A Daf of Gemara and a Tosafos

The Rebbe often recounted what he had heard from his father, who heard it from Rav Avigdor of Dukla, brother of the Divrei Chaim. Rav Avigdor said that he had already conducted a galus, wandering from town to town, never sleeping in the same place two nights in a row and always sleeping in the local hekdesh, as many tzaddikim had done. He had afflicted himself by going half a year without changing his shirt, fasted from one Shabbos to the next, and afflicted himself with stinging plants. But even after all that, he could say that the yetzer hora can be defeated only with a daf of Gemara and a Tosafos.