Everybody, I think, values excellence. When the great masters in any field appear, we catch fire. I have always been interested in sports, and I still enjoy watching the Olympics or championship tennis on television; I am intrigued by the way the top athletes have trained their bodies, judgment, and endurance. Those excellent swimmers in their middle teens, those gymnasts who surpass circus performers, must have begun at a very early age. How much dedicated effort all this must take! It is hard not to admire the discipline and enthusiasm behind any performance that captures a gold medal.

Just as the body can be trained for virtuoso skills in the pool or on the uneven bars, so our senses can be trained, immensely benefiting ourselves and those around us. Then the senses become our trusted servants. But when they are untrained, as we shall see, they become the most oppressive masters.

Saint Francis of Assisi put the matter well. He used to speak of “Sister Moon” or “Brother Wolf” as though they were close relatives, which indeed they are; and with the detachment of a great mystic, he spoke that way about his body and senses too. “This is Brother Donkey,” he would say, “and I’ll take good care of him. I’ll wash him, feed him, and give him rest. But I’m going to ride on him; he’s not going to ride on me.” Imagine walking along a country road in Italy when over a rise comes a peasant bent nearly to the ground by the donkey on his back. A ludicrous picture! But isn’t that what we do when we let our senses and body take charge and issue all the orders? Believe me, they don’t make kind masters; they are very demanding, very hard-riding. Through training the senses, we climb out from under them and regain our proper role as their master.

To put it another way, our senses are like puppies. If you have had a pup, you will recall how they seize a slipper and growl and tear at it until it’s shredded. We expect that of puppies, but we don’t want the dog acting that way when he grows up. To make a good companion of him requires training; fortunately, he loves to learn. Similarly, the senses can be the best of friends if they receive some training. But if we let them run loose without any training, they will simply turn against us.

How to Begin  |

We begin the training of the senses by denying them things that injure the body. We wouldn’t drive into a service station and ask the attendant to fill our gas tank with thirty-weight oil; the car wouldn’t run. To operate a machine we have to use a particular type of lubricant, fuel, coolant, or whatever, and we do. But regarding our own bodies, we are not so careful. We put in all kinds of things that nutritionists – and plain common sense – tell us impair the body’s smooth functioning, mainly because they taste pleasant. We haven’t yet learned that the body’s needs should determine what we eat, not the appeal of the senses.

As your awareness grows, it will hurt you to watch people let their senses drive them into harmful habits of living. When you see somebody smoke, you will understand the discomfort of those lungs. You will feel yourself in those air sacs, dreading the inrush of tobacco-laden air. Overeating will distress you too; you will hear the poor stomach crying out in its own language, “Please, please, don’t stuff anything more into me! It hurts so.” Whenever you see people damaging their bodies like this, you will be all the more vigilant about what goes into your own mouth. However tasty it used to seem, however aromatic or agreeable to the eye, food with no nutritional value will lose its appeal for you. And you will shun all those highly processed and synthetic foods which try to better nature: “balloon bread,” cream without a cow, “instant breakfast,” spray-can cheese.

Children especially are vulnerable to the appeal of the senses. We all know how television prompts a howl for breakfast cereals with little or no food value, simply because it tastes “neat” and comes in three different colors. Children below the age of judgment are urged to eat cereals consisting of as much as forty-five percent sugar, when they need solid nutrients for energy and growth. And all this so people can make some money! Worse yet, we go along with it by letting children watch these shows and giving in to their demands to eat what Booba the Bear eats – his Tooty-Fruity All-Jam Breakfast Triangles.

To wean children away from this, though, takes some time and energy on our part. We won’t be able to say “Go watch TV” and hand them over to the set. We will have to be with them ourselves. And we can’t say, “Honey, will you fix your own breakfast? You know where the Fruity Triangles are.” It takes some effort to prepare a tasty, nutritious cereal of whole grains. We need time to prepare it, and time to sit down with the children so that all can enjoy it together.

Preparing healthful dishes also requires a rudimentary knowledge of nutrition. You needn’t be an expert; it is enough to know the basic principles. But wherever you obtain your information, I would urge you to follow the findings of qualified experts rather than go in for fads.

