Q:
How do I achieve pure thoughts? Is thinking about Hashem’s creations, the niflaos ha’Borei, a solution?
A:
Now if I could give you a perfect prescription for pure thoughts I wouldn’t be sitting here. I would be in an office with ten gabbaim at my door; I’d be a very great rebbeh, famous all over the world.
There is no prescription to give you perfectly pure thoughts. But certainly there is advice for pure thoughts. Now the first thing is סור מרע. You have to keep away from things that cause wrong thoughts.
It’s a big order; of course you cannot have a television. Anybody who wants to have a television and wants to have pure thoughts is a lunatic.
You cannot go to movies and have pure thoughts.
You cannot be in bad company and have pure thoughts.
So first of all is סור מרע – go away from evil. Don’t read the newspapers; just the headlines and finished. Because once you start opening the newspapers inside, you are going to be flooded with the opposite of pure thoughts.
Now that’s a big achievement already, סור מרע. It doesn’t guarantee that your mind will be perfectly clean but it’s a very big step in the right direction.
Now one more suggestion – and I am not going to exhaust this subject – and that is that your mind cannot be a vacuum. The Rambam says that wrong thoughts are going to enter any mind that’s vacant of Torah.
Which means as follows. If you have an empty mind something is going to enter it and probably the wrong thoughts will enter, so you have to fill your mind with good thoughts. You must be busy with positive thoughts.
Now listen to what I am telling you. In case you’re not a ben torah, in case you’re not a baal mussar, get busy with some project like making money. A man who is making money has no time for bad thoughts. Like the Gemara (Avodah Zarah 20b) talks about somebody whose parnassa is to match animals, to mate them; he’s a shadchan between male and female animals. Now that’s something that can trigger the wrong kind of thoughts. It’s his business; he’s in the stud business. And the Gemara says still, he won’t have bad thoughts because בעבידתיה טריד, he’s busy with his parnassa. If a man is busy with his parnassa, he doesn’t have time for wrong thoughts.
It’s only a person who is an idler with nothing to do; even if he’s sitting in a yeshiva but he’s not learning in the beis hamidrash so his mind is vacant. And anything can enter.
So now we learned just two suggestions in this subject: One is, keep away from those stimuli that cause wrong thoughts. And secondly have something in your mind at all time, whether it’s business, or a hobby like dressmaking, or yiras shmayim and Torah. Your mind must be filled with something otherwise the wrong things will enter the vacuum.
Q:
But will thinking about the niflaos HaBorei of Hashem help?
A:
Like I said, if a man is going to hold onto a thorn-bush and he is crying out “Oh, the thorns are hurting me! Quick, bring the medicine, bring the Vaseline,” and so on, it won’t help.
First he has to let go of the thorns. Then he can put the medicine on.
So that’s why I said before you have to rid yourself of all the stimuli that are harmful. And then if you fill your mind with valuable positive thoughts, certainly that’s one of the pieces of advice I can offer.
I am sure that there is something else that can be said but for the moment that will suffice.
TAPE # 511 (July 1984)
