Not a matter of quieting the mind…

I have often heard time after time when asking to people about meditation, that it is really hard for them to quiet the mind. The very word “quiet” might carry negative biases, as if you think of the time when you were a child, and to “be quiet” usually meant repressing yourself. So it is as if this repression creates more revolt in your mind, possibly leading to frustration or disappointment, and hence quitting.

One is not to quiet the mind, but to be a mere witness of it, and simply notice the manifestations of the mind. To observe it without being it.

It is in a way funny how we are capable of doing many difficult things, but something as simple as just sitting and doing nothing results so difficult. I used to feel frustrated when I struggled to just do this on a yoga teacher training, until the teacher said something like “those few seconds of pure concentration are enough to receive the benefit.”

A few words from the song of Mahamudra:

If with the mind one then observes the mind,

one destroys distinctions and reaches buddhahood.

With the mind just to observe the mind… In Neurolinguistic Programming they call this dissociation. You stop being associated with the situation and just watch it from an outside perspective. In essence NLP and tantra share this approach for the same goal of the realization of the individual.

We are so used to always be doing something, hence in meditation, if there is something to do, is to be completely a witness of the present. Witness-hood, for the sake of that!