21 Tamuz - Igeret Hatshuva

Questions: What is better -- someone who learns hours of Hassidus every day and has wide knowledge of all the Sefiros, concepts in Hassidus etc... or someone who takes small doses of it but spends a lot of time thinking about it and trying to live it?

Is the "Chabad" (Chochmah-Binah-Daas = Wisdom*- Understanding - Knowledge) process the process of intellect - information processing/clarification/analysis, or is it the process of integration into one's life?
[*see also http://tinyurl.com/chochma]

Is Chochmah - Binah the intellectual process and Daas the process of making it real?
or the Binah is in actual action until the Daas "catches up"?

Pirkei Avos chapter 3 towards the end:
אם אין דעת אין בינה , ואם אין בינה אין דעת
"Im ain daas ain binah, v'im ain binah ain daas"
--Without Daas (Knowledge) there is no Binah (Understanding), and without Binah there is no Daas.

If so, then the question becomes: Is it better to have more Daas than Binah or more Binah than Daas?

I asked the Rav about this. He said that in Chabad the emphasis was always on daas and integrated knowledge rather than intellectual knowledge, that his mashpia said that the yetzer hara lets a person learn for four hours but won't let him contemplate even for a moment, that taking one idea and driving it home into your very being is more important than all the intellectual knowledge.

So why is the learning of hassidus emphasized so much?

Because, he answered, it's through learning Hassidus that you get the tools to drive the knowledge in to yourself.

Nowadays, he added, due to yeridas hadoros, people mainly talk about the learning of Hassidus rather than contemplation, since that's what we have...

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R. Avraham of Kalisk takes issue with the Alter Rebbe in a famous letter that the approach of presenting the masses with such a breadth and depth of spiritual concepts and learning is dangerous, that when he learned by the Maggid the talmiddim would take one little idea and work with it for months and years before moving on to another one.

The Rav said that the talmidim of the Maggid were all Rebbes in the making, all great people, but that the Alter Rebbe wanted to bring the message to regular people. There has to be depth and breadth--an ocean of hassidus--in order for us regular people to feel a drop.