Taming The Mind

Mary was up late, waiting for Matt the next evening, despite his being late from work.

She served him dinner and as he settled down to eat, asked him, "Tell me more about Gabriel Ben's novel ways of taming the mind."

Matt understood. He smiled and spoke between mouthfuls of food, "One day Gabriel Ben was expecting a visit from a large number of his sponsors."

"Wanting to impress them, he fretted and fussed. He arranged and rearranged that day's offerings on his shrine in front of the image of Buddh."

"Examining his handiwork when he was finally satisfied, he suddenly realized that his intentions were not pure. He had done what he had done today merely to try and impress his patrons."

"Disgusted with himself, he picked up a handful of dirt and threw it over the offerings saying, "Monk, just stay where you are and don't put on airs!"

"It is said that when Stanly  or 'Father Smith' heard this story, he said, "That handful of dirt that Ben Mark
threw was the best offering in all Tibet!"

"Why?” asked Mary

“We have no control over what thoughts will arrive in our minds,” answered Matt, “But if we can remain constantly vigilant, recognize the wrong immediately, confess it and try not to do it again, we do less and less wrong. Which also simply means that we will begin to do more and more right."

"Have more food", Mary insisted when she saw that Matt was almost done, eating as well as speaking.

'One way to this man's heart', she thought lovingly, 'is through his tummy'. And, it was beginning to show.

"Tell me more", she asked once she had filled his plate with another generous helping of rice and curd.

Matt put his spoon aside, poured curd on his rice, and sprinkled some salt over it. He started eating again, creating little balls of curd-rice before popping them into his mouth with his fingers.

"One day Gabriel Ben was at a large gathering of geshes at Penyulgyal. Gabriel, as you probably already know, is a Tibetan Buddhist academic degree for monks and nuns. As part of the meal, some curd was offered to the guests."

"Gabriel Ben, it is said, was seated in one of the middle rows, and noticed that the monks in the first row were receiving large portions."

'The way they are lavishly serving that delicious yogurt...' he thought, 'they will run out of it before they reach me. I don't think I’ll get my fair share.'

"Suddenly realizing what he was thinking, he caught hold of himself: 'You curd-addict!' he thought, 'Here you go again'.

"He immediately turned his bowl upside down. As it turned out, there was enough curd for everyone. When the man serving the curd came and asked him if he would like some, Gabriel Ben refused."

“This evil mind has already taken its share,” he said.

"But there was nothing wrong in wanting to have a fair share?" Mary objected.

"Indeed", Matt agreed as he got up from the dining table, "but it was the realization of the self-contentedness of his expectations, that made him refuse it in the end.”

“If the mind can always be examined like this and taught, adopting what is wholesome and rejecting what is harmful, it can become malleable and there can be hope that it can be tamed."

"And have you tamed your mind yet, my husband?" Mary teased, clearing the dinner table.

He smiled and replied, "No my dear, not yet. I try often, but I always fail."

"Then make sure you do not fail me tonight!", she commanded, a twinkle in her eye.

His smile deepened as he responded, "I have never said, Do as I do. But do as I say, and there is hope - for you."

She laughed throatily at his rejoinder, then retorted, "There is always hope, so long as there is love."

'He knows so much', she thought, 'yet he knows so little.'

"Come here", she flashed a mischievous grin, "Let me fill you with both."

She touched him ever so lightly. Sensually. Music began in his mind.

“Go Kamli”, he said, as he waited. Waited and watched.

She moved slowly. Then her tempo accelerated, accelerating the beats in his temple.

Taming of the beast had begun.

Caught You Red-Handed

The night was dark. The shriveled moon paled in its efforts to bring light to the earth. Matt lay awake late that night, thinking.

Mary sensed his restlessness, and turned around to face him.

She touched his face lovingly, and with her finger gently traced his facial contours down to his neck.

"What bothers you so?" she asked.

"Morality is a not an innate trait which humans are born with. It is a social construct imposed and enforced by society so we can all live in peace with each other. It is the parent's duty to teach it to their child."

"But you already do," protested Mary, "you already teach them everything."

"I didn't today," Matt answered, "I failed. I yielded to your judgment, as it seemed so reasonable. But I suspect, we have both erred today."

"Why do you think so?" she asked.

"We cannot teach our kids to watch their minds, when we are unable to watch ours. We have to be like Gabriel Ben Gungyal."

"Who was he?" she asked. She loved the stories he told, just like her kids.

"He was a 12th century Tibetan Zen master", answered her husband, "It is said that he neither recited prayers nor meditated in traditional ways. All he did was to observe his mind very carefully. Whenever he noticed his mind becoming agitated, he became especially vigilant."

"For example, if he felt self-cherishing was about to arise, he would immediately recall its disadvantages, and focus on Universal Love, the opposite of self-contentedness. He became renowned for his novel ways of nipping such persuasive feelings in the bud."

"To gauge his spiritual progress, it is told, he would put a black pebble down in front of him whenever a negative thought arose, and a white pebble whenever a positive thought arose. At the end of the day he would count the pebbles."

"If there were more black pebbles he would berate himself and try even harder the next day. But if there were more white pebbles he would praise and encourage himself."

"At the beginning, the black pebbles greatly outnumbered the white ones, but over the years his mind improved until the white ones began to greatly outnumber the black ones."

"As a youngster, Gabriel Ben Mark had a reputation for being wild and unruly, but by watching his mind closely all the time and judging it with complete honesty, he gradually got better. Several stories from his life can be found in Patrul Rinpoche's book Words of My Perfect Teacher."

"Tell me more about him", she asked, as she adjusted her pillow and settled back more comfortably on the bed.

