Try to close our eyes and stay still do nothing, for one
minute… nothing happened. Try to add more time, for 5 minute… maybe for some people,
still nothing happened. But for most people, start to feel bore. Then if we add
more time, lets say 15 minute, bore become anger, and if we still doesn’t move
it will become rage, and then become hate.
Why is it hard just to stay still? Its easy isn’t it?
"Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grab one branch and let it
go only to seize another, so to, that which is called thought, mind or
consciousness arises and disappear continually both day and night”
Since we are born, we never told to look inside, to check
what happened inside us / our mind. Our mind is like untamed monkey, that
always jumping from one tree to another, always craving for more, restless,
careless. We must always feed this monkey with pleasure, pleasure from our
senses; ears, mouth, eyes, skin, and even from our own mind (we can imagine
things), if we stop feeding this monkey it will go crazy. This is why we feel
bore, then anger, then rage then we will hate the whole “stay still” situation.
Lets go back and check,
Sit down, relax, close our eyes and stay still do nothing,
for one minute… nothing happened (nothing major happened, but actually
something happened) . Then after 1 minute, don’t quit stay some more, and see
our mind wandering thinking about the past, then go to the future, and then go
back to the past, and after we bored with that, we will day dreaming, all of
that happened. Then at some point, we start feeling bore, (the monkey want
more), but stay still…
Then hate come, we feel heat on our chest… the monkey in
rage, our mind in rage.
What we don’t realize is that, this whole “untamed monkey”
thing is not only happened when we stay still. It happened all the time,
every time. In daily activity our mind also jumping from thinking about the
past, the future, day dreaming, thinking about person we like, something we
love, we hate, we don’t like and so on… As a result, its nearly impossible to
slow down and enjoy the present, focus on thing that really giving happiness,
concentrate to what is important, happiness.
Tame the Monkey, and be happy. Try to sit down, again,
relax, close our eyes and stay still do nothing, try to feel your breathing,
inhale…exhale…be conscious about the whole process, from the beginning of our
inhale, turn to exhale, the beginning of our exhale, and continue. The same
thing would happened, our mind will start to wandering to the past, to the
future or day dreaming, and we lost focus on the breathing (this is normal),
now when we conscious about this, train our mind / train the Monkey, take it
back to the breathing, be conscious about the breathing. Do this over and over,
anger will still come, hate will still come, but as we practice, we will notice
the duration will extend, our mind start to enjoy the peaceful moment; the
untamed monkey become peaceful monkey.
As we practice, on our daily activities, we will realize
that some time we will automatically stop from what ever thinking we do for a few
moment, then on that moment, we would able to choose between enjoy the present,
positive thinking then happy feeling blooming; the untamed monkey become
peaceful monkey.
Please remember, meditation is a practice, a training. Don’t
hope for an instant result J
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In contrast to this, the Buddha asked his disciples to train
themselves so as to develop ‘a mind like a forest deer’ Deer are particularly
gentle creatures and always remain alert and aware no matter what they are
doing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On the sample, all of them using hate / anger, but its not just about hate and anger, it used because those are the most significant feeling arise on meditation practice. There is fear, sadness, even happiness, joy, etc. Its actually about “Feeling” (vedana in Sanskrit) – refer to only the mental separation of perception into pleasant, unpleasant and neutral (nothing more). -- but this is deep deep deep :)
