Revision as of 10:56, 5 December 2017

What is a Yogi?

Kamal Jain, Master Your Mind & Become A Yogi, December 4, 2017: The Times of India

When is someone called a yogi? Krishna provides the answer in the Bhagwad Gita, Chapter 6, Verse 18: “When the mastered mind, withdrawn from all worldly desires and cravings, is seated only in the Self, then such a person is called a yogi.”

Mastering his mind, is different from controlling or suppressing it. The mind is a flow of thoughts, including the thoughts of desires and cravings. ‘Vritti pravah iti manah’. A desire is our wish to experience something which we have not experienced so far, whereas, the craving is our intention to repeat the experience.

Mastering the mind is ‘not to associate with the flow of thoughts’. Thoughts survive when you identify with them and support them. For example, identifying with thought is to say that ‘I am angry’ instead of saying that ‘I watch the anger on the screen of my mind’. When you watch or observe, you separate the thought or emotion from yourself, leaving it powerless to affect you.

When you are master of your mind, it can’t use you – instead, it now has become a beautiful tool. When you need it to interact with the outside world, use it ably. Otherwise, put it aside and be with the Self.

Witness your thoughts, as witnessing would create a gap between you and your thought or desire. Watch your mind with no labelling or without evaluating your thoughts. It helps you not to identify with your desires and thoughts. You neither accept nor condemn your desires. By and by your mind becomes a pure sky with no clouds of desires or cravings. Now your mind is not in demand mode and you are at peace with yourself. Your present moment is joyous, celebratory as all desires and cravings have dropped away. You thus become nihsprihah.

Here Krishna talks of two characteristics of a yogi. A yogi is master of mind and he is free of all worldly desires.

It is said that desires trigger more desires and they propel our mind to engage our sense organs into action to fulfil them. Thus the mind remains constantly agitated. That’s why the Buddha said that desires can never be fulfilled as it is a vicious circle.

To assuage mind, you have to free it from sensual pleasures and desires. Fulfilling of desire implies future tense. You then sacrifice the present for achieving something in future. If desire is unfulfilled, you are frustrated and feel dejected. If desire is fulfilled, you feel elated but it turns out momentary after a while. You start running after something else. You feel that if you become rich, you will be happy. After becoming rich, you find that there is no happiness in money or things.

Happiness is not in the objects, but in how you approach life. You can’t kill desire because it is energy. Hunger creates desire which we have to satisfy. Desire is the sign of being alive, so don’t make it your enemy. Desire is not in the way of your becoming a yogi but the longing for it and getting attached to it is. If you have mastered your mind, you will have desire but wouldn’t be attached to it. So renounce not the desire but the longing for it. Desires are to be fulfilled as need not as greed.