M.J. Rose

Welcome back to planet Every Day Life! I hope everyone’s holidays were sane and nourishing in some form or another.

So, everyone seems to have resolutions for the New Year and it’s this week that we are expected to actually act on those pledges. My promise to myself is always the same: To live more in the present and to somehow find the key to calming that incessant debilitating chatter in my head – you know, that radio station in your brain that tells you constantly how you need to do this or that, or how misunderstood you are, or how your house is the dirtiest house in the western world, or your parenting is suspect, or how sad and unhealthy your cats must be because you don’t feed them Science Diet anymore…

The Zen Buddhists call it monkey mind. Writer Anne Lamott calls it Radio Station KFKD. Whatever you may call it, here’s some good advice for calming it the heck down, linked to from the aptly named Monkey Mind blog:

Controlling the Monkey Mind

A Lecture by Shunryu Suzuki Rosh

This lecture is reprinted from the October 2001 Berkeley Zen Center Newsletter.

The purpose of sesshin is to be completely one with our practice. We use two Chinese characters for “sesshin.” “Ses” means to treat something the way one treats a guest or the way a student treats a teacher. Another meaning of “ses” is to control or arrange things in order. “Shin” means mind or heart. So sesshin means to have proper functioning of mind. When we say “control,” it is our five senses and our will, or small monkey mind which should be controlled. We control our monkey mind in order to resume our true Big Mind. When monkey mind is always taking over the activity of Big Mind, we naturally become a monkey. So monkey mind must have his boss, which is Big Mind.

However, when we practice zazen, it does not mean that Big Mind is controlling small mind, but simply that when small mind becomes calm, Big Mind starts its true activity. Most of the time in our everyday life, we are involved in the activity of small mind. That is why we should practice zazen and be completely involved in resuming Big Mind…

For the complete lecture, click here.