Recently a student of mine came up with a really brilliant metaphor for the mind.
It's kind of an alternative to the image of the monkey mind.
And you're probably familiar with monkey mind.
It's the aspect of our minds that are always grasping after thoughts.
Really busy.
Lots of activity.
I don't know about you,
But I really haven't connected with that image.
I grew up here in America and we don't often see monkeys jumping from tree to tree in America.
So I never really connected.
So an alternative that a student of mine came up with is puppy mind.
I kind of like puppy mind and the idea that the mind is like a puppy.
Now,
If you've been around puppies,
You know they have lots of energy and they are super curious and they get their noses into everything.
They'll chew on anything.
They're easily distracted and just full of energy and their attention spans are non-existent.
And then sometimes they just fall asleep.
And if you let a puppy just sort of run amok for a while in an enclosed space,
They run out of energy and they just kind of fall asleep.
In fact,
That's the way that I met my dog,
Sonny,
When he was a puppy.
We went to a neighbor's house and there were chocolate lab puppies running around and Sonny was running amok and he ran over and was kind of jumping on us and we kind of pet him and let him do that for a bit and then he fell asleep and rested his head on my wife's foot.
So this is just a really brief meditation about making friends with your puppy mind.
So you want to get into a comfortable,
Upright posture and maybe let your eyes close.
And why don't we just start by taking a deeper breath in than you normally might take,
Filling your lungs and then on the exhale just letting it go and feeling what that is like to empty your lungs.
Sometimes maybe taking another one like that and breathing out and then letting yourself breathe normally.
I want you to imagine that your mind is just like a puppy and see if you can really visualize what kind of puppy your mind would be like.
Maybe you might even give it a name.
And just observe your puppy mind doing whatever it's doing in the same way that you might watch a puppy who's kind of running around in an enclosed space.
It's not going to hurt itself or anything,
You know,
It doesn't really need to be supervised.
It's just doing its puppy thing,
Running around,
Being curious,
Expending energy,
Maybe tussling with other puppies.
Imagine your mind is just like that and just watch what it's doing.
And maybe just like a puppy,
Your mind is sort of grabbed on to a thought like a toy and doesn't want to let go of it.
And if you find yourself trying to like wrestle that toy out of your mind puppy's mouth,
See if you can just let go for a minute and just let your mind have it.
And maybe your mind will run around with that thought for a bit.
But at some point maybe it just gets bored of that toy and lets it go.
Maybe it really wants to chew on that toy for a little bit.
Go ahead and just let it and just watch that happening.
Puppies are just being puppies.
Your mind is just doing what minds do.
Maybe your puppy mind is sniffing all around,
Super curious about what's going on.
And just like a puppy,
Maybe your mind is jumping from thing to thing,
Really curious about all these different thoughts or sensations that are coming up.
And if you find yourself trying to usher your puppy mind away from a certain thought or experience and it's kind of fighting with you,
Just let go and let your puppy mind do what it's going to do.
Notice what it feels like to just let your mind be like a little puppy doing its thing.
Not a threat to you.
It's not going to hurt itself.
It's just doing its thing.
So you can continue this meditation on your own as long as you like.
One thing you might do is if you've named your puppy and you find yourself in a moment of struggling with your thoughts or pushing away experiences or trying to fight your attention to get it to be in a certain place,
Just see if you can take a moment and try just recognizing,
Oh,
There's Sunny.
Sunny was the name of my dog I just mentioned.
Oh,
Sunny's chasing after thoughts again.
Oh,
Sunny's really chewing on that one.
Just to be a little bit playful with your mind.
Your mind's just doing what it's supposed to do.
It's not your enemy.
It also doesn't have to be anything you get involved with.
Just let it be.
And maybe while your puppy mind is doing its thing,
Shift your attention to something else that you need to do.
You don't need to necessarily play with your puppy all the time.
You don't need to play with your mind all the time.
It can just be there doing its thing.
All right.
