Monkey Mind

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Monkey Mind - Solitary Zen

Wikipedia gives us a concise definition of monkey mind - "a Buddhist term meaning unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable." It is this all-too-normal aspect of the human mind that scares so many students whom are new to meditation. Too often those just beginning a meditation practice feel they have failed if they are unable to quiet their own monkey mind within the first few days or weeks. Most feel their erratic, runaway thoughts are unique to them and will never be overcome.

I ask those new to zazen to take heart in the knowledge that in many ways it gets much, much easier but it is something you will experience from time to time for as long as you are practicing meditation. There will be days of remarkable clarity and quiet and there will be days where you can't seem to quiet any of the myriad thoughts and ideas running around in your head. This is normal.

Even on those days when you can't seem to quiet or calm the monkeys, you can at least begin to recognize what you are experiencing and how this unsettled and restless state might impact your day, your decision making or your relationships. There will be days when simply recognizing that your monkey mind is distracting you will have to be enough. Don't get discouraged. Try again with your next sitting. Don't stress about it. Eliminate expectations. Just sit.

The Key to Knowing Ourselves

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By Pema Chödrön

Meditation practice awakens our trust that the wisdom and compassion that we need are already within us. It helps us to know ourselves: our rough parts and our smooth parts, our passion, aggression, ignorance and wisdom.

Meditation practice awakens our trust that the wisdom and compassion that we need are already within us. It helps us to know ourselves: our rough parts and our smooth parts, our passion, aggression, ignorance and wisdom. The reason that people harm other people, the reason that the planet is polluted and people and animals are not doing so well, these days is that individuals don’t know or trust or love themselves enough. The technique of sitting meditation called shamatha-vipashyana (“tranquillity-insight”) is like a golden key that helps us to know ourselves.

In shamatha-vipashyana meditation, we sit upright with legs crossed and eyes open, hands resting on our thighs. Then we simply become aware of our breath as it goes out. It requires precision to be right there with that breath. On the other hand, it’s extremely relaxed and soft. Saying, “Be right there with the breath as it goes out,” is the same thing as saying, “Be fully present.” Be right here with whatever is going on. Being aware of the breath as it goes out, we may also be aware of other things going on—sounds on the street, the light on the walls. These things capture our attention slightly, but they don’t need to draw us off. We can continue to sit right here, aware of the breath going out.

But being with the breath is only part of the technique. These thoughts that run through our minds continually are the other part. We sit here talking to ourselves. The instruction is that when you realize you’ve been thinking you label it “thinking.” When your mind wanders off, you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Whether your thoughts are violent or passionate or full of ignorance and denial; whether your thoughts are worried or fearful; whether your thoughts are spiritual thoughts, pleasing thoughts of how well you’re doing, comforting thoughts, uplifting thoughts, whatever they are—without judgment or harshness simply label it all “thinking,” and do that with honesty and gentleness.

The touch on the breath is light: only about 25 percent of the awareness is on the breath. You’re not grasping and fixating on it. You’re opening, letting the breath mix with the space of the room, letting your breath just go out into space. Then there’s something like a pause, a gap until the next breath goes out again. While you’re breathing in, there could be some sense of just opening and waiting. It is like pushing the doorbell and waiting for someone to answer. Then you push the doorbell again and wait for someone to answer. Then probably your mind wanders off and you realize you’re thinking again—at this point use the labeling technique.

It’s important to be faithful to the technique. If you find that your labeling has a harsh, negative tone to it, as if you were saying, “Dammit!,” that you’re giving yourself a hard time, say it again and lighten up. It’s not like trying to shoot down the thoughts as if they were clay pigeons. Instead, be gentle. Use the labeling part of the technique as an opportunity to develop softness and compassion for yourself. Anything that comes up is okay in the arena of meditation. The point is, you can see it honestly and make friends with it.

Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you’re sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. So when you realize that you’re talking to yourself, label it “thinking” and notice your tone of voice. Let it be compassionate and gentle and humorous. Then you’ll be changing old stuck patterns that are shared by the whole human race. Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.

From Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, by Pema Chödrön.

The Key to Knowing Ourselves is Meditation, Pema Chödrön, Shambhala Sun, July 2001.

Peeling Potatoes

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Zazen, the fundamental practice of sitting meditation, is meant to bring the mind and body to a state of unhindered experiencing – what Kosho Uchiyama Roshi called “opening the hand of thought." In sitting meditation, body, breath and mind come together; uncovering who we really are, liberated from the external affectations of society, family and friends. A common practice in sitting meditation is to focus on – often counting – the cycle of breathing. This practice is designed to bring the sitter into the present; untied from rehashing past events or dwelling about future possibilities. We seek to experience this moment, this breath.

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

– Alan W. Watts

Few statements get to the heart of Zen quite like Watts’ analogy of peeling potatoes. It seeks to bring the very essence of zazen to our everyday life. That is, staying present in every aspect of our waking life and to bring no more and no less than what is required for any moment of our lives.

We now live in a culture where multitasking is routinely a matter of necessity, as well as a prized commodity in terms of employment. Far from the lives of leisure technology promised humanity, we find ourselves trying to cram more and more activities into seemingly less and less time. At the end of the day, we are barely able to recall most of what our day comprised.

“How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it.”

