Spiritual Excellence:

Jewish Classics of the Spirit in Brief

Book One:

Bachya Ibn Pakudah

The Duties of the Heart

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Bachya Ibn Pakuda's The Duties of the Hearts book one of
Spiritual Excellence: Jewish Classics of the Spirit in Brief by
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Copyright © 2009 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

book or portion thereof in any form.

This book is based on classes available at URL http://

torah.org/learning/spiritual-excellence/archives.html
In loving Memory of Raizel bas Meyer Volff HaLevi (Rheta Goldberg)
This is the first in a series of works in the Spiritual
Excellence series that has run for a number of years with
considerable success on Project Genesis’ very popular
website, www.torah.org . To date we have presented a
number of classical Jewish ethical and spiritual texts there,
including the one this book is based on, Bachya Ibn
Pakudah’s The Duties of the Heart, as well Rabbeinu Yonah’s
The Gates of Repentance, Moshe Maimonides’ The Eight
Chapters, and Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s The Path of the Just.
We’re honored to now offer this work (with some
alterations) in book form, and we look forward to doing the
same with those other works and others.
We’re especially pleased, though, to offer this work first;
not only because it was the premier work in the series, but
because it has always touched the core so deeply and been a
central work of personal inspiration.
Table of Contents

About the Author ii

About Project Genesis iii

Acknowledgments iv

Prologue 1

Ibn Pakudah's Introduction 3

Gate One: The Wholehearted Acceptance of the Oneness of God 15

Gate Two: Reflecting Upon Created Things 33

Gate Three: Serving God 45

Gate Four: Trusting God 67

Gate Five: Dedicating Our Actions to God 91

Gate Six: Surrendering to God 113

Gate Seven: Teshuvah (Returning to God) 127

Gate Eight: Introspection 141

Gate Nine: Abstinence 165

Gate Ten: Loving God Wholeheartedly 181

Epilogue 191

i
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Mr. Ori Pomerantz for all his input and
support, as well as the the fine staff of Project Genesis and www.torah.org,
most especially Rabbi Yaakov Menken its director and Mr. Michael
Harshaw its Executive Director, for all their encouragement and assistance.

iv
Author's Prologue
There are many things we’d need to know if we’re ever to achieve the sort of
spiritual excellence that the Jewish Tradition asks of us. But perhaps the
most important of them would be the need to know our own hearts—which is
to say, to know who we are, what we feel, what we consider important, what
our dreams are, and what realizations we’ve come to.
But that’s only the first half of knowing our hearts. After all,
psychologists ask us to know ourselves that way, too; as well as career and
relationship counselors, time-management experts, and the like. Obviously,
then, there’s a difference between their demands of us to know our hearts,
and the demands that the search for spiritual excellence would make upon
us to do that.
At bottom the difference between the two is this. When I set out to know
my heart in pursuit of spiritual excellence I do it not just to make the best
use of my time and to succeed in life: I do it to draw close to God Almighty.
For, we’re taught that “while people look upon outward appearances,
God looks upon the heart“(I Samuel 16:7). So it would logically do me well
to know what He’s seeing. And it would also obviously be important to
rectify my heart once I’d come to catch sight of its shortcomings. That’s
where the idea of there being duties of the heart—things my heart and inner
being would need to fulfill if I’m ever to achieve spiritual excellence—comes
in.
But what are the duties of the heart? And how are they different from the
other sorts of duties anyone trying to live a spiritually rich life has? We’ll
touch on all that and much more that speaks to the life of the spirit, the
meaning of life, the deeper meaning of many things said in the Jewish
Tradition, and more in our study of Bachya Ibn Pakudah’s 11th century
master-work, The Duties of the Heart.
Let’s start off by saying that the ten so-called “Gates” that embody The
Duties of the Heart offer bright and rich explorations of the above themes as
well as the following ones, which serve as the Gates’ titles:

1
 1. Wholeheartedly Accepting God's Oneness
2. Reflecting Upon Created Things
3. Serving God
4. Trusting God
5. Dedicating Our Actions to God
6. Surrendering to God
7. Teshuvah (Returning to God)
8. Introspection
9. Abstinence, and
10. Loving God Wholeheartedly.

