Taming the Monkey Mind

by Jetsuma Tenzin Palmo

ALL PHENOMENA ARE PRECEDED BY THE MIND 

The opening verses of the Dhammapada said that all dhammas, all phenomena, are preceded by the mind. The mind is chief. Everything depends on our minds. So in Buddhism, the primary quest is to know our own mind. No matter where we live, what we can never leave behind, even in our dreams, is our own mind. Yet how much attention do we give to purifying our mind?

In Buddhism, when we talk about the mind, it means the heart-mind, which is a much deeper level of our essential consciousness, or essential awareness than the mechanism of merely our conceptual thinking mind, or intellectual thinking. In Sanskrit, it’s called citta; in Chinese it’s xin.

There are many levels of consciousness beyond the surface consciousness of our thinking. If we think of the mind like an ocean, then we could say that our ordinary conceptual thinking mind, which is where we normally operate from, is like the waves on the surface of the ocean, with our emotions as the undercurrents. We do not normally know anything about the depths of that ocean, the depths of our consciousness, because we are living on the surface of awareness. 

More than 2,500 years ago, the Buddha said that the average mind is a monkey mind. An ordinary monkey in the wild is very active. It is always jumping from branch to branch, picking the first fruit, taking a bite and then throwing it down before moving on to the next fruit. Most monkeys spend their time jumping around, fighting one another etc. They are mostly very restless, always agitated and never at peace. The Buddha also said that the average mind is like a drunken elephant that is very, very destructive and out of control. So, you see, all that action isn’t just on television. It’s all going on in our own minds. Thus, if we want genuine happiness and peace, we have to tame this wild monkey mind.

The Buddha taught us how we can tame, train, transform and eventually transcend the monkey mind. He taught us techniques on how we can be more calm, patient, kind and loving.

TAMING THE MONKEY MIND 

It is helpful to have a daily formal practice. If possible, set aside a small amount of time early in the morning when you get up, dedicating yourself to any meditation you have learned. If you have only 10, 20 or 30 minutes, however long the time you can spare, that is the time to meditate and just go inwards.

Even if it’s very short, it’s better to do a short practise constantly, then to do one long practice just once a week. So even if we can only do 10 minutes, 10 minutes every day is more precious than two hours each Sunday. It’s the continuity that builds up.

At the same time, we commit ourselves to using this day to be of benefit to ourselves and others. Set your intention or your ‘energy GPS’: That today I will use my day for the benefit of others. Then whatever happens during our day, we can remember that we want to benefit others. “Others” means the person next to us, our families, our colleagues, ourselves. Not just distant sentient beings out there on the horizons, but also the people around us, the people we meet, the people we know best, our partners, our spouse, our children, our parents, our neighbours, the people we work with. These are all sentient beings, and all sentient beings wish for happiness. Keep that in mind. So we try our best to bring kindness into our relationships with others.

All genuine meditation is based on cultivating a quality of mind, which is called awareness, mindfulness, attention or consciousness. It is a quality of the mind to know, to observe without comment, to be aware without evaluating or judging. This is a very, very important quality in Buddhism to cultivate, and the way to tame the monkey mind.

In all Buddhist schools, we usually start with the breath. If our awareness knows the breath, as it goes in and out, we stay in the present moment. It is very hard for the egocentric mind to stay in the present, the now. If we get to understand our mind, we recognise just how much our mind is caught up in the past, in memories, comparisons and thinking back to what’s happened before — fifty years ago, twenty years ago, yesterday, five minutes ago. Or it jumps forward to our future, our plans, our fantasies, our dreams, our ideas of what will happen next. Our fears of what will happen next. To stay present, right here, right now, without commenting or ruminating in our heads, is very hard for the mind. Therefore, the very simple meditation on the breath is a very skilful way to bring the mind into the present, to be centred so we can observe and witness.

