This practice is called watching the monkey mind.
As many of you will probably know,
The mind is unruly,
Busy,
Chaotic,
Which is why the Buddhists have described this as the monkey mind that we all suffer from.
When we sit down to practice meditation,
Often the busyness of the monkey mind becomes painfully apparent
as the mind wanders off and does its own thing.
The goal of today's practice is to not fight the monkey mind.
Instead,
I'll be inviting you to actually use the busy mind as your object of meditation today.
So we're not trying to fight the mind,
We're not trying to fight thinking.
We're going to sit back and watch the monkey mind do its thing.
Sometimes what happens when we practice in this way
is by accepting the busyness of the mind and by not trying to fight it,
It can actually engender a sense of calm or peace.
Okay,
So getting comfortable.
Sitting with a straight back,
A relaxed and alert posture if it's possible for you to.
Closing the eyes.
Beginning with a few nice and big in-breaths through the nose and then releasing through the
mouth.
Breathing in.
Letting go.
Breathing in.
Releasing.
Final one.
And letting go.
Allowing the breath to return to normal.
Closing the mouth and breathing through the nostrils for the remainder of the session.
Checking in with the state of the mind.
Most of you will have some degree of agitation,
Busyness,
Distractedness or all of the above.
And so with a sense of curiosity,
Just acknowledging that it's okay to be a little bit more active.
Distractedness or all of the above.
And so with a sense of curiosity,
Just acknowledging this.
This is how the monkey mind feels right now.
This is how they're behaving and that's totally fine for the purposes of today.
We're going to take a few moments to ground ourselves.
So to do this,
Noticing the points of connection between your feet in the ground,
Your legs in the
seat.
Becoming aware of any sounds that might be present in the room right now.
No need to fight hearing in any way.
We're not looking for only special sounds here.
An absence of sound,
Distracting sounds are all perfectly fine.
So just allow hearing to unfold exactly as it wants to.
And then dropping your focus on hearing.
And we're going to gently turn our attention towards the activities of the mind.
Turn our attention towards the activities of the mind.
So it's as if you're passively sitting back and watching thoughts appear and disappear.
Watching the monkey mind doing its thing.
For many of us,
The monkey mind will already be starting to do its thing.
Ruminating over the past,
Commenting on the present,
Or planning for the future.
The great thing in this practice is if the mind feels busy,
That's completely fine.
All you need to do is sit here and be with the busy mind.
The less you try and fight the monkey mind,
The more enjoyable this practice will be.
It's a bit of a paradox.
The goal here is to allow the mind to do whatever it wants to do.
If it wants to be busy,
You allow it to be busy.
If it wants to be busy,
You allow it to be busy.
But you just need to sit here passively watching the monkey mind doing its thing.
The strange thing is,
When we stop fighting the mind,
When we allow it to think away,
Over time what often happens is that it starts to calm down a bit.
It's like as you allow the monkey mind to do what it wants,
It starts to lose some of its energy.
And maybe you start to take the contents of thinking
slightly less seriously,
And that can be seen as a win.
You can't fail with this practice.
By sitting here,
Allowing the mind to do what it wants,
And just witnessing it,
Is all you need to do to succeed.
And now as the session draws to a close,
Starting to become aware of any sounds or smells that are
Starting to become aware of any sounds or smells that are present in the room right now.
Having one final check-in with the mind.
Is there any subtle change in the mind from the beginning of today?
Just acknowledging this,
If so.
And then when you feel ready to,
Gently opening the eyes,
Coming back to the room,
And perhaps stretching or waking up the body in any way that feels good.
Congratulations,
Great job.
My hope is in this session,
You had a couple of realizations.
The first is that the mind is always busy.
It's just that when we sit down to focus on it,
It sometimes becomes clearer to us
just how busy the mind can be.
And the second is,
If we can just acknowledge this fact,
And become a bit more familiar with the behaviors of the monkey mind,
These thoughts will become more clear to us.
And if we can just acknowledge this fact,
And become a bit more familiar with the behaviors of the monkey mind,
These thoughts can have less of a sway over you in your day-to-day lives.
And this can help you be slightly calmer or more at peace when the monkey mind is playing up.
Have a great day.
