Almost everyone before they spend serious time doing zazen or meditating suffer from what I like to call the monkey mind (kapicitta). This is the mind of our internal conversation or the same, thinking. It is almost always disordered and chaotic. The Buddha described such a mind this way.
"Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grabs one branch and lets it go only to seize another, so too, that which is called thought, mind or consciousness arises and disappears continually both day and night" (S.ii.95).
This inner monkey mind depends on determinate objects including sounds and many other things such as the past or the future. Without an object (a branch) it is still unable to relax and just abide. The monkey has to hold onto something all the time. The restlessness of the monkey mind is sensory object dependent.
Taming the monkey mind is no easy task. Most people cannot sit in zazen or some form of meditation for five minutes without their monkey mind grabbing branches right and left! The I or the higher self is aware of all this craziness, but has lost control of the monkey. And this is a big monkey, almost of gorilla-like proportions for some people. On the outside such people look normal. But inside, the monkey is jumping around, chattering, grabbing things. In other cases, the monkey is depressed almost despondent grabbing at past branches; refusing to let go of this one particular branch.
Buddhism, especially, Zen Buddhism, needs to convert this wild monkey mind into an ordinary human mind that is capable of listening to the Buddha’s discourses, correctly. The higher or lord self has to take charge and stop allowing the monkey to do as it pleases. (From the Dhammapada (380) we read, “the self is lord of the self [attâ hi attano natho].”)
From the position of proper meditation, we have to be aware of our monkey mind as painful as it may seem to us. The more we zoom in on the monkey the more he seems to calm down. Aversion to our monkey mind is not helpful. He only becomes more active. Sometime in our life we have to face him.
Thanks for the .. er.. thoughts! Beautifully stated. I've been noticing (at least in meditation) how my mind just wants to grab onto anything, and how it gives up a bit if I don't give it space to jabber on.
LOVE this sutra:“the self is lord of the self [attâ hi attano natho].”
Posted by: Don Radick | January 12, 2015 at 07:06 PM
In case nobody gets it, my post was sarcasm because The Zennist is highly predictable, and so are most of his readers...
Posted by: Electric Black | January 11, 2015 at 08:36 AM
Zennist, thank you for responding to my thought-force. I was waiting for you to post this today. The condition of my mind has continued to improve since I stopped your meditation. My 'monkey mind' (as I intended for you to say) has been quiet. Whoever is reading this, leave the Dark Zen cult. It has no purpose but to cause you harm.
Posted by: Electric Black | January 11, 2015 at 05:12 AM