Mind : ( 24/10/2012. )

"A pilgrimage is a journey seeking our own origin. One should visit forests, oceans and mountains   not just temples. Don t waste a life time after booking for a pooja (special worship that are booked years in advance) at a temple   see and enjoy the worship of the nature by the various movables and immovables present in nature. Now we have placed God in stones, photographs and in the space below the staircase in our home. Go down to nature and see God there."

* Anger has that peculiar quality of isolation; like sorrow, it cuts one off, and for the time being, at least, all relationship comes to an end. Anger has the temporary strength and vitality of the isolated.  *There is a strange despair in anger; for isolation is despair.  *The anger of disappointment, of jealousy, of the urge to wound, gives a violent release whose pleasure is self-justification.  *We condemn others, and that very condemnation is a justification of ourselves.  *Without some kind of attitude, whether of self-righteousness or self-abasement, what are we?  *We use every means to bolster ourselves up; and anger, like hate, is one of the easiest ways.  *Simple anger, a sudden flare-up which is quickly forgotten, is one thing; but the anger that is deliberately built up, that has been brewed and that seeks to hurt and destroy, is quite another matter. * Simple anger may have some physiological cause which can be seen and remedied; but the anger that i

Habits can be changed only by creating new habits. These new habits have to come from a spiritual discipline. The usual reaction to the imposition of a spiritual discipline is to say: ‘I am not in a mood to practise them. I will do them only on my own terms, not when told by somebody or forced by circumstances’. But the very moment you say this you have sacrificed your will to be dictated by moods and desires. To live in subservience to the calls and appetites of othe outer world is the origin of all sins. Such subservience contributes to 'inhuman' and 'undivine' vasanas piling  up in the mind. From vasanas to thoughts and from thoughts to actions is a very familiar chain. To break it, one has to substitute the evil vasanas by divine vasanas . When we keep on  pouring the clear water of the thought of God in to the reservoir of the mind, we naturally dilute the impurities in it. Eventually the divine thoughts will completely fill up the mind, hopefully

At a crucial point in  the discourse of the Bhagavat-Gita, Arjuna wails, (CH.4 – 34): ‘Restless indeed is the mind, O Krishna; it is vehement, strong and unconquerable; I deem it as hard to control as the wind’.  Canchalamm   hi    manah    krishna    pramathi     balavad-drridham  tasyaham     nigraham     manye    vayoriva      sudushkaram. Arjuna has spoken for all of us. And Krishna replies: Yes, the mind is restless and difficult to restrain. But says He, it may be controlled by constant practice ( abhyasa) and dispassion (= vairagya). (CH-4 – 35): asamshayam    mahabaho    mano    durnigraham    chalam abhyasena     tu     kaunteya     vairagyena     ca    grrihyate. The Will of man must be made more supreme than the mind. Everywhere in the Upanishads the ultimate appeal is to the will and not to the intellect. They would have us not only understand, but do, that is, realize God. This requires an action by one’s own will, to start making the effort. The

 Mind is made up  of four constituents: The first is the receiving mind, which receives all impulses and impacts from the external world. It just receives, like an antenna. ·        What sifts these pieces of information and analyses them is the buddhi,                             the intellect. It is the discerning function of the mind. ·        There is cittaM, the storage part of the mind, ·        The agent of all these activities is the ahamkAra part of the mind, which                          by its very nature   possesses authority over all actions of the other parts                           of the mind and therefore constitutes the EGO of man. These four parts are together called the mind, very often in the literature, without care being taken to distinguish the different functions. The physical framework through which all of them work is of course the brain. B ut just as the body is the physical basis for the soul which is a subtle entity ‘residing’

Mind is the meeting point of science, religion and philosophy. It is the human mind that understands scientific phenomena of nature and coordinates with nature to work out man’s ‘conquests’ of natural phenomena. It is in Man’s mind that religion is  born, when he needs internal solace and satisfaction. It is with the same mind that man is able to abstract the concrete world before him and go into speculations of philosophy.  But with all this it is the mind itself that is man’s greatest enemy,  because Man can never say with finality that he is in control of his mind. Hindu Vedanta therefore,  placing a great emphasis on the need to control the mind,  dwells repeatedly on efforts and strategies for controlling it, even partially. Any effort made in this direction, says the Gita,  saves one from great disaster.  Continues...