When painful memories keep replaying on their own, it can feel like the mind has turned against you. You are not choosing this. There is nothing you are doing wrong.
The mind clings to painful memories because it starts identifying with them emotionally. Sometimes there is even a hidden feeling that if we let go of the pain, we are letting go of the person or part of ourselves connected to it. So the mind keeps revisiting the sorrow, even when it continues causing suffering.
You can keep what mattered without keeping the suffering. Those two are not the same thing.
From the Mahabharata
After the Kurukshetra war, Yudhishthira was consumed by grief and could not stop replaying what had happened. During the teachings given to him at that time, Krishna compares trying to hold on to events to trying to hold on to flowing water — the river does not pause, and neither does life. Krishna's intention was to help Yudhishthira see that clinging to what had passed was not honoring it; it was simply prolonging suffering.
This reflection draws from Swamini Supriyananda’s Mahabharata teachings at Chinmaya Mission Hong Kong.
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