Mind Management Youth

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So consciousness goes out from the soul through the mind and then it comes to the body and then goes out through the body. So for example, if I have this flashlight, so the source of light is the soul, the beam of light coming out from it is consciousness and the mind you could say is like the shutter. Now, if the mind is closed, some people are closed minded, narrow minded, that means no matter what argument you give them, nothing goes inside because they are just not open.
So this is the consciousness is practically not going out, but this is closed, but also one thing that happens is if you are distracted, then the mind has gone somewhere else. And that’s why I will be speaking to you, but if you are distracted, then what I am speaking is a register, it doesn’t reach the soul. So the mind is a functional necessity for us, at a practical level, we cannot function without the mind.
That’s why one example of that function is distraction. So essentially, so perception happens when soul, mind and body are aligned. That’s when we can perceive things properly.
When there is distraction, soul may be here, the body is here, the mind is here. So when this happens, then part of the consciousness is going here and then most of the consciousness is going here. So for example, if there is a long talk going on, long class going on, during a long talk, our mind goes for a walk.
And then if there is some humour in the class, the mind comes and says, hey, what did you write? I will laugh also. So it’s not that it’s entirely absent, some little bit of consciousness is there. That’s why we are aware.
If something unexpected happens, then the mind is aware of that. But what is normally going on, it is not so much aware. The same sound is going on, okay, let’s go somewhere.
But laughter, some banging sound, some cracking sound, oh, what happened? It comes back. So distraction means our attention is available much lesser. So when we talk about mind management, one of the key things in mind management is just to get the mind aligned with where we want to focus on.
If this happens, whether it’s our job, whether it’s our relationships, we will be able to function much better. And this is the last one, you can have questions. When you talk about the senses, you mentioned that from the senses, the inputs come in.
Now physically, they come to the brain. From the brain, they go to the soul. So we could say, this is the brain.
So in the hardware, you could say the brain is like the central processing unit, the CPU. So the inputs from the various senses, they come to the brain, and then they are presented to the mind. And then the mind evaluates them.
And then the mind adds something to it, and then presents it to the soul. So we’ll talk about how that happens a little later, when we talk about why the mind is so wild. But yes, you had a question? Yeah.
Some points that you brought up were some points that we discussed as a group for our presentation. So it was aligning perfectly to what you were saying. Oh, OK.
So you’re going to present that? Yeah. So I stole your points. Sorry about that.
OK, so in the distraction part, why is the mind difficult to control? Sorry about that. Any questions based on this? Thank you. Yeah, you had a question? Please.
Oh yeah, subconscious and conscious mind. Good question. So we could say that if the mind is like a software, now to take a rough example of this, in a computer, there might be thousands of files.
Now one of those files is open. When that file is opened, then that’s what is displayed on the monitor. There are hundreds and thousands of more files, more data in the computer, but one of them is open.
So now what we call as a conscious mind is that the file that is open. The subconscious mind is all the files that are not open. So that’s a basic level categorisation.
It’s not complete because at one level, the data in a device, it’s passive. It just exists over there. But what exists in our mind is not just passive.
It influences us. So I’ll come to that. But conscious mind is basically we could say that part which is evident to us, like the file that is open.
But if you take it further, if we have used a device browser to visit certain sites. Now, many of you know this small thing in Mumbai. Suppose somebody has visited a website called Bollywood.com. Now this gets stored in the browser history.
We can say that it’s stored in the browser history. It’s just like data that is stored. But it is not just for browser history.
It’s not just passive data over there. It comes as active auto-suggestions or auto-completes. Next time, if I type anything with B, I might want to go to, I might want to, after coming to a topic, I might want to visit bhagwankar.com. I type B, but what I get as auto-complete is Bollywood.
So that, from the subconscious mind, so from the conscious mind, I may want to go to bhagwankar.com. But from the subconscious mind, the proposition that comes is Bollywood. So, it’s from the subconscious, say whenever we feel hungry. Now, if we feel hungry, we want food.
