Face It
I thought today might be a good day to share one of my favorite passages from Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Gunaratana. It’s from Chapter 7, “What To Do With Your Mind.”
“Somewhere in this [meditation] process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.
“Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and helpless.
“No problem.
“You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you.
“The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation; they have not. So they still feel relatively comfortable.
“Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation. So don’t let this realization unsettle you. It is a milestone actually, a sign of real progress. The very fact that you have looked at the problem straight in the eye means that you are on your way up and out of it.”
Monkey mind is what I like to call it. There’s that first step when you become aware of its incessant, relentless nature and how very little influence you have over it. I can still remember the first time I had this realization “holy mackerel (actually, i used a more colorful exclamation) there’s no one minding the store”. I felt like I was in free fall.