Part I. The Garden
The Neglected Field
In Mishlei perek chaf daled, possuk lamed, Shlomo Hamelech tells us a short story: יּƒ̇¿ﬠָבַר ≈לˆﬠָ ׁ̆יƒ‡ ≈ ה„ׂ¿̆ ﬠַל – I once passed by the field of a lazy man, ﬠַל¿ו ל≈ב חֲ סַ ר ָ ם„ָ‡ ר∆ םּכ∆ — and he had a vineyard there too, this person, and I could tell that this fellow was lacking in his mind. It says leiv in the possuk and in lashon kodesh the word leiv means mind.
“Now, how did I know that the owner was an atzel, lazy, and a chasar leiv, lacking the right kind of mind?” said Shlomo. יםƒֹׂנּ̆¿מƒ̃ וֹּכֻל ﬠָלָה נ≈ּהƒה¿ו – Because behold, the entire field was overgrown with thistles, יםּƒחֲ רֻ ל פָנָ יוּסּ וּכָ – and brambles covered the entire surface. And not only were thorns and weeds growing in the field but רָ סָ ה¡נ∆ה ֲ בָנָ יו‡ ∆ ר„∆‚ ¿ו – the wall of stones surrounding the field had already begun to crumble.
Recipe for Disaster
Now, the first lesson, that the owner of this field is a lazy fellow, that’s simple. Because, said Shlomo, ֹ̇≈ׁ נו̆ ﬠַט¿מ – a little sleeping when you're supposed to be at work, ֹ̇מוּנוּ¿̇ ﬠַט¿מ – a little bit of slumbering; it means you take off from work and take a nap now and then, בּׁ כָ¿̆ƒל םƒַ י„יָ ּ̃בֻƒח ﬠַט¿מ – putting your arms together and lying down for a rest, too much of that is a recipe for disaster.
It’s like the man who has a sign on the shop door. There's a picture of a clock and it says “Will be back in 15 minutes.” Now anybody who means business shouldn't have such a sign. If you already have it you should take it down and forget about it – destroy it. Sometimes the shoe store or the mocher seforim, the Hebrew book store, has such a sign. But you don't want to buy books every moment of the day and so just at the time when you have a few free minutes, let’s say bein hasedorim, you come there and you find that sign, ‘Will be back in 15 minutes.’ So in the meantime you go back to the yeshiva and you sit down for a while. You come back twenty minutes later and the same sign is still waiting for you, ‘Will be back in 15 minutes.’
The Unhappy Surprise
Now, nothing is wrong with taking a rest. But the man who is always seeking to evade his responsibilities, what is going to be the result of all his excuses that he is tired and he'll do it later?
ָ∆ׁ ך̆ר≈ י¿ךּהַל≈¿̇ƒמ ‡בָּו – Your poverty will come like a mis’halech. Mis’halech means a vagabond. You know, when you meet a vagabond on the road, it's not such a happy experience. You're afraid of him; he might do something to you. And he does; sometimes he jumps you. And so, a man who doesn't attend to his business, he doesn't manage his affairs, he'll encounter unhappy surprises in life. “You’ll encounter poverty,” Shlomo said, “like you encounter a bum on the street.” That’s the first peirush; the possuk is telling you that if you have a field or a shoe store or even if you’re a rebbi in the yeshiva, whatever it is you’re doing, you have to be a hustler.
Cultivate Your Estate
But there’s another explanation. Not that the first pshat is wrong but we’re going to talk now about the other lesson – the more important lesson that Shlomo Hamelech learned when he saw the field. Shlomo said as follows: Every person in this world is endowed with another field – you have up here in your mind an estate given to you by Hashem for a purpose; and the purpose is to cultivate it, to cultivate it with good ideals and good attitudes.
Now you have to know something right away. If you'll just wait, if you’ll just let your mind remain, don’t think it will lay dormant, an empty field waiting for you to begin planting. Oh no! It will produce the things that grow naturally. And naturally means you'll have thorns and weeds. Even on a city street if you leave things alone, if traffic would stop for ten years, the whole street would begin to change. The weeds and grass would begin to sprout and trees would drop seeds into the cracks and new trees would begin to grow. It would lift up the sidewalk. In fifty years, it would be a jungle.
Now I understand that today the jungle is admired. The environmentalists love the forests but you have to know that forests are good for snakes and bears, for chimpanzees. Sometimes you’ll have a meshugeneh, like Jane Goodall, who goes out to live with chimpanzees; so maybe for such people. But despite all the propaganda, human beings must have cultivated land.
A Field of Orchards
Now, when we talk about planting good things in our mind, about uprooting weeds and planting beautiful saplings, you have to know that there are very many different kinds of orchards a person can have up here. When you have such real estate you don’t just grow grapes and you’re finished. You have to plant cherries too. And apples and pears. The mind of a Jew has many compartments, many orchards, and each one has to be tended to with the utmost care.
