Learning is driven by purposefulness, lamenting by pointlessness

We all can and should learn from the past. By reviewing what we did, we can learn what we did right and what we could have done better – and thus grow in our wisdom.

But not all thinking about the past leads to learning. Quite often, our thinking of the past can be centered on lamenting about things that went wrong, things that others did wrong or even things that we ourselves did wrong. Such thinking only makes us feel negative and despondent and helpless.

What determines the difference between learning and lamenting? Primarily, it is a matter of who is in control – Are we in control of our mind, guiding it purposefully to review and learn? Or is the mind in control of us, goading us to pointlessly wallow in self-pity or self-flagellation without letting our thoughts move in any constructive direction.

The Bhagavad-gita (18.35) indicates that such self-defeating contemplation characterizes the mode of ignorance, wherein we obstinately hold on to thought patterns that harm us rather than doing us any good.

By cultivating the mode of goodness before we let ourselves dwell on the past, we can avoid succumbing to bouts of lamenting. When we practice bhakti-yoga diligently and experience our own spiritual essence and further the transcendental shelter of Krishna, we cultivate not just the mode of goodness – but also go beyond it towards transcendence. By such connecting with transcendence, we become rooted in a reality beyond the ups and downs characterize the material level of reality. By such spiritual rooting, we don’t feel threatened by things going wrong and even less by things that have gone wrong in the past. With this self-security, when we think about the past, our thinking can be purposeful and productive, being driven by the aspiration to learn how we can serve Krishna better.

Don’t analyze the trash – just trash it

Suppose we inherit an old uninhabited house containing much trash. We might wonder where all that trash came from. But we wouldn’t spend too much time finding out the source of the trash – we would just trash it and focus our energy on making the house livable.

We need to adopt a similar pragmatic approach while dealing with the mind. The mind is the inner house in which we souls have to live throughout our material existence. Of course, we don’t inherit the mind at any particular time, but we become aware of it and its contents when guided by Gita wisdom.

Unlike the physical body, which is made of gross matter and is visible, the mind is made of subtle matter and is invisible. So we often don’t even realize that the mind is different from us – we think its desires are our desires. But Gita wisdom illumines our inner territory, helping us understand that the mind is our inner covering – a none-too-congenial covering at that.

Akin to a trash-filled house, the mind is filled with many trash-worthy cravings. So when some unworthy desire pops up in our consciousness, we don’t need to analyze too much where it came from. We can quickly review to check if we had subjected ourselves, intentionally or unintentionally, to some agitating stimuli. And if we find something, we can plan to prevent or minimize similar exposure in future. But if we can’t find the cause – and even if we can – the important thing is not the source of the trash, but its destination. We need to sweep out the unworthy desires by fixing our consciousness on Krishna and service to him. The Bhagavad-gita (06.28) assures that by practicing yoga determinedly we can become fully purified and situated in everlasting spiritual happiness.

Performance matters, but performance is not all that matters

Sports players often have their pet superstitions. An Australian batsman would insist that all the pavilion commodes be covered whenever he went out to bat. An American tennis champion would wear an earring in just one ear as a good luck charm.

We might feel amused by such superstitions. Yet beyond their idiosyncratic specifics, such good luck charms reflect an underlying acknowledgment that human performance is not all that matters. No doubt, sports is performance-driven; players know that their performance is vital, even indispensable. Yet their real world experience of competitive sports frequently convinces them that in determining results, something other than performance contributes significantly, even decisively. That unknown, they try to appease through their pet rituals.

Gita wisdom explains that this unknown is ultimately God’s will. He usually bestows results according to not just our present actions but also our past karma. We can’t change our past karma, but we can change our present actions.

The Bhagavad-gita (02.47) guides us towards such pragmatic focus by urging us to work without considering ourselves the cause of the result. To the extent we consider ourselves the determiner of the results, to that extent we subject ourselves to feelings of inferiority and inadequacy when the results don’t come, and to feelings of superiority and supremacy when the results do come. And both will keep us distracted from comprehending the reality that we are not the sole performers.

