World Mental Health Day Special Bhagavad-gita Insights for a Healthy Mind

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Lecture Summary

1. Metaphors for Understanding the Mind

• The Mind as a Tool for Perception: Just as eyes perceive the outer world, the mind serves as the central processing tool for all senses.

  • Fit Mind: Sees things clearly and evaluates problems accurately.

  • Unfit Mind: Distorts perception, making small problems look big.

  • Sick Mind (Toxic): Creates toxic perceptions, leading to catastrophic thinking and self-destructive behavior.

• The Mind as a Passageway: The soul acts as the source of consciousness, which is channeled outward through the mind. When the mind is distracted or restless, consciousness is blocked or scattered.

• The Mind as a Child: The mind is naturally restless (chanchala) and tends to wander everywhere, requiring patient guidance rather than harsh force.

2. Methods for Managing the Mind (Abhyasa and Vairagya)

• Feeding (Abhyasa – Practice):

  • Repeatedly directing the mind toward positive and higher realities.

  • Exposing the mind to the ultimate reality (divinity/Krishna) expands its capacity and accelerates its growth.

  • Utilizing external practices or rituals to anchor the mind in a steady state of goodness (sattva guna).

• Fencing (Vairagya – Detachment):

  • Environmental Detachment: Creating physical barriers and distance from temptations, digital distractions, or stimuli that agitate the mind.

  • Emotional Detachment: Letting go of unrealistic expectations of instant transformation, practicing patience, and understanding that mental growth takes time.

3. Moods and Practical Application

• Managing Mood Swings: Instead of fighting or obsessing over sudden, unpredictable shifts in the mind’s moods, focus on elevating your overall environment and lifestyle.

• Creating a Sanctuary of Goodness: Establish a clean, serene space (sattva guna)—such as a small corner with peaceful imagery, soothing music, or fragrance—to quickly reset your consciousness.

• Working with Incrementality: Meaning, motivation, and healing are built through small, consistent actions rather than all-or-nothing leaps.

