I asked Vince if it was still hard and he said “not at all” adding this observation: “However, I know there’s a beast in my mind but I have him in a cage. Every now and then he shakes the cage but I simply tell him to ‘calm down’ and then it’s all good.” His reference to a beast in the mind is highly helpful for meditators. All of us have a mind which is much like a beast: erratic, volatile, angry, inconsistent, constantly twitching. Like Vince, we need to be aware of the beast’s presence, contain him in a cage and, whenever he begins to shake the cage, we need to offer him the instruction to calm down.
I recently attended (12/21/22) a retirement celebration for a man who had directed the HOW Foundation in Tulsa, a center devoted to helping men break free from addiction. Seated across the table from me was a man, ‘Vince’, who told me he’d been clean and sober for six years. Among the ripple effects of his addiction issue were time spent in prison and the erosion of family life. His first two years of working toward sobriety were “very hard” he told me.
I asked Vince if it was still hard and he said “not at all” adding this observation: “However, I know there’s a beast in my mind but I have him in a cage. Every now and then he shakes the cage but I simply tell him to ‘calm down’ and then it’s all good.” His reference to a beast in the mind is highly helpful for meditators. All of us have a mind which is much like a beast: erratic, volatile, angry, inconsistent, constantly twitching. Like Vince, we need to be aware of the beast’s presence, contain him in a cage and, whenever he begins to shake the cage, we need to offer him the instruction to calm down. Comments are closed.
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Victor M. Parachin ...is aVedic educator, yoga instructor, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of a dozen books. Buy his books at amazon or your local bookstore. Archives
March 2024
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