The mind wonders

"मन चिंती ते वैरी न चिंती"


Have you ever wondered how our mind can think of the most un-thinkable things? Each and everyone of us has some morals, some set of values that we try our best to live by. But everyone has had thoughts at one point of time which were so against our morals that we wondered 'how could i even think of that'. Have you ever wondered that why our mind can produce so conflicting a stream of thoughts?


Mind is like a canvas - it will take up any color. At the same time, it has the ability to erase any color it wants. We 'paint' the canvas with beliefs and ideas, but it can be wiped clean even in a single moment. And nothing else but the mind itself does it. A person can lose their beliefs in a second. A person can lose faith in some concept, e.g. faith in god, in one second. A person can lose years' worth of trust in a second. All it takes for such things is one thought by their mind. At the same time, it can only take a second to build new faith / rebuild trust. 


Our mind is a strange thing. I say thing because mind is not living. Surely, it is our brain cells etc, but it is the abstract that generates from them, not the actual living entities. It is the software, not the hardware. But it has so profound a control on our hardware that its hard to tell the difference. But i digress.


I remember a story about king Asoka. He was a great mauryan king who ruled a large part of southeast asia. He ruled it by the mighty and ruthless force. On the battlefield in the war of kalinga, he saw death that he brought to his fellow men and at that moment, something inside him broke down and he swore onto a life of non-violence by following a buddhist way of life. This story illustrates the great power of mind. The same mind, which had developed a huge dam of thoughts for Asoka. The same mind that made him a great king, a conqueror and a great warrior. The same mind that made him choose the complete opposite way of life in one moment. It has such great power, ironically not only on ourselves but on our fellow human beings too. 


"Mind is a terrible master, but a wonderful servant" - Robin Sharma in 'The monk who sold his ferrari'


Couldn't have been said more aptly. Mind is in fact a terrible master. Of course the example above illustrates that. I am sure all of us have experienced this sometime. Our minds control us, but how many times have you been disappointed with yourself for not making a choice. So many times it happens that our mind acts in such a way that we intentionally make the wrong choices. Sure, we have 'inner voices' telling us what is wrong and what is not. But who are those afterall, figments of our mind ! It is the mind who is acting against itself, sometimes i wonder why? Could it be that, without something like that, mind's own existence will become obsolete?


This reminds me of 'Lord of the flies' - an amazing piece of work. Such beautifully written but a horrifyingly natural concept. The behavior of those children on the island was nothing but a terrible interplay of minds. Mind being a terrible master, guided the kids to be 'lords of flies'. 


I was talking to R [i am borrowing her idea of initials] after watching the movie 'Shutter island' about beliefs and psyche in general. And we were saying that a lot of things we believe in are nothing but our mind's imagination. The whole concept of religion is one of them. What is religion and why do we believe in it? Isn't it a concept that our mind either creates or accepts? When i say someone is very religious and monotheistic, that only means that their mind has accepted the concept of monotheism as a reality. Reality is what our mind makes up - our perception.


Which brings us to the mind being a great slave part. Our mind makes a slave out of itself. When people devote themselves to something, it is exactly that. When i say that i am 100% devoted to something and i can only think about that, i am training my mind to exactly the same thing. Or rather, my mind is training itself to do that. The last 'ashram' of a man's life - sanyasashram [संन्यासाश्रम] is nothing but a time period devoted to clearing off the mind and train it to prepare to cease its own existence. How thoughtful of the mind i say.


So here i am writing about mind. Or shall i say my own mind writing about itself and its fellow minds?


I shall end this post with a quote from Ozzy Osbourne [to put it entirely out of context]
'Of all the things i have lost, i miss my mind the most'


Go on, let your minds wonder...






[image courtesy haironi_91 via photobucket]