The Open Bank
Now, your property, your health, your life, you can follow basic rules that will protect you. If you take the prudent steps required and you’re not careless, you’ll be safe. Generally, that’s enough.
But your mind is an entirely different story; you cannot protect your mind unless you take the most extreme steps, because from all sides you are being bombarded. People, pictures, words, conversations, advertisements. It’s a never-ending barrage of influences entering into your mind. And it has an effect. Absolutely. It’s impossible otherwise. And that’s why the wisest of all men said, ָ ך ל מִ שׁ ְ מָ ר נְ צ ֹ ר לִ ב מִ כ – more than anything you guard, watch your mind.
People today are doing the opposite. They’re busy guarding everything except the one most important possession. Their minds are wide open. Imagine a bank at night, the bank doors are wide open, even the vaults inside are wide open. The president of the bank goes home to sleep; everybody's asleep, there are no guards, everything is open. What would you say to such a bank?
Well, we are worse than that because our bank is wide open. Our ears are open all the time and the eyes are wide open all the time, and anything that wants, can come in.
Wandering Eyes and Open Ears
Here’s a man, when he walks in the streets, he stares. This shoiteh, he looks everywhere. You’re not watching your eyes? There's nothing to look out for?! Don’t you realize what’s being poured into your head?
He reads whatever he wants. It’s a sickness, to read what imbeciles write. Juveniles, crooks, amei haaretz, perverts, write books and articles, and people read their words. Oh, the written word!
When your ears are left unguarded so you listen and you hear everything. People sit and listen to a radio; some listen to other things. They sit together with fools and listen.
Let's say Cousin Jack comes with his family and you sit for two hours and listen as he fills your ears with narishkeit. Where are the bars?! Where are the walls? Where are the fences? Where are the security guards? All these things that are coming into your mind. Do you know what danger that is? There's nothing as precious as your mind but nobody's on guard!
The Technological Window
And some people invite criminals into their home. They have a special window; you turn a little knob and a big light comes on and criminals climb in through the window. And sometimes for two hours the criminals are there and they’re stealing your mind — they’re taking your most valuable possessions.
If you would let them climb into that window and take all your jewelry, it’s a much smaller misfortune. Suppose he climbed out of the screen and took away, let's say, your wife's diamond ring and your golden watch and maybe $1,000 cash you keep hidden away somewhere. It would be a terrible thing for you. You'd call the police. Oy oy oy! My gold watch! My savings! And here you've lost your mind; you've been robbed, you're impoverished, you're a pauper.
So he says, “Oh no, they didn’t take away my mind, no. No one can take my mind. I’m not such a fool. I can see all these things and my mind remains the same.”
It's the biggest deception! It's the biggest sheker! Your mind is gone already. You let the most dangerous thing into your head and it’s wreaking havoc, destruction. The foreign influences that creep into your head are more dangerous than the most wild animal.
A Crazed Bear is Safer...
Listen to the picture Shlomo Hamelech draws for us. In Mishlei (17:12) he says as follows: ֹ ב פּ ָ ג ו ֹ שׁ ד וֹ לַת אִו סִיל ב אִישׁ וְאַל כ ל ב ו שַׁכ – It’s better to meet an enraged bear, a bear that lost her cubs, rather than to meet a fool with his foolishness.
Let's study those words. You're walking in the street, and down the block you see an enraged bear coming at you. How do you know it's enraged? You see it’s growling, ‘Arghaahhhh!’ – it’s chuffing too – and the saliva is drooling from its mouth.
Why is it enraged? It's a she-bear, and somebody took away her cubs; that's what it means ל ו שׁ ַ כ. It’s a she-bear looking for her cubs that were taken away by hunters, let’s say.
Now, a she-bear from whom you took the cubs away, she is ready to tear the world apart. She’s wild. She’s crazed. And now she's coming down the street and here you are, your luck, you’re walking down the same street.
Are you going to walk quietly and calmly toward her and hope that she doesn’t bother you? If you’re a meshugeneh, maybe. But if you have a little seichel what are you going to do? You'll hop on top of a car that's passing by. If there are no cars you’ll climb a telephone pole. You’ll run as fast as you can in the other direction. Whatever it is, you’ll risk your life to get away from there.