In fact, the book also delves into such recondite and vital issues as the
nature of the soul, reward and punishment, Divine Providence, free will,
God’s Being, our place in the universe, personal power versus subservience,
health and vitality, and drawing close to God.
So let’s now begin to meander about this savory and captivating work of
classical Jewish spirituality, insight, ethics, philosophy, and wisdom.
Just know that at bottom this book is a synopsis of a much lengthier and
fecund work that tries as best as it can to explain it, and to highlight its
wisdom (and in order to facilitate that we’ve set up the sections of each Gate
to correspond exactly to that Gate’s chapters in the original). As such, you’ll
find a lot said here in as few words as possible, which may confuse and
frustrate. So we quote a statement made in the 9th section of the 3rd Gate
below that may serve as a guide for the whole work.
“… whole books can be culled from the rich mine of wisdom Ibn
Pakudah provides us with …. So take heart if you find yourself dazzled and a
little overwhelmed. The best advice we'd offer would be to reread it from
time to time and to savor its delights again and again.”
May God grant us the wherewithal to draw upon the wisdom we cite in
this work, and enable us to carry through on its reasoned suggestions for
betterment and true spiritual excellence.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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Ibn Pakudah's Introduction
1.
Though the thrust of this work will center on the ways our heart can best
serve God, it would be silly of us to skirt past the mind as if it hardly
mattered. For Ibn Pakudah argues that the greatest gift God has granted us
beyond mere conscious awareness of things is our ability to reason and
acquire knowledge. In fact, he terms our mind the “life” of our spirits and the
“light” of our intellects, inasmuch as without it we couldn’t hope to succeed
on any level in our search for spiritual excellence, despite our very best and
most heart-felt intentions.
But there are many, many things to think about and know. There are the
sorts we’d have to know in order to carry out everyday sorts of things, other
things to know to accomplish some more exalted things, and yet other things
to know to achieve our ultimate goal— drawing closer to God. And it would
do us well to know the difference between them, and where our priorities are
to lie.
In keeping with that, let it be said at this point that this introduction and
the Gate to follow are unusual, for while the bulk of the work concerns itself
with the heart indeed and is quite inspirational and uplifting, these first two
Gates are quite analytical and knowledge-based. They set out to rationalize
why the heart matters, ironically … but then they let heart hold sway and get
on to the business at hand: the devout and heart-felt search for God.
That being so, we’re told here that the knowledge of more practical
things, as well as of even more exalted items that nonetheless don’t directly
touch on our relationship to God are at best secondary to the kind of
knowledge that would draw us closer to Him. And we’re informed that the
latter sort of reasoning and knowledge only comes to us when we delve into
the kinds of things we’d need to know to comprehend God’s Torah. For
while other forms of knowledge and insight certainly make life a lot easier
and help us carry out our God-given functions in the world, only the latter
type directly help us achieve our ultimate goal.

3
 As we’ll discover in the course of this work, Ibn Pakudah’s underlying
points will prove to be that the sorts of things that we’ll be concentrating on
here, in The Duties of the Heart, will indeed either directly or soon-enough
help us in our search for spiritual excellence. And that there are three sorts of
Torah knowledge as well: the knowledge of less-essential things like proper
cantillation, grammar, and story-line; the knowledge of more exalted things
like the physical mitzvot (“commandments”); and the knowledge of ultimate
issues like the duties of the heart.
But there’s a hitch. For despite the fact that certain studies directly
nourish our beings and lead head-on to spiritual excellence, we’d still-and-all
have to engage in them for the right reasons in order to achieve our goal.
We’d need to avoid delving into them for material gain, in order to advance
our “careers” so to speak, or to impress others. Our impetus should be
achieving spiritual excellence for its own sake, and thus drawing close to
God.
After all, we’d be touching upon some of the very secrets of the universe
here, and it wouldn’t do to delve into all that for selfish, self-serving reasons!

2.
After having expounded on the intellect that God granted us to fulfill His
wishes and to grow close to Him, Ibn Pakudah now points out something
else.
It’s that not only are we capable of drawing close to God with our
minds. We can also do that by means of the Torah which He transmitted to
us prophetically through Moses, and by means of the oral traditions passed
down by the prophets and elaborated upon by the Jewish sages.
For as is known, the Torah and all its accouterments derives from a
series of prophetic revelations, starting with Moses’ at Mount Sinai, onward
to the revelations attained by the later prophets which were then passed on to
the sages, who then gingerly expanded upon those traditions to suit the needs
of time, place, and individual.
But the Torah tradition itself can be broken down into two primary
elements: what God bids us to do physically to draw close to Him, and what
He asks us to do within, in our hearts and minds. And each touches upon a
category of mitzvot.