– Paulo Coelho (Brida)

To be sure, there are moments when multitasking is necessary. In fact, our brains are wired to do it without even thinking – we walk into a room and our minds instantly assess the layout of the space, how many people are there, do we know any of them, what are they wearing. All of this is done without any real conscious command on our part. Yet, when asked to recall specific details about the experience, we are often at a total loss to do so. This is why eyewitness accounts are so bothersome for law enforcement. Our brains are flawed and seemingly preconditioned to experience life at a cursory level.

Far too often we equate movement or action with consequential results. We miss countless tiny miracles and moments of wonder while flying to and fro through meaningless activities, events and trivial conversations – what Jacob Needleman describes as the difference between “intentional speech” and “talking.” Even when we are engaged in emotionally rewarding events and activities we are often far more concerned with the instantaneous “sharing” of the experience through social media than we are with fully experiencing the moments. We involuntarily leap past the actual event to the experiencing of it through the unreliable eyes of memory. Fearful of missing something, we rush to the next tourist attraction only to be thinking about the one after that. If we can be this distracted and dismissive in life’s magic moments, imagine how brain-dead we allow ourselves to be in the course of our normal workaday lives.

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

– Douglas Adams

Perhaps unintentionally, Douglas Adams provides us with an important reminder to recognize and appreciate the beauty all around us, every day. Or, as Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh tells us, “The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.” Our modern world – and modern relationships – are too often filled with pomp and circumstance masquerading as real emotion, real compassion, real caring; smoke and mirrors masking a hollowness that goes undiagnosed, only to need a temporary, superficial filling again and again and again.

The practice of sitting meditation, zazen, is a tool that can help us peel away the layers of scattered thoughts and experience the stillness of our true self. For some, this can be a disquieting experience. Finding this stillness can be difficult and erratic. However, the times we do find that stillness can be deeply healing. With practice, we learn to find that stillness – that presence – in even the tiniest moments of our lives; during our morning commute, taking a shower, planting a garden or, peeling potatoes.

(repost from August 19, 2011, SolitaryZen.com)

On Spiritual Authority – Alan Watts

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This is a repost from the old version of this blog. However, I think it remains pertinent to the overall mission of the Solitary Zen book and blog; that is, to bring the ultimate authority and responsibility for our actions, our thoughts and our lives where it belongs – with the individual. Your comments are encouraged.

I may take the liberty of beginning by saying something about myself and my roll in talking to you about philosophical matters, because I want it to be understood perfectly clearly that I am not a guru. In other words, I talk about what we call “these things” and that comprises a multitude of interests concerning Oriental philosophy, psychotherapy, religion, mysticism, etcetera. I talk about these things because I’m interested in them and because I enjoy talking about them; and every sensible person makes (his or her) living by doing what (they) enjoy doing. And that explains me.

Now in saying, therefore, that I am not a guru that means also that I’m not trying to help you or improve you. I accept you as you are. I am not out, therefore, to save the world. Of course, when a stream, a bubbling spring, flows out from the mountains, it’s doing its thing. And, if a thirsty traveler helps (themselves), well that’s fine. When a bird sings, it doesn’t sing for the advancement of music. But, if somebody stops to listen, and is delighted, that’s fine.

And so I talk in the same spirit. I don’t have a group of followers. I’m not trying to make disciples; because I work on the principle of a physician rather than a clergyman. A physician is always trying to get rid of his patients, and send them away healthy to stand on their own feet, whereas a clergyman is trying to get them as members of a religious organization so that they will continue to pay their pledges, pay the mortgage on an expensive building and generally belong to the church, boost its membership and thereby prove – by sheer weight of numbers – the veracity of its tenants. My objective is really to get rid of you so that you won’t need me or any other teacher.

I’m afraid some of my colleagues would not approve of that attitude because it is widely believed and said that in order to advance in the spiritual life – whatever that is – it is essential that you have a guru, and that you accord to that guru, perfect obedience.

And so I’m often asked the question “is it really necessary to have a guru?” I can answer that only by saying “yes, it is necessary if you think so.” In the same spirit as it is said that anybody who goes to a psychiatrist, ought to have (their) head examined. Of course, there is more in that saying than meets the ear. Because if you really are sincerely concerned with yourself and are in such confusion, that you feel you have to go to a psychiatrist to talk over your state, then, of course, you need to go.

Likewise, if you are in need of someone to tell you what to do, to practice meditation, or to attain a state of liberation – nirvana, moksha, or whatever it may be called – and you feel that necessity very strongly, then you must do it; because, as the poet William Blake said, “The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”

However, I do want to point this out – what is the source of a guru’s authority? (He or she) can tell you that (he or she) can speak from experience; that (he or she) has experienced states of consciousness which have made (he or she) profoundly blissful, or understanding or compassionate, or whatever it may be. And you have (his or her) word for it. And you have the word of other people whom likewise agree with (him or her.)

But each one of them – and you in turn – agree with (him or her) out of your own opinion and by your own judgment. And so it is you that are the source of the teacher’s authority. That is true whether (he or she) speaks as an individual or whether (he or she) speaks as the representative of a Tradition or a Church.

You may say that you take The Bible as your authority, or the Roman Catholic Church; and the Roman Catholic following very often says that the individual mystic experience is not to be trusted because of it’s liability to be interpreted in a whimsical and purely personal way, and that it has to be guarded against excesses by the substantial and objective traditions of the Church. But those traditions are held to be substantial and objective only because those who follow believe it to be so. “They” say so, and if you follow it, you say so. So, the question comes back to you.

Why do you believe? Why do you form this opinion? Upon what basis does all this rest?

– Alan W. Watts