AUG11.7

Ancient Pali texts liken meditation to the process of taming a wild elephant. The procedure in those days was to tie a new captured animal to a post with a good strong rope. When you do this, the elephant is not happy. He screams and trampl

es and pulls against the rope for days. Finally it sinks through the skull that he can't get away, and he settles down. At this point you can begin to feed him and to handle him with some measure of safety. Eventually you can dispense with the rope and post altogether and train your elephant for various tasks. Now you 've got a tamed elephant that can be put to useful work. In this analogy the wild elephant is your wildly active mind, the rope is mindfulness, and the post is your object of meditation, your breathing. The tame elephant who emerges from this process is a well-trained, concentrated mind that can then be used for the exceedingly tough job of piercing the layers of illusion that obscure reality. Meditation tames the mind.
Ancient Pali texts