In the previous episode, we had witnessed Bhagawan Krishna elaborating on the fact as to how our mind plays an important role while we perform our “Karma Yoga”. We’ve witnessed Bhagawan Krishna explaining how our mind is a very important entity through which we realize our “Atman” and its significance. Moreover, He also explains how in this regard, our mind can be our greatest friend as well as our greatest enemy too. For our reference and understanding, we shall revisit this important shloka as we have a detailed analysis of the shloka in today’s context. Bhagawan Krishna says thus,
“Uddaredaatmanaatmaanam aatmaanam avasaadayeth!
Aatmaivahyaatmano banduhu aatmaiva ripuraatmanaha!!”
So Bhagawan clearly explains here as to how we can use our mind as a friend while executing our “Karma Yoga” efficiently. We might wonder thus, “Oh! How can the mind be both a friend as well as an enemy to us? The mind is a single entity within all of us, isn’t it? If such is the case, how can this mind give a “double action” within us?” Bhagawan says that a detached mind can be our greatest friend, however, an attached mind can be our greatest enemy! The mind might be just a single entity, but the nature of the mind is what matters here the most. When we say “detached mind”, Bhagawan says that the mind should not run behind worldly attachments whatsoever. In other words, the mind should be completely one-point focused towards the “Karma” that we perform, and if this happens, our mind can be our greatest friend in realizing our “Atman”. However, if our mind is straying into the trap of worldly attachments, the path of our “Karma Yoga” gets derailed completely and we’re going to land up in a complete mess. For this also, our mind is the sole reason!
Thus, from this point of discussion we can infer that the mind can be a cause of success as well as failure. If we’re completely focused on our duty, the mind will be our best companion all through the journey of “Karma Yoga”. However, if we are distracted with worldly pleasures, the mind can easily pull us down and make us end up in failure. In the present day context, it is important for all of us to analyze whether our mind is a friend or an enemy to us. In today’s scenario, there are a whole lot of ways through which we can get distracted quite easily. With the advent of “social media” today, we are exposed to a variety of stuff that’s happening around us, within just a touch of a button on our mobile phones. Thus, while performing our duty, many of us have this habit of looking at our mobile phones frequently and this itself is the greatest distraction ever! Are we able to control our mind, which is trying to get distracted into the mobile phone, while performing something important? Are we able to focus our concentration on our work activities, despite the temptation to look into social media? This is where we can easily test ourselves, whether our mind is a friend to us or a foe! If the mind should be our friend, we should train our mind to be controlled by not deviating from the path of our ultimate goal. Rather, our mind will become a foe to us if we’re easily distracted into things other than our duty.
Of course, I’m not saying here that we should completely refrain from the usage of social media. Social media is very much essential, given today’s requirements and challenges. But what I’m saying here is that, we can use social media judiciously in a way that it would be of benefit and not a disaster. Many of us, especially youngsters today are completely hooked into social media today, forgetting their fundamental duty of focusing on academics, and this is a sad state of affairs that we see across society today. Moreover, there is also a trend of posting some photographs and counting the number of “likes” and “comments” that we receive for them on social media platforms. This has become a status symbol for many of the youngsters today and gradually, it has become an addiction as well! The more the number of likes / comments, the more the popularity of this person, and vice versa! This status symbol has caused many people to go into addiction and gradually into depression as well! If we’re getting into such things in life, obviously as Bhagawan Krishna says, our minds are going to become the greatest enemy ever! Whereas, if we’re able to junk all this and focus solely on our work activities, our mind can be our greatest friend, and this is where we talk about “detachment”.
So for today, let us understand this point clearly and in the next episode, we shall try and understand what exactly Bhagawan is talking about when it comes to being “detached”. Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 