Time away from work gets us out of routine. “I think I have a monkey mind”, my daughter commented. I know the feeling. I know how it feels to jump from thought to thought — often random, usually unconnected.
What I did not know was that the concept of the monkey mind has been around for more than two and a half millennia. In fact the term was coined by Buddha who defined it as follows:
Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grabs one branch and lets it go only to seize another, so too, that which is called thought, mind or consciousness arises and disappears continually both day and night.
The lesson — focus on one thing at a time, and don’t get ahead of yourself. Funny how we tend to focus on everything in the future, without paying attention to what’s right in front of us. When the monkey jumps around, we ruffle more than just the trees.
About Hemant Rustogi