When the mind is in a flux or is busy analyzing the pros and cons of an issue, it is called manas or the deliberative faculty. When it exercises discrimination or takes decisions, it is called buddhi or the discriminative faculty. What is called will is the dynamic aspect of buddhi. The more awakened the buddhi, the stronger the will power. As long as the mind is not disciplined it remains sense-bound and drags us towards sense enjoyment. In the process, buddhi lies dormant and the will remains weak. Life in such circumstances is ‘led’ by the mind and the senses. Selfishness remains the core value, and circumstances dictate our behaviour. Things appear to be fine as long as we are party to this slavish existence. The mind is accustomed to the path of least resistance: senses, objects and enjoyment. Once we try to train the mind, it rebels with all its might, advancing all plausible excuses not to lose its upper hand over us. Nor does it cooperate with us in acquiring good habits or kicking bad ones.
Such a mind the Bhagavad Gita calls our enemy, and teaches us to how to befriend it: by discipline and control. The only tool for this mind discipline is our buddhi or a strong will. Every exercise of discrimination, conscious thinking and decisive action goes to strengthen our will. With this will we learn to patiently bring back the straying mind to the task in hand or to the divine form we try to meditate on. Every success in this attempt, again, goes to fortify our will against the mind’s lures. The purer the buddhi and stronger the will, the more will our identification be with the divine core of our personality and less with our body, mind and senses. Such a purified will paves the way to inner solitude; we learn to remain unshaken by circumstances, good and bad. When the mind is fully purified, says Sri Ramakrishna, there is nothing to distinguish it from the Atman. The Upanishads say that the Atman (or Brahman) is one without a second, and a knower of Brahman becomes Brahman. The knower is truly alone in that blessed state of Oneness. True solitude thus really refers to that state of Self-realization.