You know how it
is.
We see someone
do or say something that we don’t approve of, and right away he’s guilty of
whatever it is we’re charging him with in our minds. We didn’t (at least this time) make a
derogatory comment about it to anyone, nor were we mekabel this negative
inference from yenem.
Neither saying nor
hearing anything leaves us squeaky clean on our ride
under the radar
as far as the laws of loshon hora are concerned.
Our thoughts,
however, are a different story because as we explained in EmunahSpeak:
Nothing but Thoughts:
You are what
you think.
We were speaking
there in relation to character traits and we went on to point out that If
his (a person’s) thoughts were saturated with humility it would be physically
IMPOSSIBLE for him to conduct himself in an arrogant manner. And so it is
for every other midda, be it positive or negative.
And the same can
be said even for certain mitzvos.
In the
introduction to Sefer Chofetz Chaim the Chofetz Chaim lists 17 Laveen (negative
mitzvos) and 14 Aseen (positive mitzvos) that one might potentially violate by
either speaking or believing loshon hora.
While most of these mitzvos are not about loshon hora per se in their
essence, the Chofetz Chaim tells us that when ones crosses the line on loshon
hora he may also be violating one or more of these Aseen or Laveen.
But most of them
are also violated without even uttering a word of loshon hora.
If someone is
speaking loshon hora is he not, as was also said there, simply reading his
lines; the lines that he has written for himself; the ones etched into his
thoughts?
If you said it,
you first thought it.
And if you
thought it, then even if you’re a tzaddik who kept his mouth shut in the
aftermath of the judge and jury role playing that was outlined above, and you
didn’t tell your wife, your co-worker or your best buddy what you saw or heard,
you have to know that you’re a tzaddik who might already be in big trouble
because you may have trashed the Aseh of judge your fellow Jew charitably.
And that’s
before you even opened your mouth.
So it all comes
down to this:
If you really
want to control your tongue you have to first learn to control your mind because
if you’re not already thinking about something that shouldn’t be there then it’s
impossible that you should be speaking about it.
