on the "monkey mind"

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her hilarious and gaspingly honest memoir, Eat. Pray. Love., talks about the “monkey mind” and how by practicing to calm it through meditation, we gain the ability to be present. Presence, being the thing we most need, to first recognize and then change the conditions of our lives.

Like most humanoids I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the Monkey Mind – the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknown future, my mind swings wildly thorough time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but – whoop! – how quickly I swing into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it’s the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts and you are the slave to your emotions.

The other problem with all this swinging through the vines of thought is that you are never where you are. You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in the moment. It’s something like the habit my dear friend Susan, who – whenever she sees a beautiful place – exclaims in near panic, “It’s so beautiful here! I want to come back here some day!” and it takes all of my persuasive powers to try to convince her that she is already here. If you are looking for union with the divine, this kind of forward/backward whirling is a problem. There’s a reason they call god a presence – because God is right here right now. In the present is the only place to find him, and now is the only time.