4
 The more manifest kinds of mitzvot can also be broken down into two
kinds: perfectly logical ones (like not stealing or committing adultery, and
the like), and not at all logical ones (like not eating meat with milk, not
wearing wool and linen together, and the like). We’ll find, though, that the
duties of the heart will all prove to be quite logical and explicable.
We’ll also find that in both “camps”—physical, manifest mitzvot and
inner ones—there are imperatives (things we’re charged to do) and
prohibitions (things we’re charged not to do).
Now, the various imperatives and prohibitions connected with physical
mitzvot are well known, so we needn’t delve into them here. Instead, our
task will be to lay out the inner imperatives and prohibitions, since they’re
less known. And we’ll in fact be doing that in the course of this whole work.
In short, though, inner imperatives include: believing that the world has
a Creator who fashioned it out of nothing who is utterly unique; accepting
His Oneness; serving Him with your heart; reflecting on His wondrous
creations; trusting Him; surrendering yourself to Him; fearing Him; dreading
and being abashed before Him knowing that He observes you both outside
and in; yearning to fulfill His wishes; dedicating your deeds to His Name;
and loving Him and those who themselves love Him.
And inner prohibitions would touch on making sure we don’t engage in
the opposite of the above (by not believing in a Creator, not believing Him to
be One, etc.), as well as not coveting; not acting out of vengeance or bearing
a grudge; not contemplating sin, not yearning to commit one, and not
deciding to commit one, and the like.
Needless to say, God alone knows if we’re successful or not in our inner
devotions; for only He can read our hearts. In fact, that will prove to be a
major factor in the duties of the heart, since engaging in them usually wins
us no favor with others (as more external mitzvot might, which we could
“impress” others with). They only win us favor in God’s eyes, and they’re
thus uniquely able to draw us close to Him.

3.
Since it became clear to Ibn Pakudah that there are in fact inner, heart-bound
mitzvot waiting to be fulfilled, he wondered if a work dedicated to offering
and explaining them had ever been written. And he discovered that none had.

5
(Let’s not forget—The Duties of the Heart was written in the eleventh
century!)
And he noted that the only books written by Torah scholars since the
redaction of the Talmud were Torah commentaries, legal codes or responsa,
or repudiations of the claims of heretics, none other.
He was taken aback. Had he been wrong? Had the Tradition not really
charged us with pursuing inner mitzvot? Were they merely discretionary and
optional, he wondered?
So he went back to the drawing board, so to speak, and delved once
again into the duties of the heart. And he determined that not only are they
logically imperative, but that the Torah itself as well as the Tradition are
quite blunt about how obliged we are to make them a part of our devotional
life.
In fact it even became clear to him by then that the heart’s duties “are the
very foundation of all the mitzvot”—including the physical ones! And that if
we were less than fully attuned to these duties of the heart, that “it would be
impossible for us to keep any of the physical mitzvot!” on any substantive
level.
After all, he reasoned, if we’re comprised of an “inner” and “outer”
being, if you will—body and soul—it follows that there’d need to be inner
and outer ways of serving God. The outer way would involve the many
physical mitzvot, while the inner way would involve the sorts of inner
mitzvot we’ll be delving into in this work. And it also seemed clear that
we’d need to serve God on an inner level indeed, given that “physical
mitzvot could only be observed thoroughly when the heart was willing, the
soul wanted, and the self yearned to do them“, as Ibn Pakudah put it.
Then again, aren’t these sorts of mitzvot stated straight-out? Isn’t it
written, "Love God your Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with
all your possessions. And the words I am commanding you today shall be on
your heart" (Deuteronomy 6:5), "Love God your Lord, listen to His voice
and cling to Him" (Ibid. 30:20), "Love God your Lord, and serve Him with
all your heart and all your soul" (Ibid. 11:13), "Follow God your Lord and
fear Him" (Ibid. 13:5), "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18);
"And now Israel, what does God your Lord ask of you but to fear
Him ..." (Deuteronomy 10:12) and, "Love the stranger ...: fear God and serve
Him" (Ibid. 10:19), and the like.

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 We find much the same said by our sages and even more outright, as in,
"The Compassionate One demands the heart" (Sanhedrin 106b) and, "The
heart and the eyes are the two instigators of sin" (Jerusalem Talmud,
Berachot 1:8), aside from the many admonitions listed in Pirkei Avot (the
series of moral directives set forth by our sages known as “The Ethics of the
Fathers”).
Could it be that such inner obligations are only binding from time to
time, he wondered? But that certainly proved not to be so, considering their
make-up. It became clear that they are in fact relevant, as he put it, “our
whole lives long, all the time, without exception ... each and every minute, in
every way, for as long as we’re conscious and alive”.