Instead, if we understand our role in the overall scheme of things, we can do the best we can with the abilities and resources at our command in the mood of devotion to Krishna, the giver of those abilities and resources. Thus, we can not only maximize our chances of success at the material level but also relish our growth in spiritual wisdom and everlasting devotion.

If Krishna is not our goal, we hit self-goals

All of us want to achieve success and happiness. But just the desire or even the ability to succeed is not enough – we need to have the knowledge to transform that desire and ability into success.

Suppose a football player has strong skillful feet to hit goals. But if that player shoots the football into one’s own goal, then all the ability ends up not helping but hurting the player and the team too. We might consider it absurd that a player may not have the basic knowledge to know which goal to target and would consider a self-goal to be an accident.

Unfortunately, we all end up scoring such self-goals when we don’t have a spiritual conception of life and don’t make the supreme spiritual reality Krishna our goal. How? By letting our desires and abilities be captivated by worldly things – a captivation that only increases our illusion, bondage and misery. The Bhagavad-gita (06.05) cautions us that presently our mind is our enemy. From within us, it prompts us to act against our best interests by making us infatuated with the temporary instead of the eternal, with the material instead of the spiritual, with the world instead of the source and Lord of the world, Krishna.That is, it makes us score self-goals.

To stop scoring such self-goals, we need to make Krishna our goal. How do we do that? By firstly striving to increase our devotion to him by practicing diligently the rules of sadhana-bhakti and by secondly doing all our activities in the mood of an offering of love to him.

When our consciousness is connected with him through intention and action, we get a higher satisfaction that increases our immunity to the mind’s self-sabotaging suggestions, thereby protecting us from scoring self-goals.

Protesting that the mind is wandering is progress over wandering with the mind

Sometimes when we start practicing bhakti and try to fix the mind on Krishna, we may become disheartened at how frequently and forcefully the mind wanders away from Krishna towards worldly things.

While the fact of the mind’s wandering is certainly sobering, we need to consider another, more heartening fact: that we are no longer wandering with the mind, but are protesting about its wandering.

Our protest itself indicates that we are spiritually growing up. We are recognizing that the mind’s ways are childish and so are no longer ready to entertain its restlessness. Probably, before we started practicing spiritual life, we might well have been entertaining the mind, or worse still going along with its childish fancies, losing ourselves in whatever fantasies the mind conjured up.

Of course, even in our pre-devotional life too, we sometimes need to control our minds, but that control doesn’t take us out of the material level of reality because our overall consciousness is materially attached.

Gita wisdom explains that we are eternal souls and are meant for eternal happiness in spiritual love for Krishna. But as long as our consciousness is caught in material things, we under-cut our spiritual potential by staying attached to things that can offer at best only temporary pleasure. When we try to focus the mind during meditation, we are redirecting our attachment towards the eternal, specifically the supreme eternal reality, Krishna.

The Bhagavad-gita (06.26) urges us to persevere on the path of spiritual grown when it declares that we should bring the mind back under control wherever and whenever it wanders. Striving to keep ourselves fixed in Krishna’s remembrance and service may initially seem disheartening but in due course it will be supremely rewarding for it alone can grant everlasting fulfillment.

To reject reality because it is not found in the map is absurdity

Suppose someone uses a map to travel to a friend’s house. At each step during the journey, suppose the map guides them well, and their faith in it increases more and more. Finally when they reach their friend’s house and see him, they check their map, don’t find him there and declare, “You don’t exist.” Their friend would be right to retort, “Your intelligence doesn’t exist – the map is not meant to show people. It doesn’t show all of reality.”

Science acts like a map for navigating material reality. The scientific picture of nature enables us to reliably do things such as getting where we want to go. Being enamored by these navigational abilities, some people deem science the only reliable source of knowledge about everything. Thus, they become believers of scientism.

What’s wrong with scientism? It misrepresents science. Mainstream science doesn’t show all of reality. Operating on the premise of methodological naturalism, it looks for material explanations for material phenomena while saying nothing about any nonmaterial factors. In principle, the map of naturalist science isn’t meant to depict nonmaterial realities such as consciousness.

