Anxiety and restlessness can arise when the mind becomes fragmented—moving from task to task, or spending time worrying about a future that hasn’t arrived. In this talk, Gullu Singh explores Buddhist approaches to working with an agitated mind, and learning where to rest the heart to cultivate calm. Through everyday examples and meditation practice, we are invited to consider how where we place our attention shapes our life experience.
Anxiety seems to be a through line of our culture these days.
When I first went to go work in law firms, people would say, “How are you?” And I would tell them, naively, how I was. Then I learned that the only correct answer is busy, so busy. It’s kind of like your badge of how successful you were, how much in demand you were, that you’re busy.
Busyness is one of the things that causes restlessness. The Buddha often talked about it in terms of the mind being fragmented. This is the kind of agitation that we experience when the mind is tracking a lot of things, moving from task to task.
For most of us, our lives are organized such that we have to track a lot of things. One of the antidotes to the restlessness that comes with this multitasking is to “defragment,” or gather the mind. This is more or less what we were doing in our meditation.
Rather than moving from thing to thing, topic to topic, and scrolling — all of which fragments the mind, causing agitation—we practice just attending to one thing.
The breath is a good object for meditation because while it’s not scintillating, it also provides a reasonable level of challenge to maintain focus on the breath. You compare that to watching a good Netflix show, which takes very little effort to watch, because it captures the mind in a certain kind of way.
There’s a quote from the Buddha from from the Dhammapada, Chapter 3, “The Mind”:
The restless, agitated mind,
hard to protect, hard to control.
The sage makes straight,
as the fletcher the shaft of an arrow.
In the ancient days, when arrows were made of wood, this was a very patient and delicate task. You cut a piece of wood, and it would not be straight, or perfectly round. It was a meticulous art to get the arrow to be perfectly round. To get it straight usually involved steaming the wood to make it more malleable, and then straightening it, letting it set, checking it again, adjusting. Very patient, and laborious process.
The Buddha compared that process to calming the restless, agitated mind. It’s not, “do this one thing and you will never again experience restlessness.” It’s a project that we undertake.
Like a fish out of water thrown on dry ground, the mind thrashes about.
The mind, hard to control, flighty, alighting where it wishes.
One does well to tame. The disciplined mind brings happiness.
The mind, hard to see, subtle, alighting where it wishes.
The sage protects the watched mind. It brings happiness.
There’s this message that how we use our mind becomes how we begin to experience our mind. Without some practice, some strategy, some stewardship of the mind, we’re just taking in what’s in the ether.
And what’s in the ether right now is generally alarming, frightening, rage-provoking—all things that lead to more and more agitation.
Some of this is environmental. For example: I usually do my grocery shopping at the co-op market down the street. It’s little, and not stressful to go there.
The other day though I went to this giant Vons. It’s nice in there, but they are constantly blaring advertisements. “Buy this thing! Buy that thing! Aisle 9.”
So I noticed that I was sort of getting agitated. Then I noticed that there were these kids that were yelling and pulling things off the shelves. Their caregiver was getting more and more agitated and yelling. Then I heard a couple who were arguing about which thing to get.
It was this Twilight Zone moment of, wow, this grocery store has created this environment that is so agitating that you could just see that everybody in the store is agitated. So my practice is simple: that store is off the list.
I often share this teaching, because it’s been very helpful to me, that we can actually systematically do an audit of the way we spend our time. See how many activities we engage in that cause agitation. See how many things we do that cause relaxation, or promote calmness, or peacefulness.
Then start crossing things out. The things that are optional that cause agitation, just restrain. Refrain. If there are things that cause agitation that you are committed to do, put a boundary around it.
It’s a really good investigation to see: What are the things that you do regularly that cause agitation?
Can you cross them off the list? Can you put an envelope around them, and do them for just a set period of time?
My favorite way of relating to our understanding meditation practice is developing the wisdom to know where to rest the attention, and where to rest the heart.
There are so many things in any moment that would compete for our attention. Attention is a finite resource. It’s how we care for things, and how we shape our mind.
What’s worthy of my attention in this moment? A lot of times we know, or we have teachers, so we can learn. That’s the first step: developing the discernment, the wisdom, to know where to rest the heart.
The second part is just actually being able to do it. That’s where the meditation practice comes in, because this simple practice of coming back to our anchor again, again, and again, is building that kind of stewardship of the mind.
The more we get good at placing the attention on the breath, that skill set can overflow into our life, helping us attend to the things that are most important, most valuable to us; the things that bring happiness and well-being.
We don’t have to attend to things that don’t bring happiness and well-being, at least not habitually. So meditate with diligence, immediately, it will bring you benefit.
Thanks for reading,
Gullu Singh
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