Part 5 · Chapter 2

תבונה: Guiding Emotions Through Understanding 0:03

וגם וזה הטעם בבחינת המוחין שבמידות נמשך מבחינת התבונה. And this is also the reason why the intellect of the emotions comes from תבונה, because the intellect of the emotions is what once you have an emotion, that's what tells your emotion how to go, and it also is what keeps it going. So like we just explained, תבונה is what takes the שכל and applies it down and tells your emotion in each situation whether this is good or bad.

So that's the intellect that relates to emotions. Should you be happy about this, or should you be sad about this? Should you like this, or should you hate this? So the thing that applies your understanding of what this thing is and understanding of what's going on in this situation to how you should actually feel is תבונה, and that tells your that's the intellect of the emotions. It tells your emotion what intellect to have.

And then based on that, that's what keeps your emotion going. So like if somebody You can see this sometimes, like a like a little kid, like a baby falls down, or sometimes even an older kid falls you know, falls down. At first, they're like shocked, and they're just thinking about what happened. And then all of a sudden, they calm down a little bit, and they realize what happened, and it hits them, and then they start to cry.

Why didn't they cry right away? Because when it first happened, they were shocked, and right away their חכמה and בינה were analyzing what happened, and they're just trying to figure out what was going on. So when they're involved in the in the mind, they didn't feel an emotion.

Then after they calmed down a little bit, they said they say, "Wait a minute, that hurt me," and then they start to cry. And the same thing like if somebody hits somebody. Sometimes, at first, he'll be real shocked, and he won't get angry, because he'll just be like, "What's going on?" And then when he said realizes what's going on, he'll say, "Hey, he hit me! How could he hit me?"

whatever, and his his his שכל will tell him that he should get mad. And as soon as his שכל says, "Oh, you shouldn't let him do that. You should," then he starts to get angry.

חכמה as the Foundation of Earth and Heaven 2:02

And that's the way it is with every emotion. וכמו שכתב, ה׳ בחכמה יסד ארץ, that it says that ה׳ founded the earth with with חכמה, דאבא יסד ברתא, because the father founds the daughter, which means that חכמה is the source of מלכות, and the ארץ represents מלכות, like we'll explain later about that.

כונן שמים בתבונה, He maintains the heavens with תבונה. שמים הם בחינת המידות, אש מים, כידוע. And the and the heavens represents the two emotions אש ומים. The word שמים, it says, a contraction of אש ומים, and that represents חסד וגבורה.

And so תבונה is what is what maintains the emotions of חסד וגבורה, of אש ומים, because the שכל has to tell them what to feel, or else they they will the feelings will go away.

כידוע. וכן, and similarly it says, ובתבונה יתכונן, that with תבונה, they are established. שהוא בחינת קיום המידות בבחינת המוחין דתבונה שבהם, which this is what keeps the emotions the the the the maintenance of the emotions from their the מוחין of תבונה. The intellect that tells their emotions what they should feel, that's what keeps the emotion going. And this is like you see that when a person has an emotion, they keep like having this little tape recorder go off in their head over and over again, repeating a certain thing.

So like if they're angry, they keep repeating to themselves, "Oh, look what that guy did to me. I'm not going to let him get away with it." They just keep telling them the themselves that over and over again. That's like a ובכן. And the same thing with like an אהבה. They keep telling themselves, "Oh, I like this so much. This is so great. This is so great."

Like, they just keep telling that to themselves over and over again, and that's what keeps the emotion going. And you see like you see sometimes by people that are just like if they want to hype themselves up, that friends will tell each other that. They'll keep telling each other that, "Oh, isn't this great? This is great," you know?

They want they want to keep the feeling going. כי התבונה כמו ממוצע, because the תבונה is like a sort of intermediary, להביא מוחין מבחינת מידות דבינה במידות שבלב. It brings an intellect from the emotions of בינה to the emotions of the heart. So to go from the absolutely theoretical מידות of בינה, which we spoke about before, which have nothing to do with a particular case, to go to an actual feeling of what I should feel now, you need to have the תבונה, which translates the שכל into a ובכן.

