Mystic Mantra: What is right thinking?

Every person thinks s/he is right! The old man thinks that because of his experience, what he thinks is right. Young people think that they alone are right and that their parents don’t know anything. It is said that by the time a man thinks that perhaps his father was right, he already has a child who thinks he is wrong!

People are proud of the fact that they are rational and intellectual, but actually they fall far short of it. The Taittiriya Upanishad gives the anatomy of the intellect as comprising the five elements — sraddha, rtam, satyam, yog, mahat.

The first aspect, sraddha, is made up of the words “sradh” meaning truth and “dha” meaning that which holds. Thus sraddha is that which holds the truth. It implies that our thinking must be rooted in faith. Is it not true that even a rationalist has faith in his own sense organs and intellect? Mere logic cannot lead us anywhere. Certain basic premises have to be accepted before we proceed with our inquiry.

With sraddha as the foundation, when we inquire deeply and arrive at an understanding of the truth, it is called rtam. Rtam should be followed by satyam, the manifestation of that truth in our lives. Yog means the mind should be absorbed in that truth, that there should be a deep conviction that guides our lives.

Only a person who has conviction enough to apply the results of her inquiry in his daily life is a true intellectual. And finally, individual thinking must be rooted in the totality called mahat. You must be identified with the welfare of the whole.

If the head of the family thinks only of himself, his own needs and never about the needs of the members of the family, his thinking is not right because he is not able to identify with the entire family unit.

In the same manner, the whole world is my family. When I am able to identify with the totality, my thinking will be right. My individuality must be merged with the totality. From that level if I think, then my actions will be right, and whatever be my personal beliefs, I will not do anything that hurts the totality.

We must learn to look at life as a whole and live a whole life. If my thinking is based only on one aspect, it will be faulty. For instance, if my actions are motivated only by the desire for money, then they will be defective. In my individual life, I must integrate all aspects of my personality, only then will my thinking be right.

To sum up, we face different situations in life. When we don’t understand them properly, or are unable to deal with them, they become problems. All we have to do is utilise our thinking faculty in the proper way. We must cultivate right thinking, rooted in sraddha, rtam, satyam, yog and mahat. Right thinking is the only solution to all our problems.

Swami Tejomayananda, head of Chinmaya Mission Worldwide, is an orator, poet, singer, composer and storyteller.

To find out more about Chinmaya Mission and Swamiji, visit www.chinmayamission.com.
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Mission Trust.