Now, we could eat any food. We are hungry, right? But from our subconscious mind, certain topics will come. You know, if you are from South India, you say, oh, I want to eat Indian sambhar.
If you are from North India, you say, oh, I want parathas. If you are from some other part of the world, yeah. So, the subconscious auto-completes.
So, food is what consciously I want. But all of us, when you talk about, if I ask all of you, delicious food. Now, a tasty food.
The auto-complete that will come in your mind, each one of us, it’s quite likely to be different. That’s based on what is our past experience of delicious food. Now, some of it we may be aware.
It’s there. But it is sometimes we are aware, sometimes we are not aware of it. Subconscious mind is that part of our memories coming from our past experiences that shape our choices in ways that we are not conscious of.
If we are very careful, we can become conscious of it. But often we are not conscious of it. It’s just something we automatically do.
Okay. We’ll explore this a bit more. Thank you.
That’s a good question. You had something else? Okay. Thank you.
So, we have now the, you can in the group. Okay. You had it? Yeah.
Thank you. You mentioned that the soul, mind and body, when it is aligned, then we are, I didn’t get that part, when it is not aligned, that’s how we get distracted. Yes.
So, for example, you are sitting here, but maybe you are thinking of some work that has to be done at the home, at your home. Then part of your consciousness goes over, I have to complete this, for that I have to get that. And then if you are talking here, you are not going to hear it fully.
Yeah. So, basically, if the mind is where the body is, then that’s where we can be attentive and focused. If the mind is somewhere away from where the body is, then we are distracted.
Yeah. Then, like, how we can do mindful chanting? Like, mindfully hearing? Yes, consciously try to align them. Krishna said the mind will go away, bring it back.
The mind may stray away, don’t let it stay away. It will stray away, but bring it back. You told me, you told me.
Chalati manas chanchala mahasiram, tatas pato niyam yaitad. Atma niyam abhisham. Just bring it back.
Thank you. Yes, the Canada group, are you ready? Please come forward. All of you, please come.
Everyone, please introduce yourself first, and then you can start. Hare Krishna. My name is Jaya.
Our topic was, why are some minds more difficult to control than others? And our group, we chose to split it between, our ideas between the external and internal forces. To start… Everyone, introduce yourself first. Yes.
Hare Krishna. My name is Niharika. I graduated from UMD with public health.
I worked in health and wellness. I’m currently looking for a new opportunity. Hare Krishna.
My name is Satya. I’m my first year in undergrad. Hare Krishna.
My name is Sanvi. This is my first year in high school. Hare Krishna.
This is my last year in middle school. Hare Krishna, Prabhuji, and everyone. My name is Akshita, and I’m in middle school.
Hare Krishna. My name is Kavya, and I’m in fifth grade. So actually, Kavya is the oldest among us.
So we’re going to start with external. Some external ideas that we brought upon was the start with the seven gates. The seven gates that contains two eyes, two nostrils, a mouth, and our private areas.
It is very difficult to control these areas. For example, the music that you listen to. By listening with your ears.
Sometimes the music that you listen to can be rock. It can be punk. It can be R&B.
It can be soft spoken. It can be chanting. That affects how you think and perceive the world and reality around you.
We also brought up how we are affected by advertisement and Maya. How the physical world and the world around us sometimes has us continue moving. Where sometimes I’ve been to, we’ve been to temple, and they promote chanting close to 16 rounds.
And it’s very difficult at times when we have jobs, and we’re constantly on the go. Some of you rise and wake up in the morning. And the third one is physical attachments.
Physical attachments can affect our minds, such as our friends, our families, relationships, and people that we are involved with every day. Thank you. That’s quite a good list of factors.