And that's like, you know, when the the woman brings the chicken to the rabbi, and he says, "Well, according to the רמ״א, according to the ש״ך, according to the ב״ח," and he starts this whole פלפול, and it's based on a גמרא, it's מחלוקת Because this opinion, that opinion, and it's really depends on how you understand this and that, and he starts this whole פלפול. And at the end, she says, "So is it כשר or not?"

She doesn't want to hear the whole פלפול, she just wants to know is it כשר or not. So even though you can understand this whole פלפול and you can understand like the whole theory, but then you have to be able to take it from the theory to the פועל. Oh, so what does that mean in this case? And that's the thing of תבונה. שזהו כמו כח ההויה בענין הנבדל שהוא עיקר ענין התבונה כנ"ל.

Which this idea of transferring something from intellect to emotions, that is like the power of bringing something out into something separate from the שכל, cuz the emotions are separate from the שכל, and this is the general thing of תבונה like we've been explaining is the ability to apply the intellect to something separate from it. And so this power of application in this case is to apply it to an emotion.

Okay, so now we explained what תבונה is and we explained the difference between תבונה and the מדות of בינה, that the מדות of בינה are in the theory and תבונה is applying it outside of the theory. And now we're going to explain how you get תבונה. וידוע גם כן שיש נון כפופה ונון פשוטה בבינה. It's known that there is both a bent נון and a straight נון, a long נון, in בינה.

The Bent and Straight Nun: Symbols of בינה 6:12

להיות נון כפופה הוא רוחב ונון פשוטה הוא אורך. That the נון, in general the letter נון represents בינה, and the bent נון represents the width of בינה, and the long נון represents the אורך of בינה. Because the bent נון goes like to a width, and the long נון just goes down. והנון, and the letter נון is special, המילוי שלו בנון פשוטה. That how what's the מילוי when you're spelling out the name of the letter נון, how do you spell it?

You spell it with a נון פשוטה, with a long נון. So you spell it נון, ואו, נון, a bent נון and a long נון. That's how you spell it. מה שאין כן בשאר מילוי האותיות. This is not the case with any other letter in the Hebrew אלף בית.

The only other letter that is doubled in its מילוי is the letter מם. But there it's not a straight מם, it's a closed מם, and later on we'll explain the significance of those two מםs. But the only letter that has The other letters that are straight, like a כף and a פא and a צדיק, so those ones, they're not spelled out with with the long one. So what does this represent?

כי האורך נכלל בהרוחב. The length is included in the width. So in other words, the מילוי of a letter is the explanation of the letter. So if I point to a letter נון on a page, a bent נון, a regular נון, and I ask you, "What letter is that?", so you're going to tell me, "נון." By telling me "נון", you told me it's a bent נון and a straight נון, cuz what you told me was נון, ואו, נון.

So the explanation of a bent נון includes a long נון. כי האורך נכלל בהרוחב, because this represents the length is included in the width. When you when you study an idea and you study the width and you see the idea with many different explanations of the idea, then you start to get the length, that you'll be able to explain it simply also. וכך הוא בתבונה, the same thing with תבונה.

That the ability to apply it outside of the idea, which is the length of תבונה, to be able to do things with it and to give a advice or a פסק based on it and to be able to bring it to an emotion, that depends on the width of תבונה. And the width of תבונה is that you should be able to explain it to yourself in many different ways and and find examples of it to explain it to yourself outside of the idea itself.

In other words, the difference between the width of בינה and the width of תבונה is that the width of בינה is only explanations and משלים that are necessary to understand the idea itself. But once you understand the idea itself, תבונה is then just like a good speaker, just finds all these stories and examples and like cute ways of saying it that are not really necessary to understand the idea.

