Guarding one’s eyes
מאת ר' ש. קאפלין שליט"א
"וירא אליו ה' באלני ",ממרא , the word וירא means that הקב"ה showed himself to אברהם. The next פסוק continues, "וישא עיניו וירא והנה שלשה אנשים נצבים עליו" , the word וירא means and he saw, the letters of these two words are exactly the same, is there a connection between וירא – and he saw, to וירא אליו ה' – and Hashem showed himself to אברהם אבינו.
We speak and we hear a lot about שמירת העינים, guarding one’s eyes, there is an organization called וימאן where everyday somebody speaks and gives some חיזוק and התעוררות to help people in this tremendous test of guarding our eyes. This is not just an issue for men; this is also an issue for woman. Today this a very challenging ניסיון, we go on the streets, there are billboards, there are adverts on buses with inappropriate
I would like to speak about another type of guarding one’s eyes which perhaps is not spoken about enough or at all, and this is about guarding our eyes from things which are permitted. We live in a world where people grow up with a vision what their dream life should look like, they have a phrase “my dream life,” and they have a picture in their mind what their dream life is going to look like. The dream life that people imagine they want to lead one day is usually detached from reality, it’s not going to happen as it rarely is possible.
pictures, and one of the biggest tests is within one’s own home or pocket where one can have a gadget with access to inappropriate things, this is one of the big challenges in life today, guarding one’s eyes from looking at forbidden things.
“What we see is not important in life, it’s not going to give happiness, it’s שקר”
Imagination
What creates this dream life which is very elusive and nearly impossible to reach? It’s because of the things we see. In today’s day and age, one can open a magazine – a kosher magazine which comes out every week and in there they put thirty or sometimes even fifty pages of adverts, adverts for apartments that are going to be built, pictures that give the impression of גן עדן התחתון, adverts of different vacations and cruises and various other adverts. I’m forbidden to look at, but seeing these pictures can give a person an image of the life he would like to have one day, it can make a person change focus from what is really important in life and what the purpose of life is, a person can get carried away with these pictures. These things what we see have a tremendous impact on our imagination, on our dreams and what we focus on being important in life. A person can be pulled down with the imagination through what he has seen. This is brought out by many מפרשים on the ותרא האשה כי טוב העץ למאכל" ,פסוק "
not
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)בראשית ג' ו'(, and the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, "וכי תאוה הוא לעינים", and that it was delight to her eyes, חוה saw the tree and it looked really good to eat, which then caused disaster to mankind, it wasn’t really good, but she had looked at it in the wrong way. The מסילת ישרים writes in פרק ט"ו that the פיטוי עינים – seeing things with the wrong mindset brings a person to desire תענוגות that are not good for a person. A person must use his brain and his שכל and right השקפה to interpret what they are seeing, or not to look at it all, perhaps skip the first fifty pages of adverts in the magazine, it’s irrelevant to us, we are not planning to buy an apartment in Netanya looking over the sea or a penthouse in ירושלים, we don’t have the money for that and it’s detached from reality completely, and if we do look at it we must have it clear in our brains that this goodness that we are seeing is not necessarily happiness and the fulfilment that we desire in life. Another example we can relate to: one sees a very nice-looking cream cake with a lovely topping that looks exciting to eat. On the other hand one knows it’s not
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us good for his health as he is trying to diet or even without the diet he knows it’s no good for his health. This is a good משל,it looks delicious, but after taking one bite it won’t be as delicious as one thought it is, if one is going to eat too much of it he might have a stomachache, after it goes into the stomach it is no longer enjoyed, and as the רא''ש writes that most illnesses comes from overeating or eating the wrong things כי רוב חלאים באים על רוב אכילה . If a person just thinks for a second: do I need to eat this? Will I survive without eating this? If a person is on a serious diet he will think ahead and tell himself that after three minutes it’s all gone. This is a משל the מסילת ישרים writes to compare to all the imagination created in our brain from the things we see, is it really good? Where is it leading me to? When it comes to today’s day and age where advanced to an entirely new level which has the power to pull a person down, even people who are not addicted to looing at דברים האסורים but they can be addicted to constantly looking at their little machine in their hands, just wasting their time and not doing anything
we
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constructive. I will never forget, I was once in a hospital about thirty years ago and I wanted to speak to the consultant, yet he seemed very busy on the computer. I noticed there was a glass behind him which reflected what was on his screen and I could see what he was busy doing. He was playing a game on the computer! This was years ago, he looked so engrossed, I was certain that he was looking at somebody’s x-ray or reading about someone’s condition. Technology is very enticing, it pulls a person into its world, it can pull a person to a different world. The כלי יקר writes in בראשית on the פסוק וכי תאוה לעינים that there is a constant battle inside a person: the יצר הטוב is promising future reward in the real world, and the יצר הרע is promising a person instant pleasure. Very often the יצר הרע wins, כי תאוות העולם הזה נראה לעין כל, that is the danger of seeing. The truth is, most ניסיונות come because of our eyes, and we must know and tell ourselves again and again: what we see is not always important in life, its not as good as it looks, it’s not going to give happiness, it’s often pure שקר.