4.
Continuing to wonder why a book dedicated to explicating the inner, heart-
based mitzvot hadn’t been written before he had set out to write The Duties
of the Heart, Ibn Pakudah thought that it was because there really weren’t
many heart-based mitzvot. But he discovered that while there’s a finite
number of physical mitzvot (613, in all), there’s a nearly infinite number of
heart-based ones, when you consider how capable they are of coloring and
infusing nearly everything we do.
He then wondered if perhaps everyone was already so aware of and so
committed to fulfilling these mitzvot that it was simply unnecessary to lay
them out in book form.
But to his dismay he knew (just as most of us know, and only too well)
that the great preponderance of people simply don’t strive for spiritual
excellence. And that when they do the sorts of things that benefit us all, they
often do it for self-serving ends—perhaps to appear intelligent, caring, or
pious to others, and the like.
Such individuals not only do the right thing for the wrong reasons, they
also bypass the need to concentrate on certain fundamentals of the faith we’ll
be touching on later, including: faith in God's Oneness; whether we’re
supposed to delve into the import and implications of it on our own, or
whether it’s enough to depend upon the tradition for that; and whether we’re
supposed to say "God is One" the way most people do, without really
knowing what they’re saying, or whether we’re to research the matter on our
own.

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 Many sages, though, have dedicated the requisite time and energy
needed to dwell on these points, as well as other duties of the heart. In fact,
the story’s told of a certain sage who would only associate with others until
midday, when he’d seclude himself and say, "Bring on the hidden light!”
referring to the duties of the heart. Ibn Pakudah’s point is that it is they
whom we should emulate.

5.
He had introduced a second theme above, aside from the original one, which
was why heart-based mitzvot weren’t explored in the past. And that second
theme touches upon the question of whether it’s wiser to explain certain
more “abstract” articles of the faith (that don’t touch upon actual practice) on
our own, or whether it’s better to depend entirely upon the explanations
we’ve inherited.
And he remarked that while some of his contemporaries thought it best
to simply draw and rely upon our spiritual heritage when it came to such
things, Ibn Pakudah himself thought we were obliged to delve into them on
our own—if we have the acuity needed.
In fact, he likened anyone who’s able to delve into those things on his
own but doesn’t to the poor servant of the king who was charged with
shirking his duties.
It seems there had once been a rather intelligent and capable servant of a
great king who was ordered to handle a very special assignment. He was to
collect all the taxes from the people, to categorize the funds he received, and
to allot whatever was needed for each purpose. The servant was rather lazy
or perhaps naive, though. And he let the people convince him to take their
word for what they’d paid out, and to allow them to decide which causes
they were to set aside money for. The king found out soon enough, and he
ordered the servant to come before him.
“How much did you collect, and what did you allot it for?” asked the
king. The servant was dumbfounded and couldn’t say a thing. After all, he
simply didn’t know. And he was arrested. Not for embezzlement so much as
for dereliction of duty. After all, all he did wrong was to allow others to do
his work for him, when he was perfectly capable of doing it on his own.
“The same goes for you” charges our author. ”If you’re knowledgeable
and clever enough, and you’re capable of understanding what you’ve been

8
taught” already by the sages, who explicated the more abstract fundamentals
of our faith—“then you’re obliged to make use of all of that to draw
conclusions on your own.”
His point is clear, though, that you have to know what the sages passed
down to us in the form of the electric, light-studded, coalesced doctrines we
have. And only then can you—and must you—“put two and two together”
and offer cogent insights of your own. Again, though, this doesn’t touch on
practical halacha so much as on the haunting abstract ideas the tradition
offers.
As the Torah puts it, "Should something too enigmatic for you to judge
occur in differing bloods, laws, plagues ...” which is to say, when it comes to
practice and halacha, you’re obliged to act “according to how you are
instructed" (Deuteronomy 17:8-10) without recourse to novel interpretation
or insight.
The implication though according to Ibn Pakudah is that when it comes
to things like “the nature of God's Oneness, about His various names and
characteristics, about particular principles of the faith like serving God,
trusting Him, surrendering to Him, dedicating your deeds to His name,
ridding your good deeds of untoward influences, repenting, fearing Him,
loving Him, being abashed in His presence, being introspective for the sake
of His name,” and so on, that you’re not only to delve into these matters in
light of the traditions, but on your own as well.
It’s important to underscore the point, though, that study of the tradition
would naturally come first. Otherwise your conclusions would be purely
personal and conjectural. But the point is that the person who can arrive at
clear, logical conclusions after having seeped himself in the Tradition
“should delve into the matter on his own as deeply as possible, and arrive at
as many proofs (i.e., of the underlying veracity of the tradition) as he
possibly can.”

