Don’t Believe Monkey Mind

I have written before about monkey mind, or our daily mind that is the problem in Buddhism.

Ajahn Sumedho often talks about “pure consciousness,” which is the necessary background context for all other perception and understanding. Pure consciousness is the dog, monkey mind is the tail at best.

Our problem is that we let the tail take over and ignore the dog. That’s why we’re stuck in samsara, the Buddhist term for this vale of tears, or our conditioned existence where suffering is a common experience.

Sumedho also explicitly says we do not experience consciousness. The reason is, as he explains repeatedly, is that consciousness is what we are, and experience assumes some distance between us and what we are experiencing. In this sense, even as you may feel as if your monkey mind is your identity, what Buddhist teachers keep saying, and what a consistent meditation practice reveals, however gradually, is that monkey mind is not who we are. We are really pure consciousness.

A common metaphor/analogy is that your eyes cannot see themselves without a mirror. Your teeth cannot bite themselves. Fire does not burn itself. It’s an interesting paradox that the key function of these common items cannot operate on the items themselves.

Realizing your identity as pure consciousness removes all doubt and anxiety from your existence. Our problems, our suffering, arise in the gap between pure consciousness and monkey mind, which we live with as long as we identify with monkey mind. This is critical.

Pure consciousness will arise in your awareness if you keep up your consistent meditation practice long enough. I promise.

Please donate to help build Red State Vihara as a site for the realization of pure consciousness.