Rabbi Yuhanan Mesilat Yesharim 1.15-1.16 (1)

problem welcome back we are continuing our studies in mississaug we have studied for quite some time and we learned the introduction and part of the first chapter and then we took a break for the yamim tovim and we're coming back so in order to remind ourselves I'm going to quickly review what chapter 1 is speaking about so I'm gonna read just the English of misalat Miss and then when we get to where we stop then we are going to continue studying in depth so he says like this the foundation of devotion to Hashem and the root of perfect service is that it should become clear and it should be convincing to every one of us what is the purpose of man in the in his world and toward what should he put his glance and his gaze what should be his goal in all the tutorials all the days of his life so briefly the foundation of our service to Hashem and our life is to make it clear what we are living for what we are working for we wake up and we start doing things we run from thing to thing from task to task is their purpose or until we go to sleep and we look back and we say okay here goes another day and uh I didn't accomplish anything what for do I toil all the days of my life behold what did our sages of blessed memory teach us that the Man was created only for the purpose of gaining pleasure from Hashem and to enjoy the Splendor of his shechina of the divine presence so that's the goal we have to keep in mind we are created in order to receive pleasure from Hashem Hashem created us not to serve him but rather that he should serve us and for that we have to live a life that we should feel that we deserved his Blessing then the blessing will be really enjoyable and then we will be able to enjoy the Splendor of shakina that is the true pleasure and the greatest of all forms of delight of all the Delights that could be found in the world the pleasure of our communication with God the pleasure of realizing that everything we get in life is coming as a gift from Hashem to understand that there is a relationship not to take things for granted and the true place of this pleasure is the world to come because the world to come was created with the preparation that is necessary for this pleasure as we explain that our physical world has a lot of pleasures and if we learn the Gate of examination where we examine the physical world and how it's created for our benefit out of love of Hashem for us we will enjoy the world more because as uh the gemara says who is considered a good guest the one that says everything that the host prepared was for me so a good guest enjoys the party why because he doesn't feel oh I'm just a byproduct you know everyone was invited and I just came to partake a little bit on the side no the good guest says everything was made for me I'm the main guest over here the guest of honor and the owner of the house thought about me and the owner of the house cared for me and gave me the what is going to give me the best benefit and the best pleasure and then I will have gratitude to the owner and I will accept everything as uh custom made for me and therefore I'll gain more pleasure as opposed to feeling I'm just picking up crumbs that fell from the Royal table it's not for me it wasn't made for me God didn't think about me no we say God thought about me he prepared everything for me so this world is a world of great pleasure but now we learn that as much as pleasure we have in this world it's nothing compared to the next world and we explained in the past that in this world we're limited by our brain by our senses by the number of connections and number of neurons and therefore what we we feel and what we can process with our brain is limited but in the next World we we will see and and sense things with our soul which is unlimited Hashem can really shower us with unlimited pleasure so now the goal becomes different the goal is not only to achieve greatest pleasure in this world the goal is to prepare in this world to achieve the greatest pleasure in the next world and the path to reach this destination is by means of this world this is what our sages said this world is like a vestibule to the world to come as it says prepare yourself yourself in the vestibule in order to enter the banquet hall prepare yourself change your character doomitzvot learn Torah come close to Hashem beautify your soul so that when you come to the world to come you will be sensitive enough to feel the pleasure and now Hashem we reviewed uh the beginning of chapter one what we covered so far and now we're going to go in depth on page 98 of Sharif chapter 1.15 preparation or fixing the number one is don't do damage this is again the book misiladi sharim The White Edition Aura Victor Miller's commentary number one job of a human being in this world is not to do damage just like doctors take an oath not to do harm because when a doctor sees a patient who is weak he has to be very careful not to weaken him even further just like you're driving on the road you see an accident and you run and you want to help they tell you don't help because you don't know how to help a call ambulance police paramedics let them help even though the person is laying there and crying Help help you can't help because you might pick him up in the wrong way and break his back or even kill him because you don't know how to do it so too if you're not sure what to do don't do anything don't do damage and therefore every person has to understand that life is a dangerous matter and the the faster you will learn the laws of Life the faster you will learn how to control your character not to hurt anybody the safer your life will be the safer your Passage through this world will be and so we should not postpone our learning for later because just like you don't start driving and say I'll I'll uh learn and pass the driving course later let me drive in the meantime if I make a few mistakes it's okay no because it's very dangerous if you crash and kill someone or yourself it's going to be too late so too with life you don't say oh it's okay let me live my life and later when I have time I'll learn let me get married I'll uh try to figure out how to treat my wife no first learn how to treat your wife and then get married or let me have children and then will will swing it will somehow figure out how to raise them no don't damage your children don't sacrifice your children on the altar of your ego rather make it your job to learn how to raise children and so on and so forth learn about mitzvot learn about uh prohibitions and then live a successful life so midrash in which Hashem speaks to Adam the first man Hashem said to him look at my work how beautiful and how praiseworthy my Creations are and everything that they created is only because of you man therefore put your mind pay to pay attention of the following obligation that you have you should not damage and ruin my world foreign gave to Adam make this world a better place but keep in mind always not to damage the world