No end to שקר
The גמרא in שבת ק"ד writes that שקר doesn’t stand, the letters ש' ק' ר' can’t stand they only have one leg, whereas the word אמת can stand, the letters א' מ' ת' have two feet and can they stand on their own. There is no קיום to this דמיון of interpreting wrongly what we are seeing thinking that we need it and it will make us happy people, it’s going to get us nowhere. Somebody asked ר' משה שפירא זצ"ל : The word שקר is made of the last letters of the א' -ב' , if it is already the last letters why does it not also have the letter ת' inside? ר' משה שפירא said: the שקר of life gives a person the imagination that he is heading to a destination and making progress to reach a goal – my dream life, suddenly right at the end it drops us in the middle of nowhere, there is no ת' – it’s שקר, there is no end like we imagined. This dream life we envision in our brain from seeing pictures, reading or seeing things makes us feel that we are going to reach a certain destination. The reality is that eventually we come and see that we haven’t advanced at all or reached the imagined goal.
אמת has the last letter, when we go with the truth we reach the end, we don’t get dropped off in the middle, if we go with שקר we will drop in the middle, we won’t reach the our goal, the last letter isn’t there.
Seeing Hashem
When we look at these pictures that entice us to an imagination of what a dream life is about, we are distancing ourselves from הקב"ה because that is not why הקב"ה created us. The חובת הלבבות writes numerous פרקים in שער הבחינה of the importance of looking at the world around us and seeing הקב"ה, seeing the colorful plants and internalizing where the color comes from, looking at a tree, looking at the little insects, looking at a person’s own body, he writes at great length the obligation for a person to be מתבונן in the world around him and to feel that הקב"ה created it, שאו מרום עיניכם וראו מי ברא את אלה, look at the world, look at the moon, the moon has a gravitational pull that moves the worlds oceans, as the world spins on its access it releases that gravitational pull and the tide comes back in, if the tide would not move all the fish would die from the stagnated
water, if the moon would be 100 miles closer to the earth the tide would be so powerful submerged twice a day under the ocean, the world is made with exact precision, if gravitational pull would pull the earth into the sun, if the sun would be only a few miles further away the world wouldn’t stay in its orbits. If we use our eyes to see the right things and interpret it correctly with "וירא", then we will come to 'וירא אליו ה , we asked at the beginning what is the connection, the answer is: there is a big connection, if we see things properly then we can see הקב"ה, if we look at the right things we will see הקב"ה, we see הקב"ה is running the world and created the world, it will connect us and inspire us. If we look at the wrong things we are going to imagine a dream life which is almost impossible to have, we will spend a whole life chasing a dream which is שקר, there is no purpose in it, there is no ת' in שקר, it’s going to leave us in the middle of nowhere. We go on the street and see a beautiful car, there is nothing to be impressed about, the car is eventually going to
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become rusty, it’s not going to last forever. tremendous חכמה and technology in the car, we don’t really see the רבש"ע as its manmade. However when we look at a tree and see how the leaves fall off in the autumn, the tree then looks dead and yet comes back to life in the summer, that התבוננות brings a connection to הקב"ה. We are living in a world where people are immersed in their phones, even people whilst they are working they are playing a game, watching a film, messing around, the whole world has become lazy and completely detached from what they are supposed to be doing, they are engrossed in their iPhone, and this will continue with them until they are old and grey, and nebech if a איד gets caught up in this type of life where is he going to find himself at the end of life? A person can go through a shallow life with no meaning or value. This is the challenge of today, it’s not just about looking at forbidden things, even things which are permitted but they are creating in our brains a dream life of דמיונות that can cause a person to become depressed, because the dream life is
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elusive, it’s probably not going to happen, you don’t reach that destination, אין אדם מת וחצי תאוו תו בידו , a person doesn’t die with even having half of his imagination fulfilled, מי שיש לו מנה רוצה .מאתים People can waste their whole life playing the lottery or gambling in casinos night after night, it’s all imagination, it’s all being driven by things they have seen, nice cars, nice houses, nice cruises and hope that when they gamble and make enough money, they will do these things. If we focus on the right things we will see הקב"ה and it will uplift us, we will have the right goals and this will enable us to feel a satisfaction when we look back at our lives. The power of imagination through what we see was not created to bring us down, it’s created to make us grow when it’s used for the right things. The גמרא in מנחות מ"ג: tells us how by looking at תכלת this can remind us of the sea, the sky and then to the כסא הכבוד, seeing things can bring us to seeing וירא ,הקב"ה which brings to וירא אליו ה'. Someone once asked ר' דסלר זצ"ל: I don’t understand! Seeing תכלת on the ציצית sounds rather farfetched to remind a
person of הקב"ה, does that really trigger these series of associations in a person’s mind? ר' דסלר זצ"ל answered him very cleverly: The גמרא tells us that a man shouldn’t look at the coloured clothing of a woman even on a washing line to avoid bad thoughts. No one questions or has a problem understanding why this can bring to impure thoughts, no one has a difficulty understanding this, because the mind automatically wanders to a bad place. But the opposite is also true, if a person trains himself to see the רבש"ע, when we goes on the street and he sees the רבש"ע when he sees the beautiful sky, clouds, trees, birds, insects, he sees people moving, hundreds of miracles happen with every movement. When a person is מתבונן in that he sees ,הקב"ה
הקב"ה imagination and when it’s used in the right way to interpret what we see we get inspired, uplifted and elevated, then when he sees תכלת he will be reminded of the כסא הכבוד. וירא can make us distant if misused, and וירא when used correctly can bring us to .וירא אליו ה'
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