Question: How can we control the mind?

Sri Chinmoy: Please try to imagine a lotus inside your heart. Then try to imagine that the lotus is not only inside your heart, but that your heart itself is a lotus. When you look at the lotus or imagine the lotus, try to be deeply absorbed in the beauty of the lotus. It is your own heart-lotus. Then your mind will have no time to roam.

When you enter into a garden, you look at the flowers and enjoy their beauty and fragrance. At that time you do not pay attention to anything else. You have no thought. You are only enjoying the experience that the flowers are offering.

In the same way, try to be deeply absorbed in the lotus which is inside your heart. Then a day will come when you will see that this lotus is not a flower at all — it is your heart itself, which is full of beauty and fragrance. If you start appreciating the beauty and fragrance of your own heart, then there will be no time for your mind to think of anything else.

It all depends on where we place our attention. You are a teacher. When you pay all attention to the subject that you are teaching, whether it is mathematics or any other subject, then you become deeply absorbed. It is when you are not deeply absorbed that the mind roams here and there. When an athlete is running, does he have time to think? No, his goal is only to reach the finish line as fast as possible. Now that you have entered into the spiritual life, your goal is only to remain inside your heart. Who can prevent you from remaining inside your heart-room? For many years, or even centuries, you have been living in your mind-room. Therefore, your heart-room is not familiar to you. But once we start living in the heart-room and pay all attention to the heart-room, we can forget about the other room. This is how we can always be in the heart and pray to God, meditate on God and become choicest instruments of God.