Rabbi Yuhanan Mesilat Yesharim 1.20-1.21

they will continue learning Mr Lati sharim we're on page one of 107 of Robert Victor Miller's commentary and this is chapter 120. last week we read the first paragraph I'm gonna quickly review it on page 106. and for that reason to in order to earn Eternal reward in the next world man is put first in this world in order that by these means that offer themselves to him here he will be able to arrive at the place which was prepared for him which is the world to come to be satis satiated there with happiness that he acquired for himself by these means the happiness is again building yourself building and raising your soul fixing your character traits and with those better tools that are the character traits if the character traits are perfect we will be able to see and enjoy the light of the divine presence and as you explained last week if your tools are crooked then the light that is going to come will only hurt it will be embarrassing as opposed to if your lenses are clean you will actually enjoy the light your eyes will not hurt the better the preparations one makes in this world the more happiness one will have in the world to come the reward is not uniform for everyone rather one who puts in more effort to prepare himself will experience enjoyment according to what he acquires as the sages say that one time doing a Mitzvah with effort is worth more than doing a Mitzvah 100 times without effort so everything is measured according to the effort the person puts in and as well as what you start with the lower your level and the higher you climb the more reward you get your level may be very high when you were born and you enjoyed free flow easy life and you stayed on that high level that itself is good but you didn't change much and therefore even though you may be much higher than someone else but that's someone grew put in a lot of effort whereas another person only grew a little bit and even though throughout life he feels above and everybody respects him he's on such a high level and he really is but the reward that he's gonna get is much smaller than the person lower that is why when um one Siege in the talmud lost his son to a disease and then sometime later the sun awoke again from his near-death experience the father asked his son what did you see in the next world and the son answered an upside down world did I see whoever is on top in this world was on the bottom in the next World whoever was low in this world was very high in the next World and that is because we judge circumstances and people according to um the external uh picture what we see there outside we don't know what's going on in the inner world and we don't know the struggles they go through and we don't know what talents they were born with and what they acquired uh through their own struggle and this is what the sages of blessed memory said today is to do them the mitzvot and tomorrow is the time for the reward and we know that many myths what we do in this world and we receive the reward in this world as well we know that on average most of the time people who are good they have good lives most of the time people who are kind they have pleasant pleasurable life surrounded by people who love them and people who are cruel angry they have unhappy lives and people around them treat them the same way so we already see that people who follow the way of Torah the way of Hashem they have on average and great majority of time good life and people who stay away from the proper path they have bad life and that is already in this world and in the next world that's where we will see the majority of the reward and that's where those that are evil will see the majority of punishment even though it is true that majority of people who are bad they suffer in this life but in the next world that's where the difference is going to become ultimate and drastic those that did mitzvot here will be living a life of Eternal pleasure and those that did uh sins will live life of suffering and embarrassment the mislature is referring to the gamara which discusses the timing of divine reward what is the meaning of the words I command you to do them today we say this actually it's a slightly different person but similar to smart I command you to do the com the mitzvot today and he answers today in this world we do the mitzvot and not tomorrow and not in the next World can we do the mitzvot today was made to do them and to tomorrow was made to receive the reward the gamara in fight emphasizes the word today and the word to do first today is the time the time is today not tomorrow tomorrow there is no opportunity to do and second today is the time to do to work hard not to relax not to seek reward not to enjoy life without accomplishment very often a person pushes himself he accomplishes and then he pauses he steps back and says oh I accomplished enough and he relaxes he takes vacation he takes it easy and then starts The Descent and all that time he is losing everything that he gained and not only that he also loses all those opportunities all the days that he could have gained more and he's not so as they say don't rest on your laurels don't enjoy too much your Victory continue to the next battle next accomplishment as um again one of one of our sages he said don't relax we will relax in the next World we'll have plenty of time to relax the whole eternity life is too short to relax in life every moment should be used to push forward to accomplish more and more and more in this life is not the goal and is not an achievement happiness is the base level the foundation to be successful in this life you need to be happy but then you have to build on it if you just like desolation means nothing growing that already can make you happy just the fact that I am alive without any possessions without any accomplishments already makes me happy I'm alive I have potential but if I never actualize the potential the happiness didn't achieve anything the happiness is the foundation when there is nothing yet but there is potential and therefore happiness is not the goal and happiness is not an achievement this world is only for the purpose of doing and the more a man does the more he's satisfied with his life if a person is successful enjoys life is happy it does not mean that he has utilized his life at all which means cannot stop as as gamara says even if you harvested at the beginning of your life continue planting and harvesting at the end of your life don't stop and the the more interprets it to uh to mean that if you had children when you were young don't settle don't be satisfied don't close the shop but rather continue striving to have more children and the Gamora says because you never know which investment is going to be successful you may have opened the business and if you just step back and relax maybe the business will close down open another business and another although that's not what we recommend in the physical sense but in spiritual sense that's exactly what you have to do