Lemons Into Lemonade: Using Life's Difficulties as Practices

The temptation is to regard difficulty as something that simply happens to us — an interruption of our practice, a reason we cannot meditate well today, an obstacle on our spiritual path. But there is another way to see it. Swami Rama taught his students to use every circumstance as grist for the mill — as raw material for growth. Everything in life, including what is most painful and most frightening, can be turned toward our development as meditators and as human beings.

The Mind Is Like a Dog

Anyone who has owned a dog knows that given the chance, a dog will find something unpleasant to smell and will return to it again and again with great enthusiasm. The mind works the same way. When something frightening or upsetting happens to us, the mind circles back to it compulsively — replaying the scene, rehearsing the threat, deepening the wound with each pass.

This is not a character flaw. It is simply what minds do. The question is whether we are going to be dragged around by the dog, or whether we are going to take hold of the leash.

Swami Hari, who was known for his humor, once pointed out that the word "dog" reversed spells "God." The practice of meditation is, in a sense, exactly this reversal — turning the restless, scavenging dog-mind into something more settled, more luminous. Not by fighting the mind, but by steadily, patiently returning it to its point of focus.

Using Disturbance as Practice

When something disturbing enters our lives, we face a choice — though it rarely feels like one in the moment. We can let the mind run where it will, chasing the disturbance in circles until we have exhausted ourselves and wasted the day. Or we can turn toward it deliberately, as practitioners.

Here is what that looks like in practice. When an upsetting situation arises:

1.     Do not push the feelings down. Suppression is not the same as equanimity. Allow yourself to feel what you feel — breathe, and surrender to the feelings as they are. This is the first and perhaps most important step.

2.    Use the feelings as objects of meditation. Rather than thinking about the situation, observe what is happening inside you. Watch the thoughts circle. Notice how repetitive thinking intensifies the emotional charge. When you see this clearly, you can begin to loosen its grip.

3.    Return to the mantra. Once you have felt and observed, give the mind a better place to be. Put it on the mantra — on the positive feeling that arises in the heart when the mantra is present. Let the thoughts of the disturbance fall away, not by force, but because the mind has found something more nourishing to rest on.

4.    Spend some focused, constructive time thinking — not worrying — about the situation. Ask yourself: What can I actually do? What do I choose to do? Make a plan. Then, each time the mind drifts back to the problem outside of that set-aside time, bring it back. You have already done your thinking. Now you are training the mind.

This is what it means to turn a difficulty into a practice. The difficulty is going to be there either way. The question is whether it simply causes suffering, or whether it becomes the very thing that strengthens our will and deepens our meditation.

Difficult People as Teachers

Some of the most reliable sources of disturbance in our lives are other people. A fellow student in our tradition — a man of considerable practice and genuine warmth — shared something that struck me deeply. There is a person in our community whom I find quite difficult to be around, and whom I have tended to avoid. This student does the opposite. He deliberately continues his relationship with this person, not out of masochism, but out of love — and because he recognizes it as excellent practice. Being with someone who challenges our equanimity, and choosing repeatedly to return to stability rather than react, is one of the finest exercises available to us.

This does not mean we must expose ourselves to people who harm us. Protecting ourselves is necessary and right. But within the range of what we can manage, there is value in not simply closing every door that is uncomfortable. The approach of hatha yoga offers a useful analogy: in a difficult posture, we move toward our edge, but we stop just before it — perhaps at 80% of our capacity. We do not stay safely at 20%, but we do not strain beyond our limit either. Over time, with this approach, the limit expands.

The same is true with difficult people, and with difficult situations of every kind. We approach with what we have. We hold our ground as best we can. We return to center when we slip. And over time, we find we can hold more.

Letting Go of What We Cannot Control

There is another kind of difficulty that life brings, subtler but no less real: the difficulty of letting go. Of places, of objects, of ways of living that have become part of who we are. When we are called to release them — because circumstances change, because we move, because life simply moves on — the mind clings.

A practice that has helped me, and that I have found recommended independently in several traditions, is to thank the things we must release. To hold them, in a sense, one last time and say: thank you for all you have given me. Now I let you go. This is not sentimentality. It is a form of completion — a way of acknowledging the value of what was, so that the parting can happen with grace rather than grief.

When we can pass something on to someone who will love it, so much the better. The object continues to give. When we cannot, we release it with gratitude and trust that it will be useful to someone. Either way, we practice the deeper teaching that everything we hold is, in the end, borrowed. We will let go of this body one day. Learning to let go of smaller things, with some grace, is preparation for that.

The Strength of Will

All of this comes back to one thing: the of will. This is not willpower in the ordinary sense — not gritting the teeth or forcing the mind. It is something more like the ability to hold a direction. To keep coming back. To not be permanently derailed by whatever has arisen.

We build this the same way we build any capacity — incrementally, through practice, in the small moments as much as the large. Getting out of bed promptly when we wake up, rather than lying there luxuriating, is itself a small act of will. Returning the mind to the mantra one more time when it has slipped away is an act of will. Choosing not to take the emotional bait in a difficult conversation — even once, even imperfectly — is an act of will.

Swami Veda taught that regular meditation sharpens our ability to observe our inner world. With practice, we begin to notice the moment before a reaction — that brief pause in which a choice is still possible. We do not always catch it. Sometimes things happen too fast, and we find ourselves already in the middle of the emotion. That is fine. Each step is something we can learn from. We are not aiming for perfection. We are aiming for a little more clarity, a little more stability, a little more of the time.

As this strength grows, something remarkable becomes possible. The mind that was once dragged around by every disturbance — every frightening message, every difficult person, every loss and uncertainty — begins to hold still. Not because the disturbances have gone away. They have not. But because the mind has found its center and has learned, slowly, to return to it.

This is the possibility that meditation points toward — not a life without difficulty, but a life in which difficulty is no longer the whole story. The lemons are still there. But we have learned, at last, to make something of them.

❧