Every human being is a combination of spirit and matter. Spirit represents the divinity, the soul in every human. Matter represents the physical body, mind, and intellect. Mind is a wondrous instrument gifted to us by nature. It helps us to experience life to its fullest potential.
What is the Mind?
The Mind is the place where thoughts and feelings are generated.
- Our likes and dislikes arise from the mind. We like to eat junk food and dislike physical exercises.
- Various emotions like kindness, compassion, love, forgiveness, and many pleasant emotions emanate from the mind. All the negative emotions also arise from the mind. Like anger, fear, jealousy, and greed are a product of our mind.
- The impulses we experience are a product of our mind. Someone insults you and you get an impulse of retaliation.
- The mind is the source of your emotions, feelings, likes and dislikes, and impulses. The mind represents an indiscriminate flow of thoughts. Mind has no direction or dimension. A student could be sitting in his classroom and could be thinking of the party he attended the previous night.
Let’s understand the mind and how it functions:
- Mind produces innumerable desires. The Vedic texts equated the mind as fire. You take any sample of fire; it consumes all the fuel and is ready for more. Similarly, our mind keeps producing desires one after the other. That’s probably the fundamental reason we find the problems in the modern world. The richest person wants a little more wealth. The most powerful person craves for a little more power. The most beautiful lady wants a little more beauty. Our desires are never ending and there comes a time when we have this struggling thought ‘ When is Enough…. Enough’? Can there be a stage in life, where I can say ‘This is enough’.
- The Mind can never remain constant. Mind constantly goes to the past worries or future anxieties and gets excited in the present. When a person is a victim of their mind, they find it difficult to practice concentration.
- Mind tends to get attached to anything it possesses and craves for what it does not have. The attachment and craving spoil our peace and togetherness. Attachment is a continuous, unintelligent flow of thoughts and emotions from an individual to an object or a person. That’s how you have developed attachment. Attachment is the reason for all our sufferings.
- Mind seeks variety all the time. A person functioning on the mind loses interest in their pursuit. Mind gets distracted by various attractions in the world. As a result, many lack consistency and are not willing to be committed.
To deal with the mind, we need to develop a powerful intellect. Intellect is developed by aligning with higher values, not taking anything for granted, and pursuing the right questions of life.
Wise words on the Mind:
Swami Vivekananda says, “Conquer your mind, you will conquer the world”.
“It’s man’s own mind, not his enemy, that lures him to evil ways. To conquer oneself is the greatest task than conquering another.”–Buddha.
John Milton, in his epic Paradise Lost, states “Mind in this own place can make a hell out of a heaven or a heaven out of a hell”.
Text by S A Sreedharan
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