When believers of scientism encounter consciousness, especially its irreducible subjective dimension, they deny its existence by deeming its locus – our sense of self – a neurochemical illusion. But it is only because they have consciousness that they can say anything about it, either its existence or non-existence. Put another way, only because consciousness is real can they make the absurd claim that it is not real.

The Bhagavad-gita (16.09) indicates that people destroy their soul because of buying into a fanatically materialistic worldview (16.08). If instead we study the Gita’s wisdom, we can intellectually grasp the reality of the soul and gradually by the practice of yoga realize it to be our essence.

The mind is not your boss – don’t let it boss you

Suppose a colleague started bossing us around. Being annoyed, even angered, we would counter, “Mind your own business. You are not my boss.”

Yet we hardly ever do the same thing when our mind starts bossing us around. And the mind is not even our colleague – it is actually our subordinate. The Bhagavad-gita (03.42) outlines the chain of command in our inner world: the senses are above the body; the mind, above the senses; the intelligence, above the mind; and the soul, above the intelligence. So the soul is not just above the mind, but is two rungs above it. Thus, it has no right to order us.

Of course, the mind is far too wily to come right out and order us. Knowing that we wouldn’t entertain such an outright usurping of our authority, it acts much more subtly and sinisterly. Subtly, it whispers and suggests and insinuates. And sinisterly, it makes us misidentify with it, thereby making us believe that its ideas are our ideas. Consequently, we don’t even realize that we are being manipulated till we end up doing something self-defeating and then wonder what made us do that. So, though the mind doesn’t boss us explicitly, it does end up bossing us essentially.

By becoming introspective, we can notice when the mind starts bossing us. But more critical than catching the mind in action is countering its action. And for that we need to wholeheartedly invite Krishna to occupy the position of our boss. When we diligently render direct devotional service to him and redefine our entire life as an offering of loving service to him, we get by his grace philosophical insight and spiritual taste. With that empowering grace, we can not only pause the mind’s bossing but also purge it of its disruptiveness.

Possibilities expand when we begin where we are instead of where we should be

Suppose we take a wrong turn and end up somewhere other than our destination. If we keep resenting, “Why am I here instead of where I should have been?” we end up paralyzing ourselves. As we waste the time that could have been used to get to our destination, our possibilities for getting there shrink.

Similarly, when we find ourselves in an unpalatable situation, our mind goes into an auto-repeat mode, asking resentfully, “Why did this happen?” or “Why did they act like that?” or even, “Why did I do like that?” Such resentment by consuming our time and mental energy shrinks our possibilities for correcting the situation.

Central to ending resentment is tolerance, which essentially means the willingness to accept the reality as it is. The Bhagavad-gita (02.14) commends such tolerance and places its call for tolerance immediately after delineating our spiritual identity (02.13). This context indicates that spiritual knowledge can and should foster material tolerance. How?

By informing us of a higher reality that is unchanging and is unfailingly shelter giving. By prayer and meditation, we can elevate our consciousness to this higher spiritual reality, experiencing the unchangeability of our spiritual essence and our connectedness with the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna. By this inner solace, we realize that important things in our life are still all right and that whatever has gone wrong is not catastrophic.

By such realization, we can break free from the mind’s “should be” narrative and channel our mental energy for exploring pathways to go from where we are to where we need to go. Whereas resentment keeps our thoughts locked, re-running on the same disempowering track of how things should have been, spirituality opens new empowering tracks for those thoughts, thus expanding our possibilities and eventually changing our realities.

Channelize your capacity to control to connect with the supreme controller

Some people ask, “If the Gita teaches that I am not the controller, then why does it ask me to control my senses?”

Actually, the Gita’s teaching is that we are not the supreme controllers. But we do have some control, as the Gita itself (15.08) indicates when referring to us souls as controllers (isvara). We are controllers in the sense that we have enough control to choose our controller. The previous verse (15.07) points to the essential choice before us: Krishna or our senses.

