By Victor M Fontane
Mainly in India, people ride in elephants and for that to happens they need an elephant rider, trainer or keeper called Mahout. However being the elephant much more bigger and stronger than the Mahout is kind of difficult to the Mahout to make the elephant obey him. The Mahout wants the elephant to go on certain direction but the elephant sees a banana tree and a bunch of bananas and of course he will go there and there is nothing the Mahout can do. Thus, the only way for the elephant to obey the Mahout is by training and repetition.
Same way happens on meditation, you, the Mahout wants your mind, the elephant, to silence, be quiet and relax to be able to meditate but your mind is more stronger than your will and will wander everywhere not obeying your desire. The only way again to make the mind to follow your will is training and repetition.
To try to meditate is important then to choose a quiet place, always the same and also at the same time using the same technique every single day so you train your mind to follow your will. It will take time but with repetition and a good technique like counting from one to ten over and over again for the same period of time, concentrating on the numbers and if your mind goes away forcing it to come back to the counting you will eventually gain the skills to have good meditations.
You will become the Mahout of your elephant, your mind. Same technique should be used on chanting mantras.
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