Automatic Eating  |

The next step in training the sense of taste is to eat only when hungry. Food may lie close by, but no force compels us to eat it. Physicists have assured me that we can maintain a constant distance from food – or even increase our distance from it – just as easily as gravitate towards it. Most of us have been to dinner parties where the guests – after assuring the hostess they couldn’t eat another mouthful – find themselves in the living room with bowls of mixed nuts and mints and cheese in strategic places. Soon all those bowls are emptied. No matter how often they are filled, empty they become. Someone says a few words and then pops in a mint. Another makes a smashing point about politics, then swirls a few peanuts in his fist and tosses them in. A third gets up to cross the room and makes a small detour by the Camembert on the way. We aren’t really aware when we eat like this. Our attention is divided, and we eat compulsively rather than from hunger.

Automatic eating occurs too in front of the television set, or at a movie theater, nightclub, or sports event. The action catches us and the hand just keeps moving up and down, to and from the mouth, like an automated signboard of a cowboy endlessly waving “howdy” from a casino in Las Vegas. But we can learn to be more aware of what we are watching, and do one thing at a time. It will multiply our enjoyment immensely.

Eating has become so mechanical now that people eat and talk at the same time. I am not objecting to conversation passing across the table, which is certainly a part of the satisfaction of eating with friends or family. But it is quite another thing to try to talk about important or complicated matters with your mouth full of food. It just doesn’t seem to be mannerly for me, say, to take a good bite of a corn muffin and then try to explain some point about meditation. Yet, I sometimes get the impression from the media that reporters and private detectives can’t talk at all unless they have in hand a cup of coffee, a cigarette, or some sandwich sent up from a nearby delicatessen.

To train our sense of taste, we need to stop eating mechanically and become aware of what we eat. Eating only at mealtime helps, because we can focus our attention on the food more fully when we sit at the table. But give up snacks? What a terrifying prospect! The moment we feel a twinge of hunger – or even anticipate one – many of us head for the refrigerator or cookie jar. “No snacks means we’ll get hungry. We’ll have to wait all the way from lunch to dinner.” What’s wrong with that? It is good to be a little hungry. It enables us to relish food when we do eat. It lets our overworked stomach and digestive system complete their work before we give them more to process. And it helps in reducing total food intake, too.

Artistry  |

If you do find that you have eaten more than you should at a particular meal – which is likely to happen to most of us occasionally – I have a simple suggestion for restoring the balance: skip the next meal. Instead of going about saying, “Why did I do it? Why did I do it?” and working yourself up to such a state that you head back to the refrigerator, just resolve to sail past the meal coming up. The mind loves to get entangled in all kinds of regrets, especially when it suspects you aren’t really serious about changing your behavior. It says to itself, “I get to overeat, which I like; then I get to put on my black suit of woe and mope around for a while. I kind of like that, too!”

At a wedding or other special occasion, I enjoy being with my friends and sharing fully in the festivities. I don’t want to be an Ebenezer Do-Good announcing in a funereal voice, “No pie for me; I’m on a rigorous program of sense-training.” So if I know an elaborate meal is on the way, I go lightly on or even skip the meal that comes before. Then, at the feast, I participate in everything without overdoing it.

This requires a certain artistry. A while back one of my young friends made her entry into the world of the teens, and I joined in the celebration. Everything was carefully arranged for teenage tastes – “calories don’t count.” I sat down at the table and there was a big silver bowl of raspberry swirl ice cream looking up at me. But I didn’t quail – I had prepared in advance by having a very light breakfast, and I ate the whole bowlful – and enjoyed it thoroughly.

But my taste buds were still smacking their lips. “Give us more!” That was the time to be firm. “That’s it, boys,” I said, and I gave all my attention to the friends seated around me. I can assure you, I found that much more satisfying than a second helping – and no need for “fast relief” from the pharmacy after I got home.

Gourmets claim that the true enjoyment of fine cuisine requires that you stop just when you would like to have a little bit more. In this way, the connoisseur maintains his interest. Everywhere, knowing how to stop short of satiety helps you to savor life and, more important, helps you to be free. At parties, instead of waiting far into the night until you are exhausted and the host doesn’t know how to get rid of you, you can take your leave when there is still some life left. Even in letter writing, the same principle holds true. Haven’t you received a letter of inordinate length and asked yourself why it couldn’t have all been said in a couple of paragraphs? How much better for the recipient to say, “If only she had written a little more!”

