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.