This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Meditation: Restlessness; Dharmette: Animal Similes (2 of 5) Monkey – Foolishness and Investigation. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by an unknown speaker at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Welcome to everyone arriving. It’s nice to see you. Let’s go ahead and start.
Sometimes, occasionally, you may experience a mind that has a lot of restlessness in it. I’m saying that a little bit tongue-in-cheek because I think we all know that one. Other times, the mind may seem to be kind of uninterested in meditation. So we may have restlessness or disinterest, can’t quite be there.
Sometimes we take that itself to be the problem, and we try to change how the mind is. We think it should be some other way. But sometimes when we do that, all we’re doing is letting go at a surface level, and it turns out there’s actually something underneath that’s driving all those thoughts or all that resistance. There can be times where we need to see that underlying issue before the mind can settle down. So there’s restlessness, and then sometimes a little investigation can help. And sometimes there’s some kind of emotion, maybe some kind of discontent or some kind of desire that’s often what drives restlessness.
And if you’re feeling very calm and peaceful, that’s also great. But with that little introduction, let’s sit together and have a chance to look more carefully at our minds.
Settling in now to a posture where you can stay sitting for a half hour or so. Just allowing the attention to come inward, sensing the body in whatever posture you’re in, knowing that you’re moving into a meditative mind space in a natural, simple way.
Starting by feeling into the body—not what it looks like in the mirror, but what it feels like right now to be in a sense in the body.
Sometimes it’s easy to connect first with the contact points, the place where you’re sitting, resting on, just feeling your weight, the solidity and stability of sitting on a chair, a cushion, a bed. And allowing yourself to be supported.
Sensing into the balance of the body. Sometimes I even rock back and forth slightly or forward and back slightly, just to sense that middle balance point as well as possible, and inviting the body to settle there.
Inviting some softening in the face, in the shoulders, in the belly, arms, and legs.
And tuning into the sensations of the breath, which are certainly happening in the present moment. So this is a way of inviting the mind to connect with the present, the simple life force of the body.
Breathing in, breathing out.
It can be helpful to invite some further softening on the out-breath.
And bringing up consciously the quality of mindfulness: a simple, present-moment attention that doesn’t judge what’s happening as good or bad, right or wrong, but just sees clearly. It’s easy enough with the breath because there really isn’t any right or wrong way to breathe. Just notice how the breath is.
And now, noticing the energy in the mind. As we settle in, we can just at a top level check in: is the mind more on the side of being a little drowsy or dull? More on the side of being a little bit energized or jumpy, restless? It’s as simple as taking the temperature of water, putting our hand in—is it a little cool, a little warm? And just noticing that it’s a natural quality of the mind that this kind of energy changes throughout the day and even from minute to minute.
So continuing to stay with the breath as the primary object, but in a sense, also being aware of the tendency of the mind toward being a little agitated or a little dull. Or perhaps it’s perfectly centered at this moment. That happens too. But just resting with the breath and having some curiosity about the flow of the mind in addition.
It may be that simply paying attention to the energy level of the mind helps it to find some balance. It’s a little bit like the dynamic balance of riding a bicycle. You’re never completely balanced on a bicycle but always making very slight corrections back toward the center. It’s possible for that to happen in meditation too. With the right balance of conditions, we stay with the breath, and a little agitated, but then that settles out; a little dull, but then that returns to balance.
And sometimes not. Sometimes the mind is really determined to not stay present. And if that’s the case, it can be helpful to notice next time it happens, what did it feel like? What does it feel like when the mind is continually moving away? Is there something else there right before it goes off or it gets dull?
Continuing to breathe along with the flow of the mind.
As we continue to bring mindfulness to the mind, the flow of the mind, a gentle reminder that mindfulness is not deciding what should and shouldn’t happen. It simply is being with what is happening. So mindfulness has kind of an inherent aspect of contentment, being okay with what is actually happening in the present. Whereas the moment where the mind gets caught in a thought or a desire is kind of a moment of discontent in the mind—something else would be better than this present moment. Seeing a contrast between the discontent of restlessness and desire, and the contentment of noticing and being with how things are at this moment.
Can we be content with a mind that is sometimes restless and sometimes not? Once again, we feel the ease and the safety of just being mindful. Nothing is a problem if we’re aware of it.
And as we move toward the end of our formal sitting, beginning to have a sense of what it means to be okay with things as they are. The Dhammapada1 says, “Contentment is the greatest wealth.” It doesn’t mean accepting terrible things, somehow validating things that we don’t agree with, but that very base level of, “Yeah, this is how it is at this moment.” And when we do that with our mind, which is sometimes discontented, restless, or dull, we can then carry that into our day. As we move through tasks that we enjoy, tasks that we don’t enjoy so much, just managing the mind well through all of those changes. Staying with things, staying with interactions that may not be to our liking, but we can be content to know, “Yes, I’m present, I’m going through this.” It’s such a gift to ourselves and to others to have this gentle awareness of the mind.