A SIMPLE MEDITATION PRACTICE 

Let’s sit for a while. Keep your feet on the ground. Keep your back straight but not tense. You can place the back of your right hand on the palm of your left hand, forming a “seal” between the two. Make sure your hands are facing up and rest them lightly on your lap. Or you can place them resting gently on your knees. Just keep the neck slightly down and relax. We stay focused and relaxed. Don’t make the mind tight. You have nothing to do except sit, breathe and know that you’re breathing. That’s it. Breathe normally. The attention should especially be on the out-breath, then after a slight pause, the in-breath, just naturally coming in. Then, the out-breath again, just observing and knowing. That’s all. If after a short time, you get bored and the mind gets carried away thinking again, just notice it, and bring your attention back to the breath. The key to the meditation is to develop the quality of being mindful, of being conscious, of being aware. Be aware of being aware. It’s the awareness, rather than just the breath. The breath is like a support for our awareness. 

It is a very simple practice but this is the first step in learning how to tame our monkey mind by getting our mind to become more quiet and calm. Watch the monkey mind as the breath goes in and out. Any sounds we hear, just ignore them. They are just sounds. If we get tired, agitated, or overwhelmed during the day, bringing your attention back to breathing in and out for one to two minutes can really help to diffuse the situation and bring our mind back into a state of open, spacious relaxation and attention. We can do our breathing meditation in trains and planes, or traffic jams. We can make use of the red stop lights to practise breathing in and breathing out. Or do like the great Vietnamese master Thich Nhat Hanh’s sangha when they hear the bell ring, all of them stop what they are doing and just focus on their breath: breathing in, breathing out. Just for a minute. Back to the present. Back to the here and now. 

WE IDENTIFY WITH OUR THOUGHTS, FEELING AND BELIEFS 

This is a very important step in our spiritual lives because normally we are so identified with our thoughts and feelings that we think, “I am my thoughts and feelings.”We believe our thoughts and feelings. People stand by what they believe. People will kill for what they believe. They will die for what they believe.

So the ability to step back and observe our thoughts and feelings as just thoughts and feelings and not “me and mine” is a big step forward. But we cannot do that until we have cultivated the ability to be aware. And we cultivate the ability to be aware by observing the breath. 

It goes up step-by-step. You can’t skip steps. If we consider the thoughts and feelings we have now like a river, endlessly flowing by, we are caught up and swept along in the river, completely submerged in the river. We are absolutely, totally immersed in our mental world — our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, our fears, our joys, our sorrows.

WE ARE NOT OUR MONKEY MIND

First of all, we should understand that we are not our monkey mind. If we were the monkey, we would not be able to observe the monkey. The fact that we can observe the monkey means we are not the monkey. Do you understand? The fact that we can step out and observe the mind, this mindstream, all the thoughts, means that we are not that mindstream. There are four levels of consciousness beyond the normal, conceptual, mental stream. We should also feel the space between the witnessing awareness — the mindfulness which knows — and what it is knowing, which is the mental stream.

Between the two, there is a space. Thoughts arise from that space and disappear into that space. Normally, because we are so immersed in our thinking, we don’t even know there’s space there. It’s like being surrounded by clouds, we can’t even recognise that there are other parts of the sky which are not clouds. So here, we are stepping out and observing the clouds. We’re no longer immersed in the clouds. This is very useful. During the day, as much as possible, we should try to observe the mind.

When I first began, I lived with these yogis and they told me that every hour, I should look at the mind three times. The book said to observe the mind at all times, but you can’t do that at all times, you can’t even do it once. So we start with a very simple “three times every hour” to make a commitment to stop for a second and look back: “What is the mind doing at this time?” Normally, we are so carried away by our mind, we’re not even aware of what we're thinking, or what we’re feeling. So now we’re stepping out and we’re looking and seeing, what state is the mind in at this time. Are we happy? Peaceful? Focused? Are we anxious? Annoyed? Depressed? What is our mind doing at this moment?

If the mind is in a positive state, that’s good and we can carry on. If the mind is in a negative state, now that we are aware of it, we apply the antidote.

