SB 11.23.42 – The mind is the root of all our problems and chanting is the most effective way to tackle those problems

Transcript

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wholeheartedly take shelter of the holy name thank you kala here davanti brahmana is praying and is saying that certainly he is in a state of great suffering far more than most of us can imagine after he has lost all his wealth all his relatives and then now he has lost all his prestige all even sense of human dignity leave alone social honor no people are beating him abusing him verbally as well as physically while stealing away his clothes his food you know passing foul air in front of him passing water in his food and you know in so many ways just horribly abusing him so when he’s facing all these miseries he gets the same question that all of us get when we face miseries why me so what is the cause of the suffering why am i suffering and now in things of various causes now i am he’s thinking that the obvious causes these people are cruel they are barbaric and they are causing my suffering he says no that’s not correct these people are not the cause of my suffering why because ultimately as he himself talked earlier how everybody is being moved by maya these people are also being moved by maya and they are acting under the spell of maya so who are they being moved by i’ll tell you the devatas are controlling the things in this world so are the devatas the cause he says no the devatas are also not independent devatas also give us our karmic reactions they are the controllers they are also not the cause then am i the cause myself atma normally we are told that we have to take up responsibility for our actions so am i the cause of my suffering he says no actually atma i’m also not the cause of my suffering because the soul is always pure the soul being a part of krishna is always transcendental and the soul cannot be the cause of suffering because the soul being pure a part of krishna doesn’t act wrongly by itself that’s not the nature of the soul then graha karmakala so it gives various factors are there other factors which impel a person to act wrongly sometimes the grahas are bad for us and some shani is there some mangal is there and mars or saturn these planets they cause suffering in our life so uh are they the cause so the soul may not be the cause but is my own karma the cause or is it that there are bad bad times in me bad times i have to face sometimes we go through some good times some bad times so arati is the cause yes they may be the cause but he says actually they are not the cause then what is the cause mana param karanam ma mananti it is the mind that is the cause now why is the mind considered to be the cause mana param karanam because it is the mind that is what puts us under illusion it is the mind that makes us add wrong act wrongly so the soul come under comes under the spell of the mind and now we may say the modes are the cause maya is the cause but the modes of the maya they all act through the mind so it is the mind that makes us do wrong and we of course exceed we give in to the mind’s proposals but it is the mind which proposes and we who accept the proposal of the mind so mana param karanam ma mananti amananti means it is said by the standard authorities so he is not only giving his own conclusion but he’s also repeating the conclusion of the authorized learned person that mind is the cause of suffering but why so we are all transmigrating the cycle of birth and death and the reason we are transmigrating the cycle of birth and death is because of the mind so the mind is our in-house enemy and it is this in-house enemy which misleads us misdirects us causes us to do actions that misfire and backfire which end up in our sufferings so therefore mana param karanam now when we see the mind is the cause of all our suffering that doesn’t necessarily mean that the external cause is not there somebody might be insulting me i may have some financial issues i may have some medical issues that is all true but if we look back deeper whatever the problem is the magnitude of the problem now it is determined by how much we obsess over it how much we mope over it how much we worry about it and that is determined by the mind and if we look deeper further we are whatever problem has come in our life it has come as a karmic reaction to some karma that we are done and we did that karma because we gave in to the mind at that time succumbed to the mind’s ideas and therefore we acted wrongly and beyond that further it is the mind which makes us stay on material existence in the hope of pleasure over here and that’s how samsara chakra parivartaye dhyad and we continue on in samsara chakra going round and round suffering so meditating on how the mind is the cause of all our problems suddenly and gravely makes us realize how important and how vital purifying the mind is and how critical an activity mantra meditation is because if you forget the role of the mind then mantra meditation doesn’t seem to be very important we’re just uttering some sound what is it going to do but when you understand that the mind is the cause of all suffering and we realize the we need to purify the mind and the mind and the mantra meditation is the best way to purify the mind then chanting suddenly becomes vitally indispensably irreplaceably important and that inspires us to take shelter of the holy name wholeheartedly thank you shlomit bhagavatam 11 23