Look at the Himalayan Mountains

The nature of the mind that’s not finding inner fulfillment is that it makes insignificant things seem so important — Radhanath Swami. 

Things that are practically meaningless we sometimes interpret as so meaningful. Fights, arguments and even divorces are often based on these trifling things. Radhanath Swami explains in this connection. “If there is a little hill in front of your house and that’s all you have ever seen, it seems gigantic.” As long as we don’t focus our consciousness on higher principles, unimportant things are important, at least they seem that way. Radhanath Swami, continuing his analogy of being overwhelmed by a little hill, says, “But if you look at the Himalayan Mountains, then that little hill is insignificant because you have seen something greater.” We have to see something higher in life. “Krishna is great, devotion is great, and the satisfaction of Bhakti is great. When we have some connection to that, some experience with that, then all of these little things we see it for what it is worth. Otherwise, things that really has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with reality, obsess us, possess us, rule over us and cause us to fight, to battle, to become envious and angry. We can only overcome these things when we experience something higher. That’s the real solution.”

The stage of perfection is called trance, or samadhi, when one’s mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This is characterized by one’s ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.’ (Bhagavad Gita 6.20-23)