Garbage that is not cleared often tends to multiply – even if it is kept in a bin, the bin starts stinking or polluting the environment. 

The same principle applies to garbage in our mind. We all have certain waste thoughts – stray desires that are utterly unworthy. Such garbage often crowds and clouds our mind. And this garbage tends to grow, not just inside us but also outside us. Filthy thoughts inside us grow till they impel us to filthy actions that only make things worse, sometimes horrifyingly worse. 

Pointing to how garbage within expands as garbage without, the Bhagavad-gita (02.62-63) outlines the trajectory through which our contemplation grows to infatuation, obsession, delusion and so on till we are dragged down to degradation, even destruction. 

If we don’t want to thus make a mess in our life or, worse still, a mess of our life, we need to begin by minimizing the mess in our mind. Just as a bin that is cleaned regularly remains usable, so too a mind that is cleaned regularly remains usable, instead of becoming useless or even harmful. 

How can we manage the garbage in our mind? 

By choosing what we take in, what we dwell on and what we turn away from. 

The content in the mind is determined by perception, contemplation and rejection. On a more positive and transformative note, if we learn to carefully fill our mind with positivity, then negativity gets automatically driven out or kept out. And the ultimate positivity centers on the supreme positive reality, Krishna, and our eternal relationship of service with him. 

When we invest time regularly to clean our mind by cultivating thoughts of Krishna through disciplined bhakti-yoga practice, we make our inner and outer worlds better. 

 

Think it over: 

  • How does mental garbage multiply?
  • Where may mental garbage come from?
  • How can we best clean our mind?

 

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02.62 One who restrains his senses, keeping them under full control, and fixes his consciousness upon Me, is known as a man of steady intelligence.

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