How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [3]
Unfortunately the mind, in its anxiety for us, tries to make plans for a huge number of possible futures, most of which will never arrive. This constant leapfrogging into the future is a waste of our mental and emotional energy. The most important way we can prepare for the unknown-to-come is to make a reasonable plan and then to pay attention to what is happening right now. Then we can greet what flows toward us with a clear, flexible mind and an open heart, ready and able to modify our plan according to the reality of the moment.
The mind also enjoys excursions into realms of fantasy, where it creates an internal video of a new and different me, famous, handsome, powerful, talented, successful, wealthy, and loved. The capacity of the human mind to fantasize is wonderful, the basis of all our creativity. It allows us to imagine new inventions, create new art and music, arrive at new scientific hypotheses, and to make plans for everything from new buildings to new chapters of our lives. Unfortunately, it can become an escape, an escape from whatever is uncomfortable about the present moment, an escape from the anxiety of not knowing what is actually moving toward us, an escape from the fear that the next moment (or hour or day or year) could bring us difficulties or even death. Incessant fantasizing and daydreaming are different from directed creativity. Creativity comes from resting the mind in neutral, allowing it to clear itself and provide a fresh canvas on which new ideas, equations, poems, melodies, or colorful strokes can appear.
When we allow the mind to rest in the present, full of what is actually happening right now, redirecting it away from repeated fruitless, energy-sapping excursions into the past, future, or fantasy realms, we are doing something very important. We are conserving the energy of the mind. It remains fresh and open, ready to respond to whatever appears before it.
This may sound trivial, but it is not. Ordinarily our mind does not rest. Even at night it is active, generating dreams from a mix of anxieties and the events of our life. We know that our body cannot function well without rest, so we give it at least a few hours to lie down and relax each night. We forget, though, that our mind needs rest, too. Where it finds rest is in the present moment, where it can lie down and relax into the flow of events.
Mindfulness practice reminds us not to fritter our mental energy away in trips to past and future, but to keep returning to this very place, to rest in what is happening in this very time.
2. MINDFULNESS TRAINS AND STRENGTHENS THE MIND
We are all aware that the human body can be trained. We can become more flexible (gymnasts and acrobats), more graceful (ballet dancers), more skilled (piano players), and stronger (weight lifters). We are less aware that there are many aspects of mind that can be cultivated. Just before his enlightenment the Buddha described the qualities of mind and heart that he had developed over many years. He observed that his mind had become “concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, malleable, wieldy, rid of imperfections, imperturbable.” When we practice mindfulness, we learn to lift the mind up out of its habitual preoccupations and place it down in a place of our choosing in order to illuminate some aspect of our life. We are training the mind to be light, powerful, and flexible but also able to concentrate on what we ask it to focus on.
The Buddha spoke of taming the mind. He said it was like taming a wild forest elephant. Just as an untamed elephant can do damage, trampling crops and injuring people, so the untamed, capricious mind can cause harm to us and those around us. Our human minds have a much larger capacity