16.21-22: Are mental parasites sucking our energy?

Many of us may sometimes feel fed up of the way things are going in our life; at such times, we feel mentally tired even when we are not physically tired. What causes this mental tiredness? It is caused by the many superfluous desires that we unwittingly welcome in our minds. The Bhagavad-gita (16.21–22) indicates that these distracting desires that prevent us from acting in our best interests fall in three broad categories: lust, anger and greed. 

Lust and greed often fuel our desires for the many worldly objects that enter our vision and imagination, be they glamorous forms or trendy products. These desires are innumerable and endless, and most of them are practically unfulfillable. Consequently, a conscious or subconscious irritation builds up within us. When this irritation becomes intolerable, it makes us sitting ducks for anger, and we become sulky (mentally anger) or snappy (verbally anger) or even beastly (physically anger). In this way, lust, greed and anger cumulatively divert our mental focus away from the main goals of our life – both material and spiritual. This inattentiveness makes us falter and blunder while pursuing those goals, and we start getting mentally exhausted and exasperated at how nothing seems to be working in our lives. 

Thus, our mental exhaustion originates not in the external difficulties that life brings our way, but in the internal diversions that prevent us from treading our way effectively. These diversions of lust, greed and anger are thus like mental parasites that live on and live off our mind’s energies. That’s why Gita wisdom urges us to proactively immunize ourselves from these dangerous parasites by Krishna consciousness, and thereby keep ourselves mentally energized and focused on our worthwhile aspirations.