Meditation: Training the Monkey Mind


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Our minds are always thinking, calculating, planning, organizing, dreaming, etc. This state of continual input and output of thoughts and ideas can be detrimental to emotional, spiritual, and mental health. This ongoing internal chatter hampers achieving the happiness and contentment we all, as human beings, strive for. Often, we don't even realize or recognize thoughts as distractions. 

Awareness is the first step to changing our minds.

Jumping monkey = mind before meditation To give a simple comparison, think of a monkey. Monkeys are busy - always moving, jumping around, eating, chatting, moving about from branch to branch. Our minds do that as well. Jumping around from thought to thought with often no real connection or substance. Most of us have never stopped to notice these actions that our minds take. Sometimes these thoughts are obsessive and negative. Sometimes these thoughts are of good will and compassion for others.  Regardless, our thoughts are an endless steam of unconscious chatter.
Learning to train the monkey mind is not an easy task, but achieving stillness and calmness within ourselves enhances our ability to be content and serene. Meditating is a practice, and if practiced daily - even for a few minutes - it is the path to insight, wisdom, and internal peace.

"It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free." -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

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