Games the Mind Plays
Life sustained by food is short; life sustained by the atman (Divine Spirit) is eternal. Do not lay claim to long life, but to divine life. Do not pine for more years on earth, but for more virtues in the heart. The Buddha knew and made known to the world the truths. Everything is grief. Everything is empty. Everything is brief. Everything is polluted. So the wise man has to do the duties cast upon him with discrimination, diligence, and detachment. Play the role, but keep your identity unaffected. Have your head in the forest (ashram/retreat), unaffected by the aimlessly rushing world. But it is your duty, a duty you cannot escape, to fully engage yourself in your work, unconcerned with loss or gain, failure or success, slander or praise. The Gita instills this very lesson in you: “Whoever does upasana [steady worship] with no thought other than Me, him I shall have with Me; I shall bear his burden now and forever.” The Gita says, “Keeping Me ever in memory, engage yourself in the battle of life.”
This ‘Me’ to which Krishna refers is not something outside you or extraneous to you. It is your own diviner reality, which you can cognize in the silence of your own dhyana (meditation), when you shut out of your awareness the distraction of the senses, the mind, and the ego. You can take refuge in the calm coolness of your heart where He has installed Himself as the charioteer. You must only engage yourself in work that is purifying, with an attitude that sanctifies. Most people do not know how to set about on this most rewarding adventure. They waste their lives in sorrow, wading through disappointment and despair, for they cling to something as theirs and treat something else as belonging to others. They grab and grieve, and labor to acquire and lose. Desire multiplies desire, and man sinks deeper into discontent and distress. The behavior is really artificial; it does not conform to man’s real nature, the prompting of his atman, which is divine.
Sathya Sai Speaks, vol. 13, pp.100-101
What is required is the awareness of the vicious game that the mind plays. It presents before the attention one source after another of temporary pleasure; it does not allow any interval for you to weigh the pros and cons. When hunger for food is appeased, it holds before the eye the attraction of the film, it reminds the ear of the charm of music, and it makes the tongue water for the pleasant taste of something that it craves for. The wish becomes very soon the urge for action, the urge soon gathers strength and the yearning becomes uncontrollable. The burden of desires gradually becomes too heavy and man gets dispirited and sad. Train the mind to turn toward the intelligence for inspiration and guidance, not toward the senses for adventures and achievements. That will make it an instrument for reducing your vagaries and saving time and energy for more vital matters.
Sathya Sai Speaks, vol. 12, p. 34
