The Gita and the mind

Is your mind your friend or your enemy? The Bhagavad Gita 6.5 and 6.6

Chapter 6 of the Gita is the chapter on meditation, and two of its verses are among the most quoted in the whole book. Dr. Sharad Wagle reads them as a psychiatrist: the same mind that holds us down is the one we have to rise with.

Lift yourself by yourself (6.5)

As he reads verse 5: “lift yourself from this bondage … lift yourself by yourself don’t lower yourself his self is his friend his self is his enemy.” The bondage, he explains, is our bondage to the world, to our desires and to our possessiveness. He compares the verse to the English saying about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

He quotes Shankaracharya on why nobody else can do it for you. If you are hungry, you cannot send a servant to eat and come back with your stomach full. If you want to build up your body, you cannot pay a trainer to go to the gym for you. Books, teachers, classes and videos are signposts. They point the way, but you have to walk it yourself.

Only when you are ready

He is candid that not everyone wants this. A man once told him he had two glasses of Scotch every evening, a good meal and a well paid job, and was perfectly happy: why should he change? The Gita does not force anyone. Until you are ready, he says, you go on acting on your desires. Only when, like King Janaka, you have everything and see there is nothing in it for you, does the search begin.

Make the mind your partner

How do you start? Through karma yoga, selfless action and giving to others, and by making the mind and intellect your partners rather than working at cross purposes with them. He says you are ready to meditate when you are no longer jumping up and down for worldly things. An adult walks through a toy shop untouched, because he has outgrown those toys.

Friend or hostile like an enemy (6.6)

Verse 6: “for the person who has conquered his senses and his body his mind and his intellect the atman is his friend but for the person who has not … the atman verily becomes hostile like an enemy.”

He uses the image of a surgeon’s scalpel. In a skilled surgeon’s hand it is almost part of the body. Your senses, mind and intellect need to be under your control in the same way, and the mind most of all.

The child in the toy shop

The mind is far more powerful than we think. It carries likes and dislikes from long before this life, which is why even identical twins differ. It holds love and friendliness, but also jealousy, anger, fear, sadness and guilt. You cannot force it.

Picture a child in a toy shop, crying I want this, I want that. Grab him by the collar and drag him out and he will have a tantrum. That is what happens when your mind is fixed on something and you order it to meditate. Instead, a parent bargains: let’s go home, and we will play marbles together. “You make a deal with your mind because your mind is much more powerful than you are.”

His example is a boss who embarrassed you at work. You sit down to meditate and the mind says, no, help me sort this out first. So you make a deal: you are right, he embarrassed you, and tomorrow we will go and talk to him. Put it aside for now. Only then can you meditate.

It is not God being angry with you

He adds that the verse says the self is like a friend or like an enemy. The Atman itself is neutral. When we say God is angry with us or God rewarded me, it is really our own mind and intellect at work.

The same in heat and cold, praise and blame (6.7)

Verse 7 describes the one who is “self-controlled and peaceful who is balanced in cold and heat in pleasure and pain and also in honour and dishonour.” Heat and cold are the body, pleasure and pain are the mind, and honour and dishonour are the intellect. These are our likes and dislikes, raga and dvesha.

He tells the story of the Mullah on a running donkey. Someone asks where he is going. “Don’t ask me, ask the donkey.” Let go of a donkey’s rope and see who runs after whom. We think the mind is under our control, but we run after it.

A mind you do not notice

When your heart, lungs and liver are healthy, you do not feel them. “That’s how your mind should be you should not know that your mind is there.” Instead, most of our minds keep announcing themselves with worry, fear, jealousy and anger. The goal is a mind that is still.

More on this: Intrusive thoughts and OCD.

Earth, stone and gold (6.8 and 6.9)

Verse 8 says that to the wise person “a lump of earth a stone and gold are the same.” He compares it to waking from a dream of diamonds and gold: in the morning it is worth nothing. Verse 9 asks for equal regard for friends and enemies, relatives and strangers, the good and the bad. A jeweller’s eye sees the gold in every bangle and necklace. The ocean is in every ripple and every wave.

Seeing the same Atman in everyone does not mean being foolish. The same life is in a tiger and a cow, he says, but he will not put his hand out to a tiger. You still use your intellect to decide how to act with each.

More on this: The steady mind: the sthitaprajna verses.

These pages share teachings from the Gita, not medical advice. If your thoughts or feelings are hard to manage, please speak to a doctor.