Vigilance  |

We need to be vigilant in training the senses. For a long while we are so vulnerable that we can be caught at any time. The senses will be comfortably seated inside when some of their former pals – sense-objects – come to the door and call, “Can the senses come out and play?” At this point, of course, we can always say no. But if we are napping upstairs, the senses will jump up, look around, grin at each other, and rush right out.

We happen to pass by the pizza parlor, say, with the best intentions, just going to pick up a watch from the jeweler’s. We have had our lunch; food is the farthest thing from our mind. But there is the big glass window with the fellow tossing powdery wheels of dough in the air, and we stop to watch. He opens the brick oven and slides out a hot pie with the cheese bubbling, topped with mushrooms . . . our favorite! Next thing we know, another mushroom pizza – ours – is bubbling in the oven, and we are trying to decide whether we want garlic dressing or bleu cheese on the salad. About halfway through we remember, rather guiltily, that we are trying to train our senses.

This kind of temptation may seem to lie everywhere. To the pizza parlor you may need to add the candy counter, the bakery, or the fast-food drive-in. But however many apply, you will surely gain mastery by working at it every day. There may be a few slips and falls, some close calls, but there will also be some rewarding victories. Just keep trying!

Because our habits are so deeply entrenched, we should not expect too much too fast. We have to assess just what we are capable of at any time. After all, we are trying to make our senses faithful servants, not abject slaves. We need to understand them and be firm but gentle: expect a little more from them than they have been used to, but not make unreasonable demands. We need to know when to issue strict orders, when to persuade and negotiate, and when to let them frisk a bit.

In the early days of your training it is helpful to have a few gambits you can play against your senses. They are simple fellows, really, and not that difficult to appease if you go about it the right way. If you crave candy, for example, you can offer your taste buds some nutritious substitute like raisins or fresh fruit. They will probably accept. Or when a sensory desire arises you might try saying, “Well, if you still want that in an hour, I’ll give it to you.” Very likely the desire will have subsided by that time, since it is the nature of desires to come and go.

The mantram can also be a ready ally in training the senses, especially when some negative emotion gets the better of us and we feel obliged to take it out on the refrigerator. Something goes wrong at work and we compulsively dispose of a few doughnuts or half of a pineapple cheesecake. It solves nothing; it only increases our mental agitation. Why not use the power of that negative emotion constructively? When we go out for a brisk walk repeating the mantram, we not only give our body a healthy workout, we transform negative emotions into their positive counterparts – anger into forgiveness, envy into sympathy, depression into good cheer.

Meditation, of course, is our most powerful tool for rechanneling our mind, for reconditioning ourselves. Sincere and regular practice can lead to complete transformation of the contents of consciousness. But even if we sit for meditation in the morning and then again in the evening, that will not of itself change our eating habits. We have to make wise choices during the day. Meditation gives us the freedom to make these choices, but we still have to make them. If we meditate for half an hour and then get up and head for the bakery, we wipe out the benefits of our meditation. But if we can use the power released in meditation to choose a wholesome breakfast instead, we are beginning to change ourselves. That is why I often speak of meditation and its allied disciplines: in this instance, meditation helps us train our senses, and training the senses draws on and deepens our meditation.

We Have a Choice  |

All this requires personal responsibility. Many people, for example, gain weight and insist that nothing can be done. Such talk is not usually very persuasive, especially after a glance at their heaped-up plates. We can only go forward when we frankly admit that we have a weight problem because we eat too much, and we eat too much because we have not – as yet – trained ourselves to do otherwise.

I like to think of the contrast between two British writers, great favorites of mine when I was a professor of English in India: George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton. Both appeared often in the news, and even in India we heard a lot about their personal lives. What a difference between them! Shaw was a tall, thin man, not an ounce of extra weight on him. He took to vegetarianism when little was known about it in England, and the literary world feared that a promising writer would be cut off prematurely. The eminent physicians of ­London too warned him that his life would be shortened by his new way of eating. Of course, he went on to produce remarkable plays even in his eighties, and his friends naturally suggested that he go back to those physicians and show them how well he was doing. “I’d like to,” he replied. “But unfortunately, none of them is around any more.”

