03.43:The mind traps us materially and trips us spiritually

We like our job one day and detest it the next day; we sometime feel excited about our devotional activities and sometime feel bored. Why does our mind oscillate like this? Because it has learnt from experience that the charm of worldly objects doesn’t last for long.

This lesson is helpful if it can help us realize that no material object can ever offer us lasting satisfaction – even in principle. However, the mind evades this realization by imagining that the problem lies not in the principle, but in the practice; the mind imagines that the past worldly objects didn’t give lasting satisfaction because something was wrong in the practical details of the attempt for enjoyment. “I don’t like my job because my boss is lousy.” Due to this blunder of judgment, the mind keeps us entrapped at the material level with the hopeless hope that that we will become happy if we just get the next worldly object that is alluring us from round the corner.

More damagingly, the mind doesn’t let us stay fixed when we do contact the object that can offer lasting satisfaction: Krishna. He is eternal and eternally enchanting. Yet due to the mind’s default oscillatory habit, it imagines that the charm of Krishna will also not last long, and so it starts looking for something externally new in devotional service without going deep into the remembrance of Krishna. Because the mind thus causes us to look here and there and everywhere – except straight towards Krishna, we frequently trip on our devotional path, and suffer unnecessary slips and falls.

If we strengthen our intelligence by deep deliberation on the nature of the mind, then Bhagavad-gita (3.43) assures us that we won’t fall for its traps and trips.