Dear steemians Greetings from a corner of the globe,
How many times have we heard “control your anger”, “be fearless”, “worrying doesn’t help”, “don’t be greedy” or “be grateful and don’t complain” and so on? Quite often we hear these as our own inner voice or we hear them from others, right? Yet, many struggle to keep the peace or be brave or generous particularly in adverse situation.
Although we know intellectually it’s good to be kind, compassionate and joyful, why they remain difficult for many (specially when things don’t go their way)? As SN Goenka puts it “Everyone sings a happy song when everything is well and sound but a man is a real man who smiles even when everything goes dead wrong.”
There are many different techniques such as neurolingustic programming, reflective practice, laws of attractions, contemplation and verbalization etc. which may help improve our control over our mind. The root cause of why the mind have control over many is worth exploring. Buddha explains the four parts of mind - vinanna or cognizing part just observe things as they are without judgement and particularly predominant in childhood - some say they make children so happy and joyful. But as we grow old the cognizing parts weakens and 2nd (recognizing), 3rd (judging/evaluating) and 4th (shankhara or reactive) part becomes stronger partly due to the social conditioning, social learning etc. And thus as soon as people experience something via their 5 senses the judgement starts immediately. For example, you see someone or hear something judgement starts immediately and if it is something to your liking (through social conditioning, past experiences etc.) the mind (stronger reactive part) react with craving for the experience but if it is to your disliking then 4th part of you mind reacts with aversion. And this way the reactive part becomes stronger and stronger by generating reactive (cravings or aversion) pattern. Thus we crave for pleasant experiences & have aversion toward unpleasant experiences (as judged by our own mind) within these 5 sense doors. This leads to road rage where seemingly a nice gentle man or woman is taken over by the rage or happy honeymoon end up in painful divorce or best friends become worst enemy and so on.
But how can we learn to master ourselves? We can control ourself somewhat (or on surface) by many different technique but the significant control of the mind is no easy task and require ardent, dilligent & persistent practice with wisdom. Over 2500years ago Buddha gave us a revolutionary technique which goes to the depth of the mind to take back control of our mind & enjoy the natural state of joy and bliss. And observing (being aware) breath is one of the starting point. Let’s try for one minute - close your eyes, sit comfortably and focus your entire attention on the nostril (while eyes closed) and for next one minute just try to observe the breath as it goes in and as it comes out - see how long you can control your mind to do this one thing. Are you the master or the servant of the mind?
I hope to go into more details in next post. If you think this post is useful, interesting or helpful please upvote, reesteem as you see fit. Also would be quite insightful to have your thoughts on comments section below.
Thank you 
