Quotes From The Tanya

Chapter 9

The Zohar says that Binah – Divine comprehension, is Teshuvah Ilah (the higher Teshuvah.)

In other words, when a person uses their comprehension to truly comprehend the greatness of the Divine, furthermore understand that “the Divine is my very essence, my soul, who I am!” this gives wings to the love, making it soar aloft.

Similarly, one’s comprehension can be used to understand that the great Divine Being constantly is watching my behavior, hence this arouses perhaps a fear of punishment or better, a sense of embarrassment – for when one is cognizant that another supervises them – commensurate with the greatness of the person who is looking at them – is the fact, they will be ashamed to do wrong.

Now the main aspect of love is the unity of the lovers – hence love for God would mean to unify your mind and emotions, thoughts, speech and actions (which compromise the human self) with God’s; This is achieved by firstly the emotional love towards God (which also translates as the embarrassment to do what he abhors – see above) and in practice, relates to the study of Torah (mind/thoughts) the speaking the words of Torah (speech) and in practice, the giving of Charity (the essence of all the Divine commandments.)

For one who has caused the Divine mind (the Divine connected to his mind, see above) to descend to the lowest realm due to wasteful emission of semen and certainly forbidden relations, the way for him to repent is through the additional study of Torah, like a string or rope that got cut, so we double-knot it – this is what it states, that if someone sins and is liable for a punishment what should he do? “If he was accustomed to reading one page of Talmud, let him read two, one Mishna, let him read two” (for Torah reconnects one with the Divine.)

Chapter 10

In the last chapter we spoke of Teshuvah Ilah as it relates to Torah, but it also relates to prayer.

However before prayer and the love it engenders, uniting one’s heart in God, as it states, “You should love God with all your heart and all your soul!” one must preform the lower level of Teshuvah which is the feeling pity on the Divine-Being, dragged into the mud by my negative (see above.)

This should ideally be done before one begins praying (to have the above pity-based contemplation) however, once one finished the pity-based contemplation they should then start praying with joy.

As today people are not capable of transforming their emotions (for a healthy mind should have absolute control on one’s emotional feelings) therefore a good idea would be to have the pity-based meditation during Tikkun Chatzois (at night) hence during the morning prayers one will be in a state of joy – for those who find this difficult they should at least do so on Thursday nights.

Chapter 11

In truth one should be able to hold both emotions of joy and sadness, as mentioned in the end of chapter 34 of Tanya from the Zohar “One side of my heart is ecstatic; The other side, weeps.”

Now the way a person comes to this important level (for as we will soon see, the important balance it creates) is by rejoicing after repentance!

The reason for this rejoicing is, imagine you had a fallout with a close friend and after saying “I am sorry” the friend forgives you; this would bring your heart much joy! – Well, though we constantly repent (as mentioned in last chapter, doing the lower level Teshuvah) nonetheless, as God and his emotions are infinite, hence his compassion and forgiveness likewise are immediately aroused the moment we seek forgiveness.

In other words, one should now feel great joy that one is back in God’s loving heart!

Now this is consistent with what King David (who repented after his sin with Batsheva said) “I recall my sin before me constantly” – this means not that he felt deep shame, a sense of lowness constantly, rather it was in order to enable him to remain humble – in other words: one repents, one rejoices in their newfound union, and then remains humble by reminding themselves of their capacity to sin (by the way, this memory of our sins is also highly effective in preventing us from becoming angry, as we can attribute an evil another does to us as a Divine retribution (so instead of allowing them to anger us we see it merely as a cosmic justice.)