Get Some Headspace: 10 minutes can make all the difference by Andy Puddicombe Read Free Book Online Page B

much effort and instructed me to try less. But by this stage I was putting too much effort into everything. Even into trying less. This struggle went on for some time until I was fortunate enough to meet a teacher who seemed to have a natural gift for story-telling, for explaining things in a way I could easily understand. What he said to me came as quite a shock, because his description of meditation was radically different to what I’d imagined.
    The road
    He began by asking me to imagine I was sitting on the side of a very busy road, with a blindfold around my head. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘maybe you can hear the background noise, the cars whizzing by, but you can’t see them because you have your eyes covered, right?’ I imagined myself sitting on the grass verge of a motorway (the M4 as it happens) and nodded in agreement. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘before you start to meditate it can feel a bit like this. Because of all the background noise in the mind, all the thoughts, it means that even when you sit down to relax or go to bed at night, it still feels as though this noise continues, yes?’ It was hard to argue with this, because it did indeed feel as though there was always a certain amount of background noise or restlessness in my mind, even when I was not consciously aware of the individual thoughts.
    ‘Now, imagine taking the blindfold off,’ he continued, ‘For the first time you see the road, your mind, clearly. You see the cars racing by, the different colours, shapes and sizes. Maybe sometimes you are attracted by the sound of the cars, at other times more interested in their appearance. But this is what it’s like when you first take off the blindfold.’ He started laughing to himself. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes it’s at this point that people learning meditation say some very funny things. They start to blame their thoughts and feelings on the meditation. Can you believe it?’ he asked mockingly. ‘They come and see me and say “I don’t know what’s happening, where all these thoughts are coming from. I never usually think this much, it must be the meditation making me think all the time”, as if the meditation is somehow making their situation worse.’ His laughter trailed off as he picked up the thread of his explanation.
    ‘So, the first thing to get straight is that meditation does not make you think! All it does is shine a big bright light on your mind so that you can see it more clearly. This bright light is awareness. You may not like what you see when you switch the light on, but it’s a clear and accurate reflection of how your mind behaves on a daily basis.’ I sat there and considered his words. He was definitely right about one thing – I’d been blaming meditation for the state of my mind ever since I started. I couldn’t believe that my mind was really like that all the time. Or at least I didn’t want to believe it was. I wondered if perhaps I was beyond help altogether, that no amount of meditation was going to help. It turns out that this is a surprisingly common feeling though, so be reassured if you feel this way too.
    My teacher seemed to sense where I was going and interrupted my thoughts. ‘This is how the mind looks to begin with,’ he said softly, ‘not just your mind, but everybody’s. That’s why training the mind is so important. When you see the mind in this confused state it’s very difficult to know what to do about it. For some people it’s difficult not to panic. Sometimes people try to stop the thoughts through force. At other times they try and ignore them, to think about something else instead. Or if the thoughts are very interesting, then they might try to encourage them and get involved in them. But all these tactics are just ways of trying to avoid the reality of what is. If you think back to the busy road, it’s no different from getting up from the side of the road, running among the cars and trying to control the traffic.’ He