Chesterton, on the other hand, weighed three hundred pounds and hugely loved the pleasures of the table. You can imagine how they looked together when they met. Both had a marvelous sense of humor, and each enjoyed making rapier-sharp thrusts of wit at the other. Once, it is said, Chesterton cast an appraising eye on Shaw and said, “To look at you, GBS, one would think there was a famine in merry old England.” And Shaw replied, “To look at you, GKC, one would know what caused it.” So the question arises: do you want to look more like a GBS or more like a GKC? It is up to you. You can inflate yourself by eating wrong food in immoderate quantities, or you can have a trim, vital body by eating the right food in temperate quantities.

The Power of Conditioning  |

The difficulty in resisting sensory desires comes from the force of conditioning working against us. When a river, for example, has gained momentum, how hard it is to stop it or even divert it! Most of our desires too flow like that, along deep channels cut in the mind through repetition. But just as a river can be rechanneled or dammed, well-established patterns of behavior can be changed. Naturally, the longer the channels have been there, the more work will be needed to remove them. But it can always be done, by drawing on the power released in meditation.

Most of the rigid likes and dislikes of our senses are picked up early in life. A mother gives her toddler a small dish of plain yogurt, and a neighbor, already conditioned, wrinkles up her nose with disgust and groans, “Plain yogurt?” Enough repetitions and the child’s nervous system reacts automatically to the stimulus. He has been conditioned, and every time we are conditioned in this way, we lose a little of our freedom and our capacity to choose. That child has moved closer to the day when any food that is healthful but sour makes him wrinkle up his face and shove the plate away with a loud “No!”

Most of us have been through this. Usually, of course, we don’t remember when, or where, or how we were conditioned. The person doing it probably did not know that he or she was teaching us how to react, putting limits on our consciousness. Actually, we begin to think that the unpleasantness lies in the food itself. We don’t like the yogurt we have been served because it doesn’t taste good, although next to us sits a lady happily savoring a big bowl of the very same thing, unflavored and unsweetened. It is the same yogurt; the conditioning is different.

I recently witnessed the enormous power of this conditioning in one of my young friends, who wants to be a football player. It happens too that he abhors zucchini, which I have found to be a rather harmless vegetable. So one day I said to him, “If the Lord came to you and said, ‘I will make you the greatest football player in America if you eat zucchini every day,’ what would your reply be?”

He was silent; I could see the battle going on in his consciousness. Finally he said, “I would tell him, ‘No, Lord.’ ”

The power of likes can be just as strong. In my native state of Kerala, where cashews thrive, most of us are quite partial to them. I too shared this fondness. But when I left Kerala to teach at a university in central India, cashews more or less dropped out of my life.

Then, when I came to America, someone gave me a big can of cashews as a present. I opened it and was amazed at the response of my mind. All the old attraction came pouring in, and I could hear my mind say, “Ahh . . . at last! Cashews!”

But by this time I understood the ways of the mind, and I was training my senses. So I said, “Oh, you remember how good cashews taste, do you?”

The mind said, “Don’t waste time talking . . . let’s get to them!”

I replied, “I think you’ve forgotten again who’s the boss around here. But I know you have a great fondness for these little nuts, and I’m a fair man, so I’ll make a bargain with you. As soon as you stop clamoring for cashews in that insistent way of yours, I’ll give you some.”

Then I placed the open can of cashews on the table beside me and turned to my academic work. For some time, the battle went on. I would be reading an incisive passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and suddenly I would feel something small and smooth touching my fingertips. Part of my mind – utterly unbeknown to me – had sent my hand over to the cashew can. “What’s going on?” I asked gravely.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” the mind said. “We weren’t going to eat any of them. We just wanted to see how they felt.”

I didn’t have to say anything more. My hand came back, and my mind scurried back to The American Scholar where it belonged.

At last, the mind gave up its tricks and subsided. I looked at the can of cashews and saw them for what they were – nuts, grown on trees in India where I used to live – and my mind did not move. “Good show,” I said. “Now you may enjoy some.” Those were the best cashews I have ever eaten in my life, because I ate them in freedom.