Full Transcription

Hare Krishna So on the occasion of World Mental Health Day, welcome all of you to this talk on mindfulness based on Bhagavad Gita insights.
I’ll talk about this in broadly three parts metaphors for understanding the mind, then methods for managing the mind, and moods for understanding the mind’s moods. So I’ll talk about moods. So metaphors, methods, and moods.
So what is the mind? When you talk about mental health, what do we actually mean by it? As our society has become more and more progressive, it has progressed, we have more and more physical comforts. But there seems to be something wrong that we have not become happier with the comforts that we have. There is greater stress, greater depression, greater addiction, even greater suicides.
So we are recognizing that well being extends beyond the physical. I was in America a few months ago. And there are devotees who work at the Mayo Clinic.
So I was speaking with again, at that institute. And there, the discussion was about how more and more science is recognizing your mainstream medical science and recognizing that medicines physical medicines are meant to cure people. They can’t cure as effectively unless people’s mental health is sound.
So what does that mean? That means that, okay, there’s something wrong in the body, there’s some acidity, and we take some food. And then that is meant to cure, that should cure. But it doesn’t cure if a person’s mind is disturbed.
So we talk about mental health or mental sickness, what do we mean? In the past, mental sickness meant insanity. And somebody has to be institutionalized, put in a mental asylum. But that is a very radical and very exclusive kind of understanding of mental health and mental sickness.
It is that mental health is a spectrum. Just like physical health is a spectrum. That not everybody who is physically not so fit, has to be immediately put in the hospital.
But anybody who’s not physically so fit, can function better if they become physically fitter. So similarly, mental health, the more we improve it, the more we become mentally fit. So we could have three things, there’s mentally fit, there’s mentally unfit, and there’s mentally sick.
It’s like we are physically fit, physically unfit, and physically sick. So what does this mental health and mental fitness mean? The mind, the Bhagavad Gita explains, is basically a tool. It is a tool for perceiving.
When you want to perceive what is there in the outer world, we perceive it through the mind. And then we process it. We process it means we try to apply what we have learned.
So to understand mental health, let’s look at the one major metaphor, which is what I’ll be using throughout this talk primarily. So here. Yeah.
So what is mental health? If you understand a health, what is how do we define a healthy body? A healthy body is that which does what the body is meant to do. So with the body we walk, we talk, we function. So when we are able to function properly, we say the body is healthy.
Similarly, when we understand the mind is healthy, what does it mean? It does what it is meant to do. So let’s look at this metaphor a little more clearly. That, as I said, there’s a fit body, there is a unfit body.
So when the body is fit, a person is efficient, they can do things and do them fast. The body’s unfit, they’re inefficient in doing this. They’re sick, they’re immobilized, they’re in pain.
So if you understand, the mind is an object of perception is a tool for perception. So when the mind is fit, we see things clearly. When the mind is unfit, our perception becomes distorted.
That means there’s a problem, there may be a small problem, and we make it big. So our perception becomes distorted. And when the mind is sick, our perception is not distorted, it becomes toxic.
That means there may be a small problem, and we catastrophize it. We think that this is the end of my life. This is the end of the world.
I’m ruined because of this. So when we want to promote mental health, that means we want to make our perception better. Of course, the mind has functions other than perception also, I’m focusing on one over here, just to make the understanding clearer.
So here the metaphor we’re discussing is the metaphor of a tool. If the body is a tool, it helps us do things. When we’re not able to do things, then the tool is not working properly.
So same way the mind is a tool, and it’s a tool for perception. It’s like if I consider these glasses, now the glasses are, there’s a lot of dust or mud or any other stuff like that, then I can’t see very clearly from the glasses. Then I need to clean them.
If I don’t clean them, I won’t be able to see clearly. The more I clean them, the better I’ll be able to see. So similarly, the mind needs to be clean.
Then we can see more clearly. So as a toxic perception would mean what? The mind is filled with biases, prejudices, with unhealthy cravings and passions. So a person with a sick mind, for example, what happens? Sick mind becomes destructive, destructive for oneself, destructive for others.
I suppose somebody is an alcoholic, an alcoholic, that person has a craving for everything they see in terms of alcohol itself. How can I fulfill my craving for alcohol? A person may come home and that person has some savings, which are basically enough only for their meals for the family for the next few days. That person thinks, no, I want to drink.
No, we have less money. Can’t you drink less? No. If you have less money, then you eat less, but I have to drink.
That’s sick mind. Sick mind just fixates on one thing and becomes blind to everything else. So everybody has problems in life.
But sometimes some people become self destructive. Some people become suicidal. Why do they become suicidal? Because of course, suicide is a complex social phenomena.
And there can be many causes. But ultimately, suicide is a tragic example of the mind literally killing the body. It is not that in most cases, people are suicidal, they are so there’s such a desolate physical state that they’re starving and they’re going to die.
They end their lives because their mind is filled with negativity. Now, of course, there may be negativity in their life also. But their mind exaggerates the negativity.
So this is the point that the mind that is perceiving things erroneously, that is an unhealthy mind. And the degree of the erroneous perception, degree of the false perception, the sinning perception that determines the degree of the distance of that mind from a healthy situation. So with this, with broad background, the Gita says the mind is a tool for perception.
Shrotram chakshu sparshanam cha, rasanyam grhanam eva cha, adishtaya manas chayam, dishayan upasevate. That all the senses, normally that’s what we consider the objects, tools for perception. We see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, we smell with our nose.
