Is the world really the cause of my suffering, or is it how I see it?

Rabbi Landau teaches that the problem usually isn't the world, “it's the way you see it.” Reality is one, but you don't experience it directly. You experience it through the lens of your own mind, and “every filter you carry is made of you, not reality.”

That is why two people can look at the same exact situation and walk away with completely different realities. “Most of the suffering we blame the world is really the result of our compulsive judgment about it.”

King Solomon says, “Ki k'mo sha'ar b'nafsho, ken hu.” Rabbi Landau reads it as: a person's inner mental accounting is his reality. And “the more rigid your identity becomes, the less of reality you're actually able to experience.”

Wisdom, he says, “isn't collecting better opinions, it's learning to see with less distortion.” The moment you stop clinging to your conclusions, your intelligence begins to work, and the clearer your perception becomes, “the more extraordinary ordinary life begins to look.” His bottom line: “If you want a better life, go get a cleaner mind.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Much of our suffering comes not from the world but from how we see and judge it.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that each of us sees reality through the glasses of our own mind and heart, made of our assumptions, judgments, and the conclusions we have piled up over the years.

Deepest human truth

“As a person reckons in his soul, so he is.” A person's inner accounting is his reality, so a cleaner mind opens a clearer, even extraordinary, ordinary life.

More questions from this teaching

• What is true wisdom?