When you first learn to juggle with your likes and dislikes, there may be a lot of inner irritation. Some of the things you have chosen to eat taste so dreadful, and some you have chosen not to eat seem so luscious! But after a while, you will feel more than compensated by the marvelous juggling skill you are acquiring through your efforts. You may even begin, as the pulp magazines put it, to “amaze your friends and associates.”

One young woman I know went into an ice cream parlor when she was beginning her sense training and asked the proprietor, “What’s the worst flavor you have?”

“Licorice,” the man said. “It’s got to be licorice.”

She ordered a bowlful and ate it all – and when she went to pay, the man said with awe, “It’s on the house.”

After a while, you discover that your sense of enjoyment has been greatly multiplied. Freed from conditioning, you can now relish everything in perfect freedom – not only what you have always liked, but what you used to dislike too. You realize that taste lies in the mind, and the mind is yours to change.

Selecting Entertainment  |

So far we have been focusing on eating, but we do not eat with our mouths only. Eyes can eat. Ears can eat. And just as we exercise watchfulness about what we put in our mouths when we are training the senses, we have to be watchful about what passes through our other senses too.

A good play, for instance – one that explores character or expands our understanding, or even one that gives us some light entertainment – can be a wholesome meal for the mind. But a bad play is an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord; we stuff ourselves and often end up with a severe case of mental indigestion. And movies? I used to enjoy them, until I began to tire of seeing people throw off their clothes three or four times in an hour. But long ago, when I was training my senses, I discovered that even this can be turned into an opportunity.

Before a torrid scene came on, I recall, the whole theater would be fidgety. You could hear some talking and coughing, some candy wrapper and popcorn noises here and there. Then, suddenly, there would be complete quiet, complete concentration. Nobody would move, unless it was to the edge of the seat to get a closer view.

At this point, I began to do a very difficult thing: I closed my eyes. Or rather, I tried to close my eyes. I put my hands over them, but usually a chink would open up. After a while I managed to keep the lids closed, but the eyeballs still struggled and cried out, “This goes beyond the possible!” However, I persevered: if I was going to look at something, I wanted at least to have some say in the matter. I didn’t want any of my responses to be automatic.

In this way, bit by bit, I gained mastery over my sense of sight. After that, I was free to use my eyes as I liked – and instead of watching the screen during such scenes, I began to look at the rest of the audience. Then I came to understand the nature of compulsion. What power! If only those people could have harnessed that concentration in meditation.

By such training, what once seemed a grand thrill now appears in its true perspective. As spiritual awareness grows, we begin to realize that this body itself is a kind of garment, the ultimate costume. It just is not possible to be really naked until we shed the body in death.

I remember when my nieces dressed up for a wedding and showed me their little white gloves. One said, “Uncle, you don’t have on any gloves!”

I held out my hands and replied, “Oh, yes, I have – custom-made, too. A perfect fit; you can’t even see the seams.”

When you have this realization, you lose interest in seeing people take off their shoes or shirt. You know they are still fully clothed, and the whole thing seems not wicked but rather boring. Today, when such scenes arrive on the screen, I often doze.

In the name of hard-hitting communication, the media increasingly also offer us debased language – a few shopworn vulgarities, hauled out to serve every occasion. Presumably they are supposed to shock us, but what I find shocking is that people will allow the full range of their expressiveness to be encapsulated in a few stale interjections. It may seem old-fashioned, but I would recommend standing guard over the gate of the mouth to ensure that only the right kind of words come out. It is another form of sense training. Vulgar speech, sarcasm, gossip, even pointless chatter, should all be denied exit visas.

The Sufis capture this idea in a splendid metaphor. They advise us to speak only after our words have managed to issue through three gates. At the first gate we ask ourselves, “Are these words true?” If so, let them pass on; if not, back they go.

At the second gate we ask, “Are they kind?” If we still feel we must speak out, we need to choose words that will be supportive and loving, not words that embarrass or wound another person.

At the final gate, we ask, “Are they necessary?” They may be true, even kind, but it doesn’t follow that they have to be uttered; they must serve some meaningful purpose. Do they clarify the situation or help someone? Or do they strike a discordant or irrelevant note?

