The Five Levels of Pleasure and Peace - a few ideas put together

The Five Levels of Pleasure is a hierarchy that the late Rabbi Noach Weinberg (my grandfather’s younger brother) devised which delineates each level culminating with the highest level of the pleasure of the Divine. Already on a lower level of pleasure, the pleasure of having children, my uncle points out that people don’t know how to capitalize on this pleasure, and life goes by bereft and often even on the contrary, people are greatly pained by their children. So my uncle introduces the Yiddish word: kvel, which means to simply sit and reap in the sensation of the goodness being graced before you, like when a one looks lovingly at someone, kvelling is the practice of doing just that. This is really beautiful, and when it comes to the highest level of pleasure of the Divine, one really needs to do this, and in this sense it is classically known as divaikus (clinging, bonding, attachment).

So after such a beautiful presentation proving and selecting divaikus as the highest pleasure and purpose of intent, and also pointing out how people categorically ignore and do not even know to capitalize on the real pleasures, and pointing out the need to do things like kvelling, one would think, ok this guy has it all figured out he must be putting it into action. But no, not in his institution of Aish Hatorah, or in any institution that I know of today (with the exclusion of meditation and yoga, which maybe some can consider to be an attempt at divaikus), do they have a program to proactively seek divaikus. There are sessions for all types of subjects and studies, even sessions to teach of divaikus, but to actually commit to achieving and even living a life of divaikus everyone shirks away.

Peace, everyone knows that you can’t force peace, force and peace are opposites. Some people try to get around this by trying to cultivate peace with incentives, to make it worthwhile for both parties to be at peace. But what type of incentive can rival the vitality and the industry of hatred? Money or sensual pleasures, are often very insufficient to keep hate at bay. And when the money and pleasure are coming from people whose lives are so empty and meaningless, what appeal do they have? The recipient can hope to gain the “good life” of the donor?!

So ultimately peace has to come from each individual, first one must gain inner peace, peace in his home, and then he can pray and promote peace in the world (-see this in Likutay Moharan, Torah-lesson 14). Also when a person reaches a standard of living which has a vitality much more powerful than hatred, then just his presence alone will force the other side to submit to him. In the Story of Ancient Times of the Seven Beggars, Rabbainu revealed different aspects of his good life that he had, these are not only incentives for peace, but they actually induce peace, because without the teeth to actually dig into these paradigms that Rabbainu revealed, one will only be able to shirk away humbled. It has been said that when a person see someone very great, in his mind he sees a reflection of himself. This is true of seeing a great person whose greatness is superficial and self aggrandizement, such a great person who knew how to successfully achieve the empty pleasures of this world. When looking on such a great person, a person will see in his mind a reflection of his own self. However when a person looks at a truly great person, then he will see how much he himself is in the dark and how his own personal immense deficiencies. So the more people up their game and begin to achieve the true pleasures of life, the pleasures of the Divine, the more everyone else will follow suit, and the more peace will reign.

Na Nach Nachma Nachman MayUman!