Search for Serenity - 008 Dealing With Suffering

A Person Is Made Up of Body and Soul

The Torah compares Yissocher, the tribe who merited Torah scholars as descendants, to a donkey.  Just like a donkey endures its load and rests wherever it is, so do Yissocher’s descendants have these two attributes.  They have rest, menuchah, and they have savlonus , enduring pain.

How does a person have peace of mind, while at the same time enduring pain?

A person has a body and a soul, and the body and the soul want different things. When only the soul gets its needs met, the body suffers in the process, and when only the body gets is needs met, the soul suffers with this. Their needs contradict each other. For example, if a person sleeps a lot, his body enjoys it, but his soul doesn’t. When a person pushes himself to do a mitzvah, his soul enjoys it, but his body doesn’t.

When a person has menuchah, his soul is at peace, but with that the body endures some pain. It is being denied certain comforts so that the soul can have enjoyment, and the body endures this.

Two Different Reactions To Suffering

If a person is suffering, there are two ways to deal with it. One way to deal with pain is to kick and scream throughout the entire ordeal.  The other way is savlonus, to really endure it, by embracing it.

With the first way, a person’s body and soul are in a fight. The soul wants to suffer physically, because it knows that this will purify it more, but the body is kicking and screaming at the pain. But with the second way, savlonus, the body and soul come together in harmony. The soul enjoys it, and the body, while not enjoying it, is able to endure the pain. With this way, a person achieves menuchas hanefesh, even as he’s suffering.

The Soul’s Suffering

When a person suffers physically, there are two parts to it. There is actual pain, and then there is the change of routine in a person’s life.  For instance when a person gets sick, his schedule has changed and he isn’t living his regular life anymore, which is a mental kind of suffering.

This second part of the suffering is much more painful than the actual physical pain. The soul suffers from this, because it has been taken out of its routine. This is known as yissurei nefesh, suffering of the soul.

Silence Relieves The Pain

A sick person isn’t only suffering physically, his very soul is suffering from the change of routine in his life. How can he comfort his own suffering soul?

The answer is silence. When a person is suffering in his soul, this naturally causes a person to want to talk about his pain.  The Gemara (Berachos 62a) says, however, that one should accept pain with silence. It seems that a person should just embrace it, but it is really more than that.

Upon analysis, we can find that talking about one’s pain is what increases it. The less you complain, the less painful it is.

At first, if a person does this, he will find it very hard not to talk about his pain. But after some time, his silence will give him menuchas hanefesh.

This is the real reason why on Shabbos we are silent from talking about weekday matters -- because we must learn how to be silent about our problems.  Talking spreads a person’s soul too thin. It is written, “My soul leaves when I speak with him.”

Silence Unifies Our Soul

The Vilna Gaon writes that a person has seventy forces in his soul. How can a person have menuchas hanefesh, if he has seventy different forces going on inside??

The answer is through silence, which can come and unify them all together. Silence is the power that brings peace between differences.

Creation was silent at the giving of the Torah. The power of silence is what unifies everything together. Silence unifies the body and soul together and also unifies the soul itself.