You might think that just naturally the mind is free to do whatever it would like to do. You might think that training your mind would limit your freedom. Without physical training our body cannot work well. Without mind training, our mind wanders like it’s lost. Always looking for something, without knowing what, or where to look.
Our modern lives are extremely constrained. Where we can go, what we can do, what gets our attention, and what we can think about, are limited. It is not an accident. It wasn’t always this way. People feel frustrated and confused, without knowing why, or what to do.
Driving at high speed on a crowded road, listening to love songs, desire, loss, rage songs, news stories, podcasts, interviews filled with pride, greed, longing and despair, surrounded on the road by people you don’t know, don’t need to know, will never see again, in your way, as you are trying to get somewhere you are not, whether you want to go there or not, after sitting all day at your screen, looking forward to a few hours of screen time of your own before you crash.
And what is on those screens? Where is all that input sending your mind? How do you configure the world from an imagination filled with all that? Trapped, unsatisfied, always feeling something fleeting, always wanting to be somewhere else, someone else, and to do something else. What is your body doing while all that is going on? Neglected. Useless. Occupied.
That’s no way to live. But that is how we do live. Miles from friends and family. In small spaces. In tight routines. Barely interacting with friends, with the sea, the sky, the land, the horizon, the forest, the fields, food, water, animals, plants and the rest of the world around us, which is kept at a distance from us all the time, wherever we are, even on vacation, so it begins to seem like the natural world is the strange, remote environment, and the congested, confined, paved and constructed world is our natural habitat, the result of progress, convenient, necessary, with no alternative, just the way we live.
That is no way to live either. But it has been decided that this is the way we will live. With a phone in your pocket and a song in your heart. And a gun to your head which you only notice when you have a mind to break out.
Your mind, untrained, not under your control, ranges around like an animal exploring, looking, searching, wanting, yearning, seeking – for what we do not know. Finding appealing poisons, disturbance, and stress. Exploring, our minds head back to the past, foraging among the wonderful moments we can never get back that seem more distant every day. Back to things that went wrong, or that were wrong, when you did wrong and didn’t know it would go that way, hoped it wouldn’t, but it did. Hard to shake that memory. Keeps popping up. Keeps getting your attention like an old wound. Or your mind races forward to things you want, and people you want, a way to feel that would feel good, to a picture of the world as it might be. Or it goes racing forward to what you fear, what may approach at any time, creeping up out of nowhere, uninvited, unannounced, just there, a shock, what might go wrong, what you can’t control, what you can’t quite see, but you know is out there. And the tension rises and falls and goes away and comes back stronger, just pulsing away in the background while you act cool and do what you need to do. The mind racing forward and back in time, always on the lookout for something threatening or something nice. You want to stand tall, be proud, be sure, do right, be a hero, be someone, not no one. But there you are, in your cube, in your apartment, in your car, on your couch, on the phone, on the train, typing, thinking about what you want and what you don’t and what might be.
That’s no way to live. We do not have to. We can escape that confinement. We do not need to live pinned between the walls of the past and the future, of hope and fear. We don’t escape by manipulation, calculation, threats, promises or tricks. There is only one way out. By training. It is the only way that works. And it always works.
If you go the gym, play sports, or run, you have trained your body. You know what training is, what it can do, and that to make your body your own, to fulfill its potential, to become who you want to be, there is no alternative.
If you are good at anything you have already trained your mind, to some degree. If you can play music or sports, if you have learned a language, piloted a plane, debated in public, sparred with an opponent or designed a bridge, it is likely that you have sustained present time attention long enough to enter a flow state, and do what you are doing, with your whole body and mind, for more than a few seconds at a time. That’s an achievement. You can go further.
Breath awareness is a technique that is always accessible, easy to do and effective bring your life home to the present. We can make a habit of it, get good at it, and then apply it in everything we do.
Sit still and place your attention on your breath. Notice breathing in and notice breathing out. Notice the breath for the full length of the breath, without drifting away. Settle down. Be where you are; Let go of the past and future. It sounds like it might be dull, but it becomes peaceful, and soon it is joyful, and pleasurable. As you get good at keeping your attention on the sensation of the breath as it moves, allowing your attention to remain right there, in the present, not pulled away or drifting away to the past or the future, something unexpected happens, an experience that is deep and powerful and good.
When you first try it, it feels like you hit the brakes hard on a busy road. Your thoughts hurtle forward, your mind keeps racing and churning, as usual. But little by little you settle down, and cruise.
The mental clarity and stability it takes to succeed at this depends on making the effort, having a good idea about what you are trying to do, and having the confidence that the process works. Success will also depend on the way you live, specifically, on being a decent person. You can’t be a jerk – lie, steal, cheat, kill, envy and exploit all day – and then open your meditation app and expect to get good results.
To succeed in this what matters most is wanting to find a way to be happy. Some people think happiness is stupid. They tell themselves that if you are not miserable you are not serious. That rage at the world and doing whatever it takes to other people to get your way is what serious committed successful people do. That ugliness and conflict are the price you pay for being a winner. You can see how well that philosophy works by the example of the people who live that way. Miserable and craving, even when they get what they want, one moment arrogant the next cringing, unsatisfied, angry and moving on, like a shark, to the next thing and the next and the next.
Inhabiting a world in which every tempting thing is bait on a hook. Every movie, soda, dinner, trip, every moment scrolling, rage bait, click bait, news, outrage, plots, deceptions, advantages and secrets, all lead them on to nowhere, diminishing them and exhausting them. All the pleasure, status and power which appear to be theirs, are threatened all the time and in the end will be ripped away from them or slip through their fingers at last. Always. It never works any other way.
We are better off being free. We are better off being here, now, coming home to our own life. We learn from the past. We prepare for the future. But we do it as the work of today. And we return to where we live, to here and now, whenever we want to, alive in every moment.
Then when we are walking, driving, working, talking, eating, living our lives, we are where we are. To be a virtuous human being, functioning as designed, honest, courageous and generous. Not confined to someone else’s careless or perverse fantasy of how we should live, or the spiritual degradation that results from their ambition and which they assume ought to be accepted by the people of this world.
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Post copyright © 2025 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate Dojo, in the mountains of western NC.
Photo by Thao Lee via Unsplash
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read True Karate Dō by Jeffrey Brooks
“One of the best books I’ve read in years, inviting and compelling. Jeff Brooks moves effortlessly from martial arts to Buddhism to consciousness studies, self-transformation, and related fields in this wide-ranging and Illuminating study that has much to offer both novice explorers and veteran practitioners. A splendid achievement.”— Philip Zaleski, Editor, The Best Spiritual Writing series