But actually, we don’t just perceive it all, we perceive with our mind. If our mind is absent, that means we’re absent minded. Even if the eyes see, we won’t be able to see.
So the mind is the central tool for perception. If I consider the palm, the five fingers of the hand, they’re centered around the palm. So like that, the five senses of perception, the jnana indriyas, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the skin, gain information of the outer world from all these, they’re all centered around the mind.
And like I gave the example, if my eyes are not able to see there because there is something, some dust on the glass, or there is something in my eyes, which is obstructing me in seeing, then we will immediately work to fix that. But when something is stuck in our mind, we don’t even realize it, we hardly ever want to fix it. And that’s how our perception gets blocked.
And not just blocked and distorted. At least with respect to the eyes, when something is blocking our eyes, we don’t see at all and we realize I’m not seeing. But with respect to the mind, when something comes in the mind, it doesn’t just block our vision, it distorts our vision.
We think we are seeing when we are seeing something different from the reality. So what do we do about it? How do we deal with it? So regarding that, the Gita talks about another metaphor for the mind. This is the mind is chanchala.
Chanchala means restless. And restless. Let’s understand this one more metaphor now.
That the mind is basically the link between the soul and the body. Yeah, this is here. So the mind that can be distresses.
So when this mental health becomes problematic, when there are distresses in our life, I said external negativity is there. But external negativity, how we perceive it, distresses the challenge our mind’s conceptions. Oh, I want to do this, but this has come up.
And the mind feels, oh, things are not working out right. What is the use of working? What is the use of trying? The mind tends to become unfit. When disasters are there, they confound the mind.
The mind thinks things has to happen this way. And they don’t happen that way. They are happening the opposite way.
You just feel sick, you feel like quitting, you feel like giving up. So in such a situation, what can we do? Let’s try to understand the mind with one more metaphor before we try to see what is happening. The soul, the Gita explains that our existence is three level, the soul, the mind, and the body.
So from the soul, consciousness comes out. The soul is the root, root means source, R O O T. The soul is the root of consciousness. And that is the pathway through is the consciousness comes out.
That is the route of consciousness. And the mind is the route of consciousness. And consciousness itself that is coming out, that is like the energy of the soul.
And this comes out from here, comes through the body and goes into the outward. So to give an example, if we have say, the flashlight, I have flashlight over here. Now, it’s imagine I put this like this over here.
So now to the extent this is a line, you can see the light clearly. Now, if this becomes like this, the light comes on the slightly, this becomes like this, imagine this handle blocking it. And this is there, but light is coming very, very less.
This has come in the light, it’s almost completely blocked. So basically, the soul is basically like this flashlight source. Soul is the source.
And from here, the consciousness gets channeled through the mind. If I want to see something that is here, I need some light to see it. But the light is going here, then I can’t see much over there.
So when this is channel has become like this, when we say somebody is absent minded, what that means is they are at a particular place, but their mind is absent, it’s not present there. And that’s why perception doesn’t happen. So we don’t perceive with our senses, we don’t perceive with the eyes, we actually perceive with consciousness.
And consciousness is channeled through the mind. So when somebody is routinely absent minded, then that becomes a behavioral trait. But there are times when our passions, when our prejudices, they just distort our perception.
That’s mental health problems. That’s when mental health problems begin. So the metaphor, so we are trying to see a particular thing, but the mind goes off somewhere.
So for example, we are facing some challenge, we have to do something which is difficult. Now part of our mind may say, it’s too difficult, it’s not going to work out. I’m not good enough to do this.
When the mind starts thinking like this, what is happening is, the mind is not looking at the exact situation that is there in front of us right now. The mind is looking at maybe the past has failed, maybe the future has failed. And in the present, what we could do, we don’t do because of that.
So the mind diverts our energy. And the sicker the mind, the more our energy gets diverted. So one characteristic of a healthy mind, we could say is that it focuses on what needs to be perceived.
Imagine, just to give another example to illustrate this, that suppose we are going through a dark place. And it’s not a very smooth path. Sometimes there are rocks, sometimes there are marshes, sometimes there are some creepers of the branches, along the ground.
Our leg may get stuck and we may fall. And we are walking through all of those. Now we have a flashlight.
Our flashlight needs to be focused ahead so that we can say, okay, I should put my foot over here. I should not put my foot over it. But suppose something came along and started moving our flashlight everywhere, rapidly, just moving rapidly, rapidly, rapidly.
Now we want to see ahead, but if the flashlight is moving like this, how will we see? It won’t be able to function. So for us, our consciousness is like the light coming from the flashlight. But the mind is like some other person and just coming and constantly shaking our hand, shaking our hand, shaking our hand.
So because of the mind, the mind just keeps being restless, going here, going there, going there. And it just comes up with its own imagination, its own stories of what is happening. It doesn’t allow us to perceive things properly.
This is why, to the extent the mind is restless, going like this, chanchala, chanchala, to that extent, our perception becomes unclear. To that extent, we become sicker. So we become mentally sicker.
And what is the solution to this? How do we deal with such sickness of the mind? This is where the Gita uses another metaphor. And that metaphor is the metaphor of a child. Chanchala also refers to one who is restless.
And children are restless, frequently children are restless. So the Gita says that we are all having a mind which is like a child. And because it is like a child, it tends to go everywhere.
