Mental weight can’t be wished away but it can be worked away Gita 06.35

Transcript

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what weighs down our consciousness, cannot be wished away, when we overeat, at that time, we feel weighed down, by all the fat that is accumulated within us, so someone may pretend to be dieting, and that person may be eating alone, and to the world it may appear, that person may claim that, actually I am not eating much food, but all the food that is eaten is going to go into the weighing scale, is going to go into the body, is going to add as the weight, and eventually the moment of truth will come, when the person sits, stands on the weighing scale, so the food, especially the fat that we have accumulated, is going to be there in the body, no matter what we do, and removing that is a laborious effort, taking in food is easy, letting it become, becoming fat is easy, losing weight requires far greater effort, the same principle applies to our inner world also, taking in impressions is easy, the world offers us so many titillating sensory stimulations, and if we take them up, they are there, we can’t deny them, and if we just, we can’t wish them away, in the sense that the external world has temptations, but if we uncritically expose ourselves to them, worse still, if we eagerly seek out such stimuli, and gobble them with our senses, then, just as we might gobble food, devour food like that, we can devour images with our eyes, we can devour sounds with our ears, and when we do that, all that is going to be accumulated in our consciousness, it is like dead weight, of course, whereas physical weight is dead, fat de-energizes us, physical fat de-energizes us, but mental fat often energizes us, but in the wrong direction, so when we take in many sensory impressions of temptations, then, that all accumulates as a fat, which burdens us, when we want to move towards Krishna, just as a heavy weight makes it difficult for a person to move, similarly, a lot of temptations which we are exposed to, conditioning that are formed, the conditionings burden us, they slow us down in our journey towards Krishna, not only that, whereas physical fat is actually immobilizing, mental fat is not just immobilizing, it is distracting, that means mental fat pushes us in this direction and that direction and we end up getting consumed by the desires that are dominating us and no matter what we do, we find ourselves overcome, we find ourselves overwhelmed, we find ourselves becoming helpless because we just can’t get over our conditionings, so the desires which have come because of our perception of the sense objects, because of our consumption of the stimuli coming from the sense objects, those stimuli will drag us down, they will drag us down in consciousness and they will drag us here and there in the physical world, we will go here to enjoy this, eat this, touch this, see this, like that and the effect is real, so just as there is a real effect of a person eating, their weight gets increased, like that our conditionings which can be compared to a mental fat, they get increased when we expose ourselves to sensory stimuli and once such exposure is there, after that there is not much we can do to resist, to counter, to reject because we find ourselves overcome by our conditionings, we find ourselves overcome by the desires coming from those conditionings and the desires drag us away from the right path towards all kinds of unworthy directions. Krishna talks about it in the Bhagavad Gita, in the 16th chapter, when he says, आशा पाशिषत इर्बद्धा काम क्रोध परायण इहन्ते काम भोगार्थम अन्याये नार्थ संचयान they become they form impressions in our consciousness and the impure impressions then go to the background and after that when those impressions are much much more to the background and the pure impressions at the forefront that’s when we become absorbed in Krishna that’s when the weight starts shedding because those conditionings are no longer active although they are there background they get lost practically so they go so far in the background that they are no longer of any influence and वैराज्य just as a person who wants to lose weight has to make sure that they don’t eat they eat they eat appropriately similarly we need to ensure that we are all consuming things with our senses Krishna talks about this sense perception in terms of consumption and he says that when we are not eating it feels as if it’s निराहारस्य देहिनहा we feel as if we are not getting any food but nonetheless if we just continue in our practices for purification and avoid contaminating stimuli the result of that is over time we become purified over time our consciousness gets elevated and so वैराज्य in this context will mean firstly not letting ourselves indulge in sensory activities but along with that also not contemplating not perceiving them unnecessarily so detachment from material indulgence at the sensual level or even at the mental level that is like regulating the diet and so exercise and regulating the diet just as they are the means by which the weight can be shed similarly the weight of conditioning can be shed by the exercise of fixing the mind on Krishna and by the by the diet control of minimizing sensory exposure so अभ्धास and वैराज्य so the weight in the mind cannot be wished away just as weight in the body cannot be wished away but it can be worked away and that work is the exercise of fixing the mind on Krishna and the austerity of not letting the mind dwell on sensory objects अभ्धास