So I was about ten years old when I was first introduced to meditation.
But it wasn’t really until my late teens, maybe even my early 20s,
that it had a bigger impact on my life.
As I got a little bit older, I experienced some loss in my life,
people really close to me,
And I didn’t know how to deal with that, So I found myself overwhelmed by emotion.
I found that my mind was often very busy.
And I though at some level that I could think my way out of it.
As it turned out, I couldn’t.
I needed something more radical.
And so I decided to quit my degree
and become a Buddhist monk instead.
I went off to the Himalayas, and I began a journey of many years
where I lived in a number of different monasteries in different countries.
And during that time, I had the good fortune to learn
from some of the greatest masters in many different traditions.
And my hope is that I can share their wisdom and their insight with you
so that you don’t have to go to the Himalayas.
You don’t have to become monk or nun,
and you don’t have to make all the mistakes
that I made on journey.
When I started practiced at the monastery,
I just assumed that meditation meant to control the mind,
to change the mind,
to be able to get rid of thoughts and distractions.
But my teacher explained it in a different way. He said, “Look,
imagine that you’re sitting on the side of the road.”
He said, “Now all you have to do is to just sit there and watch the cars.
The cars are your thoughts.”
Sounds easy, right?
But what usually happens
is that we feel a bit unsettled
by the movement of the traffic.
So we run out into the road, and we try and stop the cars.
Or maybe we even find ourselves chasing after a few…
..forgetting that the idea was to just sit there.
Now obviously, all of this running around
only adds to the feeling of restlessness in our mind.
So training the mind
is about changing our relationship with those passing thoughts and feelings.
Learning how to view them with a little more perspective,
and when we do this, we naturally find a place of calm.
Will we sometimes forget
the idea of the exercise and become distracted?
Of course, we will.
But as soon as we remember, here we are,
back on the side of the road again, just watching the traffic go by,
perfectly at ease in both body and mind.
Leave a Reply