A Quiet Mind is Good for Reflection

 

Photo Credit: Colin Dye | Lost Art of Spiritual Reflection

A Quiet Mind is Good for Reflection

Psychologists say that people generate around 300 self-thoughts per minute. Pascal the mathematician said, “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quiet in his own room.” The room that Pascal refers to is your mind. As Swamiji has said in many of his discourses, a person’s mind is never in the present moment, it vacillates like a pendulum from the past into the future. All thoughts which one gets are usually negative or of events which have adversely affected you – “that person had said this or did this to me, so I have to say this or do that to him/her”. The mind is almost always in a reactive mode, there are very few people who stop, step back, analyse and then decide on the response to be given in certain situations.

Successful people in all walks of life become so because of their decisions in critical situations. And decisions require more than anything else, quiet time inside your own head to think and arrive at a rational decision to a problem. A mind which is an ocean of calm is good for reflection and introspection. Throw rocks in it in the form of continuous thoughts and the ripples never stop and the turbulence in the mind increases, resulting in headache, migraine, stress. Suppose you are asked to carry a heavy burden, say a rock, you will most probably say that you cannot do it. But if you are told that bundle hold gold or untold wealth, then you definitely find the strength to carry it – this just goes to show that burdens are nothing but weights on your mind. As per Vedanta philosophy, a deep state of reflection is called manana which is part of the three-fold process which contains shravana (hearing the truth), manana (reflecting on the truth), and niddhiyasana (living the truth) – which in combination is the path of true knowledge. Once you embark on the spiritual path, knowingly or unknowingly this is the process one follows. This has been followed by true seekers in Bharat (India) for thousands of years.

In a fast world where inventions and innovations become obsolete even before they take hold, a world which is rife with distractions, there are few things which feel better than remaining quiet, sitting in completely calm solitude, reflecting on what you are doing and why. Practicing ashtang yog – the eight-fold path of yoga helps quieten the mind and turns you inwards. If you are not deeply spiritual and just want to reflect then a quiet walk, exercise, indulge in a hobby – anything that helps you relax the mind will do.

It is fair to say that we are not living in deeply reflective times, in fact today with the pandemic, political turmoil across the globe, natural and man-made disasters – we are living in really turbulent times. So, to keep the mind calm, reflective and turned inwards will require one to practice meditation and mindfulness to turn the mind into an ocean of calm which cannot be disturbed.