just because you uh understood a concept you read a book you learned you finished or even the entire talmud don't stop just because you had one two three four children don't stop say can I have another one can I have another one another investment another investment another investment but it's going to be hard that's what life is for but I'll have to stay up late at night I'll have to wake up in the middle of the night I'll have to wake up early in the morning to get my children ready for school I'll have to do homework with them and I'll have to pay for their extracurricular activities and tuition and weddings and everything everything that's what life is about Hashem gives you the raw material and gives you time and you take it and accomplish as much as possible with it if you say Hashem I want to take it easy Hashem says so then why did I give you all that why did I invest in you so much I could have invested a little bit in you and then you risk losing all those extras and Hashem will say it's enough for you just a little bit of wealth it's enough for you or just a little bit of Health you don't need so much because you're not planning to do anything with it anyway so one way to live a long life and one way to stay healthy and never to lose your wealth is to use all your resources and we see this with a physical system our body if you don't use your muscles they atrophy and they Disappear Completely and the same thing with the brain if you don't use your brain your memory function and your conceptual understanding and figuring out things becomes diminished and so too with our resources if I we don't constantly use our money new money is not going to flow in if we don't use every last ounce of our strength Hashem says you have too much strength left let me take some away you don't need it so wasting and therefore we have to continue striving for more never resting never relaxing furthermore a person should not look for reward in this world because in this world there is no reward at all relatively compared to the next world there's no reward in this world as we explain number one it's limited in its time it lasts only a short period of time any pleasure you have as they say every pleasure can be compared to honey you have one teaspoon of honey uh you you enjoy it the second teaspoon you can manage but it's not as enjoyable third spoon you don't enjoy it at all and the fourth spoon you it starts hurting you you just don't want to have it it becomes painful so um Pleasures are limited first bite is delicious afterwards not law of diminishing returns and uh it's also Limited in its quality because we have a limited amount of neurons of nerve endings and limited number of signals that come into our brain limited number of neurons that can process it and so there's a lot of pleasure available you just cannot absorb all of it in the next World we have unlimited quantity and quality the pleasure never stops the pleasure is always pleasurable as like the first moment and it lasts eternity and it's also qualitatively different because our soul is infinite so the entire soul with its infinite potential can can feel and absorb the pleasure so compared to the next World pleasures of this world are insignificant and as if they don't exist in this world there is no reward at all compared to Eternity it's as if it's nothing as our sages say whatever appears in this world as a reward is merely encouragement to facilitate doing more so when a person doesn't meet Siva and he receives a reward for it that reward should not be viewed as a reward but as an opportunity to do more you helped a poor person and all of a sudden you get a promotion you get a bonus you get a few thousand dollars so you shouldn't say oh that means it's a reward no it's not a reward in this world there is no reward every resource we receive in this world is an opportunity and a test to do more or I received the bonus two thousand dollars for the Mitzvah that I did helping a poor that's not the reward I should take this few hundred thousand dollars and invest it into a gamar and start lending money to people if Hashem gave me extra money I should invest it to do more with my money whatever appears in this world as a reward is merely encouragement to facilitate doing more when a person does mitzvot Hashem gives him health and longer days and opportunity to do more mitzvot but the purpose of these blessings is not a reward people run after Pleasures in this world and think that life is only for the purpose of having good time but they are making the biggest mistake because this is not the place for good times every moment we enjoy Good Times we're losing so much we're losing eternity in the next world tomorrow is the time for reward in fact tomorrow means the next World if Hashem would pay the person in this world for a Mitzvah it would be the biggest misfortune if Hashem says you've done enough now go relax I reward you with Carefree life that's a disaster that's a curse because Hashem is cutting off your life short he's saying you're not going to accomplish any more from now on we don't want that to happen so with you the blessing that comes to us after doing a mitzvah as an opportunity to do more Meets World and as says if a person is poor it means Hashem does not expect him to accomplish in that area he is off the hook wealth is an opportunity to do mitzvot wealth is a test what will I do with my money a poor person is safe he cannot fail a rich person he has money if he invests the money good and if he doesn't Hashem will have a complaint against him I gave you money why didn't you use it so again if Hashem pays us for doing a Mitzvah in this world it would be the biggest Misfortune it would be like taking a million dollar check and exchanging it for a pack of cigarettes or an apple during a mitzvah guarantees you that you will get something like a million dollars in the next world and you say you know Hashem I don't want to wait for next World give me reward now okay fine what can I give you oh I want an apple okay here's an apple give me your check and it's even worse because the way we explain if you get an Apple at least you get something but over here by giving you easy life no no accomplishments that means that every moment from then on you're losing billions of dollars in the next world because every accomplishment is infinite reward and so we want good life but the good life is not to be enjoyed for the sake of enjoying good life rather for accomplishment as he said when he was dying he lifted up his fingers and he said God my hands are clean I did not enjoy it from this world at all and the question is asked how can rebirudana say that he didn't enjoy from this world at all when he was the richest person alive at that time among the Jewish people and some say even among the non-jews he was the second after the Roman emperor in wealth had so much that the sages find it hard to imagine how is it that he didn't enjoy anything his tables were always full of Delicacies he was wearing the best