In addition to the external stimuli that distract our mind, we also talked about internal stimuli, which happens to be, which deals with our feelings, our emotions, ego, stuff that we replay in our minds on a daily basis. The benchmark of Kali Yuga is always having a disturbed mind. And I want to call back to the first group’s analogy with the chariot.
It’s the Maya, which is trying to pull us off course. So some minds are more difficult to control than others, depending on our situation. We’re easily affected by adversities, which can cause intense emotions in our minds, such as grief, anger, speaking out of ego.
We can often say that when we’re angry, our mouth is our greatest enemy, or we are the most formidable enemy to ourselves. So we’re more of a danger to ourselves when we’re angry. So that happens to be, that has to do with internal stimuli, such as everything that comes up within ourselves, such as our feelings, emotions, and everything that we think about, the way we perceive the world.
It’s a good list of internal factors also, thank you. So just to add on to the point about Maya, it’s like Maya is constantly throwing distractions to us, and some minds are more susceptible to succumbing to these distractions, and it makes the mind really hard to control, because the mind might be going here and there, contemplating on one thing or another, and it won’t stay still on one thing. So it’s extremely hard to control, if you don’t have something to, one focal point or something to focus on.
Especially when we do our japa, we should make sure to focus on not letting our mind wander here and there. And it takes time, but eventually by doing our japa, we can get to a point where we can eventually try to control our mind. So to add on, one of the factors that we discussed about was, are other people’s minds harder to control than some other people’s minds? We discussed that it depends on how much they’re materially… It’s discharged, you can use this one.
So the material, it depends on how much you’re influenced by other things, such as things around you, like material attachments, which can go into your mind and make you distracted from doing other things, such as like… Our mind is like your mic. It just goes off suddenly. And relating to that point about how some minds are more susceptible, some people are short-tempered and often succumb to… Some people’s anger is more likely to be uncontrollable and will do actions without thinking, like our reactions will be without thinking, and our mind is under the influence of that emotion and it’s not… True.
Thank you. That’s quite comprehensive in terms of external factors, internal factors, and overall the analysis of how the mind functions. Let’s give all of them a round of applause.
Well done. Please come and have a seat. So, the mind basically has two functions.
Sankalpa and Vikalpa. The Sanskrit words. Basically what it means is, it is pleasure seeking and pain avoiding.
And these are by nature not bad things. Now, one point I would like to make is that several of you talk about how dangerous the mind can be, it can be our worst enemy. It’s true, no doubt.
At the same time, the mind is not intrinsically our enemy. It is not that God has created inside us something which is out to destroy us. I said the mind is functionally necessary.
Just like in the chariot body analogy, the reins are required. The mind is a link between the soul and the body. So, functionally it is required.
And for all of us, we all look for pleasure and if there is pain, we try to avoid it. Right now all of you are sitting and say there is a nail or a pin over there below, you get the pain and move aside. You step foot on a thorn, move aside.
So, the mind’s pleasure seeking and pain avoiding itself is not a bad thing. However, two things can complicate the situation. One is the inside conceptions.
And the other is the outside objects or you can call this the perceptions. So, for example, suppose somebody has been bitten by a dog. Let me start with internal, then it will be easier.
Suppose somebody in their childhood was bitten by a dog. Now, out of thousands of dogs in the world, maybe only one was a dog which bit. But because that conception is stored inside their mind.
Dogs bite. So, as soon as they see a dog, immediately fear comes to them. They want to move away from it.
So, the conceptions that are stored inside, they are called as samskaras. You have heard the word samskara? So, samskara, you could put this in English as some scar. Everybody’s mind has some or the other scar within it.
We are all scarred in some ways. And based on our experiences of what causes pain. Now, say in our childhood, maybe if there was a big bully in our schools, then as soon as we see any hefty bodied person, immediately fear.
But now there might be a well built person who is actually a protector. Maybe there is a police person or a good person. But immediately when we see, we feel fear.
So, the perceptions that we get, the things that we encounter from outside, they may or may not be pain causing. But based on our mind’s conceptions, we will think that they are going to cause me pain. And that can cause greater agitation.
