Mind management-2 principles, 6 practices | Bhagavad-gita 6.35 | Whitefield, Bangalore

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Transcript

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based on this particular verse from Bhagavad Gita 6.35 does anyone know what the topic we are discussing mind management so before I go to this verse 6.35 I would like to ask first of all I am grateful to be here thank you for that welcome and it’s wonderful to be here beautiful venue over here if I am speaking I can see two images of you speaking so actually it’s about a month ago I was in UK and I spoke in a news track and somehow they had chosen exactly the same topic so I was quite surprised when they chose that topic guided missiles, misguided men that’s how our mind works so so so now I am going to talk about mind management so I would like to ask you what does this word mean to you if you hear the word mind management so what does it mean what do you think is the mind why do you need to manage it so when you hear the term mind management what does it what thoughts come in your mind sorry yeah ok so channelling thoughts channelling is like a water so channel then goes in a particular direction so channelling thoughts in a direction ok I have the answer controlled in the mind that’s also a nonsense don’t control the channel in a particular way ok so let me speed this a little what is the mind that’s one question you could answer that or what is mind management or what is the need for mind management any of these I would like to understand so that we start off at more or less the same level so any of these questions what is the mind what does mind management mean why is mind management necessary yes please who might be required mind management because our intellect tells us to choose a particular path that seems to be right but then mind sometimes say hey you don’t have to go there there are other things to explore so we need to align ourselves our mind aligned with our intellect so there is an inner conflict within us between we can say what is beneficial versus what feels desirable what I this is what I would like to do this is what I know I should do so we can ascribe it this is all happening in the mind or because of the mind so we want to manage the inner war thank you yes to your right to my right so my son mind to me means anxiety about the future and worrying about the past so mind so mind is what mind does we can say so what does the mind do it has anxiety about the past anxiety about the future worrying about the past now that is the question what is the difference between anxiety and worry we would have undergone some situation so we would be feeling bad about it but we don’t know how the future is we are also contemplating on that so we could say broadly distraction from the present so the mind is about distraction we pass the past with anger also with frustration also but it just goes off in the past but sometimes it goes off in the future yes there is something inside us which distracts us say if this talk goes on for a little long then while we are doing the talk our mind goes for a walk and then there is some humour in the mind yes yes please bridge ok the mind is like a bridge between soul and body yes good point at a functional level this is what the mind is doing yes yes ok so we could say that it is computational power I will talk a little bit later whether it is biological but it is based on memories yes correct ok so mind is what brings about fear of the future yes yes the centre of the senses the centre of the organs so if some thoughts are going on inside somebody’s mind inside they are going on and suddenly they speak and then did I really say that aloud I should have said that so what happens that if our mind is not working properly then what comes out of the senses or what goes inside the senses both can be undisturbed I speak things I don’t want I shouldn’t be speaking I may eat things which I shouldn’t be eating somebody may have diabetes but they just swallow food say I have a lot of sugar in it so basically it disrupts us if you consider the palm as the centre of the five fingers so the five senses, the mind is at the centre good point anything else I don’t know any of this sorry I have a question on the past and I have a problem with karma in the past so calm down the karma of the past because it is dependent on the mind so the mind is an ocean of turbulent thoughts I need to calm it down I’ll say mind is like unlimited it’s like a universe so we need to manage it to focus on whatever we want to so the mind it wanders everywhere so we want to convert its wandering into a focused journey otherwise the mind just goes everywhere true anyone last point very well summarised various facets of the mind thank you so the three questions that I raised we’ll try to address them today that first of all what is the mind then why is the mind so difficult to manage and then how can we make it more manageable the three parts I’ll discuss so the Bhagavad Gita gives us a broad principle let’s recite this verse Shree Bhagwan Vachar Shree Bhagwan Vachar Asamshayam Mahabaho Mano Durvigraham Chalam Abhyaktsena Tukamteya Vairagyena Chagruhite Krishna says over here that the mind is very difficult Asamshayam Arjuna there is no doubt Mahabaho is very powerful although you are powerful Mahabaho Mano Durvigraham Chalam Nigraha is disciplinary controlling Durvigraham is uncontrolled Chalam it is restless so Achala is steady Chanchala is restless so Chalam is chanchala short for that Durvigraham Chalam but can you say it is possible by two things Abhyasa and Vairagya so what do these two terms mean we’ll discuss this later now let’s try to understand what is the mind so now different people have different ideas of what the mind is and we will focus on what the Bhagavad Gita tells us about the mind we will try to see how the Gita offers us a model of our inner world that can help us to make sense of our lived experience so the Gita explains that our existence is three level we have a spiritual side that is the soul we have a psychological side that is the mind and then we have a physical side that is the body and at present our existence is a combination of these three things so this is the self we have these three aspects to our being this is something like if you have a computer system in which there is the hardware the software and the user the body is in the hardware the mind is in software and the soul is in the user now inputs come in from the senses they come in and they go to the mind and from the mind they are offered to the soul for perception for evaluation, for response so normally for us to function we could say that there are these various knowledge acquiring senses which are the five knowledge acquiring senses so these are the five knowledge acquiring senses and then we have five corresponding working senses which are those? two legs, two hands they are two two hands, legs then mouth and then the excretory product so those are the five senses so basically the mind helps us do these two things is water over here? what happened to