Check the train before
you check into it by Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 06.
Suppose an inattentive person on a huge, noisy, crowded
railway station boards a wrong train. Some trains may stop after a few minutes,
but some, only after several hours. In the latter case, the traveler will find
getting back on track time-consuming and troublesome.
Our mind is like a congested railway station filled with the
cacophony of various stimuli coming from our senses and our memories. If we
don’t carefully check the stimulus that we dwell on, it may trigger within us a
train of thoughts that is wrong – that takes us in undesirable directions. For
example, the stimulus of someone looking at us with a raised chin may remind us
of a past snub. That person’s opinion of us may not matter much for us. Still,
if we let that behavior propel within us the anger thought-train, revenge
fantasies may carry us away. Only later when we find ourselves with clenched
fists, biting lips and palpitating hearts, we may realize that we are
dissipating our time and emotional energy. Some thought trains can carry us so
far away that we may end up dissipating our physical energy too – we may speak
or do things that aggravate the situation.
To keep small things small, we need to check a thought-train
before we check into it. When we check into a hotel, we presume that we will be
staying there for some time. Similarly, when we check into a thought train, we
presume it to be a desirable place where we can reside for some time. But it may
not be. That’s why we need an alert intelligence to discern whether a
particular thought-train is desirable or not. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita(06.26) urges us to attentively observe where the mind is going and, whenever
it wanders, diligently bring it back on track.
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