The practice of meditation is like a discipline – it is training the mind so that we don’t have to suffer the things that the mind willfully wants to do, like cause us to think again and again about something that makes us suffer.

But when we don’t train the mind, we don’t have the option to stop that suffering. When we train the mind, that option becomes available to us because now the mind knows how to pay attention to an object, how to place the mind here or there, how to have right attitude, or how to observe a feeling and not get lost in the thinking.

All these exercises that we do will help us deal with that suffering.