So wishing as we go through our day: may all beings find some degree of internal ease. May they learn to be with the ups and downs of the mind. And I will walk through the world in that way in order to support that process for all. May it be so.
This week we are exploring the dharma through animal similes, as I mentioned yesterday. They’re designed to kind of move us along a path that the mind follows as it progresses from being relatively unprotected to becoming stronger and wiser—the same path that we walk as we walk this path of insight, during the insight practices that Gil has been emphasizing in his series.
The Buddha often taught via similes, and they’re very, very rich. They’re not only mental; they’re not meant to just be things that we think about, but they can actually be kind of visceral, you know, felt in the body. So that’s the invitation, perhaps, as we go through the week: to feel how you can connect with what we’re talking about literally in your own body and your own experience.
So we started yesterday with the quail, and that was about how when we get caught up in the five senses, we allow Mara2, the forces of distraction or difficulty, to gain access and bring us dukkha3—suffering, stress. Whereas if we stay mindful, which is our ancestral home, as it’s said in the four foundations of mindfulness, that keeps us safe, even if our minds are, you know, relatively weak, like the quail, let’s say.
So today, we are moving on to the monkey. That’s the animal for today. And interestingly, there is a nearly identical sutta to the one about the quail that features a monkey instead, so it’s kind of a nice transition. We won’t read the whole thing, but it says the same kind of thing: that there are places where neither monkeys nor humans can go, and then there are places where monkeys can go but not humans—those are places that are safe for them. And then there are places where both monkeys and humans can go, and there, monkeys can get trapped.
Apparently, one kind of trap features a tar pit. The monkey gets caught by grabbing; he gets stuck in the tar with one paw, and then trying to free himself from that, he grabs it with the other paw, and then that one gets stuck. So then he tries a foot, and that gets stuck, and the other foot, and finally the mouth. And so in a sense, we again have these five things getting stuck—the five sense bases. And that happens because the monkey doesn’t realize he’s attracted to this. Apparently, there’s something sweet in the tar, and he doesn’t realize that’s what’s happening and so continues to stick and stick and stick in more places.
So this emphasis is not so much on weakness or vulnerability like the quail, but kind of foolishness, you know, not realizing that the monkey is catching himself. So in these contexts, the monkey represents, in a certain way, the forces within us that attract us to what isn’t helpful and how we get caught again in that. The quail was portrayed as weak, and the monkey is really more portrayed as foolish in allowing himself to do that, because monkeys are nominally intelligent, right? But maybe not using their full potential in those cases.
So there’s more to this monkey simile if we then look to other suttas. We start to get a richer sense of what the Buddha is suggesting here. You may have heard the phrase “monkey mind.” Often people use this term for restlessness in meditation, and there are two references to monkeys as a simile for the mind in the suttas, and they fill out this idea kind of nicely.
The first one is the monkey mind of consciousness leaping from object to object, and maybe that’s kind of the way we often imagine it. It’s not just restlessness; there’s a little bit more to it. This foundation of restlessness, as well as of things like desire and aversion—the ways where the mind tends to go off of staying calmly in the present moment—the foundation is discontent, of not being okay with just this moment, of needing to seek something else and then going from thing to thing like a monkey swinging through the forest. I feel like we can all understand this image pretty well from our own mind.
I wanted to say a little bit about the actual teaching where it comes from. The Monkey Mind Sutta is in the Samyutta Nikaya4, and it starts out saying that somebody might not have any problem letting go of the body, the idea of the body as a self, but it’s very difficult to let go of the mind or the intellect or consciousness. The Buddha uses all three terms. And now I’ll quote from the sutta. Why can’t they let go of that? For what reason?
Because for a long time this has been held to by that person, appropriated and grasped, thus: “This is mine, this I am, this is myself.” Therefore, the uninstructed person is unable to experience disenchantment toward the mind, unable to become dispassionate toward it and liberated from it. It would be better for such a person to take as the self the body composed of the four great elements rather than the mind. Why is that? Because this body is seen standing for one year, two years, three, four, five, or 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years, even 100 years or longer. But that which is called mind or mentality or consciousness arises as one thing and ceases as another by day and by night.
Just as a monkey roaming through a forest grabs hold of one branch, lets that go and grabs another, then lets that go and grabs still another, so too that which is called mind or consciousness arises as one thing and ceases as another by day and by night.
And then the teaching goes on to say that we can observe dependent arising. We can observe that the mind too is impersonal and should not be identified with as a self, because the way it flows is actually just conditioned. It’s not really about “me” and “mine.” It’s that one thought triggers an association, and that brings on an emotion, and then that emotion triggers a body sensation, and then the body sensation is unpleasant, and so we have another thought about the unpleasantness of that, etc., etc., etc. There’s this flow to the mind. The Buddha isn’t really saying we should identify with the body as itself, but he’s saying it makes more sense, right? The body is a little bit more stable, more constant in some way than the mind, which is continually, continually changing.