All of us understand what blows can do to someone, but we do not realize that words can create a more painful injury, one that can last for many years. Nor do we understand the terribly destructive impact words can have on the consciousness of the person who uses them.

The Power of Thoughts  |

Even thoughts leave a powerful imprint on the mind. The Buddha says forcefully, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” And on several occasions, Jesus pointed out that just thinking about an action can affect our consciousness almost as much as the actual performance.

All of us are appalled by the increase in violent crime across our land. We respond by buying more guns, training fiercer watchdogs, installing stronger locks and higher fences. We have not yet recognized that we live in an increasingly violent physical world because we have chosen – largely through the media – to live in an increasingly violent mental one.

Every time we see a show or read a story filled with violence, our minds are being steeped in that, just as they would be if we saw real violence. More amazing, we voluntarily pay for this kind of violence, witness it, and make it real inside our mind. When we do this over and over, we become insensitive to it. Gradually violence becomes a possible solution to frustration, poverty, and injustice; we may even end up applauding it.

In being selective about what we take in from the media, we shield ourselves from so many banal concepts which turn us away from the permanent joy within our hearts. How often we have been shown the same tired ideas: to smoke and drink is the mark of sophistication, to drive at dizzying speeds is the mark of courage, to have a new partner every day is the mark of masculinity or femininity, to use violence is the mark of strength, to be uninvolved is the mark of freedom. No wonder the mystics say our world is upside down! To be secure everywhere is the mark of sophistication, to be unshakable is the mark of courage, to be permanently in love with every person is the mark of masculinity or femininity, to forgive is the mark of strength, to govern our senses and passions is the mark of freedom.

The Goal  |

When we stimulate the senses unduly, vitality flows out through them like water from a leaky pail, leaving us drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Those who indulge themselves in sense stimulation throughout their lives often end up exhausted, with an enfeebled will and little capacity to love others. But when we train the senses we conserve our vital energy, the very stuff of life. Patient and secure within, we do not have to look to externals for satisfaction. No matter what happens outside – whether events are for or against us, however people behave towards us, whether we get what pleases us or do not – we are in no way dependent. Then it is that we can give freely to others; then it is that we can love.

The implications of this are enormous. The historian Arnold Toynbee has characterized our civilization as sensate, lacking a spiritual foundation. A grave charge, but I think we have to accept its validity. And society is growing more and more sense-oriented, which means that people will be trying ever more desperately to cling to what is, by its very nature, transitory – the momentary pleasures of the eye, the ear, the taste buds, the body. This is not a matter of right and wrong, but a matter of logic. If you have within you, as all of us do, a need that can be filled only by what is permanent, how can you fill that need with what is fleeting – sometimes there, sometimes absent, never to be counted on? If you are on a sinking ship, you do not want a block of ice that will be gone before you reach the shore; you want a good, solid boat with a rudder that will steer you home.

By now it will be clear that training the senses means training the mind as well. If we could become detached observers of what happens in the mind when we see a piece of apple strudel or the current sex symbol in a film, we would find that a wave of desire has risen, agitating our mind as a wave agitates the surface of a lake. Where there are many strong desires, the mind is in constant turmoil. Huge waves lash and roil the surface, and we cannot see the bottom of the lake of the mind: our true Self. When we learn to train our senses and master our desires, fewer and fewer of these waves rise up. Gradually the mind becomes still, so that we can discover our real identity. Every major religion emphasizes this: to realize God, we must quiet the mind. As the Bible says, “Be still and know that I am God.”

When the senses are trained, they will participate harmoniously in this supreme stilling of the mind. As we interact with people, as we work and play, we of course need to send our senses out a bit. But in deep meditation they will obediently return, as good servants should when the master or mistress – the soul – is entertaining a special guest – the Beloved. Saint Teresa of Avila beautifully expresses this goal, attainable by anyone who will undergo the training:

You will at once feel your senses gather themselves. They seem like bees which return to the hive and then shut themselves up to work at the making of honey; and this will take place without effort or care on your part. . . . At the first call of the will they come back more and more quickly. At last, after many and many exercises of this kind, God disposes them to a state of absolute repose and perfect contemplation.

Next Chapter: 6 Putting Others First