Why Beginning the Spiritual Journey is like Riding a Horse
To those of you who have never ridden a horse it may be difficult to relate to what I am about to say but I would ask for your patience and hope that all will become clear.
To those who have ridden, even if it was only once, you will know the remarkable feeling you get when you first sit astride a horse, knowing that the movement below you is another living being and that they might have different ideas about where you are going than the ones you had planned. There is a peculiar sense of awe at the size and power of the creature you are intending to control and for beginners that ever present doubt that this was a good idea in the first place.
Your teacher, quite often younger than you and in my limited experience often confidently assertive, gives you instruction. First how to mount, then how to hold the reigns and how to sit. She explains the journey you are about to go on and you listen but are still trying to get to grips with the fact your feet want to flop about despite her strict instructions that they remain in line with the horses body. You know you have been given the oldest and the tiredest horse but that doesn’t help when suddenly it seems unaware of its age and surges towards the front of the queue.
‘Stop him, tighten your reigns! Pull them back.’
By this time you know your fellow riders are all more confident than you, more relaxed, they have it sussed, everyone is looking at you . Not only that but your horse is now annoyed because you did what you were told, but it had other plans. This doesn’t bode well. Things can only get worse.
Let me take you to the sangha. You are a beginner, you are not sure about the surroundings, you are shown your mat and told how to sit. You legs and feet don’t seem to want to go where you have been told to put them, and when you do manage they don’t feel right. Still everyone else seems to be doing it so you stick with it. As the teacher is telling you to focus on your breath and to relax you are still trying to adjust your position but your body is refusing to play ball. Despite this you do eventually get to concentrate on the breath and shortly after realise that contrary to the teachers instructions on how to focus on the breath you find that your particular mind has other ideas. Just like an old horse at the livery stable it has no intention of doing what you want. ‘Focus on the breath. Stay with the sensations….’
The more you try, the worse it gets. You take a peek at your fellow students, they all seem calm, they appear to have learnt to tame the horse of the mind without any problem whatsoever whereas yours is charging backwards and forwards like a restless bear in a cage. Maybe contemplation isn’t for you. Perhaps like the unfortunate novice rider you are in charge of a particularly stubborn beast. It’s not your fault you don’t have a well behaved thoroughbred to sit on, but it is pretty annoying that despite doing what you are told nothing is working right. Whilst the horse of your mind is heading for impenetrable thickets and trying to jump endless hurdles the rest of the room are enjoying a relaxing hack in the sweet meadows of the mind.
Of course one always imagines that everyone else is achieving something one is not. In your mind they are lucky, they have been given better mounts, they have had more lessons, they are ‘naturals’. You come back from the sangha-hack disheveled, disappointed, aching and low, convinced you will never ever mount that horse again. Why put yourself through the humiliation why suffer the bruises? And yet more often than not we do return. Something brings us back. It might be that there was a brief moment of satisfaction, a glimpse of something else on the torturous journey, it may be pure determination to get your money’s worth, or even the sense that if ‘they’ have found something then I am going to find it too.
Now what is true of all beginners is that they have a sense they will never get it right. There is too much going on, too much to learn, a certain suspicion that they haven’t quite understood what they are supposed to do and that is why nothing is happening as it should. Inevitably there is a lack of control, and this is key to understanding why at the beginning of our meditation journey things feel uncomfortable. What needs to be understood is that it is the beginning of a relationship.
Just as with a horse, you have to learn to form a relationship with the mind, and the mind, like the horse, is not immediately willing to be told what to do. It wants to wander, to go where it wishes and it resents being told what to do by an amateur. The mind knows you don’t know what you are doing and does its utmost to protest. Looking at it dispassionately, it is just behaving in the way it has always done, but you are not.
Let me digress slightly for a moment. If you want to catch a horse, don’t go after it. The best way to catch a horse is to let it come to you. Horses are very curious and they don’t like being ignored. Stand in the field, pretend you are interested in something (other than them) and more often than not they will walk over to see what is going on. In a similar fashion if you try to capture the mind and try to tame it by chasing it you will end up the loser! Allow the mind to come to you. Listen and accept that in the beginning it will do what it has always done i.e. send you things to think about, chat incessantly about anything and everything, give you plenty to doubt.
The task of the beginning meditator is to become aware of what is going on in the mind.
Do not expect silence, equanimity, or calm immediately. If they come then all well and good, but it is just as important to understand that the noise you hear is actually revealing to you what your mind generally focuses on, things you are worried about, things that seem important, and how fast or slow your thoughts are arising. Learn to let them go as soon as you recognise you are dwelling on them.
As all meditation teachers will tell you, the important thing is that you have actually noticed your mind is engaged with thinking. That in itself is an achievement.
Eventually, with perseverance the mind will settle, the horse becomes used to it’s rider and learns to behave differently. You become more confident and it becomes more relaxed.
Of course one learns that the mind, like the horse, is a temperamental beast. There will be days when you can’t get it out of the stable. There will be others when it is spooked by some unexpected event and takes off and you will hardly be able to hold on as it takes over. Sometimes it will be sick and you have to nurture it. Learn to understand this, learn to treat your mind with compassion.
Finally, we have all passed those riders in our cars whose horses have been left to graze all summer, round of belly, heads nodding, legs lethargic, with, dare one say it, equally well grazed riders. Pushing up hill with the horseman’s heels digging hard into their flanks they blow and huff and cough their reluctant way towards the impossible horizon.
The expectations of the rider are in direct contrast to the horse’s ability to perform.
Well the mind is no different.
Leave it to graze unattended and it becomes bloated, lethargic, unable to perform well. Have you ever sat on a crowded train with everyone grazing on their IPhones, heads down like farm stock? Then you get my gist.
So there is no use expecting to develop your practice if you don’t sit regularly and take care of your body and your mind. Keep up your practice and the mind will become your partner on your journey and not a forgotten friend you have to haul out of the stable when you decide it would be good to get away from life’s troubles.