the cup? so we basically take in inputs from outside and then we respond now scientists sometimes thought we are just nothing but stimulus and response but there is a whole universe of things that happen inside so there is a stimulus, there is a response the mind is involved in that but the mind is also involved in what happens in between so basically so if I consider this this is my phone now you see the flashlight over here so this light is the soul and the beam of light coming out from it is consciousness the Atma and Chetan so from this soul consciousness is like the energy that comes out and this energy spreads out and for this energy to go out towards the body and outward the mind is the link I think you mentioned that the soul is like a bridge so it is you could say like a bridge or it is like a route, a medium a pathway so the soul is the source of consciousness the soul is the root of consciousness the mind is the root of consciousness the pathway through which consciousness comes out and then it goes to the outward however when the mind is supposed to be a route it does not always work the same way so you talk about so basically what is the mind? the mind is the link it enables information to come in then we can evaluate it and then we can act on it so now the mind however is different from the brain the brain is a part of the body the mind is subtle so the brain if you want to continue the software metaphor the brain is like the CPU in the hardware but the mind is the software so the software is subtle we may say that the software is located over here in this particular but it’s not like if you open that particular device you can see the software no, it’s subtle, so the mind is subtle now for us the reason we need mind management is two things two reasons so this is why we need mind management and how we can do mind management so the mind is meant to be the channel through which consciousness goes out and it helps us to function that we can see things properly and we can respond properly but the mind is prone to two problems one is the mind wanders off so the body is here the soul is here but the mind is somewhere else I know what happens I am looking at you, you are looking at me but the mind is somewhere else you speak something what did you say? we were absent-minded so the mind causes distraction sometimes you are talking with someone and you see their eyes rolling or eyes glazing you tap them and say, hey, when will you come back to earth? so one of the problems with the mind is distraction when distraction happens the consciousness that is there a small part of it comes over here and majority of it goes over here and that’s how sometimes we read a book and sometimes we pretend to read a book because we don’t want to talk with someone and we are angry with that person or something like that and we look at the book and the person says will you read the book? of course and then she will look at the book upside down so what happens is our mind is caught in the anger so we don’t even notice how the book is so the mind one problem with it is distraction and another problem with the mind is that even when it is present the soul is here the soul is here the mind is here the body is here and say this is the outer world in which some object is present so now a stimuli come in from the outer world they come to the mind and the mind can enlarge some stimuli the mind can change the damage to the stimuli say for example if somebody is an alcoholic they are talking with someone maybe they are talking with their boss for a conference and while passing by they see there are some drinks over here and they go forward they are talking with their boss looking at their boss but in their mind their boss body changes into alcoholic alcoholic so what happens is that particular stimulus of alcohol of that bottle that becomes way too broad so if there is greed then the stimulus of money becomes way too thick so like that the second thing that the mind does is distortion distortion so it can make small stimuli very big and big stimuli very small suppose a doctor is doing some surgery on a critical tissue and say doctor is a cricket man and they are hearing the running commentary while the cricket guys are going out and their favourite batsman gets up and they cut the organ which they are supposed to see so what happens is at that time the surgery that they are doing is to be 100 times more important but when the mind is attached then that which is small can become very big or that which is very big can become very small so the mind can do distraction and distortion and generally speaking when we say somebody has some mental health issues this is one of the things like we say somebody has ADHD they are just not able to focus like nowadays kids are having that problem quite a bit attention deficit or if somebody’s reaction to something is disproportionate so that is what indicates something is wrong say for example somebody is behind me and they tap me on my shoulder please gently tap me if I scream they say what happened? I say actually I have a sprain over there it actually hurts oh ok so basically when there is a small stimulus and there is a huge response that indicates that something is wrong over there so like that we give some gentle feedback to someone and that person starts saying who do you think you are? no what happened? I was just giving you a suggestion mind your own business, get lost what’s wrong with you? so basically if a small stimulus leads to a huge response that’s indication that let me also say did I touch a nerve over there? so it’s triggering something inside so this because of the distraction and distortion it becomes difficult for us to function so now why do this distraction and distortion occur? that is because the mind is not just neutral neutral it’s not neutral it’s passager the mind has its contents and the contents inside the mind are the impressions within it so the mind has impressions now these impressions themselves are not intrinsically a bad thing like Mahatma Gandhi mentioned that it’s based on our memories that we are able to process so right now I’m speaking something if you don’t understand English then you’ll just be sitting here and just some sounds are coming and you might just watch this person pulling his hand, these people are laughing this person is sleeping, you just watch the show sometimes when I give a class and if I’m speaking I’m committing to conceptual then I sometimes see blind faces people look as if they’re watching a foreign language movie without subtitles so basically what happens is that what we have learned in the past that is stored in the mind so right now actually what is going in is simply some sound vibrations but those sound vibrations they link with only the audio data is going into your ears or some visual data is going into your eyes but it is in the subtle body that it is processed so I’m currently using we can say what I call as a minimalist model over there in the software we can talk about how does the mind, intelligence and all those things that just makes it more complicated and it’s