6.
Finally deciding that there were indeed legitimate reasons to lay out the
duties of the heart, Ibn Pakudah then wondered about something else. Would
the people of his generation appreciate them?
It seemed to him that the people of past generations worked very hard on
the duties of the heart to the exclusion of some other certainly good things

9
that still and all didn’t directly spur on spiritual excellence. So, for example,
rather than delve at length into the details of rarely-applicable halachic
practices, scholars of the past concentrated on general halachic principles,
and on knowing exactly what to do in their daily lives. And should a more
“exotic” question come up, they’d research the matter there and then, and
arrive at a practical decision—but not before.
They were thus able to spend a lot more time on the duties of the heart—
and to achieving spiritual excellence.
And so it’s said, "In the days of Rav Yehudah they only studied the
(Talmudic) Order of Nezikim, while we study more than that. Yet rain would
come down when Rav Yehudah would (only have to) take off one of his
sandals, while we’re overlooked (and our prayers go unanswered) when we
fast incessantly."
That’s to say that Rav Yehudah and his contemporaries had achieved a
higher level of closeness to God than the latter day scholars, despite their
having studied less than the latter ones. And why? Because Rav Yehudah
and his contemporaries “sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of God's
name”. That is, they dedicated their beings to their spiritual practices, “while
we (the latter day scholars) don’t" (Berachot 20A).
Ibn Pakudah’s point was that his contemporaries were like those latter
day scholars. For they, too, spent far too much time delving into halachot
that don’t touch upon the duties of the heart. And they weren’t very likely to
appreciate them. In fact, the same can be said of many of us today.
Ibn Pakudah also came to realize that our spiritual practices have to be
rooted in good-heartedness and pure intentions if they’re to be effective. And
that the whole point of observing the duties of the heart is to “align (our)
inner and outer self in the service of God”, which is to say—to be the same,
inside and out; to be a person of integrity, rather than someone whose "heart
is not whole with God his Lord" (Kings I 11:4) or with other people.
Ironically, we also have to start off with integrity; for it serves as the
very core of the duties of the heart. After all, if I say one thing and do
another, my “insides” are obviously dissociated from my “outside”. I
couldn’t be expected to be anything but a hypocrite. And I certainly couldn’t
be trusted to be sincere when it came to my relationship to God.
Ibn Pakudah then offered an original insight. He declared that a single
deed is oftentimes more effective than many others, depending on the

10
integrity (and loftiness) of our intentions. For if we set out to do things
because we love God or are in awe of Him—inside and out—and all we
intend to do is fulfill His wishes, then what we manage to do then will be
worth far more than what we’d do without those feelings and intentions.

7.
Ibn Pakudah finally resolved to delve into the duties of the heart on his own.
And he leapt from one citation to another, and one implication to another, till
he grew dizzy with the rich spiritual undertones he was unearthing. But he
was afraid he’d forget it all. So he decided to actually write The Duties of the
Heart itself, which was to serve as a primer on how to achieve spiritual
excellence from the inside out.
Then he engaged in a process of self-examination we’d all do well to
follow. He set out to determine just how true he himself was to what he was
saying; how genuine and rooted in personal integrity his own dictates were.
(And this is where he lays his own obvious piety out for all to see, it seems.)
As he put it, “When my deeds agreed with my own words, I thanked
God for helping me in that and guiding me on the path; but when my deeds
contradicted or were beneath what I said, I blamed and reproached myself,
and used my own arguments against myself, contrasting my deeds with the
righteousness of my words.” That’s to say, he set out to determine whether
or not he had a right to say what he was saying, and to improve himself when
he saw that his own actions were off the mark.
But being human as we all are, and having the kinds of limitations and
reservations we all do, he began to have second thoughts. “It occurred to me”
he wrote, “that someone like me wasn’t equipped to write it”, i.e., such a
book. After all, it would call for organizational and literary skills he didn’t
think he had (though he clearly did). “I was afraid I was burdening myself
with something that would only demonstrate my limitations, and that I was
overstepping my bounds” he said in all humility. “So I convinced myself
to ... not do what I’d decided to.”
But fortunately for us it occurred to him that “many good ideas were
rejected because of fear, and that dread causes a lot of damage”, which is to
say that many great and important projects go by the waysides simply
because their authors lapse into uncertainty and self-doubt. And he began to
realize that “if everyone who ever resolved to do something good or to

