[from the Pirke Avot]
1:13
Hillel used to teach,
Seek after fame, and you will lose honor;
Cling to knowledge, and you will forget wisdom;
Cease to learn, and you cease to live;
Exploit what you know, and wisdom will evade you.

1:14
Hillel teaches,
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But if I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?

[commentary by Rabbi Shapiro]
1:13
Fame raises you above others; honor raises others above yourself. The first distracts you from reality; the second reveals it to you.

Knowledge is the known; wisdom is the unknown. The known is the past; the unknown is the timeless present. When you cling to the known, you live in the past: today imitates yesterday, and tomorrow replicates today. Living with wisdom is living in the present moment: no imitation, no replication, each moment new, fresh, and surprising.

True learning is not memorizing what was, but staying open to what is. If you cease to learn, reality is replaced with memory, and all your living is counterfeit.

Exploiting knowledge means living from the past, selling the known disguised as the unknown. This fills you with the illusion of control, robbing you of humility, compassion, grace, and any hope of experiencing wisdom.

1:14
Being for yourself is honoring mochin d'katnut, the narrow mind of the relative self. Honoring narrow mind means seeing to the welfare of body, heart, and mind. No one can do this for you.

Being for yourself alone dishonors narrow mind by forcing it to function in isolation, when in fact it is part of a greater unity. Imagining you are apart from the world makes you fearful of the world, placing you in a zero-sum delusion of scarcity that breeds anger, greed, violence, and injustice. Balancing being for yourself with being for others is living from mochin d'gadlut, the spacious mind that sees all things as part of the One. Living from spacious mind is living without fear and the anger, greed, violence, and injustice that fear carries with it.

Past and future are ghosts. There is only now. If you would honor yourself and others, now is the only time you have to do so.