reducing the entire subtle body at this point to the mind and Krishna also does that in many places in 6.5, 6.6 he says we have to elevate ourselves to our mind we have to control our mind we have to use our intelligence to control our mind so we and our mind so now in the mind there are impressions and those impressions help us to make sense of things so because all of you are familiar with English so what I’m speaking the audio data is you are going to make sense of it so the impressions in the mind are also not entirely bad they are necessary for our function at the same time not all impressions in the mind are helpful for our function so the impressions in the mind in Sanskrit they are called Samskara Samskara is we know Samskara also for certain rituals which are meant to create certain healthy impressions on the mind now among the Samskaras many could be positive many could be negative so the negative Samskaras we can say they are Samskara we all have some or the other Skar within ourselves and because of that Skar our responses either become distracted or distorted now we could say that when this happens the underlying principle is that the Samskaras are the cause so if somebody has been pitted by a dog in the jungle then they see a dog immediately a fear comes now even if that dog is a tiny cute poodle but still that is because of the Samskaras so the impressions in the mind make the mind behave in a particular way so that could be associated with fear, it could be associated with anger, it could be associated with whatever it is so these impressions in the mind they shape our behaviour so the mind if it enlarges a particular space then that completely occupies us that completely consumes us and then that is all it is so in one sense if somebody has been bitten by a dog that dog becomes reduced to its teeth the dog may be sweet and beautiful but the dog is reduced to the teeth so this is how biassing also happens say if we have been cheated by somebody from a particular community now when we meet somebody from that community that person may be a very respectful person, may be very intelligent, may be very selfless also but all those attributes get downplayed that this person belongs to that community that is all that is removed that is all that is highlighted so that’s how our mind tends to function now what do we need to do to deal with the mind? these two problems, distraction and distortion are what cause the mind to malfunction now the distraction is also due to the substance so if somebody say an example of cricket or alcohol somebody has impressions of cricket is so wonderful, alcohol is so enjoyable then that impression catches their attention so in one sense the mind can either so when the mind brings in if we consider the mind to be like an inner screen in some high security buildings you may have seen that there is, in the security room there is a big screen on which there may be multiple windows and all the doors who is coming in, who is going out the person in the security centre can see all this, you see that kind of this place or you can visualise a big screen there are multiple windows within and then as soon as you see somebody suspicious looking is coming from there, you click on it who is this person where is this person coming, is their ID there they will see it directly so like that for us so right now you are hearing many sensors still are coming so the sound of my voice is there and your eyes are seeing my hand movement, eye guessing what is being drawn maybe you are sitting on the floor maybe it is not very comfortable temperature might be a little hot so somebody is moving so now a child is moving so all these are stimuli some of these stimuli get highlighted and then that window becomes big and the other windows become small so you could say the mind is like a screen on which there is one window which becomes big and there are other windows which are small so now which window becomes big that depends on two factors one is the outer perception perception is what we are seeing outside and the other is the inner impression both of these get combined sometimes you may have no fear of a dog but the dog seems to be like a mini elephant if that happens then you know like a doberman, a German shepherd or something like that sometimes the dog might be small but the impressions will be so because of this the mind tends to function in a particular way and this can sometimes work against us so what do we do about this there are two things the word abhyas and vairagya so we are now I talk about the second part why does the mind need to be managed because it distorts or distracts so how do we go about managing that is the last part of the session so abhyas and vairagya these words can be translated in many different ways we are using a particular frame of analysing over here so I will use two words here vairagya is distance and abhyas is diligence so vairagya means what we need to be able to create a distance between us and our mind internally that if we can distance ourselves from our mind then we can evaluate it if it’s too close to us then whatever it says we start feeling that the mind’s desire is our desire the mind’s feeling is our feeling so we want to create some distance between us and then this is what can happen I can decide what I want to do and so distance helps us to better understand the mind so distance helps us to understand the mind and diligence basically we have certain samskaras in the mind certain impressions are there diligence enables us to change the mind diligence is for changing the samskaras that are there inside the mind so what we would like to do is this is the mind that I have right now how can I best use it engage with it right now and the second is I would like to change my mind so that it becomes better so how do I go about doing that so we’ll talk about this vairagya and abhyas we’ll talk about this in two distinct steps two distinct parts and for each of these I’m not going to scream so for bringing about this distance in the mind the soul is here the mind is here what we would like to do is the soul is here and the mind is here we would like to increase the distance so that we can evaluate it and in general we will say for this purpose there are many different metaphors which are used to understand the mind so that we can deal with it now one common metaphor which the Bhagavad Gita uses is of a war isn’t it the mind is like what in the war what is the mind like like a in a war the war metaphor the mind is like what imagine she is overactive or mind is inactive whichever way it is in a war whom are you fighting with the mind is like what enemy, that’s what Krishna says so the mind is like an enemy but interestingly if he had an enemy then he might just want to kill the enemy right now there is a war going on between Israel and the Arab forces and the Shia forces so Israel just killed one of the big terrorist leaders from Hezbollah so if you have an enemy, just kill the enemy but does the mind Krishna has said kill the mind what does it say what do you want to do make it a friend so the point I am