The Discipline of Mind Training
1. Who’s in Charge of This Mind?
There’s an old Zen saying: If the student understands the martial art, they will succeed—some of the time. If they understand the art and their opponent, they will succeed—most of the time. But if they understand the art, their opponent, and themselves—there can only be success.
This is true because on the path to understanding ourselves, everything – even failure – becomes part of that deepening. Failure is powerful fuel for insight. Stumbling is part of the process of learning ballet.
In the Japanese contemplative art of Kyūdō, or meditative archery, the practitioner begins just one arrow’s length from the target. Obviously, success is guaranteed. But the real inquiry is: Where was the mind during that moment?
The point isn’t the target. The point is the mind.
Training the mind is the process of coming to understand it—so that we can understand ourselves. This isn’t about controlling reality or forcing outcomes. True agency means having the capacity to recognize when we’ve been led astray and the skill to return to center, to clarity.
Without training, we’re dragged by impulse: desire leading to desire, followed by frustration and disillusionment and more desire. With training, we gain the mastery to gain agency in life. We are no longer dragged by our nose at every impulse. I’m hungry, I’m horney, I’m tired. We gain the strength to stay in the game regardless.
Like a ship’s captain navigating turbulent seas, we don’t engage each wave or obsess over every danger. We know there are sharks below, yet we maintain internal balance and guide the vessel for the sake of ourselves and our fellows. This is the function of discipline: to cultivate the strength and steadiness needed to navigate life—not from reactivity, but from clarity.
A serious student of meditation gives themselves to training—as any martial artist, craftsperson, or career professional would, with repetitive, often boring, daily practice. This is what allows great artists, writers, and musicians to face their inner demons and still show up.
Meditation is not an escape, a state, or a lifestyle hashtag. It is a practice—a method for developing mastery over the mind, so that we can reclaim agency in our lives.
2. Stability, Clarity and Strength
We begin with the body by to taking our seat.
Taking our seat means we accept the moment as it is and are willing to both settle into it, and to rise up and face it. We let the fears, triggers, and emotional currents arise around us—but we do not chase them. We notice. We return. Again and again, we come back—until something in us begins to settle into stability.
That stability becomes the ballast for a turbulent mind. And from that ballast, the mind settles and clarity naturally arises.
Clarity doesn’t come from avoiding confusion, but by sitting through it—training our mind to stay upright as we pass through briars and storms. This work is worth it because we are gaining strength through wisdom. And with this training, there is only success. You have a hard session, that’s great. You have an amazing session, that’s fine. You don’t want to be here, keep going. Be here not wanting to. Be fully here and fully not wanting to! We keep reminding our mind to come back. We’re building strength so our mind doesn’t push us around.
The cycle is self-reinforcing, never final, always deepening. And always predicated on returning to the present. The present is our seat of power.
3. RETURNING TO PORT: Confidence, Not Control
Each return to center strengthens us. Each foray into the wilds of the mind builds experience. This is mastery with the mind—not domination, but partnership. We don’t suppress the mind. We steady it. We navigate with it. We apply just enough discipline to keep it returning to the present in order to release its power.
When we lose our seat, we lose access to the space that reveals awareness—and we lose confidence. Without confidence, there is no agency. We become reactive, trapped in our assumptions, convinced our view is the view. And as the mind narrows, we begin to build an echo chamber—around us, and inside us.
We become susceptible to victimization, as we are so easily led. Locked in our mother’s basement we conjure doom for the world. And feeling helpless, we will follow any hand that offers to pull us out. But, let me be clear, there is no hand to trust and there is no way out. The only way out is the way in. Meditation training is changing the only thing we can change – our mind. And the process is long and slow, like learning the cello, or getting a black belt. But unlike other forms of mastery, meditation has no requisites, other than the breath.
Standing 5 feet something, I may never be a basketball player. I am not expecting to to be a model anytime soon. Without college level science I might never calculate the weight of the universe. But there are no requisites to gaining mastery over the mind. None aside from a willingness to try.
Life can be overwhelming. So, cut it all back, and begin at the beginning. Don’t listen. Don’t trust. But don’t wait. Just sit. The beginning is now. Here is where we start. Right here. You can’t change the world in this moment. You can’t change other people any time. But you can change your mind through training. And the mind becomes strong through training.
One breath at a time.