Is the mind always our enemy?

From Sushant

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna, question from Sushant Kulkarni Prabhu Is the mind always our enemy? Sometimes we get good ideas also and there are materialists also who do not practice bhakti at all, but they get good ideas for excelling in their material profession and their mind they seem to have control over their mind so does the mind always act as an enemy and when we get insights from the mind when we get good thoughts from the mind, how do we decide which thoughts coming from it are good and which are not good answer certainly when we say the mind is an enemy Krishna himself, whenever he talks about the mind as an enemy, he also talks about the mind can be the friend, for example 6.5 and 7 he talks about both possibilities so now when we say that can the mind be our friend we have to understand that there are two different things, there is the vritti and there is the vasana, these are rough words but the broad is that we have our varnic tendencies propensities according to our varna and we have the cravings of lust, anger, greed, envy, pride and illusion so these cravings of lust, anger, greed, envy, pride and illusion these are undesirable, these also come from the mind and we need to resist them, but based on our particular propensity or varna, we have certain likings and those likings it’s not that the soul likes to be intellectual or the soul likes management or the soul likes to soul excels at earning money, it is the body mind complex that is there that is excelling in this particular material fields and in these we naturally get ideas and while we are doing these naturally we get focused and absorbed so when a materialistic person or even a devotee while doing a particular material activity which is according to the varna of that devotee, the devotee will get absorbed in it and the mind will give ideas, oh we are studying, we could do this you are earning money, why not invest over here, why not plan this, why not plan that now this is the natural intelligence that comes because of having a body in a particular varna and this is certainly an example of the mind acting as a friend so now when we get ideas like this usually we can use our ideas and we can improve our situation materially and if we are using those material skills in devotional service then even spiritually we can improve by that so the mind can be our friend no doubt now how do we decide which of the ideas are good and which of the ideas are bad, even firstly even while we are doing things according to our propensity, there is often the possibility that the mind may carry us away that means yes I can earn money expertly, then I just get, now I get so infatuated by that that earning money and I get creative ideas how I can earn money but I get so infatuated that I neglect all other dimensions of my of my life, not just sometimes people neglect not only their spiritual life but they neglect even their families and other things so they may say I am getting such brilliant ideas to expand my business but the business is not just the only dimension of life so when we get such ideas according to our varna, according to our nature these ideas come from the mind and sometimes when we get inspiration surely we can and should cherish that inspiration and become absorbed but we should have other times for other dimensions of our life, that is the first thing, there should be a sense of balance when we pursue the suggestions we get from the mind and secondly especially if these impulses are coming with respect to lust, anger, greed, envy, pride and delusion then definitely we need to check them and broadly if we get some idea which requires a significant change in our plans then it is good to keep it for some time in a in a state of suspended animation where we don’t do anything about it so that once the heat or the excitement of the idea has calmed down we can evaluate it a little bit with detachment and then we can check whether this really works and whether I should do this or not, so for example I as a writer I get many ideas for writing so then I can, sometimes I get idea for writing a full book which will require one year to write, now every I can’t pursue every idea so when I get an idea I just make a brief note of it and then I put it down and afterwards I evaluate it, is it really worth investing my time so much to write a book or not, if I get an article idea then I do the same thing with that, so when I am getting these article ideas or book ideas or any such things which help me in my, to serve Krishna according to my propensity, to do my varnic dharma, so then I definitely cherish those ideas and at that time definitely the mind is acting as a friend for me but then if because of this I start trusting the mind indiscriminately then the mind will as I said these two things, first is that it will reduce me to just a unidimensional intellectual and will squelch my devotional activities and secondly it will also if I uncritically trust it then eventually it will bring in lust, anger, greed and these things also and I will succumb to that also because I have started uncritically trusting the mind so we don’t have to necessarily constantly have an adversarial relationship with the mind with respect to everything that the mind suggests no, the varnic, with the things related with our profession, things related with our with our varnic inclination, we can welcome the ideas and we can implement them and they will be our strengths but still we have to evaluate them from a broader perspective and the accepting the mind’s friendship with respect to our varnic propensity doesn’t mean that we accept the mind’s suggestions when it comes to lust, anger, greed also and overall further we could say that sometimes if some devotees find the idea of a mind’s friendship a little too disconcerting because we have always heard that the mind is our enemy then we can simply say that that is coming from our material intelligence because ultimately when some idea comes from within, how do we know where it is coming from, is it coming from the mind or the intelligence now when we use the word mind in some cases the mind is used as an equivalent for the subtle body, so that’s why we say matter, mind and consciousness, so matter refers to the gross matter which has its five components, mind refers to the subtle body which has three components and there is a soul so quite often sometimes for a simpler discussion the subtle body is reduced to the mind, so when I am saying the mind can be a source of good ideas also here we can say that the mind refers to the intelligence faculty within it, but let’s not split hair over here the point is sometimes some bad ideas come from within and sometimes some good ideas come from within and if we are always in adversarial relationship with what is inside, thinking that it is a reservoir of all bad things, then we will miss out on the good ideas, so rather than bothering too much splitting hair of what is the exact source, is it coming from the mind or the intelligence, we evaluate that based on a broader framework of what our values in life is, what our purpose in life is and that’s why scripture gives us paradharma and aparadharma both so paradharma and aparadharma we get an understanding of this through scripture and then we evaluate the ideas that come from within and if to the extent they help us move forward in our material and spiritual purposes, we accept those ideas Thank you. Hare Krishna