They just It It helps it sink in, though. And like you see, like motivational speakers and motivational books, inspirational books, one of the or speakers, one of the main things that they do is just give you stories to illustrate the point. It's not really helping you understand the point, you understand it already. But by giving you a lot of examples and a lot of sayings and cute little quotes about it, it helps you to feel it, to inspire you about it.

So like for example, if you're going to listen to like a, you know, any of these let's say like get-rich-quick tape or something, what will they do? They'll try to They'll tell you all these stories of people that that they, you know, their program worked for, to try to get you, and then it helps to get you excited because you see in this case and that case, and tell you the details.

It's not really helping you to understand anything. It's telling you the details of how this person was in this situation, that situation, and this helped, and, you know, it helps you to appreciate it. ואמנם נון הכפולה בענין הנקרא התבוננות, but the double נון that we find in the word התבוננות, כמו עמי לא התבונן וכו׳, like it says, "My people do not contemplate." So, we see that the double נון, before we explained that why is it of two נון's, because you have to learn it over and over again.

Double Nun and תְּבוננות: Deep Study 10:17

When you're when you're studying, when you're doing התבוננות, you have to do it over and over until you understand it very clearly. But now we see that really that includes both a bent נון and a straight נון, like it says עמי לא התבונן. So, we see that the two נון's are one is really a bent נון and one is a straight נון. שזהו בבחינת פנימיות בינה, which this התבוננות is the inner thing of בינה, הנקרא עיון, which is called analysis or study, ועומד על הדבר וכו׳, to dwell on a thing, on a matter until you understand it clearly.

שנקרא בינה שבבינה, this is called בינה שבבינה. הוא ממוצע בין בינה לתבונה. So, this התבוננות is the intermediary between בינה and תבונה. על ידי הנון פשוטה, through the נון פשוטה שמחמת זה נקרא התבוננות וכו׳ וד״ל. Because it has two נון's, so the first נון is just you're understanding the idea, and the second נון is bringing that idea out into תבונה. So, when you do the התבוננות of בינה שבבינה over and over again, so first you get the bent נון, which is the בינה itself, you understand it, and then the the the length of בינה brings it out into תבונה.

And that's the נון פשוטה of התבוננות. So, the way that you get תבונה is by doing a lot of התבוננות. So, if you do התבוננות and you understand the idea in theory, but you can't apply it, that means that you have to do the נון again, you have to go back over and do it a few more times. And then if you study the idea more, and you try to explain it to yourself in different ways, you'll start to you'll start to get develop a קליטה for it, absorb it, and then you'll have תבונה.

And one more thing of the the idea of these two, the double נון, of the bent נון and the straight נון in התבוננות, is that these are two different types of study. And you see this if you look in קונטרס עץ החיים, where the רש״ב explains how to learn נגלה, like how to learn גמרא. He explains the same system that he explains here in פרק א׳ וב׳ for how to do התבוננות.

Learning Process: From Theory to תבונה 12:44

And there he explains that when you learn, you have to do two things, there's two steps in your learning. First, you have to learn it and just understand and be able to say over the words of the original very well.

Then, after you learn it and you understand the original words very well, you have to say it over in your own words. And that process of saying it over in your own words is the idea of תבונה. And that's what he said before about the רחב of תבונה, that the idea of the רחב of תבונה is being able to say it in different words, in your own words.

And when you can take that idea and switch it into your own words, which is the width of תבונה, the רחב of תבונה, then that brings you the אורך of תבונה. And when you have the אורך and the רחב, then you're able to get the עומק, and so then that brings you to that קליטה, that you really absorb the idea.

So, this is like the two types of learning, that there's one learning where you just focus on the the original, the material, like if you're learning here about the משלים in חסידות or, you know, whatever idea, you have to understand them all very well and just get the original very well, and then, in order to get the תבונה, you have to try to say it over in your own words and apply it to different situations, also to be able to apply it to your own life.

And when you try to do that, then you'll you'll start to absorb it and get תבונה. So, it's also two different types of learning: a bent נון learning and a straight נון learning.