Reading outline · Self-discipline
How do we learn restraint?
Attention, restraint and practice.
Practice concerns more than isolated decisions. The Dhammapada uses the image of an unsteady mind; the Gita discusses the difficulty of controlling it; the Dao De Jing treats restraint through a different ideal of sufficiency. The English terms reflect different source concepts.
In this reading
Dhammapada · Buddhism
A teaching about guarding the difficult-to-control mind.
Read passage · Dhammapada →It is good to tame the mind, which is difficult to hold in and flighty, rushing wherever it listeth; a tamed mind brings happiness.
Bhagavad Gita · Hinduism
Krishna responds to Arjuna’s concern about restlessness.
Read passage · Bhagavad Gita →“The Holy One said, ‘Without doubt, O thou of mighty arms the mind is difficult of subjugation and is restless. With practice, however, O son of Kunti, and with the abandonment of desire, it can be controlled. It is my belief that by him whose mind is not restrained, devotion is difficult of acquisition. But …
Dao De Jing · Daoism
The image of an overfilled vessel introduces restraint.
Read passage · Dao De Jing →It is better to leave a vessel unfilled, than to attempt to carry it when it is full. If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.
What changes when we read them together?
Mental training and restraint are not automatically a single technique. Attend to the passage’s image, its audience and its account of what practice is for.
Words in these readings
- Mind
- The Dhammapada selection presents the mind as difficult to guard.
- Restlessness
- Arjuna raises a practical objection that Krishna answers in dialogue.
- The overfilled vessel
- The Dao De Jing chapter approaches restraint through an image of excess.
Sources & reading notes
These are selected passages, not a complete account of any tradition. Introductions and explanations are editorial writing. Quotations use the named translations; an ellipsis marks a shortened selection.
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