In the holy book of the Hindus, the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna (the warrior) approaches Lord Krishna with the question: “Lord, the mind is restless like the wind, difficult to control. How can I control this restless mind?” Because he couldn’t, as he was disturbed by the experience of the war. Krishna said: “Yes, the mind is difficult to control, but you can!” And he gave two important points: vairagya and abhyasa.
Vairagya is detachment from the senses. If you are caught up in the senses and the elements and the material world, you cannot have a peaceful mind. You will be pulled by the horses of the senses! So, we need vairagya. Patanjali described it as pratyahara: withdraw the energy from the senses. Don’t feed them! That’s easy to say but difficult to do. In meditation, the mind goes into the world before you even know it. It moves from one thought to another. Sometimes you don’t even see how many thoughts you have entertained. So, we need this detachment, vairagya.
And when you begin to feel a little bit of that and start to resist the pull of the world, the next one is abhyasa: practice! Stay with it! Today is focused on the importance and the need for practice.
When you come into the hall and meditate for a little bit, have you meditated enough for the week? Are you sustained by that little period of meditation? How many of you repeat the meditation of the morning? How many of you attempt to manage the restless mind during the day? Do you stay in the mindfulness of how the ego is caught up in the senses? You give liberty to the pull of the world! How can you be a yogi? How can you experience samadhi if you are pulled by the world?
So, it is necessary to be able to see that you are being pulled, as you are being pulled! Some of us can’t see. You need to deepen that seeing so that you can see that the ego is being pulled. And there is a space beyond the seeing. The ego only exists because there is a form.
You know the story of the two birds: the golden bird is the infinite Self, and the bird that is moving around needs to turn its attention to the top of the tree. It should want to be like that bird. In the story, the experience of the bitter and sweet fruits does not satisfy the jumping bird anymore, so it begins to turn its attention upward and gets more interested in the golden bird. It begins to jump to the golden bird, and it starts to feel better. It gets quiet up there and wants to sit with this bird, and guess what happens? It becomes the golden bird. The twoness disappears. It was always the golden bird, thinking that it was the jumping bird. That is false, the maya.
So in you too, there is the golden bird, beyond the restless ego and the seeking for pleasures. Don’t seek pleasures, you will never be at peace. Retrace the steps back to the golden bird inside, that expansive part of you inside. It is there, it is who you are! You are the infinite “I”.
That process of going there requires abhaysa. It is such a fluctuating world, so if you get caught in that, you’ll be restless. You need a space to retreat and focus inward (dharana as Patanjali calls it). And when the focus falters, keep the practice going, again and again. At some point, it becomes dhyana: an unbroken stream of attention, sustained awareness. When you get the dhyana right, then you jump into the position of the golden bird: samadhi, superconsciousness. We need samyama, the threesome of dharana, dhyana, and samadhi.
It happens in the practice. You need to sustain this practice. Practice until it becomes no practice, a joy, a lifestyle. That is how long you should practice! Because what happens in your infrequent practice is that you built merit and lose it when you get back into the world. Are you satisfied with that kind of practice? We need continuous practice!
That is why we repeat a mantra, to protect the mind and keep you in the present moment. Some hold the beads to help not forget, some use the breath awareness, and some just use witnessing the play (not getting caught, not judging). You need to do this. When you are in activity, staying as witness is best. When you sit down and feel the restlessness of the mind, use the mantra. And when you begin to feel the magic of the breath, the prana, apana, use Soham with the breath. Choose a mantra that you feel drawn to. Don’t choose just one that you hear, and don’t choose one that is long. Om is perfect, Om guru is perfect, Sri ram, jay ram is nice, or Om namah shivaya.
How important practice is! We need to sustain practice! You have so many idle moments; when you are cooking, washing, or cleaning, the mantra can be in your mind. But if you can be in oneness with the activity, you don’t need a mantra, you are in expansive awareness. Your attention to activity can hold you there.
We should practice as much as we can. If we forget for a moment, it is okay, but we should practice as much as we can. Get into the sattva guna: peacefulness, tranquility, even mindedness. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is saying, samatvam yoga uchyate: yoga is equanimity.
It is a dynamic Universe, you cannot get away from practice. If you sit down and think you are in sattva you may be in tamas. You may be in a sensory heaven with a full stomach, and when the stomach gets empty, the misery comes back. Some people smoke and think they are in sattva, but that is tamas. We need the real sattva.
We need wisdom in this Play! If we don’t have wisdom, we think it is a battle, but with wisdom, we see it as a Play. Stay in the practice! Remember the words of Krishna: vairagya and abhyasa.
Summary
- The restless mind is difficult to control, but we can! For this, we need vairagya (detachment) and abhyasa (practice).
- We need to see how we are caught up in the senses and in the material world. If we continue to seek pleasures, we will never be at peace. We need to see how our mind moves from one thought to another and how many thoughts we entertain. We need to deepen our seeing to see how we are being pulled as we are being pulled!
- When we begin to feel a little detachment, we need continuous practice. We need to manage our mind throughout the day. We need to practice until it no longer is practice but joy and a lifestyle. If we practice only for a bit, then the merit we build is lost again in the world.
- We need samyama: the threesome of dharana (the focus inward), dhyana (when the focus becomes uninterrupted through our continued practice), and samadhi (super consciousness).
- We can practice through repeating a mantra (such as Soham with the breath, Om, Om Guru, or Om namah shivaya). We can practice using breath awareness, and we can practice just witnessing the play. These we can do even in activity! We should practice as much as we can! If we forget for a moment, it is okay, but get back to the practice as quickly as you can.
- Make sure that when you think you are in sattva, you are really in sattva and not in tamas. Get into real sattva: peacefulness, tranquility, and even mindedness.
Enjoy the practices!
Love,
Prabha
(Each day, I’ll try to give some notes and a short summary of the main practices outlined in Guruji’s morning talk, shortly after the program finishes!)