To understand, consider our situation in space. We need to be sheltered on the ground or we will be dragged down by gravity. Acknowledging that we can’t control gravity doesn’t mean that we have no control – it simply means that we need to hold on to something firm to avoid falling.

Similarly, we as souls are subject to the gravity pull of worldly desires acting on us through our senses. Such desires make us crave for pleasure by controlling external things for sense gratification. But we can’t control external things for long. Acknowledging this doesn’t mean that we are helpless. We can use our finite capacity to control for devotionally holding on to Krishna through remembrance internally and service externally, thereby relishing higher spiritual happiness. By thus holding on to him, we can not only stop our fall towards sensuality, immorality and perversity but can also become raised by his omnipotent mercy towards spirituality, purity and liberty.

By acknowledging that we are not absolute controllers who can dominate and enjoy things as per our sensual desires, we learn to best use whatever control we do have. By such shrewd use of our controlling capacity, we can gradually become free from the senses’ binding control and becoming released into Krishna’s liberating arms.

Let emotion inform, but not form, your decision

Our emotions are a big part of who we are, but they are not all of us. We are bigger than our present emotions, most of which relate with our external material shell, not our spiritual core.

At the Bhagavad-gita’s start, Arjuna becomes emotionally overwhelmed. Krishna responds (02.02) by reproaching him for having succumbed to weakness of the heart. If a maestro delivers a lousy performance, such a lapse is uncharacteristic and unworthy. Similar, Krishna indicates, is Arjuna’s pusillanimity, while being a celebrated archer-warrior. Krishna underscores the unwholesomeness of those emotions by pointing out their consequences: they will sentence him to ignominy in this life and inauspiciousness in the next. To help ground Arjuna’s conceptions and emotions in spiritual truth, Krishna speaks the message of the Gita. Its philosophical worldview creates a stable foundation that empowers Arjuna to think clearly and act intelligently.

That the Gita urges us to subordinate our emotions doesn’t mean that we are to entirely reject them – we need to use higher intelligence for cultivating elevating emotions instead of being carried away by degrading emotions. Emotions can and should inform our decision by contributing to our decision-making process, lest we succumb to hardheartedness. But emotions alone shouldn’t comprise that process, lest we succumb to sentimentality.

The Gita’s conclusion demonstrates how we can cultivate higher emotions: Krishna expresses his intense affection for Arjuna (18.64). Such expressions are intended to awaken reciprocal emotions in Arjuna, thus channeling the energy of emotions in the project of elevating his consciousness and inspiring him towards a wise course of action.

By meditating on Krishna’s unfailing, unflinching love for us, we too can energize our spiritual endeavors with emotional power. Still, we may not be able to trigger such elevating emotions consistently, so we need to base our decisions in the Gita’s philosophically-grounded worldview.

Devotion makes the head clear and the heart pure |

Devotion is essentially the disposition of our heart to love and serve Krishna. And from that devotional desire, all auspiciousness emerges, as the Bhagavad-gita indicates in its four nutshell verses (10.08-11).

The Gita conveys first the supreme position of the object of devotion (10.08) and the absorption of the devoted (10.09). It then (10.10-11) outlines how such devotional desire removes inauspiciousness. Krishna gives the devoted the intelligence to come to him (10.10). That is, when we strive to serve him lovingly, he helps us overcome the misconceptions that obscure our awareness of the levels mentioned earlier: from understanding Krishna to be the Absolute Truth (10.08) and from becoming absorbed in him (10.09).

The next verse (10.11) declares that Krishna from within the heart destroys the darkness of ignorance with the torchlight of knowledge. Intriguingly, this verse refers to knowledge and heart together. Knowledge is usually thought of as a function of the head, while the heart is usually thought of as the seat of emotion. By this paradoxical juxtaposition of knowledge and the heart, the Gita points to the special nature of this knowledge – it is the knowledge of the heart, knowledge about the most worthy object of our love. When this special knowledge illumines our heart, we see clearly that Krishna alone is the best object of our love – everything else is meant to be not a competitor for that love, but a pointer to it. Being guided by such knowledge, we increasingly concentrate our love on Krishna, thus becoming purified. We break free from our attachments to impure things and connect our devotionally dovetailable attachments with him.