To the extent it goes to this place, that place and all places, to that extent, we remain incapable of functioning effectively. And if we want to function, we need to treat the mind like a child who needs to be. What do we do with the child? If we have a child who is very restless, who is very mischievous? Now, we can’t just force the child to go away.
It’s our child. And we need to deal with the child. So Krishna uses two words, abhyasa and vairagya.
Abhyasa and vairagya. So abhyasa refers to practice. And vairagya refers to detachment.
These two terms, they can have many different meanings. But we will discuss one specific meaning over here. So there is, with respect to dealing with the mind, there are two things that are required.
The way Krishna explains it is fencing. If we have a child, and the child is often getting into trouble. So how do we get the child out of trouble? We have to keep a watch on the child.
But one way we keep a watch on the child, okay, if we have a house, we make sure that our house has a fence. Like we have some small children, they baby fence their house. They baby protect their house.
Why baby protect? Because otherwise the child will naturally run here, there, everywhere. And we can’t stop the child from running. But if you have a fence, okay, you cannot go this side.
So fencing protects the child. So one aspect is fencing. And the other aspect is feeding.
We want the child to grow up. And what do we need? We need to help the child grow up to get his healthy food by which he can grow up in a healthy way. So abhyasa and vairagya.
That is what Krishna talks about. Let’s try to understand these two terms through an example over here. Yeah.
So a mother, when she’s taking care of the child, she feeds the child. Feeding the child will help the child to grow in a healthy way. And so children are immature.
But as they grow, they biologically grow, they are fed, they’re healthy. And they also grow up and they understand because the small child, the child may just want to play here and there. The child grows, matures and the child says, okay, I have to study.
I have to have a good life in the future. I need to have the priorities. And fencing is what protects the child from things which are dangerous.
So there may be strangers who may come and abduct the child. There may be somebody else making some food which will be harmful to the child. So there is protection.
So if we take these two points in mind, what happens is, what does becoming mindful mean? What are the Gita’s insights? That we practice. Practice means what is good for us. So instead of saying, oh, my mind always thinks negative.
You know, my mind is always distracted. So thinking like that, okay, practice. As soon as I realize that my mind is thinking negative, make it.
Try to direct it in a positive direction. As soon as we feel lethargic, try to think of something which will give us energy and try to do that. So practice.
So the good thing about the mind, it’s mechanical. Mechanical means that whatever is put into it, that’s what it will bring out. So it is, there may be garbage inside, garbage will come out.
There is goodness inside, goodness will come out. So we just need to repeat. And that is why traditions across the world have rituals.
In the Bhakti tradition, there are many rituals. Now, sometimes the word ritual has a negative connotation. Oh, we’re just doing rituals mindlessly.
The word ritualistic has a negative connotation. But many athletes and achievers in today’s world are recognizing the importance of rituals. So there are books about daily rituals for success.
The idea of ritual is, ritual means that we do an activity repeatedly, and that puts us in a particular state of mind. So our actions affect our emotions, our emotions affect our actions. There’s a link between the external and internals.
So rituals are external practices, which can put us in a particular frame of mind, which can help our mind to move towards a particular way of thinking and functioning. So for example, suppose there’s a cricket player, maybe a champion batsman. Now, before the batsman goes for batting, they often have certain rituals.
Now, when they’re going to over batting, they’ll put first, maybe the right pad, and the next pad, left pad, and then put the bat in a particular way, swing the bat, maybe do some movement of the hand when they are over batting, and then look up at the sky. And when they step across, the first step they put in the right step across the boundary line. And so now what is that is not just for fashion or style.
Actually, those rituals, they help the mind. Okay, now I’m going for batting. This is important.
Let me be the best. Let me perform the best way I can. So there are actions which can help us put ourselves in particular states of mind.
So this same principle is tapped since time immemorial within the bhakti tradition. And there are certain practices that are given. And those practices help the mind grow up, help the mind calm down, help the mind focus.
So among the various practices, there it is said that we can direct the mind in various ways. But if we direct the mind towards the highest reality, that is the fastest way for the mind to grow up. Children will grow up at their own pace.
You cannot give artificial growth hormones and make a child grow from one year to 10 years in one year. We try that in with animals, and we try in factory farms, in slaughterhouses, pre-slaughterhouse stage where the animals are kept alive. They are given artificial growth hormones so that they grow up rapidly.
But that leads to a lot of diseases. So whereas the biological growth of the body cannot be accelerated, the growth of the mind can be accelerated. So how is it accelerated? The size of the mind depends on the size of the object in the mind.
So the bigger the object in the mind, the bigger our mind becomes, the faster the mind grows. And the biggest object is the supreme object, the supreme reality. That is describing the bhakti tradition in the Bhagavad Gita as the all attractive divinity Krishna.
So all the yoga traditions, all the various yoga paths are meant to calm the mind and direct it towards higher reality. Bhakti yoga among the various yoga traditions starts by giving access to the highest reality. So when we chant the holy names of Krishna, when we behold the deity of Krishna, when we hear the wisdom of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, what we are doing is exposing our mind to the highest reality.
And that exposure of the mind to the highest reality elevates the mind, expands the mind. It helps the mind to grow up. So a mind that is unexposed to the ultimate reality, it gets caught in small, small things.
Oh, oh, I want to watch this cricket match. I want to watch that movie. Oh, that person spoke like this.
How terrible. That person spoke like this. My mood is ruined now.
