Does one want to be a saint? :)

The foolish ones amongst us, who watch our minds, are hoping to:)

There are several stages to this mind business. The first stage, as one starts off with some basic discipline (even if it be in controlling how much one eats) is to become suddenly aware that the mind is gadding about. It is running riot. There is no free will really. This can be rather shocking. But at least that is a start, however frustrating.

The second stage, most difficult and where the answers don't come so easily, is where the watcher is watching the mind and is keenly aware that it has run away. Well, if the meditator is aware the mind is grazing, not tied to oneself, that is still progress. However, if one is aware the mind has wandered, then where does it go? And if one is aware the mind is grazing and not with us, then why is it simply not possible to tie it to us, as we so desperately wish to?  For a long while, most meditators get frustrated or stuck at this point. The mind is just grazing. It is as foolish as asking a cow where it is grazing. It is grazing here. It is grazing there. Aimlessly:) It has some hunger that makes it graze. So, at the point one drops the question, stops being frustrated (so far off, from where we start) then that is still progress.

But if it is grazing and you want the mind tethered,  why is that not possible? That is because, just like any old hungry cow, the mind has a hunger that compels it to graze. This hunger arises from the ego's need to survive, recreate itself. In every casual thought, (like a blade of grass) it seeks to revive itself.  Whether it be an opinion (She is so sick, I like that book, the ego as the good person or the intellectual respectively) or it be lecturing your student in your mind (the ego as the teacher) the ego feeds itself.  It is the hunger of the ego that makes  the mind wander about.

So, to stop the mind from grazing, you need to squash that hunger, that ego. That is the last stage.  The difficult part in this stage, and a lot of good people get stuck here, is when having made all those attempts to kill the ego, we leave one drop of blood in it intact (I feel so good to have made that choice, or it is the grace that made me chose this path -- the good ego), then the ego just revives  itself once more. The proverbial blood of the asura/demon in mythologies, from which spring thousand, nay, million replicas of the demon. So here is where you keep falling and falling. Often perhaps not knowing the slide has been steep... Like the snake and ladder game. Go up some, come down more. The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Just running to stay in one place. However, maybe it is not so tough after all.

So, as Vivekachudamani says, you must use rajas to drive away tamas (the mind running riot), and use sattva to control rajas (the mind grazing) and then use Brahman to control sattva (the good soul). Then, that is the trigunarahita stage, transcending all the three gunas. And you are a saint:)  You would not mind if the world is burning. Or if you are burning. Everything recedes and you see Maya's trick for what she is...

There are scarce, rare moments, when the ego recedes and something still remains. Like the determination in an act, invisible but felt, this feeling is That.