... Than a Fool
Now Shlomo Hamelech says, suppose it's not a crazed bear. Instead it’s a וֹ לַת אִו סִיל ב כ, a fool with his foolishness. It's the man down the block who always stops and talks to you. He talks loshon hara. He makes leitzanus on rabbonim and talmidei chachamim. But even if it’s not that – let’s say he would never do such a thing; but he’s a fool so he pours his shtussim into your head.
That man is more dangerous than the mother bear. If you see that man coming towards you and you don’t skedaddle, so he's going to collar you; then you have to know you’re in for it more than if the bear had grabbed you. That’s what Shlomo is saying. אִישׁ ל ב ו שַׁכ פּ ָ ג ו ֹ שׁ ד – Better to meet an angry she-bear, וֹ לַת אִו סִיל ב וְ אַ ל כ – rather than a fool with his foolishness.
A Fool Created
Because when he talks to you, he’s not talking into your ears – he’s talking into your head. And he makes you into a fool. You can’t help it. No matter how much of a Torah mind you have or think you have, no matter how much Torah and great ideals you have already acquired or think you’ve acquired, he will damage your mind beyond repair.
So you think, “How could it be? In a second he’ll say something that will ruin me?”
Yes! That’s what a mind is. The mind is so precious, so sensitive, that when the kesil is going to say something to you then you should know it’s going to harm you. He talks to you and you become a fool along with him. You will never be able to get out of your head what he put into it. It enters your mind and you remember it forever and ever.
Forever Ruined
You hear that? Forever! And I’m saying that on the smach of an authority, a great authority. Everybody knows that Rav Yehudah Halevi, the Kuzari, is a very careful writer. He doesn’t say any meshalim or any guzmaos. Every word is measured. In fact, he says too few words; in a few words he puts a great deal of thought.
And here's what he tells us. He says the things that you heard in your youth – he’s talking there about songs, about romantic songs that you heard in your youth – בָה שׁ ו כֵן עֲ לֵיהֶם הַת ת א ת ל – It’s not possible to do teshuvah, to repent for it. It means that even though you'll repent, even though you’ll fast, and even though you’ll shed tears, you’ll never be able to take it out of your mind.
Now it doesn’t mean you'll think about it all the time. It doesn’t mean it will be in your conscious mind. It might go down into the subconscious. But it will remain forever. As long as you live, it will be there.
Forgiven But Not Healed
Now that doesn’t mean you can't repent for the sin. If you did something wrong, you listened to something wrong – let’s say chas veshalom you went into a movie. Nobody should ever dream of such a thing, especially nowadays. If you walk into a movie nowadays then you have a very small chance of ever coming to the Next World, no question about it. And by the way, spread the good word. All the Jews, men and women, boys and girls, should go away from movies as if from a house of leprosy, a house of plague. Don't even walk close to the entrance; like the halacha of ד' ית זוֹנָה אַ מּ וֹת עַ ל פֶּ תַ ח ב (Avodah Zarah 17a). Walk away from it.
הַ רְ חֵ ק מֵ עָ לֶ י הָ ד – See to it that your path is not close to the movies. It’s such a makom tamei.
But suppose a person did go into the movies. Then he has to know he’ll never get it out of his head again. Now for the sin, he can do teshuvah. He can repent. How much does he have to do to repent? He should go to some rabbi who will teach him how to repent. It’s very important.
But he has to know that whatever repentance he does it’s still not going to remove the thing from his mind. It’s like a man who in his anger once cut off his hand. He was angry so he chopped off his hand. And now he can't put on tefillin anymore. So he repents. He regrets and he cries and begs for forgiveness. Very good. But he can repent from now until the end of his life and the repentance will only remove the sin; but the tefillin he won't be able to put on because the hand won't grow back again. And the mind is not different. Once it’s corrupted it will never regain its complete purity.
Now that doesn't mean you should give up. No. You should keep on adding good thoughts, adding Torah, keep on thinking emunah and wonderful ideas of nobility of mind to cover it up; bury it deeper and deeper. But it's there, however. It's not out. And that's why we have to guard the mind more than anything else.