As an analogy, if the body is sick, we find a remedy to cure the sickness. If we are not even aware that we’re sick, our condition is going to degenerate more and more until it’s incurable. The mind is just like that. The Buddha called negative emotions “poisons”. They poison our mind and make us sick, so we have to be aware. Is my mind sick? If it is, what poison is doing this, and what remedy and antidote do we use to make the mind healthy again?

During formal meditation, we learn how to make the mind feel more calm, conscious, more aware and present. Then we use that attention to look and observe the mind itself, recognising that we can be centred within ourselves without the need to always be caught up in the turbulence of the mind. As we become more skilled in being aware, the mind begins to calm down and get itself more in order because it’s being watched. For example, if we’re thinking really negative or foolish thoughts, once we become aware that we’re thinking these foolish thoughts, the thoughts cease.

MASTERING OUR MIND FOR HAPPINESS 

Much of what we do with our mind during the day is just a waste of time and causes a lot of fatigue and stress because we don’t know how to use the mind skilfully. Therefore, it is very important to be the master of our mind, to be in control and to know the mind. That’s why I highly encourage you to attend meditation retreats because we can become master of our own mind under good guidance on how to work with the mind, understand the mind and make the mind more pliable, workable and serviceable. We would then cease to be driven here and there by the mind which is out of control like a monkey.

We live in our mind but we don’t even know what the mind is. What is a thought? Where does it come from? Where does it go to? Who is thinking? Who is the ‘I’ who is thinking? Find the ‘I’. Along with that, it is also very important to open up the heart. All of us want to be happy. Nobody really wants to be depressed, anxious, angry, moody or stressed. How many of us get up in the morning thinking, “Today, I will feel grumpy, angry, irritated and stressed out, depressed and generally hating the world. That sounds like a nice, good day.” Yet, that’s how many people are living. Despairing. Depressed. Suicide rates are soaring although outwardly their lives look wonderful and they have so much.

For instance, Singapore is like a god realm. Outwardly, you have everything: a relatively crime-free and clean environment, people are well-dressed with so much to eat, and so much of everything. So why are people not all blissed out? Why are youth in so much stress? Despair? It is because we live in our minds, and unless our minds are free, we are all enslaved. Although we all need shelter, sufficient food, education, basic level of security and so forth, our outward situations really have little impact on our inner feelings of well-being.

So first tame the mind by learning how to bring awareness to the forefront of the mind. We all have awareness. It is always there. The problem is that we are not aware of being aware. That awareness gets swept along by our conceptual thinking mind. We are not centred. We get lost in our thoughts of the past or the future. We don’t know how to stay present and to be where we are right now. So, as much as possible, bring the mind back into the present moment, which, in actual fact, is where we are now. When our day begins, think about using it to try and make others — our families, our children, our partners, our parents — just that little bit happier.

The Buddha also taught a meditation on metta and maitri. We start with ourselves, wishing ourselves well, to be happy and to feel good and cheerful rather than miserable. From there, we send good feelings to people we love (our family, our good friends), the people we see at work, those we see every day but are neutral and not close to, people we don’t talk to, maybe neighbours, politicians etc, and then, people that we find difficult or whom we blame. Finally to all beings in the whole world. May they all be well and happy. If you are seated in a bus/car/plane/train, imagine that the vehicle is completely filled with light and the light is going into all beings in the vehicle.

Just as I’d rather be happy than miserable, every single being you look at would rather be happy than be miserable and sad. Wish them well. Smile. The Buddha said that to each being, his own self is most precious. So who is to say who is high, who is low? If we each wish that every individual be well and happy during the day, this will also brighten the world. You are sitting in your office surrounded by all these other people in the office, just send out light and wish them all to be well and happy. And be kind. 

