ride the donkey....

The mind is nothing but conditioning, beliefs, thoughts etc. They are making use of your life for their survival. A single thought, let us say a communist or a religious thought enters a young person, it can become like a bug in his mind and make use of his life for its survival. That is why we are against all beliefs. And we put you through a program to de-condition you, because when you get conditioned, a lot of ideas are put into you, lot of beliefs are put into you and these exactly live like a human being. One of the words used for these thoughts are – meems. When you observe, they say – me me, me me me. That’s how they continue. They fight for their survival. When you talk of war between countries, it is a war of ideas. It could be capitalism Vs. communism or anything for that matter. These are basically ideas fighting and they begin to rule over you. That is why we refer to the mind as a donkey. It is basically a donkey because there is no sense in these concepts. Hence you should ride over a donkey and not the other way round.

Once your heart is opened you very naturally are virtuous not because they were put into you as a concept. That’s why I maintain cultivated virtue is a horror because you want to do the opposite. All the time you are struggling, putting up an act and pretending to be something, which you are not. In due course it destroys you. It should be natural to you. Mind is good if you can make use of it. The mind has to be your servant and not your boss. But if it is going to make use of you, you are destroyed. That is what is happening to the unenlightened. In the case of the unenlightened person, the mind is the master. In the case of the enlightened person, the mind is his servant.

-Sri Bhagavan