I can’t do anything. So small pleasures tempt and agitate us and small problems threaten and agitate us. And the characteristic of a small mind is that it is disturbed by small things.
A small mind makes small things very big. I earlier started by talking about unfit mind is what? Its perception is distorted. The distorted perception means small things, you make them very big.
So that is what happens when the mind has not grown up. For a child, the breaking of a toy is the worst thing in the world. But as a child grows up, yeah, breaking of a toy is not a good thing.
But it’s not the worst thing in the world. The child understands that. So like that, as we grow up, as we expose our mind to the highest reality, to Krishna, as described in the Bhakti tradition, then the mind grows up.
It starts understanding that there are bigger things in life. We are bigger than our situations. We are bigger than the emotions that are induced within us by those situations.
And that understanding helps us to face life with a greater maturity. So Abhyasa is repeatedly exposing the mind to the higher reality, especially the highest reality, Krishna. And that will help the mind to grow up.
And then the other part is Vairagya. So what does Vairagya mean? Again, let’s look at this. Vairagya means two things.
Detachment. So one aspect of it is, stay away from the things that captivate or agitate the mind. And implication two is, we need to be detached from the outer objects, but we need to be detached from our own expectation from the mind.
I will explain these two things. That is, say parents are taking care of a child. When they’re taking care of the child, at that time, what happens is that if the child has some fondness for chocolates, then if the parents keep a hundred chocolates in the child’s toy room, what will happen is, the child doesn’t have a sense of perspective.
The child may eat not one or two or five or ten, the child may eat all the hundred chocolates. And that would be terrible for the teeth and for the health of the child. So it’s the important responsibility of the parents to not keep the chocolates accessible to the child.
The child may say, no, I want chocolates. The parents have to have maturity. You cannot have that.
So detachment means don’t expose the mind to stimuli that agitate it. So if the parents keep the chocolates in the child’s playroom, where the child spends most of the time, and the parents tell the child, no, parents tell the child, not the chocolate. Parents tell the child, don’t eat the chocolate.
No, every time the child sees the chocolate, I want it. The child will become annoyed. The child will become angry.
So why keep the chocolates in the child’s playroom? Keep them somewhere else. So like that, the best way to deal with temptation is to not deal with temptation. We have many more important things to do in life.
So create some distance, create some barrier between us and temptation. In today’s world, for example, our temptation may come through internet, through social media, through so many options for entertainment and distraction that we have. So create some barriers, create some net, have some net filters, have some apps, whatever is required to minimize the exposure.
So that’s the first thing. But there’s another aspect in detachment. It is not just that between the child and the toys, we need to create a barrier.
But the parents also have to make sure that they don’t over expect from the children. So the child is just learning the first alphabets today. The parents can’t expect that in one week, the child should be able to speak and write a full sentence.
It’s going to take time. So sometimes one of the biggest reasons why we are unsuccessful in our attempts to manage our mind, in our attempts to become mindfulness, we have unrealistic expectations from our mind. We think, today I made a resolution, I will never become angry.
And we expect, I give the instruction, I made the resolution, I am not going to get angry. And from today onwards, I will never get angry. It’s not going to happen like that.
It’s like we tell the child, from today onwards, you should not play with this toy at all. Well, the child may have been playing with that toy for a long time. And just our instruction may not get the child to stop playing the toy.
So we have to give up the expectation of quick results. Now, how do we define quick results? For different people, it will be different. Some of us may have some conditionings that may take a few weeks to go.
Some of us, some conditionings may take a few months to go. Some conditionings may take several years or even several decades to go. So we need to be patient.
And so the mind going in an unhealthy direction is something which can agitate us. But the mind not going as fast as we want in the healthy direction, that can also agitate us. And that agitates us again, we are no longer mindful, our perception is not clear.
So these two things in the bhakti tradition, there is vairage. Vairage means we understand that we distance ourselves from the outer objects, but also we understand that our growth does not happen by our efforts alone. Our growth happens by a higher plan, by divine grace.
And that understanding, so there is, this is the month of Damodar, which is going on. In Damodar, Krishna is tied with two rope. Krishna has been attempted to be tied by mother Yashoda, but it’s difficult.
And then finally, when there are two fingers shot again and again and again, finally, she’s able to tie him. So those two fingers represent human endeavor and divine grace. So what that means is, if we apply that to our situation with respect to the mind, what is in our capacity is, we try to create as many barriers as possible, so that we don’t get easily agitated.
But the pace at which the mind will grow, that we can’t determine. We can’t control that. Transformation will happen, surely, but it will take its own time.
And the readiness to wait for transformation to happen, that is humility, that is faith. And we will be transformed. The magic of bhakti, of abhyasa in the practice of bhakti is such that each one of us, as we chant the holy names, as we study the Bhagavad Gita, as we worship the deities, we expose ourselves to the ultimate reality, Krishna.
We’ll find the more we look at that ultimate reality, the more, when we look at the world, we’ll be able to see things clearly. If somebody’s trying to manipulate us, we will have that clarity to say, okay, this person is trying to manipulate me. Now, if we are ourselves overreacting to some situation, just that having connected ourselves with Krishna, the mind starts overreacting, starts getting hyperventilating, getting angry.
Oh, maybe I’m overreacting. We calm down. We will become better observers of our mind and better restrainers and redirectors of our mind.
