The Gita Way

Sri Ramana Maharshi

In the evening, after parayana, a visitor asked Bhagavan, “How to control the wandering mind?” He prefaced the question with the remark, “I want to ask Bhagavan a question which is troubling me.” 

Bhagavan replied, after laughing, “This is nothing peculiar to you. This is the question which is always asked by everybody and which is dealt with in all the books like the Gita. What way is there, except to draw in the mind as often as it strays or goes outward, and to fix it in the Self, as the Gita advises? Of course, it won’t be easy to do it. It will come only with practice or sadhana.” 

The visitor said, “The mind goes after only what it desires and won’t get fixed on the object we set before it.” 

Bhagavan said, “Everybody will go after only what gives happiness to him. Thinking that happiness comes from some object or other, you go after it. See from whence all happiness, including the happiness you regard as coming from sense objects, really comes. You will understand all happiness comes only from the Self, and then you will always abide in the Self.”