What will it take for us to lose faith in our mind?

Transcript

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Great Krishna what will it take for us to lose our faith in our mind the mind often gets excited and makes us excited about various small things various petty pleasures just the pleasure from sense gratification and when the mind gets excited agitated and makes us excited and agitated often it doesn’t allow us to do anything but think of that pleasure and see that pleasure and enjoy that pleasure now although the mind promises a lot of pleasure through this actually however the pleasure through through say for example sense indulgence is actually very limited consider for the example food the mind often gets so excited about something good to eat now eating is a necessity and it can also be enjoyable but the extent of the pleasure that the mind imagines through eating the reality of food hardly ever lives up to that expectation and the mind gets so agitated we eat several times each day and yet the mind always makes us crave and it is not that the body is hungry but the mind is greedy and that is the cause of the craving quite often so the mind gets over excited and makes us over excited for sensual pleasures and food may be may well be the another least harmful things to which the mind makes us attracted there are so many other non-devotional, anti-devotional sinful, self-destructive things to which the mind makes us attracted with the promise of pleasure now the mind’s promise of pleasure is something which it never lives up to so when we actually give into the mind and indulge in the pleasure, indulge in the particular activity we find that the pleasure is quite little as Prahlad says in his prayers in the 9th chapter of the 7th canto now Bhagavad Gita also tells us this that यही संस्पर्शिजाभोगा दुख्योनय एवते आध्यान्तवन्तः कौंतेय नतेशुरमते बुधा so यही संस्पर्शिजाभोगा the bhoga that comes from the contact of senses and sense objects दुख्योनय एवते actually it is the cause of misery आध्यान्तवन्तः कौंतेय that it is has a beginning and it has an end and therefore नतेशुरमते बुधा therefore the wise should not delight in it now the point is this is temporary and it leads to misery that’s what the bhagavata is saying now the mind actually says exactly the opposite oh there is a lot of pleasure and just pleasure only now we may not initially believe in scripture but but if we just reflect on our own experiences of sense gratification we will be able to see the truth of scripture yes the pleasures of sense gratification are at best anticlimaxes they are at best disappointments at worst they are terrible nightmares now when scripture says it we don’t believe it but when our own experience vindicates it at least then we should believe it isn’t it yet the mind is so persuasive and actually our faith in the mind is so much that we believe it even when what the mind says contradicts Krishna contradicts Krishna’s words in scripture contradicts our own experience now if our own experience doesn’t make us give up our faith in the mind then what will is our faith in the mind so unquestioning and so unshakable to understand how ridiculous scandalous outrageous this is let’s consider an example now someone makes a promise to us and doesn’t live up to that promise even if a person doesn’t live up to the promise once the credibility of that person goes down in our eyes imagine a person who makes a promise and never lives up to the promise and that person’s credibility will take a nose-dry down to absolute zero the mind is that kind of misleading exaggerator it promises a huge amount of pleasure and the quantity of pleasure that is promised it never lives up to that promise so yet we don’t lose faith in the mind what will it take if not scriptural testimony if not personal experience what more can what more will we need for losing our faith in our mind so actually what does it take it takes our personal resolution our determination resolute determination if we wait for something external to to shatter our faith in the mind we will be kept waiting practically for the rest of eternity why because the mind is such a deceptive thing if that it will keep persuading us so many times in the past we have been frustrated and if that frustration has not made us lose faith in the mind what reason is there to believe that future frustrations will make us lose faith in the mind now we may say that we can hear more from scripture and that will help yes that will help but if past hearing from scripture has not destroyed our faith in the mind will future hearing destroy yes it will but it will provide us the impetus it is we who have to take the initiative and act on that impetus scripture can provide us inspiration but the initiative has to come from us so now and that initiative we can need to take now so if we decide based on whatever we have experienced about the futility of sense gratification say or the futility of the mind’s false promises in general about various things and whatever we experienced about the verity the truthfulness of the statements of scripture based on that we use whatever control we have on the mind and we decide that I will no longer believe in it now our process if we are just saying no no no to the mind eventually we will get tired of saying no and the mind will make us say yes so if we focus on the mind the mind will seduce and delude us our focus should be on Krishna so after saying no to the mind we focus primarily on Krishna that’s why the Bhagavata says that we should control the senses control the mind and then fix our consciousness in Krishna then there will be then there will be we will be able to control our senses control our mind and there is a person the wise person Krishna says now when we engage ourselves in bhakti determinately then we will actually by that practice of bhakti even if the mind keeps alluring and distracting we neglect it we disbelieve I have believed you many many times of mine now I am not going to believe you anymore so we focus on serving Krishna wholeheartedly then by that we will get a higher taste our higher wisdom will awaken within us and with that higher taste and higher wisdom we will realize that actually what the mind says is false in the sense that the mind promises pleasure but delivers misery it never delivers at least it doesn’t deliver pleasure to the quantity and we will see that actually in serving Krishna which is the primary teaching of scripture we get far better far richer far deeper far greater happiness so when we see this gradually the words of scripture combined with our experience in bhakti will convince us about putting faith more in Krishna and relishing the pleasure of bhakti more and this taste of bhakti will be so infectious that earlier despite our experiences the mind will infect us but now the taste of bhakti can be so infectious that it will go from us to the mind and then once the mind starts relishing bhakti then we can joyfully practice bhakti without any distraction or interruption prashanta manasam yenam yoginam sukham uttamam upaiti shanta rajasam brahma bhutama kalmasam when the prashanta manasam yenam in 6.27 Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that when the mind becomes peaceful prashanta manasam yoginam sukham uttamam the yogi experiences supreme happiness upaiti shanta rajasam the passion has become pacified brahma bhutam akalmasam akalmasam all the kalmasas go away from the mind and that way we become joyful in our practice of bhakti so by that time the mind which is an enemy before that’s what the Bhagavad Gita says that we should elevate ourselves with our mind not degrade ourselves so if we let the mind infect us with the feverish desire for sense gratification then we degrade ourselves with the mind but if we infect the mind with the attraction for Krishna then we elevate the mind Thank you Hare Krishna