, there's no pleasure. בין בפשוט, בין במורכב, כנ״ל וד״ל. Whether it's simple or whether it's whether it's a simple desire and pleasure, or whether it's a מורכב, a complex desire and pleasure, meaning something separate from yourself, like we said before, וד״ל.

And that's the basic thing, that we see that they're really two sides of one coin, and they're really both just an expression of you connecting yourself with something.

And that is enough for the understanding. Yeah, but the נמשל we'll explain in the next chapter.