And that is how once our mind becomes our friend, like a parent, I’ll conclude with this parenting metaphor now. As I talk about the modes and mood in the last part, that is in this connection. The Gita talks about three modes, sattva, rajas, tamas, goodness, passion, ignorance.
So in goodness, the mind perceives clearly. In passion, the mind perceives only the objects of his desire. In ignorance, the mind just gets lost in imagination, in illusion, in delusion.
It doesn’t perceive in material reality properly, or to speak of perceiving spiritual reality. So that is what is the challenge. But fortunately, whatever mode we may be in, the mood is changeable.
So our mind’s moods will change again and again. But we can’t control the moods of our mind. Sometimes we feel energetic, sometimes we feel lethargic, sometimes we feel optimistic, sometimes we feel pessimistic.
These moods will keep coming and keep going. But if we try to elevate our mood, if we try to live as much as possible, have a regular time for waking and sleeping, have a regular time for eating food, have good friends around us, cultivate overall a healthy way of living. And we do that, we’ll find the mood will rise, the mood in which we are living will rise.
As we rise towards sattva guna, we’ll find automatically the moods will become less wildly swinging and more steady. So rather than worrying about our moods, I’m doing this, why is the mood swinging like this? Why do I feel so good at one moment and then so bad at the next moment? Don’t worry about it. Just focus on elevating the mood in which we are living overall.
And the mood, the mind’s mood will grow up. If parents start worrying after every mood of the child, now the children are fickle. But as long as the parents are taking due care of the children, the children will grow up and they will outgrow their fickleness.
So we focus not on the mood of the mind, but the mood of our living. The emotions and the mind is subtle, it’s very difficult to deal with it. But it’s much easier to focus on the physical level and reorganize the physical level.
And when we do that, the psychological level will automatically change. So I’ll conclude with this application. You know, in wherever you’re staying, in your home, in your work, in your workplace, what you do is try to see if you can create one corner of sattva guna.
Sattva guna means maybe in your home, have a small altar or have your own private space where you may have some good pictures, have some thoughtful quotes, have a device ready where you can have some soothing music, maybe have some incense, something which gives nice fragrance. Basically, have a place which can immediately direct our thoughts towards sattva guna, raise our consciousness towards goodness, have one place of beauty, of serenity, of sanctity wherever we are. And when we do that, we’ll find that just holding that place close to us, holding ourselves in that place, going there and staying there, even for a few minutes, will help us deal with the mind’s moods.
By creating a sattva guna atmosphere, as is possible for us, we’ll find that the mind’s fluctuations, the mind’s moodiness, it won’t affect us so much. And eventually, mind’s moodiness itself will go down. The mind becomes our friend, then it is becoming like two for one.
Sometimes, when we buy one product in sales, what happens is, they say that you buy this product and get this free. So, for us, it will become like that. Right now, we are one and we are dealing with the world’s problems, but we are also dealing with our mind’s problems.
So, half our energy or more than half of energy is going with respect to dealing with the mind. And we have only remaining little energy to deal with the world. But as our mind grows up, it’s like a parent who is carrying a naughty child constantly, and they have to carry the naughty child and take potential naughty child and also have to deal with, maybe do their job, like sometimes mothers, they go to a place in traditional places, they will say mother’s carrying the baby in their hands, and the mother is maybe selling some vegetables or doing something like that.
It’s difficult. They’re doing two things at the same time. When the child grows up, child becomes young, strong person, and the child can help the mother, child can carry heavy substances, heavy objects, place them here, place them there.
And then that one becomes two. And the force becomes doubled that way. So, as we help our mind to grow up, the mind becomes our friend.
When the mind becomes our friend, we will be able to function far more effectively, we will surprise ourselves with how many things we are able to do in how little time and not just do things, do better things, but become a better being. That is the stage where Krishna says that the mind has become our friend, and our life has become successful. Our potentials are manifested, and our destiny is fulfilled.
So, I’ll summarize. I spoke today about mindfulness based on Bhagavad Gita. I talked about three main points.
First was metaphors for understanding the mind. I talked about three broad metaphors. So, the mind is like a tool.
The body, if you consider the tool for moving and going here and there, the mind is a tool for perceiving. So, the mind can be either fit, when there’s clear perception, it can be unfit, when there is distorted perception, and that can be sick, when there is toxic perception. That means there is a small problem, and we see it as a small problem.
That’s a fit mind. When you see a small problem, when there’s a small problem, we see it as a big problem. That is a distorted mind.
And there’s a small problem, and we think, oh, this is my ruination, my life is destroyed now. That is toxic mind. So, another metaphor was the mind is like the pathway through which the light of consciousness comes out.
That same example, the mind is a tool, but it’s like a passageway through which the light comes out. Then another metaphor we discussed was the mind is like a child. And that was the metaphor in the second part.
So, how do we manage the mind? That is abhyasa and vairagya. The child needs to be taken care of, so that child grows up. And that requires feeding and fencing.
Feeding is abhyasa, fencing is vairagya. And what does feeding mean for the mind? That the more we expose the mind to the biggest reality, the faster the mind becomes big, it grows up. The size of the mind depends on the size of the object within the mind, the size of thoughts in the mind.
And bhakti yoga provides us ready access to the ultimate reality. And that helps the mind to grow up the fastest. And then, so that’s abhyasa and vairagya, two things.
The parents make sure that things that may agitate or distract the child, they are not in the child’s horizon, keep them far away. So, distance ourselves from the objects that may agitate or captivate our mind. And the second is, the parents have to be detached from the expectation of instant success, instant growth.
