The
human mind is very flickering and keeps jumping from one thing to the other. That
is why frequently the mood shifts from the moment of happiness or sadness;
pleasure or pain; delightful or dejected; anger or calmness; hatred or
compassion etc. These are some of the innumerable mental reactions that occur because
of factors of the external world or inner world due to arousal of emotions as a
reaction to the corresponding situation. And these happen within an individual
inadvertently because of his inability to control the mind. We all know that
the most difficult thing to control in the world for a human being is his mind.
The fundamental reason for this is his unawareness of factors that are not
within his control and those that are within his control so that he can
accordingly exercise his intellect to tame his mind when necessary. And so
restrain from reacting to things or situations that are not in his control. Conversely,
respond accordingly to situations of nature that demands his reaction or
intervention.
First, we will go into detail about factors that are not under his control.
1.
Controlling people.
2.
Controlling time.
3.
Controlling nature.
We
will discuss here the nature of interaction with the above factors to understand
why these are not under human control.
Controlling
people.
In
a democratic society, every individual has the freedom to express his or her
opinions, suggestions or reactions. But most people deploying these attributes
of freedom want to run everything as per their terms and try to maintain
control over other person’s thoughts, feelings, actions, reactions, likes and
dislikes etc. Before behaving in this way, we should know if we need to control
the other person or should we control ourselves?
It
is common human nature to control everything except ourselves. And that is
why we land in a sad and disturbed state with mental unrest. The truth is we
don’t have control over every aspect of our lives, so how are we to control
others with whom we interact. There are a lot of things that lie beyond an individual’s
control. The real fallout of the above-stated behaviour of what we do without
realising that in this way we want to be controlled by them. This is because
when the other person refuses to act according to us, we feel mentally disturbed
in not having been able to control the person and thus indirectly we get
controlled by that person. Thus in this situation, our freedom and hence peace
of mind depends on that person or thing that we wanted to control, but are not
able to. Another dimension to this issue is the fact is, how that person treats
you is also not in your control.
Thus
the sad reality would continue to remain and make our lives woefully unhappy.
So it is worthwhile accepting and start practising to stop controlling others
and focus on controlling self. This would enable us to come out of the
mental unrest that develops inside us from time to time and would enable us to
access more peace in our minds.
Controlling time
We
human beings have no control over time, i.e. the past and future. What has
happened in the past cannot come back and so is not possible to change. Thus it
is better to LET GO of the past. Similarly, the future can only be anticipated
with a certain amount of probability, it can never be foreknown with certainty
hence cannot be controlled. So at best be prepared with a positive and stable
state of mind and wait for the unfolding of the future.
Time
is an eternal parameter of nature manifested in flow as an eternal process and
hence cannot be controlled by man. At best it can be managed to make the best
possible use of it.
Controlling
nature.
Human
beings cannot control nature or the nature of reality. All phenomena of nature
like the cycles of season changes on one hand that brings immense benefit to
human beings, on the other hand, brings unpredictable events in calamities like
floods, earthquakes, cyclones and epidemics that cause tremendous suffering, loss
of life and property. Human beings at best take steps to prevent or reduce the
impact on them by taking precautionary measures but cannot prevent their occurrence.
The above factors that human beings are subjected to, with no control on their occurrence or prevention, the best way to respond to are to accept them and let go. And this mental approach is the only option we human beings are left with.
Well, now we would go into the factors that are under human control.
As
per Buddha, three things in human life is under the control and those are; the
thoughts that come from the way we think, the images that we visualise in the
mind and the action that we take.
Thus,
from the above, we can see that the best course that should be adopted in life
is to engage ourselves in only those factors that are under our control. And in
this way free ourselves from sadness and mental unrest by letting go of what
all cannot be controlled. Adopting this attitude enables us to lead a life of
mental peace and happiness.
