How To Control Your Mind | Buddhism In English

Namo Vidhaya. Welcome to another video. Do you know how amazing your mind can serve for you if you know how to control and master your thoughts? And that is why they say that mind is the best servant if you know how to master your thoughts, right? But if you let your mind to become your master, you will end up nothing but as a slave of it. So how can we control our mind? How can we deal with these negative thoughts? Now so many people think that they can remove a negative thought and plant a positive thought inside it. But in reality, you will never be able to remove a thought from your mind by force, right? Go ahead and do it, right? You will never be able to do that. The more you try, the more you use the force to remove a thought or forget it, the more it will come back to you and haunt you. So in this video, I'm going to be sharing with you a simple and a practical way to use the energy of that negative thought to drive it into a more positive state of our mind by simply asking these five questions from yourself, right? These questions will help you to come into this present moment and it will encourage you to cultivate more wholesome qualities and wholesome thoughts inside your mind, okay? But before starting, I have to remember none of these practices and none of these things are easy. But with the time, if you keep on practicing it, right? If you stick into the process and if you keep on doing it, it will be very easy for you to do that, okay? And once you become used to it and once you get used to that, it is very easy to deal with negative thoughts in your mind and it is very easy to control your mind. So let's dive in. The first question that you have to ask from yourself is what are the thoughts that keep me away from peace? What are the thoughts that steal my peacefulness inside me? When you ask this question from yourself, you can go through the weaknesses of yourself, right? Because the weaknesses are different from one person to another. For someone, the thought that steals their peacefulness is the anger. For another person, it is the jealousy. For another person, it is the procrastination of the laziness, okay? So when you ask from yourself, what makes me disturbed, okay? What steals my peacefulness? Then you will have a good understanding about what are the weaknesses inside you. Once you realize what are the weaknesses inside you, okay? What thought pattern steals your peacefulness, then it is very easy for you to deal with that negative state of your mind, okay? So ask from yourself, what steals my peacefulness? And have a good understanding about it. The second question that you can ask from yourself is, what am I thinking right now? This is one of the best questions that you can ask from yourself to bring your mind to this current and present moment, okay? To have a good understanding about the current situation of your mind. Because most of the time, our mind lives in either it is in past or it is in the future. It is hardly, our mind lives in this present moment. So once you ask this question, what am I thinking now? Ask this question as much as possible from yourself. What am I thinking now? What am I doing now? When you ask from yourself that it comes, your awareness come into this present moment, okay? Because most of the time our awareness travels from one arena to another. Maybe it is in the past, maybe it is in the future. It hardly comes to this present moment. Once you come into this present moment, it is very easy for you to solve the problem because you know what is going inside, okay? When you ask from yourself that question, you can come up with so many answers, okay? Ask it from yourself and you will come up with these answers like, my mind is in anger now, right? I am at stress now. I am in a problem. I am thinking about something. I am worrying about something, okay? Once you identify that, right? Once you catch your thought, it is very easy to deal with it. Now you came to this present moment and you identify the thought. Now you have to ask the third question. The third question is, is it, is this thought pattern helpful for me, right? When you ask this question from yourself, you dive into that problem and you started to think the downside of that negative state. For an example, if you are in anger, if you ask from yourself, is this anger really going to help me? Is it going to help me? Then you will come up with the answer. No, it is not going to help me. It only hurts me and the other person, right? It will lead to many problems. When you ask that question from yourself, it gives you the chance to think about the disadvantages and the downside of your thought patterns. The more you realize the disadvantages of your thought patterns, it is very easy to stay out of it because you know that it is going to hurt. Because most of the time, we do things and we think without realizing and without thinking about the disadvantages of it. And that is why it is the best thing to ask from yourself, that is it really going to help me? Now you identified your state of your mind. Now you came to this present moment. Now you know that it is not going to help you. And as the next question, now you can ask from yourself, what is the best thing to do instead of staying in this negative state, right? For an example, if you are in anger, ask from yourself, what is the best thing to do instead of staying in anger? Now what should I do now? Then you will come up with the answer that I should forgive people. I should let go of this anger, you know, if I need to be at peace, right? If I need to find the peacefulness inside my mind, then I need to let go of this anger, okay? I need to remove it. Now you come up with the solution. Now the best part is, the most amazing thing is, we, every one of us, every one of us know what is good and bad. We know what to do and what not to do, okay? Now for an example, let's say, now we know that too much sugar is bad for our health. But what we do, when we are going to make a tea cup, we just pour some extra sugar into it. We put some extra sugar into it. We know it is bad, right? Without considering about it is bad, we do it. And that is why the correct thing that you can do is, think about what is the best thing that I can do now, right? Is it to forgive that people? Is it to let go of that jealousness? Is it to let go of that laziness and continue to work, right? When you think about that, you come up with a solution from yourself, okay? You find the solution through yourself. So ask this question from yourself. What is the best thing that I can do to stay away from this negative state of my mind? Now you came up with a solution for your problem. Now what you have to do is to think about the benefits of cultivating this positive state of your mind, okay? Try to think about the benefits of forgiving. Try to think about the benefits of staying away from jealousness. Try to think about the staying away from laziness and getting to work, okay? Once you do that, you will come up with the benefits of it. You will find the reward of it. The more you see the benefits of something, the more you will tend to be in that state, okay? Because you know that you're going to get something good into your life. So try to ask from yourself, what are the benefits that I'm going to get by cultivating these wholesome thoughts? That is the fourth one. So now you asked all the questions from yourself, right? Now you know what to do and you know the benefits of it, right? Now there's only one thing that you have to do and that is to take action. Go ahead and do it, right? Do the wholesome things and cultivate more wholesome qualities to your mind. But remember, none of these things are easy to our life, okay? It is very difficult. We have to try hard. We will fail when we are doing these things. But one thing that we have to do is we have to keep on doing it, whether we fail or not, okay? Once you do it continuously, okay? Once you maintain that consistency, you will be good at it and it will be a part of your life, right? So that is how we deal with our mind. That is how we deal with the negative states of mind. So practice this and see it will work for you. Namahabuddhaya.