Be one with the happening, the change will happen || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question: Sir, you said when you do something you should be involved in that thing only. But sir, matter of the fact is that when we listen to music many thoughts strike our minds. How can we overcome these thoughts? Even the lyrics and wordings strike our mind and one word takes you to other words and thoughts. How to overcome these?
Speaker: It is a very genuine question. You see what the mind is doing. Look at it very simply. There is music and instead of being with the music the mind has another thought, some other thought. Now two things are possible at this state. One: I already have three thoughts in my mind and I generate a fourth thought which says, how to get rid of the three thoughts. And remember a thought can never get rid of a thought. All thoughts are fundamentally the same; mental activity. More mental activity can not stop mental activity. You are already thinking of three things and now the fourth thing comes to your mind; mental activity has increased, not decreased. Thoughts have grown. Mind has not become calmer. A realization is sufficient. What kind of realization? That here is this music and here is the mind somewhere else and that realization is always there. It is not that I do not know that my mind is wandering. It is just that we are in the illusion that there is pleasure in wandering. That there is some happiness in wandering. That is the only reason why you wander.
Otherwise there is no cause for wandering. Get rid of that illusion. You have trained yourself to wander. You have trained yourself that illusion is happiness. It’s just a training and every training is a mental pattern. Do not entertain thoughts of how to. At the most have a reminder that can shock you and shocking you is bringing you away from thoughts. A shock is an instantaneous thing; it does not remain with you as thought. Have something that can shock you up. There are some people who like to have external reminders. They would have something written upon the wall, some kind of an alarm bell. But far better than an external reminder is a vigilant mind itself. That can remind itself at the right time. Oh, you are wandering again. And the mind knows, have faith in your mind. It knows that it is wandering. None of us are so completely deluded that we do not even know what we are doing. We always know what we are doing. Whatever happens, happens out of our consent. Stop giving that consent. It’s not difficult. Stop giving that consent, that consent is just a pattern that you have created for yourself. You can stop giving the consent the moment you want to stop it. Right now you do not want to stop it because you think that there is some benefit in giving that consent.
As we said, some pleasure, some happiness. Inquire into it; do you really get benefited out of wandering mind? Does a distracted, disturbed mind really benefit you? Inquire , ask yourself. What have I gained out of all this? I lost out on the music. Now the music is lost, gone. What did I actually gain? And when you will keep up with this inquiry and here the mind itself is inquiring. I said have faith in the power of the mind. The mind is itself inquiring. When this inquiry will continue, then you will find that the mind has less and less incentive in being here and there. Let this inquiry be very rigorous. All my life, all these long years, mind has been restless. What has this restlessness given me? I have never been able to sit still. I have always been randomly walking, running here and there. What has this given me? Ask; confront the truth of this stupidity. And once you have seen the foolishness of wandering then the mind will not be able to tell itself that wandering is beautiful. Right now the mind tells you that there is something good about wandering. And you are prepared to argue that. Many of us might still be firmly holding on to the belief that dreams are wonderful, ambitions are great and all these are nothing but restlessness of the mind.
You need to ask yourself. I am not saying listen to me, I am saying you need to ask yourself. What is the truth of these dreams? And nothing makes mind wander as much as the dreams. You need to ask yourself. What is the meaning of going forward? What is meant by progress in life? What is meant by achievement? What is meant by pleasure and the mind is always searching for pleasure; is it not? Continuously it wants pleasure, all kind of pleasure. Ask yourself! What is all this? What is happening? Let the obvious truth come to you and then, as we said, the mind will have less and less incentive to be loose, to be untethered. Accept this first of all that for the mind it is not a problem that it roams about. If you ask the mind that you roam about so much, is that a disease, a problem? The mind will say, No, it is not a problem. It is a pleasure. Right? That is what the mind will say. I feel bored and I start drawing. I feel restless, I feel miserable, I start wandering. It means for the mind, wandering is…
Listeners: Pleasure.
Speaker: Right now you may be saying that it is a problem but what does the mind say? That it is a pleasure and it is a great pleasure for the mind. You have to tell the mind, and convince it that it is not a pleasure. That it is fool-hardy. Till the time there is this sense of pleasure, you will not be able to stop the mind. Mind is a pleasure seeker. You have to investigate the truth of that pleasure. What is this pleasure thing? Can there be pleasure without sorrow? Can there be pleasure without depending on anybody? Can there be continuous pleasure? Do pleasure and freedom go together? Is pleasure an act of intelligence or is it influenced from somebody? You have to ask this to yourself. Your own life will give you the answer. And when the answer comes straight from your life then the mind will not be able to deny the answer. It will have to accept. And then its tendency, the habit will not carry that force. Right?
Listeners: Yes sir.
Speaker: Good.
-Excerpts from a Samvaad session. Edited for clarity.
