The Monkey Mind

The Monkey Mind

My mind is restless jumping from here and there. It is hard to concentrate on nothing. It is impossible to still the monkey mind.

I have always been a Monkey. I was born in the year of the monkey in the Chinese Zodiac. And, as a totem, there is no animal more intriguing then the monkey.

The monkey is the trickster, ready to play with your mind and tease you and pull you into a sudden collision with the dichotomies of reality.

For those who follow the rules or create the rules, the monkey is rather a disturbing creature because even when caged he looks at you and mocks conventionality. You want order, he brings chaos. You want to cry, he makes you laugh. You want to frown, he will turn upside down.

It is the business of the monkey to be in constant action and to find pleasure in the small and the absurd.

The monkey is our mirror reflecting our desire to be more than just another hairless ape.

On a more serious note, in meditation the goal is to quiet the mind. Some teachers have called this quieting the monkey mind. It is in the stillness that the writer can find the form for his or her writing.

A monkey sees a shining sphere in a deep pool. The excited creature reaches out precariously to grab it, but can’t reach far enough. If the monkey lets go he will fall into the dark water. Yet if he pulls back into the trees, the quest will have been abandoned.
You don’t need any special powers to discover that light seen in the reflected moon is real.
http://meditationproject.com/Monkeys.html

The monkey running rampant in our mind, doing its business of thinking distracts us from the form of reality. To understand reality we must understand being and not being. We must understand movement and stillness. When we think too much, we sense less than is possible. When we stop the monkey mind we move on to be the sage who is observing and is witness to the world. It is this observation that brings insight and not the thinking about what is happening. Thus when we learn detachment the monkey goes to sleep and we are one with the Tao.

Thus the business of the monkey is to let us see the reflected light of reality, but then through detachment we discover that whether reflected or direct the light is just the light.