Control Your Senses

Once a motivational speaker placed one dot on a blank chart and asked everyone, what they can see. Everyone answered - a dot. Amusingly, you can see the small dot but not the emptiness on paper, he said. It's like few people see half glass as half full and some view it as half empty. Our 5 senses - eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch are always at work. What you see, hear, smell, taste and touch gets converted into feelings and they are transmitted to mind.  When they are analyzed by our conscious mind they stay in our sub-conscious mind. 

 

When two people see the same thing, there is a difference in their perception level. Different people perceive the same situation differently based on their education, background, experience, upbringing, knowledge etc.  At this point it is relevant to recall the story of blind students and elephant as narrated in ancient Buddhist literature. Few blind students who had never seen and heard about elephant went into forest and found an elephant. Every blind person touched the different body parts of elephant and described elephant in their own way. Jainism also described it as ANEKANTAVAD doctrine of pluralism which explains that even the truth is perceived differently by different people based on their view points. 

 

Our view point lies on the scale of highly negative thought at one end and highly positive thought on the other end. Here it is important to keep your needle towards the side of positive thoughts. As a human being it is quite natural that our thoughts may drift to negativity but we need to monitor & control our mind continuously to bring all senses and feelings towards positivity. Till we attainenlightenment, it is a continuous process to keep the horses of senses under control. 

 

Someone has said, “What you sense, it becomes your feelings, feelings get converted into thoughts, thoughts becomes words, words get converted into action, action becomes habits, habit forms character and your character becomes your destiny.  So control your senses, they make your destiny. 

 

5 tips how to control senses: 

 

1. Always be very conscious of your senses. Either your mind will control your senses or senses will start controlling your mind. 

2. It is a natural tendency of senses to drift. Not to worry, you can get back towards positive side. 

3. Reading good books or listening to motivational speeches helps in enhancing wisdom. In-turn they control senses effectively. 

4. Do not feel guilty about negative thoughts, words or action. Past is not important, future is critical.

5. It is easy to control action, difficult to control words and very difficult to control thoughts. Deal accordingly.