Training the Mind Is Like Taming a Wild Animal
From TheBuddhism.Net
People come to practice at the monastery in order to attain peace. But for many, the result of the practice is often the opposite and rather disappointing, because all they experience are restlessness, discomfort and a drifting mind. If there is no understanding, we will get confused and despair, Wondering why we are there.
Training our mind is like training a wild animal. Take a monkey for example. The first thing we must do to train it is to keep it in a cage. The monkey will revolt.
But we must be patient and not give it any food or water. After a while, it will run out of energy, at which point we can begin to feed it. Gradually it will be familiar with us and finally become tamed.
Thereafter, even if it still moves around in the cage, it is not revolting. We may be able to put it on a leash, take it out of the cage, teach it to sit, stand, and reward it with a banana if it is obedient.
In the end we may even be able to let it out of the cage freely.
Training our mind is similar.
At home we are free to do whatever we want, watching TV or videos, or reading. This is similar to a free monkey living in the wild. When we come to practice at the monastery, we have to abide by the rules and a fixed schedule. These rules are like a cage for our mind. But we must understand that this is the experience that every beginner must face and we are suffering because our practice is on the right track. After a period of adjustment we will get used to the practice and our mind will be calm, neither pleased nor displeased with anything. Morality, concentration and wisdom will arise, allowing our mind to rise above suffering.
Without the right understanding and wisdom, we will judge the practice simply with our emotions, and instead of seeing the benefit, we end up thinking that the practice is bad as it only brings suffering. But if we are patient and persevere, we will understand that the objective of experiencing this suffering is so that we can finally put an end to it.
Source : thesevenpracticesforahelthymind.blogspot.com
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To work with the mind is not easy, but it’s the only way to solve most of the human problems because everything starts from the mind(thoughts) then only it’s transform to be an action, it’s either by word(speech), physical action(body) or both.
To Observe, Analyse, Understand, Examine & Maintain, the mind, is a process to get rid of our problems.
We will need the help of a professional who is trained in dealing with the mind or better still, a spiritual teacher, to help us achieve a calm and composed mind. To achieve that, we have to put in a lot of hard work, effort, patience, perseverance; without letting up on the training or giving up on the teacher. It may not be easy but worthwhile for it gives happiness to ourself and the people around us.
Totally agree with the article. Our mind is very complicated sometimes people don’t even know what is in their mind. Sometimes, our mind can dig back some old incident, even incidents from previous life, it just flashed back like a short film. I think only through meditation and contemplation can train our mind. In our busy lifestyle, it’s very hard to sit down quietly, and think deeply where are we from, what we’ve done wrong, what we’ve done well, etc. But it also depends on one whether people want to train their mind or not. I notice that many young generation in this era nowadays are not mindful. Maybe they don’t even think about training their mind? I hope there are more and more people can practice dharma, so that through practicing dharma, one can sit down and meditate, contemplate, train their mind, to be more mindful.
Everything we experience come from the same mind. Happy and sad , hope and give up , there are all come from the same mind. if we can created happiness in our mind but why are we sometimes was sad. To keep a peaceful and happy mind at all times especially in difficult circumstances is through training our mind. The greatest purpose of our life is to achieve enlightenment through practising of Dharma and mind training is the supreme practice.
As the saying goes, taming our monkey mind. Our mind is constantly “working”even when we are deep into our sleep. How are we going to tame when it is so fickle and inconsistent. Meditation is one obvious way to be focus on matters so that we can develop the awareness we need in times of our inevitable death. To develop that mental awareness to be in control of things so that we don’t lose our temper and be attached on things notably emotions. The awareness is also important for us to learn what benefits us such as Dharma. Without the type of awareness, it is hard for us to sink in subjects in my opinion. Another way of taming the mind is by way of training received from our Guru who would compassionately teach and guide us the way to make ourselves a better person through trainings for us to adapt on certain situations. In short, taming the mind is not necessarily sitting down and meditate but can be done by subduing to a real guru who can train us for the betterment of ourselves.
The human mind as being filled with drunken monkeys, jumping around, screeching, chattering, carrying on endlessly. We all have monkey minds and fear is an especially loud monkey, sounding the alarm incessantly, pointing out all the things we should be wary of and everything that could go wrong.
It’s useless to fight the monkeys or to try to banish them because we know we will resist.
Buddha showed how to meditate in order to tame our mind. Buddha said if we spend some time each day in quiet meditation simply calm our mind by focusing on our breathing or a simple mantra. Over time it will tame the monkey and will grow more peaceful with consistent practice of the meditation.
Learning to manage our monkey mind is one of the best things we can do to transform fear. Pay attention to how our monkeys act and listen to them and get to know them, especially the fear monkey. Take time to practice simple meditation on a regular basis. Learn how to change the conversations in your head.
How to tame our mind? Our mind is so powerful that I believe one cannot be tamed if he or she doesn’t want to. Why we wanted to be tamed? Because we wanted to be better! So that we can function better, we can excel in our life. Many people do meditation and yoga to tame their mind to gain peace and heal etc.
I truly believe we can think and react and do things better when our mind is tamed. Hence buddhism hold vows and meditate on death. Our minds cannot be tamed over night but through practice we can. When our mind is tamed we can do a lot more, think far and contemplate deep. As a result we gain realization on many things in our life. That also lead to less ignorance, less laziness and less anger hence we stay away from sufferings. Ultimately enlightenment.
Our minds are full of activities and a lot of habituations from the past which makes it hard to tame and takes time. On a spiritual level, our Guru is the one who will compassionately ask us to do things which we have to endure the difficulty and suffering in order to tame our mind. If a person who is not spiritual, I would say breathing meditation is a good way to acknowldge your thoughts and let it pass and not holding on to it.
The mind is really not easy to tame because it always runs around like a wild animal. Constantly ‘thinking’ and ‘working’ on every single thing that it can grasp on therefore creating heaps of projections and karmas. Perseverance is a very big word when it comes to training our mind. Always remind ourselves why we need to persevere. Once we lose track, we can give up easily and just move further away. We need to always be patient and focus on the actual reason why we wanted spirituality in our life in the first place. How we want to be ‘happier’ and ease the ‘suffering’ that we are currently experiencing in this life and all future lives.
This is an interesting article and mind triggering. I agreed our mind is like wild animals, active, reckless like monkeys. Without controlling our mind, I believed we will be people with lack of morality, discipline, responsibility and attitude.
In my opinion, I think focusing on the things we needed to do by taking responsible to it. Once we take the commitment, there shouldn’t be lagging on the progress. On another opinion, meditation is best medicine for calming our mind. Here is a short video of meditation by Mingyur Rinpoche.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6pMbRiSBPs
It is so true, that until we understand the reason why we feel restless and uncomfortable while we are training our minds in a peaceful environment we will never want to endure such a suffering and give up on training our mind.
My personal experience with the wildness and wandering nature of my mind was when I first started my Dorje Shugden retreats. It was very difficult to concentrate and to comprehend the meanings of the holy text that I was reciting. When it was time for mantra recitation, the mind went into a revolt and although I was reciting verbally my mind went to all my worries and anxieties and at times even the happy events, recalling details of what happened.
As I progressed more into my monthly retreats, the mind was calmer by the second day. Although I am not in a perpetual state of calm through my waking hours of the day, I realise that these days when I start to recite my Mantras, I can visualise the words and concentrate more without much wandering. Sad to say, there are times when my mind still wanders. Training and patience is the key to a calm and steady mind.
Thank You, Guru Rinpoche for this advice. This analogy will help me greatly in my quest to tame my mind especially my ego.