Teachings
Purity of Mind - part 4
Factors That Influence Purity of Mind
Monitoring our senses and mind: In explaining the Chandogya Upanishad passage that the mind becomes pure when the food is pure, Sri Shankaracharya defines food as anything that is taken in by the senses: sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell. All these five perceptions leave impressions in the mind, and could add to the existing impurities. Therefore, we must discriminate about what we take in through the senses. More important are the ideas we collect in the mind. For example, we are to be careful about what we read and the company we keep. Besides deepening the existing bad impressions, bad ideas can revive forgotten memories, agitate the mind and the senses, weaken our resolve, and lead us astray. A seeker has to shun whatever produces impurities in the mind. Says Swami Vivekananda, “Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true.”
The mind likes to be in a state of flux and randomness. It does not like order or discipline of any kind. Elevating thoughts do not arise in it spontaneously, only with effort and discipline. Instead of waiting for the mind to think elevating thoughts randomly amid so many useless thoughts, a wise seeker consciously practices thinking higher thoughts. Says Sri Ramakrishna, “Bondage is of the mind, and freedom is also of the mind. A man is free if he constantly thinks: ‘I am a free soul. How can I be bound, whether I live in the world or in the forest? I am a child of God, the King of Kings. Who can bind me?’...By repeating with grit and determination, ‘I am not bound, I am free’, one really becomes so—one really becomes free.”
Swami Vivekananda explains the power of thought: “The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you, and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and for ever.”
Dispassion toward sense objects: Sound, touch, form, taste, and smell are the five sense objects corresponding to the five sense organs: the ears, skin, eyes, tongue, and nose. The mind has a natural tendency to be led astray by these sense organs. Our scriptures abound in warnings against attachment to sense objects. The Vivekachudamani (77) says: “Sense objects are even more virulent in their evil effects than the poison of a cobra. Poison kills one who takes it, but sense objects kill even those who look at them through their eyes.”