Thus, devotion makes our head clear, freeing it from various misconceptions, and our heart pure, freeing it from various misdirections, thereby enabling us to march straight and swift towards Krishna.

Determination is the fruit of purification – and its root too By Chaitanya Charan Das

The Bhagavad-gita (07.28) indicates that we will become determined in our devotional practices when we live purely and stop impure actions. This begs the question: how can we come to that level of pure living without first having determination?

To understand, consider bodybuilding. A well-muscled body results from a diligent regimen of exercise. It’s unrealistic to expect strong muscles in the early days of our working out at a gym. And yet we do have some muscles initially that we use to start working out. When we exercise regularly and fully whatever muscles we have, we develop stronger muscles.

Similarly, it’s unrealistic to expect unbreakable determination in devotion right from the early days of our spiritual life. But we need to use whatever determination we presently have to choose Krishna instead of worldly temptations, thus choosing the pure instead of the impure. Such choosing gradually fosters a habit of purity. Further, our willingness to sacrifice worldly pleasures for Krishna’s service pleases him and attracts his mercy, which manifests as an increased taste for the pure, ultimately the supremely pure object, Krishna. Thanks to such a taste, choosing him becomes easier and sweeter, thereby strengthening our determination to choose him. Thus, determination is the fruit of purification – and this fruit manifests from the root of our using whatever determination we presently have.

So, meditating on the Gita statement that determination is the fruit of purification can protect us from fretting futilely about our weak determination. Instead, we can just focus on using our present determination to make the pure choices within our capacity. By consistently making small but significant pure choices – akin to diligently exercising daily according to our present muscle capacity – our inner muscles, our determination to choose Krishna, will strengthen, thus making our devotional practices steadier and sweeter.

To stop defeating yourself, stop deceiving yourself

Suppose a sick person denies their sickness not just to others but also to themselves. By their denial, they deprive themselves of good health that comes from proper treatment. Thus their denial and the self-deception underlying it turns out to be self-defeating.

All of us are presently in a diseased condition, being afflicted by the malady of selfish desires. When we take to spiritual life, we strive to become principle-centered, refusing to give in to our selfish desires. But we may still find ourselves occasionally overpowered by those desires, thus creating a distance between our talk and our walk.

This distance is itself not deceptive – it can spur us positively if it inspires us to intensify our purificatory practices. But it can make us like the sickness-denier if we deny that anything is wrong with our situation, if we believe that the talk alone is enough as long as we can conceal our inability to walk the talk. When our primary endeavor shifts from striving for purification to improvising for concealing our lapses, then we descend to self-deception that leads to self-defeat.

Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (03.06) warns that those who do nothing more than put on a façade of spiritual advancement end up deceiving not just others but also themselves. And they keep defeating themselves by depriving themselves of the characteristic of spiritual health: spiritual happiness.

To give up self-defeating self-deception, we don’t have to wash our dirty linen in public, telling everyone about our personal challenges. Nor do we have to entirely give up our services because we are unable to maintain high standards. We do need to, however, invest as much, if not more, effort in walking as we do in talking. By such diligent practice, we can purify ourselves, gradually becoming not just exponents but also exemplars of spiritual truth.

Learn to see Krishna’s love with the eyes of knowledge

Our culture often bombards us with explicit images of what is considered to be love. If we equate love with such gushy expressions alone, we will miss out on love’s many subtler expressions.

For example, if parents come from a culture conservative about public displays of affection, they may not express their love for their children through any effusive displays or declarations of love. But their love will be evident instead in their working tirelessly to pay for their kids’ high-quality education. Similarly, a teacher may express affection for a student by spending extra time helping them understand a difficult subject.

