Body-Mind equanimity at work

At the end of a long day at work, we often say, ‘my body is too tired!’ The fact is, if we have a desk job, no matter how long the day at work has been, the body does not usually feel tired. It is the mind that feels exhausted. The mind needs a space of its own to breathe, create and innovate. It feels congested when we clog it up with things it is not trained to treat as interesting or challenging. 

The mind asks us to train it continuously. If we burn too much of our energy training and toning only the body, chances are that the body will leave the mind behind. That will of course affect our productivity at work. We are quite likely to feel bored, disoriented, and occasionally disillusioned. Training the body is easy, and there are well-known formal methods of doing that. But, how do you train the mind? How do we maintain equanimity between the body and the mind? It’s a bit tricky, because the mind is not a physical entity.

Does the mind live in the body?

We know we have a mind of our own. Where does the mind live? Inside the body? Or, does the mind live outside of the body and we feel it inside it through a reflection of our consciousness? Is mind formless? There is an uncountable number of questions that humans have asked about mind over thousands of years. Yet, mind remains a mysterious entity of our existence. It has been understood and explained in a variety of ways by thinkers around the world.

We experience the mind in various states every day. We feel ecstatic at a time and feel depressed the next moment; we believe we’re frustrated at some time, and again smile the next moment. Out of all these states, pleasantness is the most natural way to be. When we experience pleasantness from within, everything around us looks beautiful; even the usually ignorable physical existences (such as a small leaf in a plant) appear in front of us magnified in presence. When pleasantness emanates from within us, we don’t have to try to smile. In fact, smile automatically spreads on our face. We greet people with positive warmth. We feel something dancing inside us in tune with our mind. For those moments of pleasantness, we experience life in its joyful avatar.

Why doesn’t this state of pleasantness last long? Or in other words, why don’t we experience pleasantness uninterruptedly? This is because of the way we train our mind to experience pleasantness. We always want to achieve something, reach somewhere, do something, prove something to someone to feel pleasant. Our conventional approach makes the state of pleasantness dependent on external factors which we cannot influence through our physical body or the formless mind. 

We condition our mind to feel good when we fix the outcome of an event in a way that we believe is favourable to us. If the outcome is aligned to our expectations, we feel pleasant. We forget that the danger with this approach is that the outcome is temporary, and also, the same outcome may not be favourable for us at a different time. We will naturally come out of our pleasantness when that happens. We’ll again be in search of the next event, the next outcome to gain pleasantness. We try to experience our mind through outwardly events and as a consequence of that, we cause suffering to ourselves.

The mind in its purest form is formless. The mind is one of the biggest gifts that life gives us. The body has a spiritual connection with the mind. As long as we’re limited to the normal senses of our existence, we would need both the mind and the body to enrich our experience of life.

Let us play a game

Let us do a simple experiment. If we hold a glass of hot water, the natural reaction of the body is to feel the heat and to make a decision whether we should remove our fingers. Now imagine this: you tell yourself before holding the glass, ‘No matter how hot the glass feels, I will hold on to it longer than I usually can’. What do you think will happen? The body will urge you to withdraw your fingers, but you’ve already convinced your mind that you won’t let your body feel the heat so quickly. Three things may happen.

1. You withdraw around the same time you did before you had the secret conversation with your mind, or
2. you burn your fingers and your palm, or
3. you manage to hold on to the glass longer than before without causing any damage to your fingers or the palm.

In the first outcome, your body takes over your mind and your experience of the reality is incomplete. In the second instance, your mind captures your body, and you cause damage to your body by ignoring the reality (the heat). Whilst the second outcome is not desirable, the first outcome does not cause you any harm although it limits your possibilities. Let us now understand the third possible outcome. In this case, your body and your mind are in tune. You’ve enhanced your physical capability by holding on to the glass longer than you usually would, yet you haven’t harmed your body.

The nature of our existence requires us to observe this spiritual chemistry between the body and the mind. Unless we transcend the physical dimension of our existence, we would be limited in various ways by our body. And, that is absolutely perfect for most of us to be in that state. As long as we are in that state, that is our reality. We need to acknowledge that the body IS. What IS should not be denied. We need to endeavour to observe the wonderful cosmic dance that the body is always in with the mind. 

It is OK for most of us to feel that these two entities are inseparable. When we travel beyond all physical forms of existence and life becomes one with the cosmic energy, we do not need the body anymore. But, whilst we are still in the spiritual journey and we know we aren’t there yet, let us observe both the body and the mind, and try to keep them in perfect equanimity.