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Teachings
and Writings of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
Rebbe
Nachman on Joy
by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, San Francisco,
5734.
Transcribed by Rabbi Elana Rappaport Schachter
Rabbeinu
This
is a little anthology of Reb Nachman's teachings about joy.
What is the difference between sadness and joy? Joy really
fills you; whatever you have is fuller, and sadness empties
you out. "I don't have this, I don't have that,"
so even what you have you don't have. People walk around sad
because they don't know what to do with their future. You
have this minute right now. What are you doing with it? The
difference between sadness and joy is very simple. Sadness
always tells you, "Oy Vey! What are you going to do in
ten minutes?
What
will you do ten years from now?" If you are really filled
with joy for one minute, then you will know what to do the
next minute also. What is G-d giving you? He is giving you
this minute. He hasn't given tomorrow, He promised He will
give tomorrow. Of course I don't know what to do tomorrow,
because I didn't receive it yet. Sadness is very much concerned
with what I don't have, and I really don't have tomorrow yet.
Why, if somebody dies, G-d forbid, are you filled with sadness?
Because somebody isn't there, right? The depths of joy and
sadness are 'being" and "not being". If you
get something you are happy. The more you get it, the deeper
you get it, the deeper is your joy.
Have
you ever seen people who are so happy when they have an excuse
to be sad? One woman said to me, "I can't talk to my
mother unless I am sick." When she is sick then her mother
has something to say. There are certain parts of a person
which react only to "not being". We have to wipe
them out. There are some people who say, "I am just happy."
Have you ever seen women when they come out of the beauty
parlor saying, "It is a beautiful day, and I am happy"?
What are you happy about? What did you get? You got today,
but what are you doing with it?
Don't
kid yourself. You cannot be happy unless you have something.
If you say, "I'm just happy happy why? Because the beauty
parlor instead of charging you $35 only charged $29 and you
give a tip of $2 so you saved $4? Reb Nachman says if you
are happy for no reason, without doing something good, you
are just kidding yourself. On the contrary, the reaction to
this kind of joy will be that you will be knocked down low
five minutes later. If you can be happy just because you are
alive then you have something, if you really feel it. Everyone
says they are happy they are alive, but the question is, are
you really receiving life?
That
is the highest level there is. Most people don't realize that
life is a gift from G-d, and most people are not happy. It
says, skhar mitzva mitzva, the reward of a mitzva is a mitzva,
and the reward oi joy is joy. How does G-d pay you off for
being happy? He gives you another minute of hapiness, so if
this one minute of happiness is real, the next minute will
be also. But if you say, "I'm so happy to be alive",
and the next minute you are walking around like a dope, there
was something wrong.
The
truth is, I am always standing before nothingness, because
I am non-existent yet for the next minute. I'm not there yet.
Time isn't there. The world isn't there. The world is here
right now. One split second, one billionth of a split second
in the future has not been created yet. I am always standing
between "being" and "not being", between
Heaven and Hell. Hell is the utmost of not being.
What
is happening in Hell? I am not burning like a hamburger. In
Hell I realize that I was non-existent. Do you know how it
feels if you are suddenly non-existent? G-d forbid, that it
ever happen to anybody. Imagine, suddenly you don't have a
hand. What a horrible feeling. Imagine if suddenly you are
there, and you see that you are not there; you would see yourself
not being. It is unbearable. There are two kinds of "not
being". One way of not being is when you are just physically
not there, but imagine if you are there and you are not there.
That is what really hurts. If I love somebody very much, and
they are not here, so they are not here. It is sad.
Imagine
they would be sitting next to me and they won't talk to me.
That is a deep kind of "not being" which hurts.
Hell is that I am there, but I am not there. Sadness is a
sickness, not an emotional problem. It is absolutelya sickness
and you have to get rid of it. The Baal Shem Tov says if you
want to know whether you are really serving G-d, it is simple.
If my heart is filled with joy each time I put on tfillin,
and each time I do something good my heart is filled with
joy, I am serving G-d. If I amnot on that level, then I am
just doing mechanical things. That is very holy, I'll be rewarded
in Heaven for it, but it is heartbreaking.
If
I look sad when I walk in a room, what happens to the person
sitting next to me? He feels a bit uncomfortable. If he loves
me a lot he will overcome those uncomfortable feelings and
say, "I got to stick it out, he's my friend, so I have
to stick around while he is crying." This.is not good.
If I am sitting here and laughing like the Ropshitzer Rebbe,
laughing my head off, suddenly everyone will feel comfortable.
It is very simple. You feel uncomfortable when someone laughs
hysterically if it is stupid laughter, but not if it is holy
laughter.
If
you could look into the abyss it would be very uncomfortable,
frightening. The truth is, when you see someone sad, at that
moment you are confronted with nothingness. You see that person
is struggling between "being" and "non-being".
Imagine that I am standing on the roof with one foot on the
roof, and the other hanging over the edge. You say, "Listen,
do me a favour. You make me nervous, even if you are the greatest
acrobat in the world. Put your foot back on the roof. I don't
have strength to watch that." You have to realize it
is the same way with G-d. When you walk around sad you make
G-d uncomfortable. G-d says, "I love you. I'm your G-d.
I signed a contract on Mt. Sinai and I will stick to it. I'll
be with you, but I reaIly don't feel comfortable with you
when you are sad."
When
you smile filled with joy, and you look at somebody, they
look back at you, When you cry they can't really look back
at you. You can smile eye to eye, but you can't cry eye to
eye. We know this world is a little mirror of Heaven, so although
it can be beautiful when you cry, G-d still feels a little
uncomfortable about it. You can cry with being, or you can
cry with nothingness, with this dead kind of sadness. If someone
says, "Really I love you so much, I want to be the greatest
friend to you," and he cries while he says it, that can
open your heart in a thousand ways.