making is because the mind is so subtle and complex no one metaphor can fully explain the mind so different metaphors can be used to explain different aspects of the mind so yes now we could say the mind is our enemy but that is inaccurate the mind is like our enemy because there is something inside the mind which is our enemy so the mind is intrinsically not our enemy the impressions within the mind make it act like an enemy let’s say India had a huge law and order problem with Kashmir I have a friend in Kashmir so I have to put him out of the situation now does India want to destroy Kashmir no do you want to bomb Kashmir and destroy everyone over there no we don’t want to do that those are our people but some of them may be infiltrators from outside, some of them may be so radicalised that you just have to neutralise them but we don’t want to destroy everyone over there so the way the Indian government brought about some law and order over there is that we segregated these are the insurgent elements they have to be neutralised and then others have to be won over that others have to be brought over to the other side of India showing them that India is actually a revolution India wants your children to grow up go to school, have jobs and have a good life so basically in our mind similarly if you consider the mind to be like the disputed territory of Kashmir there are elements in the mind which have to be eliminated there are impressions which have to be written but there are also impressions which have to be good so right now we are studying the Bhagavad Gita so it is in your mind that the impressions of say the English language impressions about some previous knowledge of psychology that you have so by which way do you understand what we are discussing right now so the mind is not like a normal enemy which you just want to kill because we need the mind for commissioning the mind is like an essential tool between the soul and the body that’s why using only the enemy metaphor is very restrictive because what happens is if we treat the mind only as an enemy if our approach to our inner world if we are just constantly we try to have total control then the result of that will be suffocation how long can I keep doing it I have a desire to meet this I have a desire to watch this it’s all the mind we feel suffocated by it so one of the metaphors that I find best to understand is we and our mind our mind is like a child and we are meant to be the parent now a parent needs to discipline the child but if all the parent is doing is disciplining the child then the child gets suffocated on the other hand if there is no discipline there is total surrender so whatever the mind says you want to eat this, you want to sleep now you want to watch TV, do this, do that so then what will happen is stagnation if we don’t discipline our children at all our children will never grow up now how the children will really want to study on their own do something constructive now in our case if we don’t use stagnation it may also be degradation we will become worse so what we want is that when we are dealing with our mind a healthy balance of both so a healthy balance where the negative impressions they are restrained and there are positive impressions within us this positive impressions need to be developed directed so like that when we are dealing with our mind now this will be an entirely different subject but I’ll just mention it right now among the samskaras the negative impressions are sometimes called as vasanas and the positive impressions they are sometimes called as vrittis so for example somebody is a brahmin, somebody is a kshatriya this is not just a word designation it is the person has a particular natural interest so the vritti needs to be developed when Draupadi’s hand was won in the Swayamvar by Arjuna and his girls at that time Vipada wanted to know who is actually married by Draupadi so they were dressed like brahmins so and they had been sitting in the ranks of the brahmins but by their physique and their carriage they didn’t seem more like kshatriyas so he brought them he invited them to his house to his palace for a feast and he brought them to a long room and he asked them to sit, he said I’ll just get some food and he went down and on the Pandavas side there was a long room and on the other side there was a long table and on that table on the left side he had kept some scripture and some paraphernalia sacrificial spoon and some sacred wood nearby he had kept some bow and arrow and sword and spear then next to that he had kept a globe and farming equipment and then in the other corner he had kept some artisans equipments some painting brushes and some water craftsmen water stools so he from a small hidden window was looking so the Pandavas sat down, looked around and then they saw the table on the other side all five Pandavas like one went, where did they go? to the weapons and then Arjuna had picked up a bow and feeling it and touching it and he said this bow is like that and Bhima picked up a mace and started swinging it around Yudhisthira picked up a spear and he was like I am going to break this weapon with that metal and look at that Yudhisthira was smiling so the idea is that according to our vrittis we all have some natural interests like our children also some children may have musical talent they just pick up a karta and start playing it and it is wonderful sometimes you have these on youtube this got talent India has got talent shows are there 4-5 year old kids they just play music so wonderfully and somebody maybe 25 they pick up a karta and just can’t get the sense of it and they say this is so hard this is so hard to hear so the idea is we all have certain vrittis and these are not to be crushed they need to be developed so Iman says how do we know the presence of the sanskaras the sanskaras basically I say the sanskaras are seen by where a small stimulus leads to a large response so wherever there is a small stimulus there is a large response so that means there is some impression inside the impression can be positive the impression can be negative another way to understand this is like we know what we notice we take a note consciously we note consciously what we notice automatically whatever somebody has a interior decoration they come to the house everybody look at the aesthetics of the house but somebody has interior decoration everybody says actually if you move the sofa here you move this painting here it will look so much better somebody may stay 6 months in the house they cannot think of it and these 6 months they come for me I love words so wherever I see the whole world is filled with words like somebody gives me a big magazine first my eyes go to the caption and then I suddenly notice the picture there are times when I read an entire 300 page book and I didn’t even once see the cover picture so it’s a you could say I sometimes miss out on the visuals but the point is we all have certain natural interests so that is our vikti and this is also an impression stored in the mind but this is not an impression so now when we are talking here