"As was customary at the time", Matt began, "Buddhist monks, or Bhikkus, begged door to door for alms, when they were not engaged in their spiritual development activities. The people were poor and the takings were minimal at the best of the times. But recent times had been leaner."

"Gabriel Ben hadn't eaten for days. A householder invited him inside to be fed, as he roamed the streets on this particular day. He was seated respectfully in a room and the host went off to the kitchen to prepare food for him. The room was bare except for a jar of food on the shelf beside where he sat."

"Time passed slowly and the expectation that he was finally going to eat made his stomach growl with eager anguish. Gabriel Ben was so hungry that he found it difficult to wait. His eyes kept returning to the jar of food within his reach."

"Obviously, he couldn't just take food from the jar himself, without it first being offered to him by his host. But the host was nowhere to be seen. He was alone in the room. Yearning for food was beginning to cloud his mind. His mouth watered, yet his throat hurt from empty swallows. His fingers trembled, intestines grumbled."

"Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hour. The waiting was made worse by the delicious smell of food cooking in the kitchen that wafted into his nostrils."

"To his complete shock, he found himself stealing food from the jar. Gabriel Ben suddenly burst out into loud cries of "Thief! Thief! I've caught you red-handed."

"His hosts rushed into the room, to find him berating himself and threatening his hand with being cut off, if it ever behaved like that again."

His point made, Matt said no more. Sleep came quickly to him. Mary lay awake, pondering late into the night. She was blissfully oblivious of Matt's usually annoying loud snores as images of Buddhist monks flashed on the canvas inside her closed eyelids.

Some encouraging words I wrote:

* See a dear friend in your position. What would you say to encourage them? 

* Challenges are inevitable. Getting back up however, is a choice. 

* Are you really going to let this defeat you? After all the work, sweat, and tears you have put into this, you are going to give up now? 

* You’re not alone. Many have gone before you. Many will go after you. The important thing to keep in mind is that you need to keep on going. 

* You may think you know your limits but you don’t. You’re capable of far more than you realize. 

* Root for yourself even if you’re the only one. Even if no one believes in you, you have to at least believe in yourself.

* No matter what, today will come to an end and tomorrow will arrive, leaving you one less day to live. You can either sit there and waste another day feeling sorry for yourself or you can get up and do something about it. 

* You’re more than your past failures and mistakes. You’re more than what you’ve been demonstrating up to this point in your life. Don’t let your screw ups define you. Instead, let your potential guide you toward becoming the person you want to be.

* Things could be worse, much worse. Consider yourself lucky that things aren’t worse than they are. 

* If you’re still breathing, it’s not the end and as long as it’s not yet the end, make the remainder of your life worth living.

* Sometimes, not achieving your current goal is exactly what needed to happen in order for you to step up your game and experience greatness. 

* If you’re going through the pain of a break up, realize that the odds of that person being your perfect match is incredibly low. In other words, there’s a very good chance that you will find someone much better. 

* We tend to learn the most when things don’t go as we had hoped. If anything, past failures can make you better prepared to take advantage of greater opportunities. 

* Things will turn out okay not because it’s a guarantee that your situation will improve but because you have the strength to deal with anything life can throw at you and the power to turn things around if you choose to do so. 

* The ups and downs of life, it’s all part of the life experience package. Without the downs, the ups won’t feel as good. Without the absence of the sun during a storm, you won’t appreciate the warmth of its light when it eventually reappears. 

* You’ve got one life to live; one life to experience all that life has to offer. Embrace it while you still can. 

* Sometimes, it helps to take a step back and look at the grand scheme of things. Perhaps then you’ll realize just how silly it would be to spend another minute worrying and stressing about things you won’t even care about or remember a year from now. 

* Life can be tough and even unfair at times. I don’t really have an answer as to why certain things happen but I do know that these are usually the moments in life where the potential for personal growth is the greatest. Diamonds are created under intense pressure. Muscles are built by overcoming tremendous resistance. You could either let these moments in life break you or use them to become a mentally stronger person.

* How far you can go in life is yet to be seen. Don’t let other people’s limited beliefs about what’s possible diminish your potential. 

* Losing someone dear to you can be one of the toughest things to go through but you’ll get through it when enough time has passed. Keep in mind that they wouldn’t want you to stop embracing your life because of their passing. If anything, they’d rather you take this as a sign to live life to the fullest if you haven’t been doing so already. 

* Through our failures and setbacks, we can become wiser and more mentally prepared to deal with future obstacles. The problem is, we usually don’t realize the value of the experience until later on since we can be too emotionally involved. If you’re struggling through something right now, chances are, it won’t be for no reason. You’ll eventually find some sort of benefit from this experience even if it may not be obvious at the moment. 

* When you think about just how short a human life is compared to time itself, you’ll realize how insignificant our problems are in the whole grand scheme of things. No matter what you’re going through, it’s all temporary. Work on letting go of all the unnecessary stress you’re carrying around in order to have more time and mental energy to enjoy life. 

* When life gets you down and no one is there to help lift you back up, you can either continue waiting for someone to come along to help you, stay down, or decide that you’re strong enough to lift yourself back up. 

* If you feel like your life sucks, it’s a sign that something needs to change. If you don’t like where you are in life, do something about it. Improve yourself, daily. Sitting there and feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to change anything. Plenty of people have turned their entire life around just by deciding to do so. Realize that you have the power to determine your own destiny. You can either waste it and live an unhappy life or use it to design and enjoy an incredible life. 

* Give yourself some time to heal, but not too much time. Misery can be addictive and no matter how comfortable it can make you feel at times, hanging on to it will only make things worse.