Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

good ones, cleaning the defilement from our minds. We
should never be discouraged or distracted by difficulty or
defilements when they arise in our minds. We should see
them as a means of building strength. As the Bodhisatta
says in the Vessantara Jataka, when asked about his life in
the forest,
Adversity breaks in a man,
just as a charioteer
breaks in a horse; adversity,
O king, has tamed us here.
– Jat. 547
The difficulty we meet with in practice should be compared
to the taming of a wild horse. One can’t simply blame the
horse and give up, nor can one beat the horse to death
hoping to somehow force it into submission. Through
rigorous training, however, the habits of the horse can slowly
be changed until it becomes wearied of its old ways and
submits to the wishes of its master. In the same way, the
untrained mind is wild and uncontrollable. At times in
meditation one may think, “I am just not cut out for
meditation” and want to give up. One may become
frustrated by or afraid of one’s own mind and want to force it
to behave, repressing unwholesome tendencies out of fear
and aversion. This sort of behaviour is useless in the long
term, however, since it relies on concentration rather than
understanding, and is therefore dependent on the power of
concentration, which cannot be sustained for ever. If, on the
other hand, one is patient and persistent, over time, one will
teach one’s own mind the stress and suffering created by its
wild habits and bring it to let go of attachment to both
pleasant and unpleasant experiences through the
understanding of their leading to detriment.
As the Bodhisatta pointed out, it is only through facing
adverse experiences that one can tame the mind; if one lets
the mind follow after all of its inclinations, never facing the
difficult experiences that are also a part of reality, there is no
hope that one will ever train the mind to understand
objective reality.
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