The mind is easily distracted, our awareness swinging from branch to branch, not settling on anything. This is something I experience daily - I go onto the computer to check an email that I need to reply to but remember something I saw on the news and check Twitter to see if there’s any update about it. I see something else there on a subject I find interesting and it takes me to youtube. The monkey swings very well on social media. Don’t worry, this won’t be another rant on social media!
But we are living in the age of distraction. When I was younger, my mother used to say that I always needed a screen of some kind and she was right - and that was before the internet. That still hangs over my life today - even now I find it hard to focus if there’s a TV somewhere nearby or a background conversation. My monkey mind is looking for branches to swing onto.
If this is what we’re used to in our lives, then sitting down on the cushion to meditate can be a challenge. The monkey is angry that it doesn’t have branches to grasp so it starts looking for something to do, interesting things to think about, maybe things that you have an emotional attachment to at the moment. Naughty monkey!
So what can we do when our mind is restless and unsettled? Let’s take the advice of the monastics at Plum Village and not try to control the mind - its very difficult to make the mind do what we want, so the practice at Plum Village doesn’t focus on the mind, it focuses on the body. Of course, our bodies and our minds are fundamentally linked: our mind can live in our body when we focus our awareness on our walking or our eating - what we call contemplation of the body within the body.
But our body also affects our emotional wellbeing and its easy to think of examples. When we eat or drink it can nourish us or it can make us anxious or unwell. Pain can influence our mindset as can hormones and many other things. When we take care of our body well, we make our mind happy and our monkey more restful. I would invite you to think of one wholesome change you can make to your diet or exercise routine this week that will nourish your body and put it into practice this week.
In the shorter term, we can calm our monkey mind by practising meditation in the body. You might see this as being in union with the reality of interbeing, our theme for the year, but specifically our internal reality, the body and mind in perfect oneness.
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