Conversely, say somebody is an alcohol addict. Then what happens for them? As soon as they see a bottle of alcohol, they think, hey, there is pleasure over here. Such pleasure, I want it right now.
And then their mind goes wild, I want it. So, in seeking pleasure or in avoiding pain, based on what the conceptions are within it, what impressions are there within the mind, then the mind starts going racing. Racing towards something, if it is pleasurable.
Racing away from something, if it is painful. So, now, like I gave the earlier example, we all have eaten different kinds of food and found different kinds of food delicious. So, if we hear a particular food object, then if we have found it delicious, the mind starts racing towards that.
So, the mind’s energy of movement, it depends on the impressions within it. So, going back to the earlier diagram which I had shown, that here, there are these three things, the soul, mind and body. So, I had talked about how the mind is a transmitter of consciousness.
So, things go out and then things come back, information comes back in. This is some object outside. However, the mind is not just a transmitter of consciousness, it is also a transformer of consciousness.
So, if I have, say this is my mind, then here, there are these samskaras, these impressions in the mind. And based on that, a small thing can become very big. So, for example, say this is some, my favourite food.
Then what happens, it comes here, but by the time it comes out here, it has become this much bigger. Something I want it right now. So, the mind transforms the perceptions.
Same with the danger. It is a small danger, but it is a big danger. So, the mind, it becomes agitated, either positively or negatively, agitated by the desire for pleasure or by the fear of danger, based on what impressions are there in it.
That’s why each of us is vulnerable in different ways, because we all have different impressions. Now, having said that, there is another reason, especially in today’s world, why the mind is difficult to control. That is that we are exposed to way more objects than what we were exposed to in the past.
If we consider a more traditional society, how many objects does a person see? You live in a town, you live in a village, even if you live in a city, a certain number of things we see. Now we have entertainment, we have advertisements, now we have technology by which we can get anything from anywhere by just a few clicks. So, our roads are decorated with so many billboards.
Our digital pathways are decorated with so many more objects. So, therefore, because the objects that we perceive have increased so much, actually the mind is processing all of this, it’s always looking, ok, this promises to be pleasurable, it is reasonable. So, externally, objects, they have increased manifold.
And that, all this leads to increased restlessness. The mind, even with respect to negatives, bad things have always happened in the world. But now, with the interconnectedness of the world, we hear about this crime happening there, that murder happening there, this robbery happening over here, that happening there.
We have so many news from so many places that our mind’s level of agitation increases much more. So, it’s not just that we are hearing these news. In fact, often this news is curated so that we are presented the things that will agitate us the most.
So, if we are surfing the net, now we may think like I am a fisherman and I am trying to catch a fish. I want to read some interesting news, I want to watch some Insta shot or something like that. We are thinking we are the fishermen and I am trying to catch a fish.
But the social media algorithms are organised in a way that our past search history is known, our past search history is known. And actually, for those algorithms, we are the fish. And what they are offering is the bait.
So, while we think we are fishing, it is we who are being fished. So, that is the irony. And that’s why it’s very difficult to keep the mind peaceful.
So, because of the inner impressions and the outer perception, the mind tends to get agitated. And because we all have different inner impressions, we tend to get differently agitated. And because in today’s world, so many outer perceptions are provided to us, often perceptions that will titillate and tempt us the most, they are presented.
That’s why our mind will tend to get much more agitated in other cases. Thank you. Any questions or comments about this? Yes, please.
How long will it take? Well, one thing is the mind does not have infinite energy. It definitely has more energy than the body. The sense that sometimes we may be physically tired, but we are tired, but we just don’t feel asleep.
We don’t fall asleep. Like our mind is going on, oh, this person said this, that person said that, that person said that. We want to, our body is tired, we want to sleep.
But the mind is just not turning off. So, the mind has more energy than the body, much more energy in one sense. But its energy is also not infinite.
