On the Restless Mind

A king let a condemned man choose his own punishment: a hundred onions to eat, or a hundred lashes to bear. Onions seemed the easier thing, so he chose them. But a few onions in, his eyes streaming, he begged instead for the lashes. A few lashes in, he begged to go back to the onions. And so it went, back and forth, until in the end he had eaten all hundred onions and taken all hundred lashes too.

This is the restlessness of the mind, and it is what makes a man suffer. Pain, tension, all our troubles — they are hidden in the mind's flitting, not out in the world. Let the mind grow still, and the suffering ends with it.

Meditation is one way to quiet the restless mind.