Hi,
This is Artie Wu with Preside Meditation.
And in this video,
I want to delve into the question of can you ever fully and completely conquer monkey mind?
And what I mean by that is permanently knock it out for good.
I get this question from some students where,
You know,
They say,
Well,
I feel constantly harassed and tortured by my monkey mind.
And,
You know,
The question is,
Is this always going to be with me?
Am I ever going to be able to escape?
Is there ever some,
You know,
Promised land,
Nirvana,
Right,
Where monkey mind is completely,
You know,
Shut off forever and ever?
And,
You know,
The quick answer is no,
Right?
As long as you're alive,
Your monkey mind is always there.
It never leaves you because it is a part of your conscious self.
And some people when they hear this are dismayed or discouraged at first because they say,
Oh,
You know,
I'll never escape then.
You know,
I'll never be rid of my depression or insomnia or anxiety.
But on the contrary,
I would actually argue that the fact is that monkey mind is always with you is actually a reassuring thing.
Because as you recall,
Monkey mind is something you need to survive.
So it's not something you ever want to completely throw away.
Rather,
You want to balance it,
Right?
And what I mean by this is,
You know,
So even if you're sitting in deep,
Deep meditation and you're able to quiet the ever escalating distractions that monkey mind tries to bring to your attention when you're successful at keeping it calm,
If there were actually a true emergency,
Like,
You know,
You're sitting in meditation and,
You know,
Someone breaks into your house or the house starts burning down,
God forbid,
Right?
You will,
You know,
Wake up and get out of there because your monkey mind will do the ultimate override and say,
Okay,
You know,
We got to get up,
We got to get out of here and call 911.
So it's a reassuring thing because it's like your secret service is always with you and always protecting you.
So the trick over time when I tell people is to not aspire to escape it,
But rather the trick over time is to aspire to learn how to keep it at rest when you don't actually need it for anything specific.
In an image I often use is that monkey mind can be thought of as being like a sword,
Right?
I mean,
It's basically the sword of your reason.
And with the sword of reason,
You're constantly cutting things,
Analyzing,
Slicing and dicing things,
Judging things.
And if you think about your life in terms of the sword of your mind,
The question is,
Well,
What do you usually like?
What mode are you in with the sword of your mind?
Well,
If you're like most people,
You've cut your sword out all day long,
24-7,
And you're continuously and endlessly cutting things,
Slicing things into A versus B,
This versus that,
And making judgments and assessments of everything.
For instance,
Is it good or bad?
Should I have said this or that?
Am I correct or incorrect?
Is it a fear to be avoided or a desire to be pursued?
Is it a threat or a benefit?
Is it profitable or unprofitable?
Now,
For most of us,
All day long,
You're using the sword of your judging mind to make decisions,
Judgments and evaluations.
And obviously,
You have to do it,
Right?
It's very important to do this in life.
It's how we live,
Get ahead,
Avoid danger and stay alive.
The only problem is that with,
For most modern people,
This is the only mode they know.
They think of this as being them.
This is who I am.
They spend 99% of their time in this judging,
Reasoning,
Slicing mode,
And they don't know that there's anything else.
And the problem here,
Of course,
Is that when you do want to stop your judging mode and put your sword away so that you can sleep or be less anxious or be present for your loved ones,
You can't do it.
Right?
I mean,
You're not trained to do it.
No one's taught you how to stop your thinking mind,
At least not in a healthy or sustainable manner,
Right?
So you're basically trapped in the judging mode nonstop 99% of the time.
And as we've said in an earlier video,
If you've ever had a sleepless night because you couldn't stop worrying about something,
Then you know what I'm talking about,
Right?
And it's exhausting,
Painful and ultimately very unhealthy.
So if you stay with the image of the sword for a minute,
Your aspiration should not be to throw it away.
You need it,
Right?
But rather your aspiration should be to learn to just keep it in its sheath until you actually need it.
And when you don't really need it,
Put it away.
When you're not using your sword,
Keep it in its sheath.
Don't pick your teeth with it.
Don't scratch your backside with it.
Keep it at rest all throughout the regular day.
And ironically,
What this ends up doing is it keeps your sword sharper and in better working condition and actually more effective for the times when you really do need to pull it out and use it for something.
To tie this back to scientific research,
Meditation research has shown that when you meditate,
Your mental capacities actually improve.
Your attention span improves,
Your reaction times improve.
There's even one Harvard MIT study that actually measured cortical thickness.
So this is the thickness of the cortex of your brain.
And it actually measured the physical amount of brain in your head and found that meditation actually increased the size of your brain.
It increased cortical thickness.
It's not like you need yet another reason to meditate,
Right?
There are already a million reasons why you want to meditate.
But the point is that on multiple levels,
Leaving your monkey mind at rest when you don't really need it is good for you.
You get to relax and recharge,
But your mind also gets stronger and more capable.
So that's the answer to that quick question.
And in the next video,
We're going to switch over to my favorite topic,
Which is once you get monkey mind to finally calm down,
What is actually left over in the empty space?
In other words,
What is beyond the monkey mind?
Thanks a lot and I will see you over in the next video.