So, generally, if we can turn off its fuel sources, then it will turn off faster, slow down faster. So, for example, even if somebody is constantly on devices, and looking at every notification, every deep dot comes and they are looking at it, they are giving more and more fuel to it, then the agitation will go on longer. But if the stimulus is not provided that much, the agitation will die down.
Then it depends on how deep are the impressions within them. That, how much is the, when it is a deep impression, that also means how much is their attachment. Say, a few months ago, India lost in the cricket world cup final.
Was that a big thing here? Yes, okay. Yeah, so now, it was disappointing. India did very well throughout the world cup, and then suddenly, we had a bad day in office on the finals.
So, now, that is disappointing. Now, how disappointing is it? It depends on how much somebody invested in cricket. I heard three, four young men in India committed suicide.
It is heartbreaking. It is terrible that they did that. None of the cricket players committed suicide.
They have invested in it, but for them, it is a job. And some days, you just have a bad day. So, if somebody is way too invested, then they will be far more affected by it.
So, it depends at least. So, how much is the inherent investment of the emotion, attachment, we can say, and how much are they perceiving it constantly? So, sometimes, we get, say, cricket mania or baseball mania, they call it. So, this mania is what they are constantly bombarding us.
Oh, this player said this, and this happened this, and this has happened, and this report is coming up. People are constantly in a state of restlessness. So, we cannot change how much is our attachment.
That will take time to change. But at least, how much the outer perception we are feeding it, we decrease that, and slowly, the agitation will decrease. Thank you.
The data groups are here. You have a chance now. How does spirituality help us to control our mind? Please come.
You can use this mic. All of you, introduce yourself first. Hare Krishna Prabhu.
I am Kushal. I am doing a master’s in UMBC, and I am a data science student. Hare Krishna Prabhu.
My name is Sai Dhankar, and I am doing a master’s in information systems at UMBC. Hare Krishna Prabhu. I am MMC.
I am a member of my master’s in UMBC. Hare Krishna Prabhu. I am a master’s student at UMBC.
Hare Krishna Prabhu. I am a grad student at UMBC. I am Nitin.
Hare Krishna Prabhu. My name is Shubhan Pupu, and I am in pre-kindergarten. Okay.
Our topic is about the earth. Okay. The third question, how does the spirituality control your mind? And I want to start the answer with a sloka.
The slokas which we referred to belong to Bhagavad Gita chapter 6, where Arjuna tells Krishna about the nature of the mind. That mind is so restless, it’s so stubborn, so obstinate, wandering here and there. Even controlling the mind is even more difficult than to control the mind.
Then Krishna says in the next verse, that you told before. I mean it is not impossible to control the mind but he suggests we can control mind because of practise and detachment and that is what he says in this shloka like from wherever the mind wanders to any other place try bringing it back to its original place again and again by practising and practising this is the practise he suggested and by doing the spiritual practises like the chanting continuously or it will bring back the focus for example if we have exams and at the same time there are other programmes we have to attend we get disturbed or we get deviated in that path by chanting continuously this will bring back to our mood of to do or to do well in the exams and doing meditations, meditations will affect, it will give us a bit of results that means meditation is a bit of a spirituality but I don’t, I mean I can’t completely say that the meditations give 100% effectiveness and recitation of Gita verse which is said by, recitation of Gita verse means by chanting or like by collecting the verses which are said by the Lord Krishna in Bhagavad Gita this will bring us back our mind at its original place not getting deviated from the original path and doing some brain exercise like puzzle solving, Sudoku and some other and participating in arguments which we just, it’s only to get, to remove the stress out of our mind. So my friend has said about how those affect in bringing back the mind so I want to tell about the after effect what happens after this, so if you are spiritually inclined the following emotions are felt generally the positive feelings arise which makes the mind to get back its own place and also providing meaning to health challenges so that it gives you a bit of relief and find peace as well and also experience better self-control and self-confidence which eventually makes you feel better.