about the vasanas before we can move forward we need to understand our mind so if we are getting attached to something that means this stimulus comes up and immediately we are pushed towards a response without even thinking about it so if somebody sees a dog without even thinking I just want to move away from it so like that what we need to do is the more we can create a distance between ourselves and our mind then we can observe so going back to the computer screen the child metaphor I was explaining that we don’t always control the going to dominate the mind there are parts of the mind which need to be developed after all it is not that the soul is a brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya, kshatriya the soul is spiritual na mam vipuro vipuro vipuro so it is in the subtle body that these impressions are there now when we want to create a distance between us and our mind so how do we do that I will use an acronym PAD P A D so if there are two parts in a machine running against each other and that’s creating friction and noise put some PAD in between so that doesn’t lead to the immediate friction between so like that we want to put a PAD say I am here my mind is here then we want to put a PAD between these two so PAD is basically whenever some urge comes up with us so first is PAUSE just make it a PAUSE instead of acting immediately just pause so we pause by taking a few deep breaths suppose we have some issues with someone some people they bring out the best within us and some people bring out the worst within us so it’s like I was trying to once do a mediation between two people and the first person said I can see that you are very angry with me can you tell me what have I done that makes you so angry and the second person said you exist now the second person is not actually saying that in a joking way or a ridiculing way he is saying everything about you the way your hair is, the sound of your voice the way you laugh, the way you walk everything seems to be roughly wrong now I just can’t help myself we can’t say that in one sense we have to restrain ourselves but pause once we understand that I am different from my mind then yes that feeling may come up within me but just pause let’s not act just pause and we do have the capacity for this say if we meet someone and say maybe that person is talking to someone and we turn around and we find out what we are pressing now we get taken aback but if we are cultured we won’t show much of a shock we will just try to keep our expression as impassive as possible so there might be a shock internally but we are capable of not expressing it so pause so for all of us sometimes people say that if I could just read, if I could just understand people’s minds if I could just understand this person’s thoughts could listen to their thoughts I would understand them so much better my relationship would be so much better actually not true because if we could see each other’s thoughts not a single relationship would be sustained you know you think like this about me you have this kind of desires you have this kind of feelings what kind of person are you? I don’t want to be with you so actually nature has given us a natural buffer by which our thoughts are not visible to others so otherwise because there are many thoughts or desires or feelings whatever you say they just come up automatically almost they just come from the samskaras, the impressions that are there now it is because of discipline culture, new power, whatever we don’t act on them so we have this capacity we may have it more in some areas, we may have it less in some areas, but we all have the capacity now we may say that today’s world is with respect to sexuality very liberal people just have premarital, extramarital relationships whatever but always in every society there are some boundaries in the past the boundary was marriage now in today’s society that boundary is not respected so much, but still there is the boundary of consent and if consent is not there then it is considered a serious crime and most people no matter how wild the desires may be, they do control themselves so the point I am making is, I am not saying consent is necessarily a good boundary the point I am making is the principle of boundaries we all have the capacity to restrain our desires so now in some cases it might be easier, some cases it might be tougher but it is possible so if we learn ok if this person tends to bring the worst out of me then if I am going to meet this person right in the beginning only, first focus take a few deep breaths realise that I don’t want to act impulsively, prepare so then connects this analyse so analyse means that rather than I am feeling angry what we could do is to say that my mind is feeling angry which analyse means you could also use the word ascribe ascribe means we ascribe the emotion the desire to the mind I want to eat a gulab jamun no my mind is sitting my mind wants to eat a gulab jamun my mind is a screen on which that window has popped up let’s eat a gulab jamun it is a proposal see the mind sometimes the mind can appear so strong that it feels irresistible but the mind can only propose it can’t impose the mind can only impel, impel means do this it can’t compel but it can propose very forcefully very persuasively and then we do not even realise we just accept this proposal unthinkingly say if we are studying for an exam and a friend comes let’s go and watch a movie I didn’t want to watch a movie and say okay I have to study right now let’s watch some other time but when that same idea comes from inside let’s go and watch a movie let’s go so what happens is if we can learn to treat the mind as another person that the mind is inside me but it is something different from me then we evaluate its proposals based on that not that we always say yes, not that we always say no Krishna says this is we situate it like detached an observer so there are these two words in English there is uninterested and disinterested so are these two the same? is there a difference? or I am not interested? so any thoughts? I mean he is really uninterested but disinterested means I am disinterested interesting explanation yes okay I will give you an idea yes disinterested means you are interested but since you don’t understand you get disinterested okay, maybe a lot of interesting explanations yeah, see they are very similar words but disinterested that is associated with the word vested interests like, you know, if you want to be somebody’s architect you should get disinterested third party so uninterested is basically it is uninvolved but basically it is no interest at all so no interest at all whereas disinterested means impartial so no vested interests so I don’t really, you know if this party is right, this party is right I don’t want this party to be right or that party whichever party is right, I will evaluate based on that so like in a cricket match there is an umpire should the umpire be uninterested or disinterested disinterested if the bowler bowls and the bowler hits the national flag and the fielders how’s that and the umpire says, I