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Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #18 – Perception, Contentment and Fake News

April 28th, 2025

Perception, Contentment and Fake News[1]

 

The black snake was still sitting on the last step of the ghāṭa. It hadn’t moved one inch since I initially saw it when descending the stairs for my bath. A little fearful, I stopped suddenly and walked fifty meters to a safer spot. I didn’t have my glasses, so I had to squint to see why the snake was seemingly motionless. Oh, it was just a ripped black tire! I had an epiphany.

 

All problems are perceptual and not actual. I felt threatened by the black snake, but what was my problem? Was it a matter of what was actually there or rather something perceptual—what I thought was there?

 

The best example of a perceptual problem is death. When we lose what we are attached to, we suffer. At death we seemingly lose our very existence. We are, however, eternal. Therefore, death itself is only the illusion of non-existence and, in that sense, not an actual problem.

 

Every school of spirituality and self-improvement is based on overcoming perceptual or illusory problems. For example, the focus of the yogic process is to conquer distress and invoke contentment by purifying one’s perception, which is distorted by the static of thoughts born of ego.

 

Yoga corrects one’s vision by bringing the mind to sattva, which means the true nature of being. The original nature of the mind, which is like a mirror or lens, is one that is not distorted or dirty. The yogic technique for cleaning the mirror of the mind and bringing it to its true state is called meditation. By concentrating on one thought, the thoughts which distort the mind are quelled. The lens of the mind thus gradually moves to the platform of sattva, a higher level of perception and contentment, which are the main symptoms of sattva.

 

Similarly, in its own way, modern psychology seeks to help solve one’s mental problems by giving one a higher perspective to encounter them. Traumas, phobias, and anxieties, for example, are distortions of one’s thinking and perception. An expert in psychology may help one to identify the irrational patterns of thought that skew one’s perception and cause distress. He or she then helps one to change those patterns of thought hoping to bring one to a higher level of perception and contentment.

 

The purpose of the law of karma is also to elevate our vision by putting us in situations that teach us lessons to help us better understand ourselves. In that way, all spiritual schools of thought serve a singular purpose: to enlighten us or to elevate our perception to make us content or happy.

 

I was initially inspired to write this Monday Morning Greetings highlighting how all problems are perceptual not actual by reflecting on the perils of the internet. It skews people’s perception, forcing them to live in polarized views imbued with hate and misery. When it is used in this way it is certainly not a pramāṇa, a valid means of knowing meant to help us increase our perception and contentment. And it is surely not the world where the saintly reside. Śrīla Prabhupāda therefore condemned such media strongly:

 

“To read ordinary literature and books or newspapers is compared to the pleasure place of crows. The crows, they are very much attached to the rejected refuse, garbage.” (Lecture on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.3.17, Los Angeles, July 12, 1969)

 

 


[1] This is an edited reprint of February 24, 2020.

 

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