Just to add on one point, just as Krishna says in the second chapter of Bhagavad Gita matras parashastu kaunteya, sitoshna sukha dukkha dana, agama painu nitya, sthamsi dikshas pa bharata, so all these problems that we are facing in life, they are like seasons, like how like summer and winter come and go, the seasons are temporary, similarly whatever good situations or bad situations we face in life, they are also temporary, whether it’s good or bad it will come, it will stay for some time and it will go away, so by doing the spiritual practises we can, we are able to see life from higher perspective, like whatever situation comes into our life, whether it’s good or bad, we don’t get entangled too much in those situations, we are able to see those situations from higher perspective of life, we can understand, we can understand that whether the situation is good or bad, it’s not going to stay permanently, it has come, it will stay for temporary period of time and it will go away. Any questions? Yes, that’s excellent, so actually you could talk about, yes any questions right now? So could you explain about your spirituality and then the abhyas and vairagya and the idea of sthamsi dikshas of higher spirituality. Spirituality gives us a higher philosophical vision of how things are happening.
Thank you very much, it’s a challenging task for anyone to manage our minds better, but yes, spirituality becomes easier. Thank you so much. Hare Krishna.
So basically, if we consider the mind to be like a child, now children by nature they will be restless, they will go here, go there, they will be inactive, will they be inactive? Not inactive, they will be active, isn’t it? Children by nature will be restless. So basically for a child, if somebody is a parent, the parent has to do two things, that is fencing, that means the child is playing and there needs to be a fence around the house, child can play, but child should not go on the road and start playing, isn’t it? So there has to be a fence within which the child can play. And then as the child grows up, the child matures, the child will become responsive.
A small child will actually be frivolous. But then there is feeding. The child is eating healthy food, child will grow up healthier.
Child is eating junk food, the child will not grow up healthier. So feeding and fencing, these two are required. So we could say these two are basically for Krishna talks for Vairagya and Abhyasa.
So I’ll explain how does spirituality help us to control the mind? It is by providing us strategies, wisdom by which we can formulate and apply the strategies. So I talked about, we go back earlier, we said what are the two things that agitate the mind, they are external and then there are internal. So, say for example, this is my mind and if there are certain objects that agitate the mind, then what we do is, we try to create some barriers, some boundaries.
For example, if somebody is an alcoholic, then the first thing they need to do is, if they are serious about recovering from alcoholism, they don’t want to get caught in the cravings, then keep a distance from it. If somebody is a recovering alcoholic and their home is right next to a bar, then some people may have their home next to a bar, some people may have a bar in their home only. So now either way, if they are serious about trying to recover, then they have to get rid of the alcohol from their home, maybe they have to relocate to another place where it’s not so close to a bar, create a distance.
So the world will be filled with agitating stimuli. But we can create some boundaries by which those agitating stimuli don’t come to us constantly. If you want to seriously study, then you’re not going to have a big TV open in front of you and you’re sitting in front of the TV and looking at a book and studying.
It’s not going to work. The TV is a distraction. It is a time to watch TV, but we want to study, we want the distraction.
So whatever we know are the sources of agitation for the mind, we keep a distance from it. We all need to stay aware of our triggers and stay away from our triggers. It is not always possible, but as much as is possible, we need to do this.
So sometimes you may not want to, but vairagya is create a distance. However, this alone is not enough. So this vairagya, this barrier, this boundaries, this is necessary.
In maths, you have this necessary but not, what is it you know, necessary but not sufficient conditions. So it’s necessary to create some boundaries, but that alone is not enough. The other thing that we need to do is abhyasa.
That is, this is change or other practise, abhyasa practise, this practise to change inner impressions. So for example, when we do mantra chanting, repeatedly we are chanting a mantra. What we are doing is, we are creating new impressions.