Children will grow at their pace. So, we don’t have to think that, oh, I made this resolution, I didn’t succeed, that’s why everything’s over. No, things will grow at their pace.
So, be patient. So, when we do have this to understand attachment, we can help the mind to grow up rapidly. I will talk concludingly about the modes and how we can go beyond the modes through the practice of bhakti.
So, the modes, we can’t change them, we can’t very much control the moods of our mind. It’s flickering and fickle. But we can change the mode in which we are living.
If we create even a small shelter of sattva guna of higher consciousness around us, wherever we are, then just by going there physically, we can change the frame of our mind and help it to become more elevated. And when the mind becomes our friend, we become like one for two, we one become two, like a mother with a grown child helping her. So, similarly, the mind which has our friend will empower us to function much more effectively, not just to better things, but become a better beings.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, Balvinish Prabhu.
Hare Krishna Prabhu. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. Prabhu, actually I have two questions.
The first one is, sometimes we’ll be surprised to see the sudden change in the drastic difference of moods. Sometimes we’ll cultivate sattva guna, but somehow or other, suddenly we’ll jump to tamo guna. So, within very minute fraction of seconds.
So, we are unable to perceive what does it impact for those sudden shifts. My second question is, when we die… Wait a minute. Let’s take one question.
So, when the moods change suddenly, we’re not able to perceive the cause. Well, the mind is subtle and the way it’s affected is not so easy to perceive. Like, sometimes a person gets infected by a disease.
Sometimes we can find out, okay, you know, the infection came from here. Sometimes the infection came from there. So, like some diseases, like malaria or something, we know it’s come from a mosquito.
But if you consider cancer, it’s difficult to know what exactly caused the cancer. Some people may say it’s a pollution of the atmosphere. Well, if that were the case, then everybody should get cancer.
Everybody doesn’t. Sometimes there are diseases which we can’t really trace their cause. But then we focus on the cure as much as we can.
So, to the extent it’s… So, when our mind’s mood changes or the desire, the emotion, they change rapidly. If we can find the cause, well and good. But if we can’t find the cause, well, okay, that’s fine.
Just focus on the mind has gone towards the mood. Let me try to get it towards a higher mood. So, don’t spend too much time analyzing if no immediate cause is apparent.
Because sometimes the cause may be just some impressions within the mind rising up suddenly. Prabhupada gives the example that sometimes if a water is calm, you may throw a stone and the water gets restless. But sometimes the water may be calm and there are no stones thrown from outside.
But some kind of fermentation is happening below and suddenly bubbles start coming up from below to above and the water started becoming restless. So, sometimes it might just be something from our subconscious mind or we could say from the puru samskaras rising up. So, don’t focus so much on the cause.
Focus more on the solution, on the cure. Just do what we know helps us to rise towards higher mood, towards goodness and towards sattva guna and do that and that’s how we’ll deal with it. Okay, can I ask another question? We’ll come back to you again.
Sure, sure. So, Harshil is asking how to overcome phobias, mental blocks. Well, phobias are sometimes, it depends in the words, sometimes we use the phobia in a conversational sense, sometimes we use in a pathological sense, that means medical sense.
Sometimes we can’t, we’re not able to change our phobias but what we can do is we can change our attitude towards our phobias. If we suddenly feel very fearful about something, so rather than beating ourselves up for feeling fearful or demanding that we shouldn’t feel fearful, okay, I feel fearful but what can I do about it? So, try to, if we, we may not be able to control the mind’s reaction, we can control our response to the mind’s reaction. So, what we do is, we gradually deal with it.
Somebody has a very serious claustrophobia. They just can’t enter into a lift, for example, an elevator. So, what do they do? So, gradually, step by step, the phobia states.
That means, okay, you cannot go to the elevator, you cannot enter the elevator but can you take two steps towards the elevator? Can you take two steps towards the elevator? Yeah, two is possible. Can you take two more steps? Yeah, can you take two more? Not today. Okay, that’s good.
You took four steps. So, basically, gradually, be patient. Whatever causes the phobia, don’t expect or demand that that fear go away but just see how much you can push yourself and little pushes also.
They may be insignificant from the world’s perspective but they are very significant from our perspective and by gradual step by step, we will be able to minimize the effect. So, the mind imagines, oh, if this happens, if a spider comes, the spider will kill me. The spider can’t kill you but you tell that logically it doesn’t work.
So, what happens is, whatever the stimulus, slowly increase our tolerance to that and then we’ll also see, oh, I went so, I went right to the door of the lift and nothing bad happened. Yeah, maybe my fear is not that bad. Something to that bonafide.
Let me enter the lift once. So, gradually, step by step, we deviate the phobias. Yes, okay.
So, we have, yes, Miguel. Hi, Krishna. Yeah, you have said that we have to be patient with our practice.
We shouldn’t, you know, so, there’s also, we have to have the humility to wait on Krishna’s face, right, when we’re trying to improve in some area of our life. So, as we’re practicing and, let’s say, maybe results aren’t coming as fast as we would like, how do we understand whether we just need to be more patient on Krishna’s face or we need to step up our practice or, you know, or see that maybe there’s something lacking on our side? So, how do we know whether there’s something lacking on our side or it’s just that we have to be patient for Krishna’s grace? Well, the two don’t have to be contradictory. They can be parallel.
We keep taking inventory to see whether there’s anything more I can do. And at the same time, we wait for Krishna. So, it’s like we are waiting, and while we’re waiting, we’re working.
So, if you consider from the perspective of Bhaktishla Prabhupada, was trying to share Krishna Bhakti in India. This didn’t work. He tried that.
He tried first to write a magazine and not interested. Then he tried to work with his God family, God brothers. It didn’t work.
