MANAGING YOUR MIND.

QUIET, PLEASE. I am trying to meditate. I am sitting cross-legged on the floor, because this is what I have been advised to do. The body forms a stable triangle in this position. But it hurts.

Almost anything is more interesting than meditation. Duties that are normally shoved to the back of one's mind assume a new and diverting urgency--constructing shopping lists, cleaning the mould off the grouting in the shower, making postponed telephone calls. One doesn't actually do them, of course, one just thinks about doing them. This is called distraction.

The meditating figure has an irresistible fascination to any children who happen to be in the vicinity. They appear, sighing and big-eyed. A major school project they have forgotten to tell you about is due in today. Their sports uniform cannot be found. This, too, is called distraction.

Many people claim to meditate regularly, but I think it just feels as though they are. Those who take to it readily can, in fact, be somewhat off-putting up close. I remember a couple who told me they meditated together for forty-five minutes every morning. (There was no mention of children, so I could well believe it.) They were both possessed of a somewhat chilling calm, and seemed to look down upon the world from a great height.

I wondered what they had been like before they started meditating. Perhaps they had been bug-eyed with frenzy. Somehow I did not think so. The problem for the rest of us is that meditation does not turn meditators into better people. Whatever it is they discover on their inward journey does not produce greater warmth, or consideration for others, merely a somewhat unnerving composure.

Most of us don't know what to do with our minds, most of the time. They do our bidding well enough when we have a job to do, and they generally find the right things to say on social occasions. But give them a chink of opportunity and they fill with aimless chatter, memories, resentments. Our bodies know immediately what is "not us". But our minds--well, they have a mind of their own.

Traditions of mind training still have a place in Eastern philosophies. In the West, they have all but died out, as monastic religion has declined and decayed. Institutional religion, whether of the jump-and-holler or High Church variety, offers little in the way of usable spiritual technologies, leaving many people the task of finding (or forging) their own. Every so often, we hear of a pop star who has embraced transcendental meditation or Scientology. We tell ourselves there is something missing from our lives without ever quite working out what it is.