was not watching the ball that’s your job but the umpire should be evaluating based on the merit of the umpire not because of the personal bias and not even based on the volume of the umpire so the merit of the umpire so like that we need to become like an inner umpire we are Udasi Krishna said Udasi we can’t not care for our weight because the mind is like our child we can’t not care for our child say if our child comes we have taken our child to a park in the city we talk to the child our child comes mom dad come and beat that kid we don’t immediately go to get up and go and start beating him but we also don’t want to shut up what really happened so it is the first step is like I said here are his paws our kid will be very upset come on go and beat him no no come on beat him and then let me decide that ok I have heard your side of the story now let me go and talk to the kid’s parents generally what happens is whenever there is a story there is one side of the story and there is the other side of the story and then there is the story the story is always bigger and different from even the two sides so the idea is we pause our kid is just like come on do this wait wait what happened let’s analyse and then after that we decide ok this is what I am doing so now this is obviously very theoretical complicated but we can start with the story say whenever some anger comes up in the kids we feel like yelling at someone let me take a let me find some place so or let me decide that before I came to dhakti I used to get quite angry now also the anger comes in I was never physically aggressive but what happened is I had a bad temper and a good vocabulary and that’s a terrible combination so some people when they get angry this is becoming coherent they can’t speak anything or some people just scream but they are not coherent but some people when they get angry they can become so sarcastic and biting that cutting that people remember what they spoke in anger for years together so what even now sometimes if I feel angry I travel across the world 9 months a year so most of my services I do online so if somebody has done something which really makes me angry then at that time what I decide is I will just write down an angry email or record an angry message but I will not send it for 24 hours that was and at that time what happens is the anger is inside me if I express it outside anger it’s like why I am talking this PAD pause, analyse, decide so if you don’t pause if I express the anger what happens? others burn my words will cause others to burn but if I repress the anger then I burn because anger is there inside me so what I want to do instead is process the anger so pause, cannot send it then after one after 24 hours then maybe re-hear the message or re-read the email maybe this is a bit too hard maybe here I am jumping to conclusions maybe I should find out more about it and then maybe here comes the third part of what happened and then re-send so if you start it small small with one area you can start it where it is doable for us in some cases the mind’s urge becomes so fast that you are not able to do anything but in some area you can start pause, analyse, decide so this is more of the analytical approach to deal with, to create a distance between us and the mind so the second part was what is the other part? Abhyas so Abhyas is diligence diligence means we want to change the impressions within the mind so the mind is like a programme a programme machine fortunately for us it is a programme machine but it is also a programmable machine and the key to reprogramming it is action it is repeated action say have any of you heard of this small thing in Mumbai? so suppose somebody has visited a website called Bollywood.com and they have read it 50 times and they come to a spiritual talk like this and they hear about the Bhagavad Gita and they want to learn about the Bhagavad Gita so they open their device and they type B for Bhagavad Gita what happens? Bollywood comes as an autotune now why does it come? it is told in the browser history so you could say our browser history is like our mind is samskaras so every choice that we have done in the past that is told in our mind now if somebody wants to go to Bhagavad Gita.com what they have to do is type the whole thing Bhagavad Gita.com it is 12 letters typing 12 letters can save a flight to Mount Everest just type B and enter but if you do it suppose somebody goes to Bhagavad Gita.com 5 times, 10 times then what happens? then next time that I type B maybe in the amount of about 50 times before then that will still come as the first autocomplete but this will come as the second autocomplete so the way to change the browser history is like I said you can delete the browser history there is no such picture for our mind you can’t delete the browser history, you can’t format the mind you can’t get a new mind so those options are not there for us but what we need to do is repeatedly visit Bhagavad Gita.com if somebody visits 25 times Bhagavad Gita.com and they have visited 50 times earlier because if these are recent visits then automatically this will become the first autocomplete so for us the aim is somebody has anger issues and they want to avoid the anger so the samskara is there whenever somebody doesn’t listen to me, I won’t get angry but if they make it a habit let me take a few breaths let me chant a few Hare Krishna Mantras so we chant the Hare Krishna Mantra a few times do it once, do it twice, thrice and if we just keep doing it regularly that will create an impression after that whenever someone provokes us rather than getting angry rather than giving it to the anger expressing it the default response would be let’s take a deep breath, let’s chant let’s try to seek some inner guidance how should I do it so the key here abhyasa means practise practise for what? repetition so repetition is the key the more we repeat an activity the more the impressions are created and so the key over here is three things F, I, T so how to make our mind fit so we put a pad, while the mind is unfit we put a pad between us and the mind but now we want to make our mind fit we want to change our mind so what will change the impressions of the mind first is the frequency like how often do you visit bhagwadgita.com so if we do an activity frequently that creates impressions within our mind some people say, why do you chant the Hare Krishna mantra so many times just chant once with bhav yes, that is true but the problem is bhav ka abhav hai so by that repetition fresh impressions are being created now frequency is important now another thing is time duration how long we do something say for example once a week we come for a satsang like this it creates some impressions in the mind but say once a year we decide for one week we will go for a yatra we will go to Vrindavan then what will happen is, that’s not just for 2-3 hours in a busy week with 100 other things that’s one full week of emotion that will create much deeper impressions so how often we do something and how long we do something so that will create new impressions within us and as I