Then he tried to have his own temple. That didn’t work. He got a Bhagavatam written and he got good endorsements, but he didn’t get beyond that much.
He kept trying. Then he came to America. And then there also financial things, they broke, but eventually things took off.
So, the idea is that what is in our endeavor, we keep trying to be resourceful. So, if we are trying to chant and we find ourselves getting distracted. So, we try to take inventory, you know, how can I help myself focus? Maybe keeping a picture of my spiritual master can help.
Maybe having some, some, some many incense in my atmosphere, having some Tulsi in my atmosphere can help. So, we try from what we can. At the same time, we wait for Krishna.
So, both factors go together. And rather than thinking that, am I being too harsh with myself or am I being too lenient with myself, just focus on doing what we can and adapting. It’s just like if we were in a career, we are having our career, we were trying to grow actively in our career.
So, we would be constantly looking at what is something new I can learn? Is there some more networking I can do? We are all waiting for that lucky break. That can change our career. But we just don’t sit passively in our house waiting for lucky break.
We do what we can. We try to develop connections and then maybe some lucky break comes up eventually. That’s how it is.
Thank you, Prabhu. Thank you. So, if we feel, okay.
Shaktimaan. Hare Krishna Prabhu. Am I audible? Yes, clearly.
Prabhu, I have borderline personality disorder, which I have. See, I’m unable to mingle with people, have good friends, because whenever I mingle with people and try to develop friendship with them, I feel exploited. How to overcome this and how to have good friends? Because my whole life so far, I don’t have only one or two friends I have.
How to make friends? Yeah, it’s tough. You know, if we feel that having friends means we’ll get exploited. So, first thing is that every fear has a cause.
So, we can’t control that emotion. If you feel fear, if you feel apprehension, if you feel hesitation, that emotion is something when we try to fight against our emotions, it’s like we are setting ourselves up for a losing battle. That is, what we can do is we can focus on our actions.
We can focus on our intelligence. So, sometimes the best way to fight an enemy is to dodge their main flank. If in this side, the enemy is very strong, then don’t fight that side, go to the other side and fight from some other flank.
So, if some emotion is very strong for us, then instead of trying to combat that emotion, we focus on things other than the emotion. We focus on action, we focus on reason. So, okay, that emotion is present, I fear that I’ll be exploited.
Okay, that’s fine. But okay, within that fear, does that mean I can’t do anything? Like right now, you came for this talk and you asked a question. So, that is something which you’re capable of doing.
So, rather than thinking, when will this fear go away? We focus on okay, within whatever the constraints imposed by that fear, what can I do? What action can I take? What level of reasoning can I do? I’m going to say no, by my reasoning, I understand I should not have that fear. No, don’t, don’t attack that fear right now. Okay, with that reasoning, yeah, this person has always been quite kind to me.
So, maybe I can take a few steps through this person and see how they reciprocate. So, see, we may have to live with fear, but we don’t have to live in fear. Sometimes what happens is we try to get rid of the fear.
And then it doesn’t go away. And if you discourage, live with fear means see that each of us see we all have different issues. Some of us may have physical issues, some of us may have a scar on our body, some of us may have some, some particular thing and without the physical level, all of us have to live with some issues.
But we don’t have to live consume my thoughts of those, you know, don’t have to live in that. We don’t have to let ourselves be defined or identified by that. So, except that it is there, but at other folks, and you’ll find other fronts.
And over a period of time, you’ll find that gradually bonding will happen. So, like I said, the best way to deal with temptation is to not deal with temptation. The best way to deal with a negative emotion is to not deal with that emotion.
It’s very difficult to reason with strong negative emotions. But we can use reason for some other constructive direction. Thank you, Prabhu.
Hare Krishna. One last question. And we’ll stop here.
So, how can we deal with depression? When, if some, when a lost meaning in life? See, meaning is not like a one zero thing. In digital electronics, this thing was given me meaning of this thing is gone, all meaning is lost. Meaning can also be created in increments, it’s analog.
So, okay, in this situation in my life, there are two choices for I can sit on my bed and watch TV all day. Or I can go out and we do something for someone. We just speak a few kind words to someone.
So rather than thinking of finding a whole meaning for life, when that has been lost, simply focus on finding some small thing which gives meaning. Maybe you know, speaking a few kind words to someone that makes me feel that I did something meaningful, I did something good. So start with start the small state of small meaning.
And that will gradually build up. That’s the best way for us to move forward in the search for meaning. Don’t wait for one or zero.
Don’t worry about the big loss, loss of big meaning. Start with small and small things will grow. And sometimes or we may find that the the loss of a smaller meaning, one may not think that meaning is smaller, but the loss of a smaller meaning may actually be the pathway to open for a bigger meaning.
So the clouds look so beautiful in the sky. And we think, oh, now the sky is so beautiful. And the clouds break.
The beautiful cloud is all broken up. But from the beautiful break, the breaking of the beautiful clouds, rain sky. And whereas the clouds may just serve like an ornamental purpose in the sky, the rains serve an essential purpose, they nourish life on the earth.
So similarly, soil looks nice when it is natural, but when you have to plow it, you have to put a plow through it, it cracks, so the initial doesn’t look very good. The soil has to be broken so that grains come out of it, crops grow from it. So often, what we conceive as meaning is broken so that some higher meaning will be revealed.
So we just need to wait. And we wait and we watch. So two things, we find meaning where we can and we wait for some bigger meaning to emerge and it will gradually.
So, thank you very much for joining today. And wish you all the very best. May Krishna guide you within and without to better manage the mind and become more and more mentally healthy.