Barrel of Monkeys

In recent years I have heard people use the term monkey mind to describe all sorts of mental states, meditative thoughts or habits. “Monkey mind and horse will” is often used in Chinese literature to explain interwoven mental states and even some personalities. But my personal understanding comes from working with a powerful and energetic Japanese woman, 4 foot 6 and old as dirt. My first real experience with this term came about in 1981 when I was introduced to my friend Minimisu. She was in her late 70’s and often talked in a rhythmic manner when discussing her garden or cooking. You see I was fortunate enough to have been given a job as her gardener, by her husband. I was supposed to mow, weed, move rocks, build and maintain fences and so forth. But that work didn’t ever start until after lunch. What I really did was follow Minimisu around her many landscaped acres digging, planting and learning.

She would greet me by her garden gate every weekday morning at 6:30, rain or shine, hot weather or cold. She would sing and pull weeds, she would sing and rake and she would sing and pick vegetables, fruit and herbs, she would sing and make tea.

“Singing keeps me focused” she used to say. She never followed a schedule but always seemed to be on time to do everything. So I was surprised one day when I arrived at the garden gate at 6:40, to find her seated in a chair with her work gloves in her lap. I expected to hear her say “Your late.”, or “Did your watch break?” Instead she said nothing. She smiled and escorted right to the garden. “I’m sorry for being late.”I said, and began to explain that my old van didn’t start in the cold. I began to describe how I had to call a neighbor to jump start it when she looked me in the eye and said “Let go of that now, we have work to do.” All that day I kept replaying her statement “let go of that” Let go of what? What had I held onto that needed letting go of? I must have gone over it 15 times in my head. Did she mean I didn’t owe her an apology? Did she mean I had better get a new car? Maybe she was really talking to herself and meant that she needed to let me go. I was so wound up thinking about it that I finally had to ask; “let go of what?”

And then began a very long discussion about “Monkey mind”. To Minimisu I had spent my time that day wasting a lot of “healthy energy” on something that could not grow. My mind had grabbed onto something inside my head and held on for many hours.

She said that once in her childhood she had seen a monkey dragging around the skull of another monkey. It’s hand firmly holding onto something inside and its arm locked through the eye socket. “What was it holding onto?” I asked. “Shit” she said with a grin, maybe a pebble, maybe some rotted piece of fruit –something that had fallen inside the skull and was lost, lost and unimportant. But when the monkey’s fingers touched it, he was sure that he had found a most delicious prize. He instantly convinced himself it was worth all the effort he could muster.

“Monkeys are constantly sticking their fingers and hands into dark places. Just like you do with your attention.” She said. “I sing to keep my hands where I can see them, my monkey hands are spent on that song grabbing memories of my mother and aunts singing. I am remembering my days as a child –but always thinking of things that involved that song. This way my horse can keep working. “Your horse?” what horse? –“my mind horse.” Then she smacked my leg with the rake and pointed at the ground where I had stopped digging. I jumped right back to digging, head down. “There –there’s your horse!” she said with a smile.  I tried to stay focused on digging, but I had so many questions that I blurted out “Where the monkey go?”  “How can I have a horse mind and a monkey mind at the same time?” “The monkey is on your back,” she laughed. “He thinks he’s in control of the horse –that’s why we make him sing.”  “The horse knows where to go, what to do. The horse is strong and smart. Once he learns how, you just have to ask and he will do it.”

“But the monkey likes to pull on the horses ears. Go this way, let’s look at that, stop, go back, run fast… The monkey always wants something different from the horse. Unless…” “We have the monkey sing a song, we make him focus on remembering the song and all those things related to the song.” I said Minimisu grinned and smacked my leg with the rake again.

We talked for hours about the monkey and the horse and who’s in control. But in the end I decided that there is an ever evolving relationship between the two. On is constantly trying to learn and explore and dream, the other is focused and willful and able to carry the brunt of the load, especially the mundane and repetitive work.

Now I’ve read many books about the “monkey”, and I’ve studied some of the Chinese texts that mention these ideas, but to me nothing sums it up better that my singing mentor.