How Hisbonenus Uncovers the Ratzon You Already Have

Yeshayahu rebuked Am Yisroel:

יָדַע שׁוֹר קֹנֵהוּ וַחֲמוֹר אֵבוּס בְּעָלָיו, יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא יָדַע, עַמִּי לֹא הִתְבּוֹנָן.

On first glance, the comparison is difficult. What is the complaint against the human being from the ox and donkey? Bishlama, the animal recognizes its owner instinctively. It has no bechirah and undertakes no avodah to achieve that recognition. However, a human being has no instinctive recognition of Hashem; he must put in huge amounts of work through learning and avodah, which is in itself difficult. If so, what is the comparison to the donkey, who has no work to do?

The answer is that Hashem implanted in the animal an immediate capacity to recognize the one on whom it depends. Would He not have implanted in the human being—whose relationship with his Creator is infinitely more fundamental—the capacity to recognize Him? The only difference is that the human being possesses bechirah. The animal simply responds to what its nature presents to it. The human being can direct his attention or refuse to direct it. Therefore, what corresponds in man to the animal’s automatic recognition is extraordinarily simple: עמי לא התבונן. Pause and look. The work the human being needs is not to import an alien faculty. He already has the same immediate capacity for recognition; the only thing missing is interest. Because he knows how to be misbonein. He does it constantly. Give him something that concerns his money, his kavod, a desire, a person he loves, or anything else that is genuinely his business, and no one has to teach him how to remain with it and look at it. His attention goes there naturally. And the way hisbonenus brings you to that part of yourself is not through importing anything; it is through allowing the pre-existing recognition to become present. עמי לא התבונן. The problem is not, “You lacked the intellectual ability to recognize Me.” Nor is it, “You were never taught the advanced technique of hisbonenus.” You already exercise hisbonenus. Everything you need for it to be present is in place. Why did you not exercise it here? And why does a person naturally contemplate one thing and not another? Because one thing has entered the sphere of what matters to him, and the other has not. The rebuke is therefore not merely about a deficient importation. It is about a deficient interest: this was not sufficiently your business for you to pause and look.

 Let’s elaborate and clarify what hisbonenus is.

There are two very different ways in which the mind can think. One is sequential thinking: given this, what follows? If A is true, then B follows; if B is true, what does that tell me about C? This thinking may be deductive, inductive, intuitive, or highly sophisticated. The defining feature is that the mind advances from one thought to the next.

Hisbonenus is different. Its fundamental question is not, “What follows from this?” but “What is this?” You remain with the object itself. What is this Gemara saying? What exactly is this Rambam saying? What am I feeling? What do I really want? What is actually happening here? Instead of immediately moving on to the next thought, you keep looking at the same thing and allow more of it to become apparent.

This does not mean that hisbonenus is opposed to logical or discursive reasoning. A person can arrive at extremely precise logical distinctions through contemplation. The difference is in how the next insight is found. In sequential thinking, the previous thought generates the next thought: “If this is so, what follows?” In contemplative thinking, the mind returns to the object: “What is this?” Another feature or relationship becomes apparent, and that in turn may yield further logical consequences.

Another example of this: Rav Baruch Ber was asked how one comes to understand Chidushei Maran Grach HaLevi al HaRambam when one does not understand what he is saying. His answer was: Keep looking at Rav Chaim’s words and thinking about them. Look again. Think again. Then do it again. The instruction is not to manufacture another explanation or begin constructing deductions around the words. Stay with the words themselves until you see what they are saying.

A useful analogy is a three-dimensional stereogram. At first, one sees only a flat pattern. Nothing is added to the picture when the three-dimensional image finally appears. One keeps looking, the mode of attention changes, and suddenly a piece of the structure emerges. Then another part can be followed, and eventually the whole picture can be seen. The information was there before. What changed was one’s seeing.

But hisbonenus is not an unusual intellectual technique that human beings have to learn. People do it naturally whenever something genuinely interests them.

Watch someone eating a bowl of ice cream. He takes a spoonful and then looks at the ice cream again. Another spoonful, another look. Try deliberately eating an entire bowl without looking at it. It is surprisingly unnatural. Why does the person need to look? He already knows what the ice cream looks like. He is not gathering information. The looking is part of the pleasure. He is engaging the object again, allowing the sight, taste, anticipation, and pleasure to come together. He is savoring it.

The same phenomenon appears when someone looks at a photograph of a child he deeply loves. He knows the photograph already. There is nothing left to discover informationally. Yet he keeps looking. He notices the face, the expression, and simply remains with it. He is not trying to learn something new. He wants to experience more fully something that already matters to him.

Hisbonenus in oneself.

A person who, while tamei, unknowingly entered the Beis HaMikdash or ate kodashim is ordinarily obligated in a Korban Oleh V’Yored, but only if there was yediyah bitechilah—he initially knew he was tamei—followed by he’elem beintayim, when he forgot his tumah and entered the Mikdash or ate kodashim, and yediyah basof, when he afterward discovered what he had done. The Gemara asks what qualifies as the initial knowledge, and Rabanan hold, “Yedias beis rabo shmah lo shmah yediyah”—the elementary knowledge acquired in school does not count as awareness. Rashi explains: What is this schoolhouse knowledge? “He learned in his beis rabo that one who touches tumah becomes tamei, and he was conscious that he had touched it, but he never stopped to apply the rule and consciously think, ‘I am now tamei.’” That basic background knowledge is not sufficient to constitute knowledge that he was tamei, and therefore, if he later entered the Mikdash or ate kodashim and then realized what happened, he does not brings the korban. HaGaon Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz points out a million-dollar gem about what hisbonenus in oneself means. With his schoolhouse knowledge, he knew all three parts of the necessary information: the din of one touching a sheretz, that this was a sheretz, and that he touched a sheretz. Yet the Rabanan say that this is NOT considered knowledge. How is that possible? Rashi explains: because he was not misbonein—he did not pause to see, “Oh, that means I’m tamei!” That is the self-awareness of hisbonenus in oneself when learning applicable Torah knowledge.