11
instruct others in the path of righteousness kept still until he himself could
accomplish everything he set out to, then nothing would have been said since
the days of the prophets”. For while they were told what to say straight-out
by God, we’re certainly not; we have to depend on self-evaluation and the
guidance of teachers and friends.
And he realized as well that “if everyone who ever resolved to advance
goodness but couldn’t, then abandoned whatever he’d already accomplished
instead, that humanity would be without goodness or nobility, everyone
would just chase after empty fantasies, the paths of goodness would turn to
ruin, and the abodes of kindness would be deserted.” Which is to say that if
everyone who was capable of enlightening us in how to better ourselves had
to wait till he himself had become the very best he could be, the rest of us
would never benefit from his insights, and mankind as a whole would suffer.
Ibn Pakudah also knew full well that people were “reticent to act kindly,
and that they were lazy when it came to pursuing goodness.” So he knew that
a work like his was in fact necessary. But he was also convinced that “with
God's help ... and a strong determination to subjugate himself to the service
of God”, that people could indeed improve himself. So he put pen to paper
and followed through on his idea to compose The Duties of the Heart.

8.
Ibn Pakudah then finished this introduction by detailing the process he used
in writing this work. He first broke the various duties down into ten major
ones, which he presented as “Gates” or major sections. He decided to include
the following elements in each Gate: a working definition of each duty, a
laying out of its composite parts and implications, and a listing of the sorts of
things that would deter us from being successful at that duty. As he said, he
wrote it all in “straightforward, everyday, and accessible language that would
be (easily) understood.”
The wise reader would use this very same process in his or her own
search for spiritual excellence. After all, it would do us all well to clearly,
simply, and succinctly break our spiritual goals down into categories; to
define our terms fully, in order to know what we’re actually addressing (and
what not); to lay out the details of what we’re to do; and to consider the day-
to-day implications of that in our lives.

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 Ibn Pakudah then explained that he used logic and common sense to
explicate and justify his original thoughts, but that he was sure to “back them
up” with Biblical verses and citations from the Talmud that either said
outright what he himself was pointing out or alluded to it. And he cited the
words of non-Jewish sages as well.
He began by addressing what he depicted as “the greatest and most
fundamental” duty of the heart: accepting God’s Oneness. So he called the
first Gate “The Gate of the Wholehearted Acceptance of the Oneness of
God”. As we’ll find, though, this Gate won’t just touch on accepting the fact
that there’s only one God. It will go to great lengths to explain the whole
notion of God’s Oneness and Perfection.
He called the second Gate “The Gate of Reflection upon Created
Things” because it concentrates upon catching sight of God’s Presence in the
world. The third one became “The Gate of Service to God“, and it explains
the how and the wherefores of Divine Service. The fourth is “The Gate of
Trust”, which dwells upon trusting in God in our daily lives. The fifth is
“The Gate of Directing Our Actions to God's Name”, which delves into the
area of complete and concentrated dedication to His Presence. Sixth is “The
Gate of Surrender” and it offers details on surrendering one’s own wishes
and self to the Divine Presence. Seventh is “The Gate of Repentance” and it
details the process of returning to God when we’d turned our backs to Him.
Eighth is “The Gate of Introspection” because it delves into the subject of
self-awareness. Ninth is “The Gate of Abstention” because it lays out the
areas in which we’d do well to practice some form of abstention (though it’s
not the Jewish way to be utterly ascetic, as we’ll see, no matter how much
one dedicates his life to God). And the tenth and last one is termed “The
Gate of the Love of God” because it dwells upon the sublime idea of loving
God Almighty.
Ibn Pakudah then turned to each one of us and said, “as you read my
book brother and abide by it, use it as a reminder; and assess your soul
honestly with it. Read it again and again, draw conclusions from it, and affix
it to your heart and mind.” For after all, this book is a living text, one that
demands that we take it to heart and incorporate it in our lives and in our
search for spiritual excellence.
He then concluded this introduction with a prayer “that God teach us
how to serve Him”, which should be our heart’s underlying prayer, too.

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