When children get a new video game, they deem it awesome. But when they can’t win it the way they want, they deem it awful. Our mind is frequently as fickle as a child, if not more.

If we are watching a cricket match and a batsman plays very well, the mind adores him as the best batsman. If he gets out playing a rash shot, the mind deems him the worst batsman.

The mind deludes recovering alcoholics into paying any price to get a bottle to drink. After the drink, it makes them break the bottle in frustration at their folly in relapsing.

The mind infected by the romantic bug says, “I can’t live without this person.” A few months later, the same mind says, “I can’t live with this person.”

Echoing our experience and offering a graphic example, the Bhagavad-gita (06.34) indicates that the mind moves faster than a wild wind. Within moments, it can go from spiritual to sensual, from heroic to villainous, from faithful to perfidious. And it can take us down that path of degradation too, if we go along with it.

If we don’t want to go along with the mind, we need to anchor ourselves to something unshakably fixed. The supreme unchanging reality is the all-pure, all-attractive supreme, Krishna. We can connect with him through bhakti-yoga. When we practice bhakti-yoga diligently, that divine connection purifies and pacifies the mind.

What if the mind is fickle about bhakti practice? We need intellectual conviction to persevere.

When we study the Gita seriously, the resulting intellectual conviction powers us to push on towards Krishna despite the mind’s fickleness. With steady bhakti practice, we attract divine grace that helps us relish Krishna’s all-attractiveness, thereby decreasing the mind’s fickleness. And we become absorbed in him – increasingly, naturally, joyfully absorbed.


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