1. The same is true of changing his ratzon. R. Wolbe makes a particularly strong statement in Alei Shur, volume 2—people possess tremendous powers of will, and even Bnei Torah do not know how to utilize them. The will is the determining factor of success.

Let’s explore. A desired object naturally attracts sustained attention. A person looks again, imagines it, notices another aspect of it, and allows himself to experience what attracts him about it. His senses, imagination, emotions, and intellect begin participating together. The object becomes increasingly present to him. This is why food is less exciting when one cannot see it, and why smell contributes so powerfully to eating. The more completely the object engages the person, the more vivid the experience becomes. Contemplation does something analogous on the level of thought: it takes something that may already be known and makes it present.

This provides a mechanism for understanding how hisbonenus can change ratzon.

Suppose a person is asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to do teshuvah?” He answers, “Four.”

The first question should not necessarily be, “Why aren’t you an eight?” Ask instead: “Why aren’t you a two?”

That forces him to look at the inner ratzon that already exists. Perhaps he says, “Because I really don’t want to remain the person I am now.” Or, “Because I do want closeness to Hashem.” Or, “Because I don’t want another Elul and Yom Kippur to pass and discover that nothing changed.” Whatever he answers, these are not values being imposed upon him from outside. They are the reasons that explain why he is already at four.

Then comes the crucial question: “Suppose you remain a four. Suppose you continue along your present path and ultimately never accomplish the teshuvah that you say you want. How much of a disaster would that be to you on a scale of 1–10?”

Here is where hisbonenus begins. Do not immediately give yourself another argument. Do not tell yourself what you ought to feel. Let yourself look at the outcome. Think to yourself: What would it actually mean to me if another Elul passed, another Yom Kippur passed, and nothing fundamentally had changed? What if the direction I am presently taking becomes my life? What if I ultimately arrive somewhere that, by my own admission, I desperately did not want to arrive?

Stay with it.

Perhaps you began by saying that your desire for teshuvah was only a four, but when you actually look at the possibility of never achieving it—of the possibility of ending up like the hundreds who are not here any longer and did not have an opportunity in the last moment to undo the lifelong things they regretted—you realize that this would be an eight-out-of-ten disaster to you.

Something important has now been uncovered. Your consciously experienced ratzon was a four, while your own valuation of the consequence of failure was an eight. The deeper value was already there. It simply was not sufficiently present to you.

Hisbonenus therefore does not create a new ratzon. It brings an existing ratzon into the foreground of consciousness, and thereby the existing ratzon’s strength increases dramatically.

This is why the method can move the needle. A person’s immediate desire, comfort, resentment, laziness, or taavah is vivid. He experiences it now. His deeper desires are not only equally real; they are stronger, for they are what HE REALLY WANTS, NOT WHAT HIS FRAGMENTED ANIMAL PART WANTS, and they are far more important to him, but they are obscured. The two desires are therefore not competing on equal psychological terms. Hisbonenus changes that. It takes what the person already recognizes and already wants and allows him to experience its presence. It makes the distant consequence present. It clears away some of the muddied waters that prevented him from seeing where his present path actually leads and what he truly desires. The recognition emerges from within him: “I am presently traveling toward something that I myself do not want.” That is very different from lecturing yourself: “You ought to want teshuvah more.” Nothing new had to be imported. His own ratzon was uncovered and allowed to speak with its mighty force.

This presupposes an innate desire for good, as the Navi declared in עמי לא התבונן. It is also stated in the Rambam, Hilchos Geirushin 2:20, as follows: “Since he wants to be a member of the Jewish people, and he wants to fulfill all the mitzvos and distance himself from transgressions, but his yetzer is overpowering him.” And Rashi states in Vayikra 26:21: “They harden their hearts to prevent themselves from drawing closer to Me.” In other words, if they did not deliberately harden their hearts to suppress and resist it, they would naturally be drawn closer to Me by an innate force. There is no need to import that force; it is there. The only work is not to deliberately prevent oneself. How does one deliberately prevent oneself from drawing closer? Not by doing anything other than simply not being misbonein, as the Navi said, and as stated about Pharaoh, “He did not take this to his heart,” and about his servants, “Whoever did not take the word of Hashem to heart—he left his servants and livestock in the fields.”

The practical sequence is therefore simple:

How much do you want it? Why isn’t the number lower? What is it in you that already wants this? If you remain exactly where you are and never achieve it, how much of a disaster would that be to you? Why? Now stay with that. Look at it. What does it actually mean?

And then ask again:

“Having really looked at that, how much do you now want to prevent that outcome?”

The essential principle is that ratzon is determined not only by what a person values, but by how present that value is to him. Hisbonenus does not merely supply information. It takes what a person already knows, values, fears, loves, or wants and makes it present enough to exert its actual force upon him.

We already possess this faculty. Ice cream does not have to teach us how to contemplate. Desire does not have to teach us. Love does not have to teach us. Anything that truly matters to us automatically teaches us to look again.

The avodah is to take that completely natural human capacity and turn it toward what we say matters most.

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