But
if someone cries, "I was in the beauty parlor, sniff
sniff, and they cheated me, sniff sniff, and I paid five dollars"
what do you feel then? Would you say it is a beautiful confrontation?
You say okay, pat her on the back, and look away. There is
a very deep difference between crying before somebody and
crying about something. If I am crying before G-d it is the
holiest thing. Maybe He is crying with me, If I am crying
about something, am I telling it to G-d, it is not as good.
Anyway,
the most important thing you have to know is that if you are
shining below here, G-d is shining. If you smile below here,
then G-d smiles back at you from above. Something very holy
is going on between you and G-d. Tears open the gates, but
joy breaks down the walls! The word sadness is really a bad
translation. The word atzvut actually means to shut yourself
off. There are two kinds of sadness. There is marirut, which
is bitterness, which is living sadness, and there is atzvut,
which is dead sadness. Bitterness says, "I wish I could
do better. I didn't do it right.
Gevalt!
Why didn't I do better?" Without regretting, I just know
I didn't do well enough. That is living sadness, because when
I walk out of there, I want to do better. The Baal Shem Tov
says you can tell the difference between marirut and atzvut
very simply. If you see another person after you cry, do you
love them or do you hate them? If you cry in the living kind
of crying then every person looks beautiful to you afterward.
"I'm not so good, but they are so beautiful." If
you have the dead kind of sadness, then everything looks ugly
to you.
Sometimes
you cry and you look out the window and say, "Oh, those
disgusting creatures walking down the street." With this
kind of sadness G-d can't look at you either. If you want
to know if you have the living kind of sadness or the dead
kind of sadness, this is the test. In the dead kind of sadness,
deep down you think, "I really think there is no G-d,
the whole thing is a fake." Even if this is only for
one split second, at that moment you really reached the botom
of dead sadness.
Therefore
Reb Nachman warns that you should keep as far away from it
as you can. There is a deep kind of sadness coming from things
that G-d caused. We are always accustomed to rattle off the
prayers. The holy Trisker Maggid was so real that one Slichos
he didn't go to pray. Slichos are the special prayers for
the Saturday night before Rosh Hashana. Some Chassidim asked
why he didn't go, and he replied, "in the beginning of
Slichos we say lkha hashem hatzedaka G-d, you are right, vlanu
boshet hapanim and we are ashamed. You are right, whatever
you did, and we are ashamed of what we did." That year
there had been pogroms all over.
He
said, "I just can't say it G-d, I'm sorry, I just can't
say it." Every word he uttered was real, and since he
couldn't say G-d was right he didn't want to say anything.
If a person wants to know what level his joy is, it is very
simple. If you feel one with the world, it is because you
feel the oneness of G-d. So if you walk around and say you
are filled with joy, but you can't stand people, it is not
G-d joy. If the joy is coming from a very high place then
it doesn't make you stupid. Some people think, "Today
I am in such a good mood, I have to tell a dirty joke."
Is this how deep the joy touched you? It brought out all the
garbage you had piled up the last few years? Then it is not
the joy we are talking about.
The
higher it is coming from, the deeper it goes. How do you know
how deep the joy reaches? If it makes you get up and dance,
then it reached your feet. Reb Nachman always talks about
imagination. He says if you are sad, it is not that you have
sad imagination, your imagination isn't real. Imagination
is flying, and if you are sad you are so heavy you can't fly.
You could imagine you are flying, but even that is impossible
if your sadness is too heavy.
If you are filled with joy then you really have wings, and
you can fly. What does it mean to be happy with what you are
doing? If you are willing to be born, and hang around this
world just for this one thing, that is called being happy
with this thing. If you can be on the level with every mitzva
you do that you feel, "if I would only be born to put
on tfillin this one morning, I I were born just for this one
Shabbos, it would be enough" that is called joy. G-d
is a merchant selling Shabbos.
If
it is good to do business with you, he'll make another deal.
There is such a thing as emet , truth, and there is such a
thing as emuna, believing. Real joy is a combination of truth
and believing. If emet and emuna and are both working strongly
inside of me, if I believe what I know, and I know what I
believe, then I am filled with joy. If my job comes from truth
and believing, emet and emuna, then it is called holy joy.
Otherwise it is called pagan joy.
The
greatest joy in the world is when a person is really his own
judge. If a person can observe himself, know what he did,
what he has to do better, that means he is really in touch
with himself. Most of the time we live through doing things,
then we read in the newspaper that we did it. If something
happens to you, and your best friend hears about it from someone
else he gets angry. Can you imagine how angry your soul is
that you never told your own soul what you are doing?
Sometimes
you walk along and suddenly you are so happy, and you don't
know why. At that moment they declared in Heaven to give you
something, even if it might not be until a hundred years from
now. Your soul heard of the gift and was happy. Joy is the
strongest vitamin, because joy makes you strong in a million
ways, physically, mentally and spiritually. There are all
kinds of strength, and the highest level of strength which
a person needs to live in the world is joy.
If
someone asks you something, and you give them real true advice,
it fills you with joy. If you are suddenly unexplainably happy,
it could be because somewhere in the world a very holy soul
was born. When you tell stories about holy people, and you
tell other people there are holy people in the world, it fills
you with joy. In the end Reb Nachman says, "I want you
to know that all this talk is really meaningless, because
how can I tell you to be happy? It is up to everyone himself,
but I am begging you to be happy."
Copyright
© by the Shlomo Carlebach Foundation
Teachings
and Writings of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
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