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Monkey Mind Quotes

Browse 38 quotes about Monkey Mind.

Monkey Mind Quotes

“If we can unify the apparent duality between the great uncontrollable energy and the natural wisdom of our monkey mind, if we moderate its impulsive tendencies and incorporate its intuitive wisdom, we can express our being in all its capacity and transform into calm and enlightened individuals.”

“Teach him to call it ‘real-life and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’. (...) Never having been human (...) you don’t realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. (...) Thanks to processes we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. (...) But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is ‘the results of modern investigation’. Do remember you are there to fuddle him.”

“Your real nature is to move at your own pace but your conscious mind and all its conditioning is constantly racing around like a monkey swinging from branch to branch looking for something it can never find.”

“The route of true happiness, the Buddha argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens. To truly tame the 'monkey mind' and defeat our habitual tendency toward clinging, meditation was the prescription, and sitting and actively facing the 'voice in your head' mindfully for a few minutes a day might be the hardest thing you'll ever do. Accept that challenge and improve your life drastically. It's about mitigation, not alleviation. It's that simple. The only way out is through.”

“Evolution is fundamentally creative, and when we align ourselves with the evolutionary movements of consciousness, the universe itself puts wind in our sails. Quantum thinking goes beyond the thoughts we're aware of; it includes unconscious processing, which doesn't just expand our boundaries, but can also free us from the suffering that conscious processing (sometimes known as 'the monkey mind') creates.”

“I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind. The thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. My mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”

“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”