Great Throughts Treasury

"In life you don't get all the answers at once. First you must absorb and live with one simple truth. Then later you must find another truth- one that may seem to conflict with and negate all you previously learned. Then, from that confusion, emerges a higher truth- the inner light behind all you had learned before."

"Learning is not the mere acquisition of knowledge and more knowledge. Learning is a process of making quantum leaps beyond the subjective self."

"Our job is not to have faith. We have faith already, whether we want it or not. It comes in our blood from our ancestors who gave their lives for it. Our job is to transport that higher vision that gave them their faith down into our minds, into our personalities, into our words, into our actions in daily life. To make it part of our selves and our world. "

"All that can be cherished from this world, all that makes life worth living is that which is mined from its bowels through your own toil, fashioned from its clay by your own craft, fired in the kiln of your heart. Oh, how precious, how delightful a feast, the life that has been forged by its own master!"

"To be a good person, you do need these two opposites: a sense of shame that prevents you from acting with chutzpah to do the wrong thing, and a sense of chutzpah that prevents you from being ashamed to do the right thing."

"The world is absurd. Ugly absurd. To repair ugly absurdity, you can't just be normal. You need an alternative absurdity. A beautiful absurdity. We call it 'divine madness'."

"If you're serious about something, it has a fixed time. If you're earnest about getting something done and the phone rings, you ignore it. The spiritual side of your life is not a hobby nor a luxury --it is your purpose of existence. When you are learning Torah, or meditating or in prayer, nothing else exists. Your spiritual career should have at least equal priority to your worldly career."

"Do not give charity. Giving charity means being nice and giving away your money. But who says it is your money to begin with? It is money put in your trust, to be disbursed for good things and for others when they will need it. Change your attitude. Instead of doing what is nice, do what is right. Put the money where it belongs."

"All of Jewish philosophy is but an attempt to fit inside the human mind that which is contained within the heart of a simple Jew. "

"Marriage is a microcosm of the soul’s descent into this world: If you are here looking for what you can get out of this world, then the world and all its trappings will only drag you down. But if you are looking for what you can give, then you, your part of the world, and your soul, all are uplifted and filled with light. So too, when you enter a marriage: Look for what you can give, and reap harmony and love."

"If you see what needs to be repaired and how to repair it, then you have found a piece of the world God has left for your to complete. But if you only see what is wrong and how ugly it is, then it is yourself that needs repair."

"He has an opinion of how each person should be, how each thing should be done. Those who follow his choreography are his friends, those who dare dance their own dance are his enemies; and few, if any, are left without a label. In truth, he has neither enemies nor friends. He has only himself, for that is all that exists in his world. “If you don’t want to be so lonely,” we tell him, “make some room for the rest of us.”"

"Did you know that when the Romans would sentence a person to death for becoming a Jew, the crime was called, "atheism"? Since the Jewish G-d cannot be seen or described, they considered this person to be without any g-d at all. Turns out that Judaism is closer to atheism than most people's theism. As Rabbi Sholom Dovber of Lubavitch once put it, "The G-d the atheist doesn't believe in, I don't believe in either."

"The supernatural seems irrational, superstitious, archaic and primitive. So far, the natural world has provided explanations for the previously mysterious unknown: social psychology, psychiatry, chemistry, mathematics, biology, medicine, physics, astronomy, geology and history have aided humanity and preserved our mental and physical health and extended our lives. So why do we refer to G-d to as a supernatural being? Where is the evidence that the supernatural exists, or has any bearing on our lives? Does the word "supernatural" even mean anything, other than "I don't understand this (yet)"?"

"G-d is not Nature...but Nature is G-dly."

"Working for a living is good. It's the anxiety over making a living that is not good. Don't let your inner self get involved in your business. That inner self must be preserved for fulfilling your purpose in life. Making lots of miney is not your purpose in life."

"Beauty cannot be touched. It cannot be described or explained. The more we uncover Beauty, the more it eludes us. Beauty is where the world makes a window for the light of the infinite to shine in."

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

"The Creator's vision is that He should be found within this world. He wants to unite with this world. He wants a love affair with this world. He wants that He and this world shall be lovers that unite and just like the one that you love is found within your heart and you're found within the heart of your lover, He will be found within this world. We will find Him there and we will be found within Him."