clothing servants everywhere Palace how can he say I didn't enjoy and the answer is because he did not view the Delicacies as enjoyment and reward for his deeds he didn't view good clothing and servants and Palace as a reward he viewed it as a responsibility he said I have money that means I have to support and he established ishivot where he put the sages and he said I will pay you so that you compile me the mishnayot the code of Jewish law the oral Torah and he single-handedly supported the project he had a lot of food so he invited poor people constantly to his table so he was able to raise his hands and say Hashem I didn't enjoy because I didn't view all the wealth and pleasure as we would do now rather I viewed it as a burden I have it it means it's not mine it's not there for me to sit back and enjoy it's for me to go and give it out to others the big checks can only be cashed in the world to come as we explain the nishama can actually feel infinite pleasure because infinite our brain is finite the amount of pleasure Hashem can give us is Tiny compared to infinity and also in this world the most the Hashem can give us is 120 years of pleasure that's nothing good compared to infinite eternity of pleasure this world is too small to pay for even one Mitzvah my name is what happened to be very enjoyable and enable us to enjoy life more like we said relaxing on Shabbat sleeping on Shabbat eating food on Shabbat marital relations and so on and so forth so forth most Meets World are things that we would do anyway because we like to do them eating and drinking and sleeping and procreating for instance if a person learns to thank Hashem for eating and drinking or for breathing the air that is a big Mitzvah and it enhances the enjoyment of Life someone who never said thank you for food or for a breath of air goes through life without noticing that he's enjoying so much and really that means he's not enjoying and when you learn to do the Mitzvah of saying thank you to Hashem all of a sudden your life becomes so much more enjoyable when we utilize the Mitzvah to be happy in this world that happiness is not deducted from our reward at all rather it is all part of the encouragement to go ahead and do more mitzvot so happiness from doing Meets World is permitted and therefore it's it's a very advisable for a person to learn how to enjoy the world with the attitude of thanking Hashem if you enjoy the world for your own sake that costs a lot of money because at that moment you're not doing mitzvot you're just enjoying you're losing tremendous amount of opportunity to accomplish and at the same time that reward that you get in you're exchanging for reward in the next World which is infinite but if you're using enjoyment to thank Hashem then it's on his account because you're doing Mitzvah so no reward is lost from the next World and not only that at that same moment when you enjoying your gratitude is a Mitzvah so you are accomplishing so you can enjoy stakes and good night's sleep and luxurious life and marital relations and everything everything in the world and not feel guilty about it and only while you are thanking Hashem for all your pleasures now we go to chapter 121 page 108 perfection is clinging to Hashem when you look more deeply into this matter you will see that the True Perfection is only clinging to Hashem it is a pattern now this is speaking it is a pattern in the misalati sharim to explain a subject and then to instruct us to look at it more deeply this is an important attitude that we should apply generally even if we learned something and even if we think we know it we should go back and look more deeply into it and we will see more than we saw before this is the importance of review everything we learned we must review because review is part of learning if you never review you only cover The Superficial layer and even that you might not understand when you review you understand it better superficially and then you have opportunity to dig deeper and understand better and better and that is also considered learning not even review now we come to a word that we find in this work more than elsewhere the word perfection means Perfection and the author is telling us that all of them is what we do are our Perfection according to the Improvement we make in ourselves and the Chile moot we achieved the Perfection we achieve so will be our reward in the next world the more perfect we become the more we will enjoy the next World so foreign has explained that by doing the mitzvot man prepares himself for the happiness of the world to come that should be his aim in everything that he does this is the basic concept of perfection you perfect your character and as a result you will be able to enjoy the next World and Hashem put us in this world in order to acquire as much Perfection as we can the amount of perfection one acquires in this world is directly proportional to the happiness he will experience in the next World As We explain if your plate is clean you will enjoy the food that you're being served on the plate if your plate is dirty because it fell in the mud and you didn't bother cleaning it and then they Place delicious uh designer food on it it's not going to look appetizing and you might not even want to touch it because it's disgusting so too with our body and our soul if we make it clean we go to the next World and we will be able to enjoy if our tools our soul is dirty we're not going to enjoy any pleasure what is being added now is that simply doing the mitzvot is not the complete perfection rather the real Perfection is that they could which means clinging to Hashem by filling the mind at all times with the thought of him we should always be thinking about Hashem this is one of the six constant Meets World the first Mitzvah of the six Casa Mitzvah that every person has to have in mind is that God exists awareness of Hashem and he says that perfection is awareness because really if you're aware of Hashem at all times you will be careful not to do sins you will be careful to do mitzvot you will be grateful thankful happy patient all good character traits will all of a sudden appear why because Hashem is good when you connect to good all of a sudden you exhibit good and let's just finish this paragraph there are various ways of accomplishing this which will be explained through the rest of this safer but fundamentally the idea is to have Hashem in mind in everything you do and that is why our sages instituted that we should say 100 blessings daily in order to help us to remind us that Hashem exists put Hashem in your mind if you start forgetting take a cup of water and say and drink and when you say the name of Hashem remember him think about him and that cup of water will save you that cup of water will keep you connected to Hashem and then at that moment your whole day will change all of a sudden everything will start working out everything will be successful why because you're connected to Hashem and if you do that a hundred times a day think about Hashem