DavidT wrote on 25 May 2021 17:58:
WELCOME!
Rabbi Chaim Freidlander zatzal wrote a great eitza for guarding our eyes. (Look in Sifsei Chaim on Moados, Chelek Alef in the section Derech Shel Aliya.)
He says that if we give ourselves the choice of either enjoying the pleasure of looking at women or not giving ourselves the pleasure, we are in for a struggle: Enjoy or don't enjoy? A plate of ice cream or an empty plate? Instead, what we have to do is realize the positive benefits of guarding our eyes, the tremendous zechus and kedusha that we can gain from shmiras eynayim. If we do that, now we have a choice between one pleasure and another pleasure, between a plate of delicious treife ice cream which will eventually make us sick, or a geshmake seudas Shabbos with our families. That is a much easier choice to make.
"הוי מחשב הפסד מצוה כנגד שכרה ושכר עבירה כנגד הפסדה"
We were always taught to believe, and to be fair many Rishonim learn this way, that "hefsed mitzvah" and "schar aveirah" refer to the pleasure of aveiros and difficulty of mitzvos in this world, and "schar mitzvah" and "hefsed aveirah" refer to the reward and punishment in the world to come.
This is very difficult, because we are being asked to weigh experiences with which we are intimately familiar, against an experience which is עין לא ראתה זולתך.
I have heard another pshat suggested, along the lines of what you are quoting from Rav Friedlander, that "schar mitzvah" and "hefsed aveirah" don't refer to oilam haba, but rather the ways that mizvos enrich our lives, and aveiros ruin them, in THIS world. Now the scales are balanced, we are being asked to make a very intimate calculation with ourselves, to explore the ways with which connect to Torah and Mitzvos, and realize what we are giving up and how much we are suffering by transgressing, in THIS world.
To take it one step further, almost everyone is familiar with the Mesillas Yesharim's parable of the maze, where only the people who have completed it and are sitting in the middle and can see all the paths can guide those still inside. Everyone should go back and read it again, because we were never taught it properly. Most people were told that "the maze" is about listening to your Rebbi, or something like that. Now, listening to your Rebbi is a nice thing and an important concept, but it is flat out not what the Ramchal is talking about.
The Ramchal says that the message that the people in the center, the people who have gotten out from "תחת יצרם", have for us, is...wait for it..."הוי מחשב הפסד מצוה כנגד שכרה ושכר עבירה כנגד הפסדה". That's the whole message, which the Ramchal says only someone who got through the maze can see is the only way through it. It begs the question, what is the brilliance of this eitzah? Perhaps it's like we were saying, it's not about thinking about Gehinnom, it's about contemplating how personal the mitzvos are, how they enrich us, and thereby every time we fight against our yetzer instead of building resentment that we don't like it and tension to eventually give in, we have something to identify with in the struggle, not in oilam haba but in the here and now, and our affinity and connection to that aspect of the mitzvah grow with each act of willpower, instead of us growing disgruntled and frustrated.
As I'm writing this I'm realizing that Rav Friendlander was as we all know a big scholar of the Ramchal's works. I wonder if he saw this in the Mesillas Yesharim's "maze" as well.
