Is our mind a Monkey?

IS OUR MIND A MONKEY?

DESCRIPTION:

Mind is generally compared with a monkey because of the wavering qualities of the mind. Monkey is a good simile for the mind.  Minding our mind will lead to awareness and controls the Monkey nature of mischief and constant wavering.

INTENT:

To be aware of the monkey nature of the mind

To negate negative stimulus of the mind

To keep the mind steady

QUESTIONS:

Can you describe the activities of a Monkey?

Do you have any experience with Monkey?

Can we learn any lessons from Monkey?

Why our mind compared with Monkey and not with other animals?

Activity:  Keep silence for a minute. Let your mind think whatever it wants. (Then the students are asked to share their thoughts)

STORY : How to catch a monkey?

Once a man wanted to catch a monkey, he thought of many different ways. At last he came up with an idea. He took a glass jar with a long neck. Then he put a few red cherries in a jar and left it under a tree. The jar has a bigger base but smaller handle bar. A monkey saw the jar with the fruits and wanted to get the fruit. It eagerly put its hand inside the jar to take the fruits. But when it tried to take its hand out with the fruits in its closed hands, the fist could not be taken out. If it drops the fruits it could easily take its hand out. But the monkey did not want to let go the fruits. It kept trying to take its hand out with the fruits for long time and was caught by the man.

Glass jar

Why Monkey was not willing to drop the fruits?

Have you faced like this situation in the story?

What is the fruit in jar in our life? How to save ourselves?

Watching some TV shows and playing computer games –Fruits in the jar

Getting good marks—taking out the hand with out the fruits.

    

Smoking and drinking so some people ---Fruits in the jar

Getting a good name— Taking out the hand

Eating samosa and pizza —fruits in the jar

Want to reduce weight and take to diet—taking out the hand

STORY:

A man had trained a monkey to do all the household activities like serving food water etc. but after each activity he used to hit the monkey on the head with a stick.

Once he invited a friend for lunch. As usual he hit the monkey after every activity. The friend was very upset and stopped the man from hitting the monkey. The monkey realized that it was not being hit anymore. Its natural instinct to throw things arose and and it spoiled the entire lunch to the consternation of the friend.

What do you feel about the story?

Why Monkey behaved that way when it was not beaten?

Does the instinct of the monkey has any relation to our mind?

Application idea:

Spend sometime every day to watch the movements of the mind without attempting to control it any way.

Mind and Monkey:

The more we say, “I don’t want something”, that [thing] becomes the basis of our mind and starts to rule it.  Let’s do an experiment right now. Don’t think about monkeys for the next 10 seconds. Try it. Only monkeys come to our mind, isn’t it?

This is the nature of our mind. We can’t do anything head-on with our mind. We need to understand the process of our mind and see what to do with it. If we compulsively give up something, it will take shape in some other way.