"A Jew is here for one reason alone: To change the world. Abraham did not smash the idols in his father’s house, Moses did not rebel against the inhumanity of Egypt, simply to foster yet another obscure cult. And the Jew has succeeded. The modern mind paints its thoughts upon a canvas of Jewish axioms: the sanctity of human life, universal education, monotheism, a sense of purpose, an ideal of world peace. The impact of the Jewish mind has been so thorough, so pervasive, as to compel Christopher Rees-Mogg to write that, “…any modern man who has not learned to think as though he were a Jew can hardly be said to have learned to think at all.”"

"Eventually the human soul will come seeking its other half which is truly G‑d Himself, and find his own soul and his G‑d hiding there within the trail of broken pieces. Picking up the scattered shards, he discovers himself in the embrace of a loving G‑d who waited patiently in exile for His precious child to return. For even the hiddenness is G‑d."

"The Jew wrestles with the G‑d in whom he believes—and finds in that no contradiction. As such, he holds the glue that can bind together today’s fractured world: The knowledge that a man of faith must reason, while a man of reason must have faith."

"You have two eyes for a reason. When it comes to yourself, look with one eye and see G-d's kindness. When it comes to someone else, kvetch to G-d with all your heart--and then do something about it."

"We can't tell how old the universe is by examining it, because we don't understand how it got here in the first place."

"If the cosmos was conceived and incubated in the womb of G-d's mind, at which stage was it born into the time continuum that we measure with our physical senses? Is it conceivable that geological, chemical and organic processes that would take billions of years in our realm could occur within the equivalent of hours or minutes or even nanoseconds--or perhaps zero time--when occurring at a higher state of being but counted from our realm?"

"Once upon a time, scientists assumed they had the keys to absolute knowledge. The last hundred and fifty years has brought us to acknowledge there is no such thing within the realm of standard human perception and reason. When it comes to facts alive and well in the real world, we can make some pretty good stabs at the truth. When it comes to questions of the future, we can make limited speculations. When it comes to knowing the origin of things, empirical materialism is completely out of its realm. Perhaps we are ready today to recognize a place for the inner vision of the prophet and the mystic."

"Your spiritual career should have at least equal priority to your worldly career."

"All of Jewish philosophy is but an attempt to fit inside the human mind that which is contained within the heart of a simple Jew."

"All the mantras are names of Hindu deities and these are forbidden for a Jewish person to utter, regardless of the intent. Nevertheless, I would not replace the mantra with Shema Yisrael or any Hebrew phrase, since these are meant for contemplation and the focus of Siddha Yoga meditation is to quiet the mind. Instead, here's an idea: There is a deeply meditative Chassidic melody called the "Nigun of Three Parts. "The first part is from the Baal Shem Tov, the second from his student the Maggid of Mezritch and the third from the Maggid's student, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi. It seems this is what they used to assist entry into a quiet, meditative state. If you will adopt it, it will assist not only in your meditation and quietness, but to connect your soul to theirs. Try taking the very first phrase of this nigun, which has no words, and hum it quietly to yourself. Just the first phrase--which is half of the first part--slowly, repeatedly, each time followed by silence? Once you have achieved a quietened state of mind, you are in the right frame to contemplate some of the more spiritual concepts you've learnt in depth."

"Beauty cannot be touched. It cannot be described or explained. The more we uncover Beauty, the more it eludes us. Beauty is where the world makes a window for the light of the infinite to shine in."

"Despair is the diametric opposite of everything in which we believe --in other words: It is a Denial of Reality. It is a denial that there is a G-d that directs all of his creation and watches over every individual and assists each one in what he must accomplish..."

"Chutzpah is a kind of cosmic attitude, as though there?s nothing really there stopping you from doing whatever you want."

"First of all, Jewish kosher foods are health food for the soul. Just as there are foods that are friendly to your body and foods that harm it, so too there are foods that are soul-friendly while other foods are not-so-friendly. According to the Kabala, eating is a process of purification: When we eat, we separate the coarse material from the Divine energy in the food. Everything in the world contains some sort of Divine energy. But non-kosher foods are too coarse for us to purify by eating. Rather than providing spiritual energy, once metabolized, these non-kosher foods actually stand in the way and block the flow."