said earlier there are no metaphor fully captures the mind so a browser doesn’t care after I open a tab with how much eagerness I am watching that tab it will just change how often the tab was opened how often the tab was opened but with respect to our mind it is our intensity how much are we emotionally engaged in the activity even if say we are chanting Hare Krishna but our mouth is chanting Hare Krishna and our mind has gone on a wander of the journey of the whole universe then the mind is not there if the mind is not there then hardly any impressions will be created so this brings us to the last point I will talk about is RITUALS the word RITUAL sometimes has a negative connotation how long the RITUAL will stay, it is just a RITUAL however RITUALS are basically time tested ways or time tested methods that tap the power of repetitions even now the word RITUAL is acquiring a positive connotation you look at some self help books when I was young the three morning RITUALS of a CEO or some big successful person my five morning RITUALS RITUALS means regular practises for those which we repeat but I am talking about its intensity so there is a difference when there are many repeated activities there could be repetition in RITUALS and there could be repetition in ROUTINES now ROUTINES means that which we have to do everyday say everyday we have to do auditions, we have to do a laundry now it is not that by doing an audition or laundry we have to pay 100% attention to it that is not required so if you are brushing your teeth that is just a routine we have to do in ROUTINES the point is to get the thing done you have to do it efficiently but the ROUTINES does not require much attention but RITUALS are exactly the opposite the point of the RITUALS is not to get the thing done it is to get the experience of doing the thing so for example if somebody says you get angry, take 3 deep breaths and that is kapalbhati so the point is also slow your thoughts down slow your breath down focus it is the point of deep breathing is to get the experience of deep breathing so that our mind is closed up similarly the point of chanting mantras is not just to get the thing done it is to get the experience like if you are doing the aarti as you all know cartoon that is parallel processing so it was one person doing aarti with one hand and looking at the phone with other hand what is the point of doing aarti then? the point of aarti is to connect with the world to offer a devotion to the world but the point of it is not just to get the thing done it is to get the experience of doing the thing so that is what brings intensity so if we can have if we do something frequently if we do it with intensity if we do it for a substantial amount of time we will find that the impressions in the mind can be changed and as the impressions are changed then the weaker impressions they will go down unhealthy impressions they will go down healthier impressions will come and that is how our mind will change from being our enemy to being our friend from working against us to working with us and working for us for us many times right now like we are here we want to go in a particular direction and our mind is here and our mind wants to go in the opposite direction and say because this is our 100% effort the mind is 70% in the opposite direction so what we are able to actually do will be 30% making 3% of the action but when our mind becomes our friend when our mind becomes transformed what we want to do the mind also wants to go this is 100% this is 100% so we will find that this is the state of being involved in the same time we will be able to do so much more in motorcycle we just talk about something like a flow state or a peak performance state we all in our conditions can experience it sometime when we are doing something we are completely immersed in it there is no distraction at all and that thing what we are able to do is amazing so that state is something which we can all get to more and more frequently and stay there more and more persistently and then our whole life will be transformed that day so this is how the mind can become our friend, we work with us and for us instead of against us so I will summarise what I discussed our topic today was mind management so I talked about 3 things what is the mind so we discussed the mind is the software link between the body and the soul and the mind is meant to be a transmitter of consciousness and it is also meant to be a transformer of consciousness so this audio data comes in but it makes sense to us because the mind integrates in presence of the soul right why do we need mind management because the mind goes wrong in two ways it gets us to distraction and distortion and it does this because of the samskaras within it because of the impressions within it some of the samskaras are causative which we want to develop there is a vritti and then there are the negative which are the vasanas so those we want to restrain so basically the way we know the samskara is the small stimulus, huge response so that’s how we can know what samskaras we have and how do we go about managing our mind first was vairagya distance so for us we can, for each of these I took a metaphor I took a mind is like a child so we want to create a distance between us and our mind through PA, P was pause then analyse and then decide so pause, our child will be very angry about something, so it is my child who is angry, I am not so let me try to understand pause, analyse and decide so here we become like an inner umpire it’s not that we are uninterested but we are disinterested and in abhyasa was what? diligence diligence means doing something again and again carefully so this is for changing the mind so this is we manage the mind while it is, this is the way the mind is this is how I can function directly but changing the mind what are the three things for that? fit accordingly so F is frequency we try to do the healthy activity the kind of impression you want to create here I use the example of a browser so how do I change the browser history? go again and again to that activity do that site again and again go for a longer time and in between was intensity intensity is I try to do it not just to get the thing done but to get the experience this is the power of rituals is that it enables us to do something repeatedly so that new impressions are created and that’s how our mind will become afraid instead of being angry thank you very much hey so we have couple of minutes for any questions comments, reflections anybody? wonderful class bro I had a question when we talked about routines and rituals so the question I had was when you practise your rituals on a daily basis like when you repeat it like chanting we see that over time the rituals lose intensity so how do we maintain that intensity? two ways, buddhi and akti buddhi means we need to use our intelligence to remind ourselves why this is important say if we hear a full class about about chanting then after that we will be motivated to chant so it’s buddhi and akti is sometimes we do an activity and that activity triggers bhakti