There’s one orchard of ahavas Hashem and another of yiras Hashem. There’s an orchard of Shas and an orchard of Chumash. There’s bechina – that means to see Hashem in the world around you – and there’s emunah. You have to tend to your orchard of bitachon and to a separate orchard of chessed. There’s very much cultivating to do. That’s why you’ll have to listen to these tapes for many years – not only me; you can go to better places too – but wherever you go, there’s a lot of planting to do.
Otherwise, weeds grow, giant hogweeds. And once your mind is filled with weeds, uva mishalech, a vagabond might come along and grab you unexpectedly. You'd be surprised – the wrong seeds that grow wild in your mind might someday confront you with a nisayon; suddenly a test will come up and you’re vulnerable. Sometimes a person is ruined entirely in his ruchniyus – his entire life is ruined because of the poisonous seeds that slowly grew in his head.
The Weeds Take Over
I know a story. There was a bochur in our yeshiva who came from a very good home, very frum people. His father was a rebbe who had a shtiebel. He was a good bochur in learning – he had an orchard of exquisite peiros when it came to learning Gemara – but he didn’t have an interest in cultivating the other orchards. When it came to studying yiras Shamayim every day a half hour in yeshiva, he never bothered. He wasn't interested.
Well, when I left the yeshiva he also left and I lost track of him. Years later I hear he's out west someplace. Out west? He threw away his yiddishkeit! Ayy! From such a home! I left him a bochur from a chassidishe house. Now he's a psychologist and he is divested, he’s ois getun. I was shocked! I knew him in the yeshiva. He was a good bochur.
What happened? He had never cultivated the garden of his mind! He wore a nice black velour hat but you can't rely on that — what matters most is what’s under the hat. Unless you put something here in your garden and you cultivate it all the time you won’t be ready for a yom tzarah, for the tests of life, and who knows what could happen?
Root Out The Weeds
Now, one of the most important – and overlooked – orchards that a Jew must plant in his mind is the function of how to look favorably at your fellow Jews. It’s a mitzvah of the Torah: ָ∆ ך̇יƒﬠֲ מ ׁפֹּ ט¿ּ̆ƒ̇ ̃∆„∆ˆּ¿ב. It means that it’s your Torah duty to form righteous opinions about your fellow frum Jew (Shavuos 30a).
Now don’t think it’s something you can ignore because whether you like it or not, your mind is always forming opinions of others. It can’t be helped; you’re always making judgements. A cow, l’havdil, is able to go through life without thinking, without judging; but if you’re an adam then you’re a judge – as soon as you see somebody, you’re already forming opinions.
And so you have to get busy tending this orchard of b’tzedek tishpot amisecha because if you don’t labor in cultivating the seeds and plantings of dan l’kaf zechus, judging others favorably, then only weeds will grow there. All types of weeds; jealousy, anger, frustration, haughtiness and other things too.
Seeding The Weeds
And they grow and grow. Left undisturbed, weeds can grow as high as small trees. And so you’ll have up here a jungle of weeds, which is a recipe for disaster, for going lost. That’s what Mishlei warns us in a separate possuk connected with this subject. He’s talking there about the subject of thoughts and he says, רָ ע ≈ׁ י̆¿חֹרּעו¿̇ƒי ‡ֹלו הֲ – Won't they go lost, those who plow wrong thoughts into the field of the mind? (14:22). When people start thinking bad about others, when they like to see faults in other people, their thoughts are like seeds which will grow into bigger thoughts until eventually they’ll go lost entirely.
Let’s say there’s somebody who sits in the beis hakenesses and talks and talks lashon hara on everybody – this person is this and that person is that. His head is full of suspicion about others. The rabbi, especially. Everyone is wrong!
Same thing at home. He sits at home and talks with his wife lashon hara on everybody. This neighbor, the landlord, this friend. Visitors come and when they leave they talk lashon hara on the visitors. He’s not even looking for faults; only that it’s such a jungle of wickedness, of ra ayin, in his mind that this is what he sees.
So Hashem says, “ֹלו יןƒח¿̇פּ וֹ ‡טַ מּ≈ƒל ‡ָּהַב – If this is what you want, if this is the mind you want for yourself, I'll let you succeed. You'll succeed and your mind will become poisoned by the very worst kind of לַﬠֲ נָה¿ו ׁ̆‡רֹ, poisonous gall and wormwood. You’ll become better and better at finding faults in other people until yis’u, until you’ll go lost altogether. Great people, much greater than you, suffered that end. Doeg Ha’adomi went lost because of that. Achitophel went lost too. Yeravam ben Nevat also. Others too. It happened already many times in our history.
