How can we prevent the mind from obsessing over negative things that shouldn’t happen?
Answer Podcast:
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Great, Krishna.
The mind has a tendency to dwell on negative things which shouldn’t happen, which we don’t want them to happen. But still the mind dwells on them. How to avoid that? Yes, the nature of Tamoguna.
Krishna says, Determination in the mode of ignorance. He says, Swapnam, not dreaming in terms of the imagination we talked about, it’s dreaming in terms of idle drea-dreaming. Swapnam, Bhayam is Shokam, constant fearfulness.
Shokam is grieving. Vishadam is moroseness. It is habitual negativity.
You know, every, some day some people, you present some proposal, they are expert at finding all problems with that proposal. It’s good, there are two different things over here. One is to look at the pitfalls of some situation and prepare for it.
The other is just to look at all the problems and therefore, the solution is don’t do anything. Just don’t do anything. One time a devotee, I was explaining this words, how the modes of matrilature are doing everything.
So then I said that, if matrilature is doing everything, then this raises several questions. What possible questions does it raise? So this devotee was known to be very lazy. He says, only one question.
Why should I do anything? If the modes are doing everything, why should I do anything? Why should I do anything? No, I may say I will not do anything because if anything I do, it is the modes which are doing it. Therefore, better not do anything. But then, doing nothing is also doing something.
If I am not doing anything, what will I do? I will go to sleep. And sleeping is doing something in the mode of ignorance. So, Vishadham.
Vishadham means habitual moroseness where the mind goes towards negative things. It’s interesting, Krishna calls this also as determination. He is saying, these tendencies are this kind of mindset, this kind of mentality is determination in the mode of ignorance.
So, why is he calling this as determination? Now, suppose somebody is very lazy. Now, actually, laziness is not very easy to go on with. Why is that? You see, laziness is very easy.
You just go to sleep, don’t do anything. But generally, lazy people are scorned, frowned upon, ridiculed and any negative habit that a person has, actually, if a person is alcoholic, normally, we call that as addiction. But, to hold on to that addiction, you get a hangover, you lose money, people chastise you, you behave like a nut.
And in spite of that, you do the same thing again. What is that if not determination? To hold on to alcohol in spite of getting all the consequences, holding on requires determination. So, what we lack is not determination.
Nobody can say, I don’t have determination. Everybody has determination. What we lack is not determination, it is direction for our determination.
Instead of holding on to something good, we are holding on to something bad. Somebody says that, I just can’t control my eating. I overeat.
I don’t have any determination to control my eating. Well, it’s not that you don’t have determination. You have determination to keep on eating.
Actually, I’m speaking about myself over here. So, it’s just that, okay, I make so many resolutions and I make so many plans, but in spite of that, I have determination and that determination is expressed as I hold on to, I keep on eating. So, this is not meant to minimize our ridicule.
This is meant simply to highlight the point that we all have determination. So, in this case, when the mind is thinking about negative results, Vishadha, habitual moroseness, that is basically the mind’s determination is going in the negative direction. So, by recognizing that we have the faculty to imagine, we have the faculty to visualize, we can get that confidence, I can redirect this visualizing faculty.
So, we all can find out what are the things, what are the positive things that stimulate our imagination. That means that, yes, if something goes wrong, that can sometimes scar us mentally. Some relationship goes sore, some accident happens, that can scar us mentally and then we always start thinking, in this relationship also I’ll have a problem.
Here also there may be some accident. Here also something may go wrong. But if you look at our life, yes, things have gone wrong, but there are things which have gone right also.
There are times when we might have been in great trouble and somehow by Krishna’s mercy things work out right. So, we try to recollect those and especially not just recollect in terms of that time moment trying to recollect, but having some aid for recollection, maybe writing down incidents in our life when things worked out very nicely. We thought that everything is going to go wrong, but things did work out.
And then we use that, yes, things have worked out like this also. So, it’s not that every time things are going to work out wonderfully. But it is not that every time things are going to work out dreadfully also.
So, by countering that mind’s negative imagination, we’ll be more prepared to deal with the situation. So, yes, we want to have, see, there are two different things. Sometimes the mind is so cunning that it misappropriates the philosophy.
So, for example, this world is Dukkhalen, this world is a place of misery, but that does not mean we all have to be miserable. This world is a place of misery, but the scripture gives us a way of living by which there can be minimal misery and there can be reasonable happiness in life. So, if we always think, oh, this world is a miserable place, this world is a miserable place, the purpose, if you see the same words which we quote, Dukkhalen Vashashvatam, the focus of this verse is not Dukkhalen Vashashvatam.
The verse is, Dukkhalen Vashashvatam na apnavanti mahatmana samsiddhin paramahamdata. So, Dukkhalen Vashashvatam is a casual background fact. Krishna is saying, those who devote themselves to me, they will never again come back to this world, but they will attain my abode.
The point is, the thrust of this verse is that by devotion to me, one will go beyond the misery of this world. So, the point of the Bhagavad Gita is not to perpetuate the misery, not to sentence us to misery, but to give us a process to transcend misery. So, it’s like there’s a hospital.
In a hospital, people are going to be sick, but the purpose of the hospital is not to keep everyone sick. The purpose of the hospital is to help people to be healed. So, similarly, this world is a place, is Dukkhalen, but Krishna, it’s Dukkhalen, not in the sense that Krishna wants us all to suffer.
Suffering is a fact in a hospital, but the purpose of the doctor is to minimize and eliminate the suffering. Similarly, Krishna’s purpose is to ultimately free us from our suffering. So, if the mind misappropriates the imagination, oh, this world is Dukkhalen, so I’m going to get misery in my life.
Yes, we should be aware that this is Dukkhalen so that we don’t let fantasies that I can be happy here distract us from spiritual life. Make us think that there’s no need to practice spiritual life because I’ll be happy here. That sort of fantasization is wrong.
But while we are practicing Bhakti, we, at our, to imagine that there will be problems in my life, that is Tamasic. And especially, to imagine problems in such a way that it disheartens us, it immobilizes us, it paralyzes us, that is Tamasic. So, to counter that, we can also meditate on Krishna and Krishna’s benevolent nature.
Yes, even if problems come, even if things go wrong, Krishna can set them right. So, and Krishna is there with me. So, that by meditating on Krishna’s loving nature and Krishna’s benevolent purpose, also we can counter the mind’s negative imagination.
Does it answer your question? Thank you. Any other questions?