I think I’ve pointed this out before, but if I haven’t, I’ll say it now. If a person can sleep soundly in a Sukkah, he absolutely has a Chiyuv to sleep in a Sukkah. And I’m almost positive that the Rebbe said the same in that Sicha.
Not an answer to the question about whether or not l’maaseh you (or most Lubavichers) actually sleep in the sukkah.
Another similar Sevarah is the clapping on Shabbos.
Not similar in the slightest. One is a chiyuv aseh, one is a gezeira d’rabbonon (shema y’saken klei shir). Those who are meikil on clapping base it on a Tosafos that the gezeirah doesn’t apply when we don’t know how to be m’saken klei shir.
But let me ask you like this. A person has a mania that the Sukkah’s caving in on him. Would he be Chayav in Sukkah?
Why do I keep repeating that that’s not my question?
To answer that question, maybe he is pattur, but he needs a psychologist. If someone’s service of Hashem would make him require a psychologist, he’s doing something wrong. That makes for a much better analogy, and that’s my other question, still unanswered: how could legitimate avodas Hashem lead to not performing a mitzvah?
And as to your question of why we’d want to be lenient
That’s not my question. I get it that you’re not trying to find an excuse to be lazy.
early Chabad Chassidim (as well as some others) didn’t sleep in a Sukkah in order for them to have a stronger “feel” for a Sukkah.
Wait, no mitztaer? Stam making your own cheshbonos and not doing what the Ribono Shel Olam asked you to? What happened to the mitztaer excuse?
(and since you asked me why I am lenient here, I, personally, think that this quote was said by the Mitteler Rebbe)
So you are “lenient” (I assume that means you don’t sleep in the sukkah). And not because of mitztaer, but rather because of a twisted version of Yiddishkeit in which we’re free to do whatever makes us feel better even if it means not doing a mitzvah which is a chiyuv. That’s precisely the problem.
(In case you think I ch”v said something negative about the Mitteler Rebbe, let me clarify that I think it’s a bubba meisa).