The virtue of Torah study – “Tanya” and “Nefesh HaChaim”

Hello Rabbi Michi,
I have heard you refer to chapter 4 of the book “Nefesh HaChayim” several times in your YouTube lessons. You bring up what he wrote regarding the essence of devotion in Torah study, which does not refer to “devikut” in emotion, but to devotion from the very essence of Torah study, without any connection to emotion whatsoever.
In the lessons, you emphasize that this passage was actually written against the Hasidic view that sees devotion to Torah study as a “feeling” that accompanies the study of God’s Word, and not the actual study itself.
 
I wanted to point out that the idea and explanation regarding the virtue of Torah study, as adherence to the very study, is already explained at length in Sefer Tanya (chapters 4-5), which was printed almost thirty years before “Nefesh HaChaim.”
 
I will add that I grew up and studied in Chabad Hasidism. I never heard or was I taught that adherence to Torah study depends on emotion, but rather on the actual study. We were always taught the “Tanya” on this matter. So I think that in these sections of the lessons you are attacking Hasidism as a “straw man,” as if this is the Hasidic view.
 
With your permission, I will copy several passages from chapter 5 of the Tanya, and I would appreciate it if you would clarify whether in your opinion there is a difference:

“…When a person understands and grasps a certain halacha in the Mishnah or Gemara as true to its foundation, his mind grasps and encompasses it, and his mind is also clothed in it at that moment. And behold, this halacha is the wisdom and will of God, who arose by His will that if Reuven argued thus and so through a parable and Shimon so and so, the ruling between them would be thus and so.”
And even if this matter never was and never will be brought to trial on these claims and demands, in any case, since it arose in the will and wisdom of God, that if this is claimed in this way and that is so, the ruling will be thus, then when a person knows and grasps this ruling in his mind, according to the law set forth in the Mishnah or Gemara or Poskim, then he grasps and grasps and encompasses in his mind the will and wisdom of God, a thought that is conceived not by his will and wisdom, but by their clothing in the laws set forth before us. And his mind is also clothed in them. And it is a wonderful uniqueness that has no uniqueness like it and whose value is not found at all in physicality, being truly one and unique from every side and angle.
And this raises the infinitely great and wonderful superiority of the commandments of knowing the Torah and attaining it over all practical commandments, even over the commandments that depend on speech, and even over the commandments of studying the Torah in speech. For through all the commandments in word and deed, the Holy One, blessed be He, clothes the soul and surrounds it with the light of God from head to foot; and in knowing the Torah, in addition to the intellect being clothed with the wisdom of God, behold, the wisdom of God is also within it, that which the intellect attains and grasps and encompasses with its intellect what it is possible for it to grasp and attain from knowing the Torah, each according to his intellect and the power of his knowledge and attainment in simplicity, hint, sermon, and secret…” etc. Aisha.