A monkey on steroids

[JUSTIFY]What is Mind? When this question came up a few years back, I went to the teachings of my beloved Guru. He defines mind as “that which makes us feel we are the body and fell things related to the body as “mine”; that which runs out through the senses to the objects, in order to experience the pleasure there from. It is thus rendered very unsteady; always flitting from one object to another.” He also describes it as “an adroit substance and is a conglomeration of thoughts of various kinds; It is just like a cloth, our thoughts are the cotton, the desires which they mold are the threads, and the intermingling and interaction of these desires is the cloth i.e. the mind made out of warp and woof. When the threads (desires) are removed one by one, the cloth (mind) disappears.” He also explains in his teachings that the worldly desires are like seeds that sprouts. If we can visualize the human being as the rice, the desires (s)he has is the husk. If we remove the husk, we prevent it from sprouting. Similarly, the human being when (s)he removes the desires, becomes a real being that she is. The mind when it firmly places our identify as this body, it is known as “Bhavaroga” and the very same mind when it transcends that feeling and understands that we are a divine being, it is the cure for that disease.

Even though it is difficult for me to comprehend his teachings about the mind or for that matter all of his teachings, being a person who has a nature to analyze everything at length, I keep thinking a lot about my mind and how to control it. There are times, it goes on a tangential thinking process, when my body is doing a mechanical action. Other times, it keeps me so focused on a subject not letting me move one bit from that thought process especially when it wants to celebrate an accomplishment or mourn for a pain that I have experienced. It is interesting to watch how the body and mind work in tandem as I feel the pain in my body every time my mind suffers from stress and when my body hurts, my mind communicates the pain to me loud and clear.

How do I control my mind? I imagine my mind as a monkey that wants to be active. If it remains dormant, it could cause more problems to me. Therefore, it is important to keep it active. It is not enough if it remains active but it should be trained to focus on everything the body does with due care and diligence. Even if it is trained to be active and focused, it is also important to train the mind not to be complacent for completing the tasks nor feel depressed for failures. We need to train the monkey to remain calm and contented.

When does it really go out of control? When the monkey is in pain, it humbles itself and initially behaves like a saint in deep meditative state. After that, it reaches out to people and seek relationships and consoling words from others. But when it accomplishes something really remarkable and when everyone else appreciates its action, it behaves like a monkey in steroids. Instead of feeling the sense of fulfillment, it begins to enjoy the appreciation, name and fame it gets. It increases its own expectations. It no longer works for sense of fulfillment and instead begins to work for the appreciation, name and fame it gets.

Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that the biggest problem I face in controlling the mind is the tendency to seek appreciation instead of doing things for self satisfaction. This thought process has given me a great relief that at least I was able to identify a major problem. Once I find the problem, rehabilitation at least becomes a possibility. How I succeed is dependent upon how I make the mind to behave well and avoid complacency
[/JUSTIFY].

 

Dear Srama,

Please don't hesitate to respond to any of my post. I welcome all suggestions, opinions and disagreements. As I believe the mind is nothing but bundle of thoughts, we have no control over them coming from our prior Karmas. But we have the ability to manage them with our discriminatory skills. Therefore, I consider controlling the mind as focusing its attention to actions to be executed on good thoughts and make it achieve equanimity in pleasure and pain. Yes. We need to engage the mind always and it needs to remain active but on good thoughts. In my opinion, it is the mind that demands appreciation and not the heart. Heart is already expansive and our attempt to grow is to expand our mind beyond our focus on body consciousness.

I believe it is not a question of observer being more vigilant and mind paying attention. It is not even about knowing the difference, not even understanding that we are the observer and the body and mind are merely an instrument that is gifted to us to achieve our goal but it is about becoming an observer by constantly taming the mind. Mind is an all powerful instruments that can take us away to the world or move us closer to our inner Self. So it is the mind that requires transformation.

This is my humble opinion and please feel free to disagree if you have a different view on this. My knowledge is very limited. I am a beginner and learning things every day.

Viswa

 

Dear Balajee,

By self-satisfaction, I don't mean becoming selfish. There is no question that we have to not only coexist peacefully with the fellow beings but also serve them with noble thoughts. What I become motivated by appreciation of others, instead of doing my actions with right effort and skillful, my attention is diverted to the name, fame and recognition. In the process, I begin to compromise the full effort in each action instead prefer to do multiple actions that would bring name and fame. The quality of actions become affected by my mind's desire to obtain appreciation. Sometimes, we have to do actions that are driven by righteousness that are not necessarily popular to the fellow being. In situations like that my mind will ignore doing such actions. Moreover, it increases my expectations many fold. If I don't get appreciation, my mind will decide not to do an action.

I totally agree with you that we need to serve the fellow beings skillfully, selflessly and lovingly. Only question is whether can we do an action without satisfying ourselves that it is for the right reasons?

Viswa

 

Dear Satchi,

You raised a very important question about Dementia/Alzheimer's. It is very relevant to the subject I have written about. On this subject, your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea how it impacts the desires of those who are affected by Dementia/Alzheimer's.

Let us consider your mother as an example in this scenario. She is already a very selfless individual with thought process of God first, everyone else second and me last approach in life. There is no iota of selfishness in her entire life. Obviously, she doesn't need the help of this disease for her to evolve as she is already an evolved person, even if we assume this disease helps a person to evolve.

In spiritual parlance, there is a big difference between the mind and the brain even though brain plays a significant role in our life. I believe every cell in our body has a mind of its own and that is why when observed, it changes its position as per Quantum Physicists. A collection of all of it is what we call as our mind. Similarly, the spiritual heart is different from our blood pumping heart. It is the one that is expansive and focus on righteousness, truth, love, peace and non-violence. Our intellect (part of the mind) works closely with this faculty to determine the right from wrong. People call it with different names including Consciousness, Constant Integrated Awareness, Mahaakarana, Over Mind, Self-luminous and effulgent, Eruka or Uniki in Sanskrit.

I feel your mother's mind is as broad as her spiritual heart that draws energy from everywhere and any disease can only affect her brain but not her mind. This effect is only transient in nature and will never affect who she is as an individual.

I apologize if this is confusing. All I want to convey is your mother is already an evolved person and what you see as change in her is at peripheral level. It doesn't affect who she really is at the individual level.

Viswa