The Monkey Mind

I have been on this long road traveling with this monkey all this while and I never knew any way of communication with it till recently when I attended a retreat.

I want you to meet this beast that I have lived with and just started to love. My monkey mind. Just today morning it was shouting so loudly that I had to keep my work aside ( not that I had much today anyway!)

It jumped in woe on my not earning enough money in comparison to my colleagues (which isn’t true btw)Then It made me feel bad about the fact that this one man that I called 3 times didn’t call me back!(although I often don’t pick up his calls when I am busy…although we have been in and out of love now long time back!)

Then it got complaining about a headache which I couldn’t catch at all. This monkey was imagining a headache. There was none in my head whatsoever!

It made me feel bad about the little work in office and the fact that I don’t get to travel out of station like my other friends (But it didn’t bother to calculate how I may have had more time to go for vacations)

Sometimes It brings strange broken parts of memories and puts them in my hands and I don’t know what to do with them. Like during my rebirthing retreat it brought me a scene from my childhood- Sunday morning at Gill Aunties place. I was at the roof of their small bathroom that used to be slippery and dark from inside and always smelled of Shikakai soap! It was one place in the world that made me feel out of shape and guilty and not in command! For in Gill aunties bathroom you had to follow Gill aunties rules.. no matter how sorry the bathroom looked! She would always command how much water you ought to have used and how long you could be inside. And still I needed that bathroom if I was at her home. I had mixed feelings for it for sometimes I even used it to escape from the claustrophobia of her family. So the mind reminded me of those Sundays when we were allowed to climb up the bathroom roof and they were painted a beautiful sky blue from outside. One could see a few kites in the sky in that refugee colony neigbourhood called Model Town in Bareilly.The wind was always pleasantly cold (everyone had washed long wet hair on ones head in that surdy family) and it talked of all the adventures that life would offer when I would grow up!( and here I was lying down on the floor breathing maddeningly trying to deal with those same adventures that had become a bit too much I guess

The other random scene it brought was like a live CCTV Version of a Highway that went to my school and also almost everywhere else from my 1st home. I could see the trucks and the tremor they brought to one with their sound as they passed by. It was just a road from childhood that had completely got lost because of unuse( I haven’t visited it in a long time) but once it must have been my connection with the larger world! Although I never could have pointed that I am so weak in geography!So I don’t know what I was doing on that road or that Roof! It was just a random picture my monkey mind played for me!

But there have been times when I lay down holding the hand of this monkey and ask it to show me all the precious stones it has gathered. It works like a trusted Philips Tape playing all the old memories at my favorite speed. I must have crumbled its head with replaying again and again and again some memories.

My present favorite memories have been

How I got my first job

The first kiss

The memory of feeding from a lukewarm milk bottle and playing with mom’s hair.

My last vacation in Benares

And so on…

Sometimes when I am passing through some familiar parts or some familiar songs sting out the same memories. The monkey doesn’t know how easy it is to make him dance.

Earlier on I pitied myself. Such few memories to play up. So much sadness to avoid! And one day I saw a friend of mine had mummified the monkey and put it in a Jar in the basement. It looked as ferocious but it couldn’t jump anymore. This just changed the world. I could reclaim my life. The monkey didn’t jump on me in every little or big thing. I could choose to be sad or happy. I could keep my power with myself all the time. Wasn’t this enlightenment? I could for the first time not be dragged wherever the monkey jumped. I could live like a human being!

I don’t know who killed the monkey..Perhaps my teacher! Perhaps my higher being. But I want to tell the monkey that I don’t hate it! I am not scared of it either! If it were to get up and start talking to me again I think I would love to play with it again!

This time though I think it would be different!