Key To All Wisdom
Hasidism offers an analogy to explain the difference between learning Hasidism and other parts of the Torah. It was once asked: What is the difference between Rambam and Aristotle? Torah vs. Wisdom. Both are philosophers and scientists. The answer was that Aristotle is like a person trying to draw a circle and find its center. This is a difficult job. The Torah, by contrast, starts with the center then goes and can make a circle of any size around it, and it will always be in the center. Likewise, once one grasps Hasidism, it is believed that he will have the key to all the other aspects of the Torah because he will understand its underlying message. Once the inner point of the Torah is grasped (the middle of the circle) the only job is then to learn how to put it into practice in daily life which is what the other levels teach a person to do.
Read more about this topic: Hasidic Philosophy
Famous quotes containing the words key to all, key to, key and/or wisdom:
“The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is—Imbecility: imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments: victims of gravity, customs and fear. This gives force to the strong,—that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Experience has shown that the trade of the East is the key to national wealth and influence.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)
“At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)