THE SIX PARAMITAS

The Buddha also taught the six paramitas, the six specially exalted qualities, of which the first is generosity. Second, ethics. Ethics is based on not harming any being in body, speech or mind. Then patience. Patience means that when people annoy us, instead of being angry, we recognise that patience is a very important quality for us to develop. People who annoy and upset us give us the opportunity for developing this quality of patience. It’s when people are not nice, don’t say the things we want them to say, or do what we want them to do, that we can practise. Instead of getting all upset, we can be more forbearing, more tolerant and grateful. When you have the thought, “Oh, you’re so horrible!” Think instead: “Thank you for being so difficult. Now I can really cultivate this important quality needed in order to fulfil our human potential.”

The six paramitas: generosity. morality. patience. energy. meditation. wisdom.

The first paramita is generosity. Dāna. It doesn’t just mean giving things. Asians are very generous, and this is their beautiful quality. I respect very, very much that people are so generous with their money, possessions and time. It’s a beautiful quality of the heart and hands. Even if we don’t have anything to give materially, we can be generous in being there for people when they need help. We can listen, give them our time and be there for them when they are having problems. So as you go through the day, every single person that you meet is the most important person in the world, at that moment, because he or she is the person you are with. That person should have our full attention.

Buddhist texts say that we should put all others as superior and ourselves as inferior. But this doesn’t mean we should cultivate an inferiority complex. What it means is that we should recognise that whoever we are with, that person at that moment is the most important person, and we are not important. So when we meet others, our interest is in them, not in ourselves. Each other person is most dear to himself, so we also treat him as most dear.

As we go through the day, at home, at our work place, in our social situations, we remain aware, present and knowing, centred in this inner space of attention and awareness. Moreover, whatever the situation we face, we try to be helpful, kind, generous, patient and so forth. When negative feelings arise, we notice them: “Oh, we’re getting irritated, annoyed because somebody cuts in front of us in traffic or queues. Or people do or say things which make us very upset and angry. We notice all these and train our mind to be aware of what is happening within us. When we are aware, we can change it. We are conscious and recognise it as soon as a feeling of anger arises. When we recognise it, we are still in control and that gives us a gap to decide how we can deal with it. In this way, we transform.

Shantideva, a great Indian philosopher of the eighth century, said that if we cannot deal with anger when it arises by transforming it or by cultivating patience, then we should be like a block of wood. We should be like a log. In other words, if we cannot transform our anger into mirror-like wisdom or patience, we can at least not react at all. This gives us space to come back into a state of awareness and deal with the situation more skilfully because we are trying to use our daily life skilfully. Everything that happens to us becomes an opportunity to practise. We can walk and be conscious that we are walking. Not thinking of anything, except the act of walking. Anything we do, we can choose to do with mindfulness and awareness, or not. The Buddha said we should be mindful when we’re standing, sitting, walking, lying down, at all times. We should know what’s going on, be present in body and mind instead of being endlessly distracted.

I once read an article in the Economist that neuroscientists have discovered that one of the main causes of stress in the business world is multitasking, trying to do too many things at the same time. They said the problem is that the brain is not wired to multitask. The mind gets very stressed when it does that, becoming less efficient and making mistakes. It doesn't descend to deeper levels of creativity because it’s juggling too many balls in the air at the same time. At the end of the article, it recommended taking a course in mindfulness or doing a meditation retreat as the solution. 

Nowadays, mindfulness is a buzzword in psychological and business fields. There is even an ad in Time magazine of a new book titled Mindfulness: The New Science of the Mind. These people who read Time magazine will never buy a Buddhist book but they buy that book and learn how to be mindful and aware. So that’s good.

The mind is a brilliant tool, but it is not who we are. We can only recognise that through practice by remembering to be present and aware throughout the day. There are deeper levels of awareness than the duality of observer-observed. Just know where you are. Feel your body. Observe your mood. Just be here.

Ajahn Brahm calls it “kindfulness” — being kind and mindful at the same time, remembering that all beings want happiness, especially the one that I am with. Whenever you get frazzled, frustrated or upset, say to yourself: “I am loving awareness.” Take that day to tame, train, transform and transcend the monkey mind.

May each and every one of you be well and happy.