therefore we learn that there are two important functions in life making things better than they were and secondly not to spoil anything the Torah says when you will come to the land and you should plant fruit trees that's the translation according to the midrash the plain meaning however is that not when but if you plant fruit trees if you decide to plant fruit trees they will be subject to the laws of Orla the first three years and other laws but the midrash says not that if you plant the midrash says when you plant which means it's a given for sure you will plant why because you're obligated to plant you have to make the world a better place so not if you plant if you decide no you have to plant and when you plant for the first three years don't eat the fruit that's called Orla you should see to it that the land remains beautiful with all the gardens and Orchards that you found upon your arrival it should continue for your children after you thank you as we learn in a in a book of yahushua the Tama tells us that yahushua made a decree when the Jewish people came into the land of Israel yahushua made arabinic Proclamation rabbinic law that if you see a nice fruit tree in your neighbor's field you are allowed to go in without his permission and cut off a small branch from history and planted in your field sounds strange is that not called stealing and Yeshua said we come into the land and the land is mostly desolate there are pockets of uh populated areas but majority of the land is uncultivated and we want to make the land of Israel a beautiful place and therefore he said in order to allow that to happen we will give special permission at that time in the land of Israel that if you see a beautiful fruit tree you are allowed to take a branch from each tree and plant your own Orchard cannot damage the tree but one little twig will not harm the tree and yahushua allowed it this is what we're learning now you should see to it that the land remains beautiful with all the gardens and Orchards that you found upon your arrival it should continue for your children after you that's the minimum make sure it continues thriving being fruitful and of course step number two is to add to it midrash continues with a story about the Roman Emperor Hadrian who saw an old man laboring to plant a tree and he said old man you're planting now and laboring for others because you surely will not enjoy the fruits of this tree you're too old as the saying goes if you're old they make a joke they tell old people don't buy green bananas to hint to them that you might not live to eat them those few days that it takes bananas to ripen you're so old shouldn't buy green bananas that's what the emperor said to this old man you're so old that you're not going to eat from this fruit the fruit of this tree why are you planting it the old man said my master I'm planting so that if I will be worthy I'll eat the fruit myself nobody knows how long I'm gonna live not even you the great emperor of Rome although I'm old I might live and eat from this tree myself and if not let my children eat because others planted for me when I came into the world the world had fruit trees I want to plant for my descendants so the the way the story ends is that that person actually went to sleep and he slept for 70 years and he woke up and he actually was able to eat from that tree now you come into this world and you're going to use the world make sure that it's going to be just as beautiful and as useful as it was when you came in in Russian there is a saying new plush colors which means don't spit in a well that you drank from because you never know maybe you will need to drink from it again yes you drank from it now you're leaving the place don't spoil it you never know maybe you'll have to come back and if not at least leave it as beautiful as when you came to to to benefit from it somebody asked me in Yeshiva what's the first thing to do after you learn musad after you learn Torah and you learn ethical teachings in Yeshiva what should you do should you go help your neighbor should you go call your wife and and compliment her make her feel good and he answered the first thing you do is to put the the book back on its Shelf you found it on the Shelf put it back on the Shelf there is a common Uh custom in synagogues and in yeshivot and butemid unfortunately that people take out books they bring them to their table and when they finish learning they just get up and walk out without putting books back and that is not a good idea you came into the synagogue to pray or to learn and you damaged you did damage to the synagogue now the synagogue has to pay someone to put books back and you damaged people because they will come to the Shelf looking for a book and it's not there and they'll have to search through the entire synagogue midrash to find that book so that's called mits a Mitzvah that you accomplished by doing the sin by hurting others and that means what doesn't count it would be better not to enter bed midrash and do damage but stay outside and uh um not hurt people so when you walk on the street you can't litter the street by dropping things there you found a clean Street leave a clean Street you found a good world live a good World there are small things that people can do to remind themselves from time to time of this great function if you ate breakfast what would be the harm if you took your dishes to the sink to rinse them off yourself right don't just leave the dishes on the table for your wife to clean or for the clinic staff to clean the next step is to actually bring it to the sink that's already praiseworthy but even better is to clean them in the garbage and then and then wash them in the sink and put them back in a drying uh rack and we might say I have better things to do yes but working on your character is preparing for olamabad and uh that's the most important thing you can do is even even harder than learning Torah and you get reward according to the difficulty so since washing your own dishes is the most hard so that is going to give you the greatest reward your wife gave you clean dishes so wash off at least one dish and give it back clean so again if you say oh I can't wash all the dishes fine wash something even one spoon even one cup one plate to train yourself to give back to the society give back to your wife now chapter 1.16 another part of tikkun is emulating Hashem many people are accustomed to the idea of tikkun what is tikkun we hear about tikonim and Kabbalah which means improving mysterious unseen upper worlds that is also true but Hashem also wants something in this world improve this world with hashem's Kingdom as we say in Alena which Olam which world you were trying to improve this world with hashem's Kingdom how do we improve this world with hashem's Kingdom Hashem himself showed us the way he was the first one to be creative Hashem made everything he wants us to emulate him we should be creative too Hashem put into us an instinct to create in fact when people don't