Krishna exhibits such subtle affection for Arjuna towards the end of the Bhagavad-gita. Of course, the whole Gita is spoken by Krishna out of affectionate concern for his dear friend. He wants to help Arjuna come out of the paralyzing delusion that had afflicted him on seeing his relatives assembled, bellicose, on the Kurukshetra battlefield. Still, despite the Gita’s affectionate intent, its content can be intellectually demanding, discussing as it does various levels of dharma and their complex inter-relationships. The cognitive challenge of processing the Gita’s multi-level message can make us blind to the love that underlies and unifies it.

Thankfully, Gita commentators provide us with the eyes of knowledge to appreciate this thread of love. The last verse Krishna speaks (18.72) is an enquiry: Has Arjuna’s illusion been dispelled? The erudite commentator Vishvanath Chakravarti elucidates the loving concern that animates Krishna’s enquiry: If Arjuna has not understood any part of the Gita, Krishna is ready to repeat that part – he is ready to repeat even the whole Gita if necessary.

Thus, with the eyes of knowledge, we can appreciate how the message that began with love and centered on love concludes in love.

To beat problems, first beat the problematic mind down to size By Chaitanya Charan Das | Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 06

When an army is fighting a war, it depends on its intelligence – its information sources – to know the strength of the enemy. But if the army’s intelligence has been penetrated and compromised by that very enemy, then this untrustworthy source will give misleading information. For example, it may misinform that the enemy forces are far bigger than what they actually are, thereby demoralizing the army and thus defeating it mentally even before the war has begun physically.

When we battle life’s inevitable problems, we are often targeted by a similar misinformation campaign. The inner misleader is the mind, which misinforms us about the size of the problem. It depicts the problem to be gargantuan, making us seem like ants utterly incapable of dealing with it. And the more we uncritically listen to the mind’s assessment of the problem, the more we feel dwarfed and demoralized. Thus, our mind-shaped perception of the problem can become a bigger problem than the problem itself.

To avoid being thus misled, we need to resist the temptation to immediately tackle the problem and instead invest time for beating the problem-magnifying mind down the size. For subduing the problematic mind, the most effective way is meditation, specifically spiritual meditation. Such meditation connects us internally with our unchanging side: our indestructible spiritual core and the highest spiritual reality, Krishna. The Bhagavad-gita (06.27) outlines the fruit of such meditation: the mind becomes peaceful, being purged of the obsession with matter that makes it misperceive material things and misinform us.

Additionally, spiritual meditation enables us to experience Krishna’s shelter, helping us realize that no matter how big the outer problem, the shelter of a far bigger reality always awaits us within. By the resulting calmness and confidence, we can assess the problem objectively and tackle it intelligently.

Purity leads to freedom from misery By Chaitanya Charan Das

We all strive for freedom from misery. Enslaved people, for example, strive for freedom from slavery, seeing that as the way to freedom from misery.

When it comes to attaining a life free from misery, we need to be free from impure desires. The Bhagavad-gita (02.65) indicates that misery is destroyed for those who attain mercy, which manifests during the course of spiritual growth as purity. How does purity lead to freedom from misery?

Let’s analyze with a health metaphor. Suppose a person has become diseased because of excessive alcohol indulgence. While the physical disease is a danger that needs medical attention, an equal, if not greater, danger is the patient relapsing into alcoholism. That relapse will probably make the patient sick again, thus undoing the effort done for curing the patient.

For many alcoholics, enduring the pain of the disease and the discipline of the treatment is not as demanding as sustaining the resolve to consistently refrain from alcohol. If they were somehow freed from the addiction, that would herald the beginning of freedom from misery. Not only would they be freed from the sickening desires that dragged them into misery, but they would also be largely free from the danger of the recurrence of the disease.

A similar dynamic applies to our various sufferings during material existence. They are usually caused by our misdirected desires due to which we seek pleasure in temporary material things. Gita wisdom explains that we are eternal souls meant to delight in pure eternal love for the supreme spiritual being, God, Krishna. As long as we are attached to temporary things, that very attachment becomes the cause of our suffering. When we practice yoga, especially bhakti-yoga, and purify ourselves, the doors for walking out of this worldly arena of misery open for us.