On our daily path, suppose someone waits hiding for us. Catching us unawares, they bully and beat us. As long as they are hiding, we can’t stop them from giving us a hiding.

Unfortunately, similar is our actual plight. Inside all of us is our mind, which often acts like our worst enemy (Bhagavad-gita 06.06). It makes us believe that life’s troubles are far bigger than what they actually are, thereby making us feel resentful, victimized, depressed. It also makes us believe that worldly pleasures are far more enjoyable than what they actually are, thereby making us crave and slave for them. Overall, by inducing negative feelings of dissatisfaction that degenerate to self-pity, self-loathing and self-destruction, the mind gives us a terrible hiding. Today, tormented by their minds, millions are distressed, seeking escape in mindless entertainment. Finding the mind’s constant beating unbearable, thousands even end their lives.

Despite being tormented repeatedly,  we often fail to even identify our terrible tormentor. Why? Because it’s hiding within us. Instead of pointing to the mind, we point to a myriad of other things: to ourselves because we keep doing unworthy things; to the world because it troubles and tempts us in so many ways; to people who come in the way of our getting what we want to get.

Gita wisdom serves as a flashlight that illumines our inner world. It helps us understand how everything inside us is not us, that our mind is not us. More importantly, it reveals that hiding within us is not just our mind, but also our Lord, who is stronger, subtler and smarter than our mind and can save us from its shenanigans. When we live in the light of the Gita, we start catching the mind before it catches us.

 

Think it over:

  • How does our mind give us a hiding?
  • Why can’t we identify our inner tormentor?
  • How can we catch the mind before it catches us?

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