Restoration of the Mind
This article is about a car because I am a bit of a petrol head. Like the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' it could be about anything, because it is the essence of the story that matters. I could have made this story about a lion tamer, and that would have been just as appropriate.
Suppose we find a really rare and desirable old car, something like a '64 Mercedes Gull-wing, at an old farm covered in dirty, bits missing and a real mess.
We buy if for next to nothing, clear out the chickens and the hay and tow it home to our garage. For the next twenty years we spend thousands of hours lovingly restoring it to its original showroom condition. It is now perfect. Now it is decision time.
Do we going to sit cross legged in the corner contemplating its magnificence and beauty, and wait for it to do something? Or do we open up the garage door, start the engine and take it out to see what it can do?
I am, of course, referring to the human mind. We have spent years on the spiritual path getting our brain into good condition. You may not think of it that way but that is how it is. Progressing along a spiritual path naturally repairs our damaged minds.
The mind, in good condition, is passive, like the Mercedes in the garage. It waits for us to start the engine and tell it what we want. It then goes and gets it for us. It will guide us to anything we want. But it will wait passively until the engine is strated.
There is a stage where we need to decide what we want. Not what we are told we are supposed to want, but what we really want. Then the mind will take us there.
The alternative is to sit cross legged in the corner contemplating the beauty and waiting for the mind to do something while the mind is sitting crossed legged looking back waiting to be told what to do.
The real benefit of learning to meditate and taming the mind is to bring the mind to the place where it will be calm and wait for instructions instead of going its own way with us running after it trying to minimise the damage.
As in all things spiritual there is no need to wait until we reach perfect before we start using what we have gained. We calm our minds a little bit. We can start using it a little bit. It calms some more so we can use it some more, and so on, until we reach the stage where we are using our minds to create what we wantinstead of our minds using us to create what we don't want.
David Young