So now we’re getting into more detail than we had with the quail. Monkey mind is not just a criticism of restlessness or anxiety or mental movement; it’s actually an invitation to investigate how the mind moves from one state to another continually. The mind is leaping about, but it’s not doing so randomly. There’s a flow of conditions, and when we see that, it helps us not to identify so much with the stream of thoughts or emotions. And that is the way to really let go of all that restlessness. It doesn’t mean it goes away necessarily, but it allows us, even in that moment just of observing it, we’re stepping back from it. And instead of being that swinging monkey from branch to branch, we step back and say, “Wow, look at all that restlessness. Look at all that proliferation of thought.” There’s a Dhammapada verse that says people delight in proliferation of thought, but Buddhas are free of proliferation. So that’s one of the qualities of the Buddha: the mind doesn’t go off. And we start by just stepping back and being able to see, “Wow, look at my mind going crazy at this moment,” or “really getting caught up.” It’s fascinating to just watch that and have some ability to be aware of it.
And then the second monkey simile—I said there were two—is also worth talking about. It’s along the same idea as this moment-to-moment flow of monkey mind, but it’s on a longer time scale. So in a different sutta, the Buddha comments on some practitioners’ tendency to move around from teacher to teacher, from technique to technique, from tradition to tradition, never settling in on one practice and really going deep. In this case, he says, “Having let go of the last, they lay hold of the next.” And the implication there is the teacher—having let go of the last teacher, they lay hold of the next teacher. “Following impulse, they don’t get past the snare. They grab on and let go like a monkey grabbing and releasing a branch.” So this is a verse, so it’s a little bit more poetic than the prose I was reading before.
But in this text, the Buddha is pointing out that there are people who engage in spiritual practice by looking externally. “This teacher’s got it. No, this teacher’s got it. Oh no, I’m not with them anymore.” Or, “This practice, oh, this is it, I finally found it.” No, and then three weeks later, “Oh, I’m on to the next practice.” People are kind of looking for a particular experience or a philosophy from the outside that they can hold on to and claim, “Now I’ve got it. Now this is success. Now my mind is pure,” something like that. There’s some idea or ideal that they’re looking for. And if that’s the attitude in how we’re seeking teachings and practices, we’re bound to be disappointed. And so hence, the person goes and seeks the next thing, the next thing, like the monkey swinging. It’s the same idea. Can you see that? It’s the same idea as the mind in moment-to-moment, like in meditation, thinking this thought, then that thought, this emotion, getting caught up in this. It’s just on a longer time scale.
So there’s a way in which the Buddha says, just look at this tendency that we have to not be willing to be with one thing, not be willing to just stay in the present. But instead, to be able to watch, “Oh, why is the mind moving from this to this to this? Is there something underneath where it’s a little bit discontent, looking for an ideal, looking for an experience? This isn’t it, it must be somewhere else.”
My addition to the monkey simile—I think you get the idea now of what this represents—is that monkeys have large brains and a lot of potential capability, but they don’t always use it well. They have this slight foolishness sometimes about how it gets directed. And there are ways where that may be happening for us too. We have great potential in our human mind, but to open this up, we have to learn somehow to navigate our hindrances. The hindrances can be seen as ways that we hold ourselves back, that we don’t use our full potential. And so we have this very humble training of just watching. The very first step is to be able to see, “Ah, this is what the mind is doing, flowing from this to this to this. There’s a discontentment, there’s a grabbing, there’s a pushing away.”
And daily life mindfulness, having some continuity throughout the whole day, really helps us develop that even further than what we do in meditation. So mindfulness practice is not always all that glamorous, but it is something that we can stay with. And if we stay with it, it continually goes deeper and deeper. We don’t need a lot of different techniques. Back to the four foundations of mindfulness and continuing to stay with that, looking inward, looking inward, continuing to watch the flow of the mind, we’ll start to see the patterns and be able to settle down and just see how the mind works and be content with the flow of life as it is. Things do change by themselves; we don’t need to continually keep seeking them.
So some of our early insights, to tie into the insight theme, are insights into the hindrances and our tendencies toward certain kinds of thought patterns and emotions. It’s not always fun to see that, but “self-knowledge is rarely good news” is sometimes said. But it’s also said that when we are willing to see those, we can have a real sense of… when we’re really able to see that, then we’re doing the practice. You know, then we’re starting to settle out of the hindrances and settle into the four foundations of mindfulness, our protection and our place of refuge.
So the monkey as a way, an invitation to investigate and see the flow of the mind. Then we’ll move on to another animal tomorrow as we continue our journey through insight. Thank you so much.
Dhammapada: A collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form, and one of the most widely read and best-known Buddhist scriptures. ↩
Mara: In Buddhism, a demonic celestial king who personifies temptation, distraction, and the forces that obstruct spiritual progress. ↩
Dukkha: A Pali word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is a foundational concept in Buddhism. The original transcript said “duca.” ↩
Samyutta Nikaya: A collection of Buddhist scriptures, part of the Sutta Pitaka. It is one of the five Nikayas, or collections, in the Pali Canon. The original transcript said “samuta nikaya.” ↩