"If you have a sense of purpose, then your chutzpah is going to be in the right place. It?s about saying ?I?m not here just for me? because otherwise you?re going to mess everything up. You have to recognize the world is not about you. There is some purpose, something that you and only you is going to have to get done. So chutzpah is the attitude where you say, ?Nothing is going to stop me from making that [whatever that may be] happen.?"

"In recent years, astronomers have discovered that not all stars shine. There are some stars of such tremendous density, instead of radiating outwards they only draw light in. Therefore, they have named these stars, ?Black Holes.? Fortunately, the universe has enough Black Holes already. If you have light, shine forth."

"Our souls are not broken that they should need repair, nor deficient that they should need anything added. Our souls need only to be uncovered and allowed to shine."

"Isn?t this the whole meaning of life in this world: To choose between bondage to the material world and believing that your life comes from those many forces, or to choose true life and to believe that all your needs and all your concerns come only from the one Source of All Life."

"Our job is not to have faith. We have faith already, whether we want it or not. It comes in our blood from our ancestors who gave their lives for it. Our job is to transport that higher vision that gave them their faith down into our minds, into our personalities, into our words, into our actions in daily life. To make it part of ourselves and our world."

"Prisoners. We are all prisoners. But we sit on the keys. Finitude is our cell. The universe is our prison. Our jail keeper is the Act of Being. The keys to liberation are clenched tightly in the fists of our own egos."

"The Aura. Each of us builds our own prison or our own palace. Every conscious thought, every utterance of our lips, every interaction of ours with the world leaves its imprint upon an aura that surrounds each of us and stays with us wherever we go. All life, all blessing, all that is transmitted from Above must pass through that aura. Even if it be the greatest of blessings, the aura may distort it into ugly noise. Or it may resonate and amplify it even more. An aura of beauty attracts beauty. An aura of love attracts love. An aura of life and joy attracts unbounded light. Only you are the master of that aura. Only you have the permission and the power at any moment to transform your thoughts from the ugly to the beautiful, your words from bitter to sweet, your deeds from death to life. And so too, your entire world."

"Self-Made Man. The atheist, too, has a god, and it is himself. The idolater at least understands there is something greater than him, something beyond the grasp of his physical senses, some external forces to which he is subject. But for the atheist, all the universe is defined by his own understanding, all ethics are subject to his approval and even he himself is an artifact of his own mind. He is a self-made man, for he creates his own universe and squeezes himself inside it."

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

"The most important renewal of life is that which occurs on Rosh Hashanah. Because that is when all life of the previous year returns to its essential source and a new life, such as was never known before, emerges from the void to sustain existence for an entire year."

"There is an outer Bible ? a story of men and women, of wars and wonders. And there is an inner Bible, according to ancient traditions, in which each word uncovers fathomless wisdom, beauty and light. From the outside, the women of the Bible appear to play only a supportive role in a drama dominated by men. From the inside emerges a story of men manipulated by potent women and nurtured with feminine values. A story that reveals the inner quality of womanhood that transcends the minds of men."

"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness."

"When Man desired to fly, two paths lay before him. To create vehicles lighter than air, or to use the air's resistance to his advantage. In the end, the second path proved more successful. It turns out that when you wish to fly above, resistance is to your advantage. In fact, it carries you higher than the angels."

"Working for a living is good. It's the anxiety over making a living that is not good. Don't let your inner self get involved in your business. That inner self must be preserved for fulfilling your purpose in life. Making lots of money is not your purpose in life."

"You honor the Shabbat with clean clothes and delight in it with fine food and drink."

"Wisdom lives in the future, and from there it speaks to us. There is no such thing as wisdom of the past. Wisdom preceded the world and wisdom is its destiny. With each passing moment, wisdom becomes younger, as we come closer to the time when it is born and breathes the air of day. Our ancient mothers and fathers, the sages, all those from whom we learn wisdom -- they are not guardians of the past. They are messengers of the future. Truth can never be old-fashioned. It was never in fashion to begin with."