What is inside your Mental Cupboard?
We use a cupboard to store items. Similarly we all carry a Mental cupboard where we dearly hold our ideas and opinions. Mostly the cupboard is disorganized with many things thrown inside from many lifetimes. Where we do get the ideas and opinions? From what we see around and what we hear around and some from our past life and present life conditions and conditioning.
Some examples:
- Life is beautiful (WhatsApp DP)
- Why you ISKCON people talk about disease and death -- You should be positive
- My family is my life (WhatsApp DP)
- Always Stay Happy (WA DP)
- Keep Smiling (WA DP)
All of these are good but they have a basic problem -- they are coming from a material conception of life which is inherently flawed.
The Bhagavad-gita offers a totally different Mental Cupboard. Since it is based upon the Absolute Truth, what it offers is valid for all times, places and circumstances. And that is why the Gita has guided humanity since time immemorial.
As we start exploring the Gita, the very first thing we need to do is to recognize that our Mental cupboard is not a picture of reality -- it is mostly our own mental imagination. We must question everything that we stored carefully inside the cupboard and then throw out those items that are not in line with what Krishna is telling in the Gita.
If we continue to live from our own Mental cupboard and ignore Gita's cupboard then we will not gain anything from out study of the Gita.
The world in which we live is characterized by two things -- impermanence and misery (dukhalayam ashashvatam). Given this life cannot be beautiful here nor can we be happy. Thus the Gita teaches the right idea and opinion about life and happiness.
In the same line discussing about old age and death is not negativity or pessimistic -- it is the reality. In a Cancer hospital if we just keep telling don't worry everything will be fine tomorrow, just be positive and optimistic then that is not a reflection of reality. That kind of positivity will be baseless and short lived because patients are seeing that everyday someone is dying right next to them.