within us say we hear some nice kirtan bhajan about the lord that evokes bhakti within us but in some activities we have to evoke bhakti and bring that bhakti into that like we say chanting then if we don’t feel that raising bhakti within us then maybe have some attractive picture of Krishna in front of you some picture of your favourite deities or maybe a spiritual master or have a picture of some pastime which has touched our heart or maybe hear some song for a few minutes which triggers devotion within us so we have to bring bhakti into it so buddhi and bhakti is the way to make sure that we don’t become a cantor that’s all Hi Mr. Babu it’s a very nice class I have one question so you said that the mind is part of ourselves and soul is the user and we have also said the mind is the enemy so my question is why is mind an enemy to start with you have a friend as well right see it depends on the kind of impressions that we have this is not our this is not our worst lifetime so we have lived before and there are impressions within our mind from the past because the past impressions of the mind is the biggest we all have something what we call as a sixth sense or gut feeling which is immediately something bad so the bhakti in the mind is what we can call as our talents or gifts or our intricate sense so the mind is a combination of good and bad but unfortunately in today’s world I will get to talk about that but you know the tiger in the sense there is some tiger on top what happens is in today’s world the stimuli from the outside are mostly those which trigger the worst things in us and that’s why the negative part of the mind becomes far more activated than the positive part we all may have some talents but if we compare ourselves with the whole world and whatever talent we have we feel it’s not a big deal what difference am I going to make we can always find somebody who is better than us in the past if somebody was in a small village small town, small city the talent would shine but now the whole world is like our comparison ground and then we try to devalue our talents and then there is something which is triggering our lust something which is triggering our insecurity something which is triggering our anger so actually the human mind is not designed like this to hear bad news from all the people this happened over there that happened over there so that’s how the mind primarily acts as a hinderer but it is a combination of good and bad so if you can make a whole whole presentation like we have power to change the mind, the soul there is another function like super soul also which has a function on guru on a psychologist for a second if someone is not spiritual the psychologist has power to change the mind because here the onus is everything on the soul, particular soul you are saying like pad and pit which should be done by every soul, particular soul so what are the functions of super soul and other aspects which can help us now this pad and pit is something which we have to know but others can help us say for example if we pray to Krishna Krishna I don’t want to get angry please help me to manage my temper then it’s like that microsecond that pause something within us but something else has to stop so ultimately God helps those who help themselves but we also need to know how to help ourselves so I was giving you a broad pattern of the methods that we can use to manage our mind but Krishna can help us now Krishna can help us to pause, Krishna can help us to analyse similarly for changing the impressions within us if we are very earnest then if we are very sincere in our practise of bhakti, Krishna can change the impressions faster and the script of Koran can apply for anything at one level like I can use a material bad habit and replace it with a material good habit but if we try to develop a devotional habit then Krishna can actually do the cleansing much faster so the impressions can also be changed much faster so these principles remain the same but bhakti can help us to implement them much faster much better and as far as say a guy a psychologist or a they are not exactly the same but the principle of other people helping us to manage our mind it is that generally if I am here my mind is here and everyone else is here so I evaluate everyone through my mind so if somebody is very sweet and nice to me what does this person want from me now that person may not really want anything that person is just by nature kind but we tend to evaluate everyone through our mind but if we have somebody who is very close to us, somebody who is trustworthy then what happens is my mind is here and this person is here so this is a trustworthy friendly line so basically what happens by this mostly so normally speaking I would evaluate this person through my mind but in this case I will evaluate my mind through this person ok I might be saying that person is terrible punish that person this person is terrible maybe I must understand maybe I have to evaluate understand what actually happened so if we have even one person like that who is at least as close to us as our mind is it is a great blessing so in general loneliness is associated with increased mental health problems because when there is loneliness see it is not that lonely people are all alone most loneliness is in cities people are crowded together but the point is when we say lonely the mind is telling a particular story to the person the mind is giving a particular narrative and there is no one to give an alternative or nobody you trust enough to consider what they are saying as an alternative but if we have some close friend then my mind is saying ok, I went there and nobody even greeted me and the mind is saying see nobody cares for you, nobody loves you nobody respects you what is the point of even existing whether you live or die nobody will know that is the narrative the mind is saying and there is one person he is saying maybe that person was busy maybe they didn’t know you maybe they had some other thing going on in their life some alternative is needed so yes close relationships are generally correlated with better mental health now of course to have close relationship is not so easy also but if we can somehow develop a close relationship then that is very helpful for us to better process our mind ok I can continue you know soul is there that’s what you think but the super soul is near the soul or how? so you could put it another way the soul is here the mind is here the body is here and the sense objects are here there is a it’s almost like a pull of gravity the soul gets pulled up by the sense objects now above this is the super soul is Krishna present within us now to the extent we can hold on to the super soul to that extent we will not be pulled up so the super soul is there within us and Jiva Swami says that if we have bhakti or even the word priti specifically priti can naturally protect us from the world’s mind but till priti is developed we need bhakti we have to constantly use our bhakti in our intelligence to realise that this is short sighted this is self destructive and stay away from it