Classical Vedanta · part of the Mahabharata
Bhagavad Gita 6.35
Arjuna admits the mind is harder to hold than the wind
चञ्चलं हि मनः कृष्ण प्रमाथि बलवद्दृढम्। तस्याहं निग्रहं मन्ये वायोरिव सुदुष्करम्॥
The mind is restless, turbulent, obstinate, and very strong, O Krishna, and to subdue it is, it seems to me, more difficult than controlling the wind.
What this verse points to
This is Arjuna speaking, not Krishna, and it is the most reassuring verse in the chapter. The difficulty you meet in meditation is not a sign that you are unusually bad at it. It was already the standard complaint when the text was composed.
Krishna does not deny it in reply. He agrees the mind is restless and hard to hold, and then says it is restrained anyway — by practice and by non-attachment.
Sit with it
When the mind will not settle, stop treating it as failure. Return to the breath once more and let that be the whole of the practice.
About the Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita is a 700-verse dialogue set on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, in which Krishna counsels the warrior Arjuna at the moment he refuses to fight. Across eighteen chapters it draws together the paths of action, devotion, and knowledge into a single teaching on how to act without being bound by action. It sits inside the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata and has been the most widely commented-upon text in the Vedantic tradition, from Shankara onward.
References to this text are given as chapter.verse — here, 6.35.