​How can we avoid becoming depressed because of people who are regularly troublesome?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Even if we accept that there are some people are going to behave in a problematic way, still when they actually behave that way, we are troubled by that. And we get bothered and that botheration becomes habitual.
So this is where the influence of tamoguna is coming. The problem is intermittent. It’s not that that person is going to 24 hours torment us.
The problem is intermittent, but we let that problem trouble us constantly. Say to give a gross physical example, suppose we have a boil on our body. Maybe when we sit, that boil troubles us.
Now if I know that it is there, I’ll be careful and I won’t sit on the boil. But sometimes accidentally it’s going to be there. But that boil on the body, if somebody deliberately sits on that only, that’s going to torment all the more.
So now nobody will do that. There is a boil and sometimes whenever there is contact or whatever, there is pressure on that, there’s going to be pain. But what the mind does is, the mind when Krishna says it’s our enemy, it is like a person.
When I’m sitting down and the boil is going to cause me pain, the mind is like a person who makes me sit on that boil only. And then it worsens and I feel much more pain. So what we need to do is that when somebody is troubling us and that becomes very troublesome, we need to consciously count our blessings.
Okay, this relationship is problematic for me. But let me look at all the other things that are right in my life and try to direct our thoughts towards it. Yes, we have problems, but quite often there are people who have much bigger problems than what we have.
So if we count our blessings at that time, then this particular situation which may seem like a curse for us, maybe a curse also, but it won’t burden us so much. So the mind has a tendency to make an intermittent problem perpetual. The problem itself is intermittent.
When it comes, it’s going to trouble, but by dwelling on it constantly, it becomes perpetual. So if we can maybe write down the things that are right in our life, count our blessings, write them down and read them. So when the mind starts to read them, contemplate on them, when the mind starts contemplating negatively, we bring it towards the positives in our life.
And then that way, the negativity can be counted. So counting our blessings, it becomes easier when we have a spiritual conception of life. If we have a largely materialistic conception of life, then a material problem seems to be like a huge problem.
But if you have a spiritual understanding of life, then there are so many spiritual blessings that are available for us. And then we understand, okay, material side is one side of my life, and within that, there’s this big problem, but there are so many other things which are right in my life. That conscious cultivation of gratitude can actually help us deal with the negativity.
So whenever there’s a problem, the mind tends to make that problem consume our consciousness. And I just can’t think about anything else. So suppose we go for a feast, suppose you go for a program, and we are told there’s a feast over there.
And that feast, there’s gulab jamun. We are told. And we go there, and we love gulab jamuns.
And we go there and find there’s no gulab jamun. Actually, there’s a nice feast. Just that there’s no gulab jamun.
Why no gulab jamun? Why no gulab jamun? Why no gulab jamun? And then the mind gets so irritated. Actually, you know, I just think that there’s so many people, you know, one fourth of all people in the world, they sleep on an empty stomach every day. One fourth.
So if I just think about people, you know, I’m not getting gulab jamun, people are not getting anything to eat. So just think of that. Why am I getting so worked up about this? So I’ll conclude with this point that, you know, when the mind tries to trick us, we have to become expert in out tricking the mind.
So the trick of the mind is that there is a problem in my life, and the mind is magnifying that problem. So I have to become expert to out trick the mind. Okay, there is this problem in my life.
But, you know, there are others who may be having bigger problems. And sometimes we look around in life, there are others also have their own problems. So that way, we need to find out, I just give two, three examples of thought exercises.
But we have to find out what thought exercise works for us. And by that, we don’t let the mind direct our attention towards the problem, but we redirect it towards the things that are right in our life. Does that answer your question?