Bhagavatam-daily 281 – 11.13.14 – The purpose of yoga is to help the mind find rest in Krishna

Protect ourselves from the modes, thank you Krishna is here reiterating or summarizing and stressing the essence of the system of yoga which he has just talked about, so Krishna gave here analysis of the three modes and especially the importance of goodness and eventually of transcendent goodness by cultivating, by practicing Dharma which brings one to goodness and then takes one beyond goodness so here he says that there are great sages like Sanaka too who have taught this message and the essence of that message is that unto me, upon me fix the mind, now the human mind is far more energetic and far more restless than the body, the body may rest but even then, for example when we are tired, the difference between physical tiredness and mental tiredness is that when we are physically tired we simply go to sleep but when we are mentally tired the mind doesn’t go to sleep, the mind just doesn’t want to do what it is expected to do and so for example sometimes some people if they have a very demanding boss and now they may come fresh to the office fresh in terms of physically rested but one unpleasant interaction with the boss and then all the past memories of unpleasant interactions come up and because of that the whole mood gets lost and one just feels fed up mentally and being fed up like this, no matter what one does, one feels disheartened so the state of yoga the purpose and perfection of yoga is to give our mind a place to rest, to give our mind a position where it can stay peaceful where it can stay happy, where it can stay sheltered and thus become rejuvenated, now that place of course is Krishna now we all have the things that we try to do when we feel tired, bored, irritated mentally exhausted, some people just turn on television, some people pick up a novel and start watching it, some people start doing workouts, some people may have a boxing kit with them and they just start boxing hitting a punching bag that way they try to work out all their anger, so the point is that we need relief and release and we all can seek it in different things and these things may provide us some relief and release but they do not provide us relief and release from that which is the foundational cause of our anxiety and our frustration our anxiety and our frustration, anxiety means we are worried that things may go wrong and frustration means things have gone wrong and we are feeling angry about it so there is anxiety and there is frustration and both of these they take away our impetus to perform our impetus to act, our impetus to be stimulated by life’s challenges, people say that don’t look at a situation as a problem, see it as a challenge something that will help you to grow, now we may also sympathize with this attitude of looking positively at things but ultimately there is only so much that we can do to avoid the mind’s negativity 1,2,3,4 how many negatives can we try to see positively sometimes we feel that we are just trying to fantasize just trying to imagine that things are positive and actually they are negative but the whole process of bhakti recognizes that there is a supremely positive reality and that is Krishna and to the extent we connect with him to the extent we shelter ourselves in him, to the extent we focus on him to that extent we become better equipped to deal with whatever problems we have faced, the problems won’t go away but sometimes by Krishna’s miraculous intervention the problems can go away also, but even if they don’t go away our apathy and our loss of heart will go away the problem may not go away but our problematic mentality and what is that problematic mentality? some people may say it’s negative thinking no, that is true but what is the foundational form of negative thinking it is not that thinking that oh whatever I do things will not work out right, things will work out wrong, that is negative thinking yes, that is one level of negative thinking but an even more foundational level of negative thinking is thinking that whatever happens, we are simply meant to find happiness at the material level of reality bhunte prakriti jan gunan, in 13.22 Krishna states that the hope of the soul to find happiness in matter bhunte, to find happiness in matter prakriti jan gunan, that hope of the soul is the cause of all bondage and to the extent the soul can counter that hope or can abandon that hope and put one’s hope in Krishna to that extent one can be positive even amidst the most negative situations so here Krishna is telling that the essence of all the process of yoga is to fix the mind on him we understand by the process of analysis, introspection and gradual realization whatever realization we have that the world and its shelter is insubstantial although it can offer us some pleasure ultimately its pleasure is temporary and Krishna on the other hand if we turn our mind and heart towards him and if we try to devote ourselves to him then Krishna can offer us lasting fulfillment and it is not that it comes only at the last it is not that it comes only at the end of the life or beyond this life no, it can Krishna doesn’t say in Bhagavad Gita that the sushukha is only at the end of it it is joyfully performed while we are doing it also there is joy in it and that joy is what we experience when we fix the mind on Krishna rather than letting it go here and there so in the process of bhakti yoga we don’t have to renounce the world we don’t have to perform physical gymnastics all that we need to do is turn our heart towards Krishna and fix the mind on him and bhakti is so inclusive that it offers us many ways by which to fix the mind on him and to the extent we do so to that extent we become fulfilled even while we are in this world with its various situations