You remember I talked about how the mind has impressions within it. So these impressions cannot be deleted. Like say, if somebody has visited Bollywood.com, now they want to visit Dharmendra.com. But each time they type B, Bollywood is going to come and auto-complete.
But now with respect to browser, we might just do delete history, uninstall the browser. Or we can do incognito mode. None of these are possible for our mind.
Everything that we do gets stored. But the impressions can’t be deleted, they can be overwritten. So like Bollywood.com is already there in the browser.
But if you just keep visiting Bollywood.com, once, twice, thrice, ten times, then gradually they type B, Bollywood.com will still come as the first auto-complete. But Boglywa.com will come as a second auto-complete. It will also come as one of the auto-completes.
If you keep visiting that, say if you visit Bollywood.com one hundred times, then Bollywood.com will come as the first auto-complete. Then if you just keep visiting that and you don’t visit Bollywood.com, when bhagavata rathakam will itself come as the default or only auto-complete. So basically what abhyasa means is that we are creating fresh impressions.
So we overwrite older impressions. That’s why in many spiritual activities repetition is emphasised. What is the use of chanting the same mantra again and again and again? We may feel we are not getting anything out of it, but our mind is getting something out of it.
Our mind is getting an impression formed. So the more the impression is formed, the faster the mind will change. The mind’s auto-complete will change.
So for example, say if you are talking of sometimes you are stressed, you just want to relax. Sometimes when we are stressed, we may do certain things which may relax us at that time, but they may agitate us more afterwards. Suppose somebody watches very like violence-filled movies, I think this is my stress buster.
Well, maybe, but I feel relaxed after that, but all those, that violent imagery is going inside our mind and that will create a further sanskar of an impression of anger. And that will trigger us towards violence in the future. Maybe not immediately, but it will happen.
So instead, okay, I’ll hear some relaxing music, I’ll hear some maybe soft kirtans, some nice bhajans, some Sanskrit music, that may also provide some stress relief for us. But whenever we have stress, that may not come as the first thought in our mind. We’ll have to push ourselves.
Yeah, this is what I need to do. That’s like Bollywood.com will come as first, not Bollywood.com, but like that, we push a healthier habit. And as we keep repeating that healthier habit, then gradually that will overwrite the unhealthy habit, overwrite the impression associated with unhealthy habit.
And as the inner impressions will change, as the inner impressions become healthier, then the mind will become steadier, the mind will not become agitated. So you mentioned the point about how if we get spiritual knowledge, we understand these things are temporary. And that understanding that things are temporary means itself that’s creating a boundary, a barrier.
This is going to come, this is going to go, there’s no need to get so worked up about it. So just understanding something’s temporariness creates a little bit of vairagya. It’s not such a big deal to get excited about, get agitated about.
So basically abhyas and vairagya, these two are, these two are strategies, which could include many activities. So each one of us will decide what I need to create boundaries from, for preventing the agitation of my mind. And each of us needs to create, decide what impressions, healthy impressions can I create? What is easy for me to create? Now we of course do chanting and sadhana, but suppose some of you like darshan of the deities.
Then find out which are your favourite pictures of the deities. Keep them on your phone. So whenever the mind feels agitated, just open that picture, look at it, pray to it, pray to that, pray to the Lord.
And then that is, maybe that is the way the mind becomes calmer. If it was somebody else, it might be hearing some particular speakers talking, just hearing them speak some words, helps us feel at home, helps us calm down. So we have to find out how we can create healthier habits that have a calming effect on them.
And so it’s not just, it’s not a rote formula that, you know, do this, it will happen. But meditation, this is the last point I’ll conclude with, mantra chanting, meditation, what it does, it’s a powerful, sustained activity to create new impressions. And to the extent we get involved in the activity, to that extent the new impressions are formed faster.
So thank you very much. All of you put in a good amount of thought and the presentations are also quite articulated. Thank you so much.
Hare Krishna.