Voodoo Time Dot Com

In previous posts, I’ve touched on my Buddhist leanings. And while I have no hope of enlightenment in this lifetime, I really think that guy was on to something. One of the central themes of Buddhist practice is to see things for the way they are, and stop getting caught up in wishing things were different.

I think about this a lot, because I often catch myself wishing things were different. This is because I am an idiot idealist. I really get angry when I notice people acting selfishly. So, as you can probably imagine, I feel angry quite often. This happens a lot while I’m driving. Everyday someone cuts me off and I get angry. Nearly everyday, some jerk drives down the left turn lane, only to swerve back into another lane in the middle of the intersection, just to race ahead of the rest of us who obey traffic laws. (That is, except that bit about speed limits. I never could get the hang of speed limits.)

The problem with this is that I end up letting other people affect my happiness, which is dumb. A Buddhist forest monk from Thailand, called Ajahn Chah (”Ajahn” means “teacher”) taught an interesting lesson about this kind of thing. Apparently, in Thailand, the forests are chock full of monkeys (or at least they were when Ajahn Chah was still alive). Monkeys make a lot of noise, and they are forever swinging around and throwing things or stealing things. As a monk, one spends considerable lengths of time everyday in meditation. With monkeys making a racket, it could be hard to achieve tranquility in one’s mind. So the natural human reaction is to be angry with the monkeys.

One could try shooing away the monkeys, but they would just come back, or worse - attack. You could yell yourself hoarse, telling the monkeys to “shut up”, but monkeys don’t understand Thai (everyone knows monkeys only speak Dutch). If you’re angry with the monkeys, you’ll never achieve any kind of peace, because now there is a racket outside, and on the inside as well.

A wise person knows that this is simply the way monkeys are. There is no point wishing they would act otherwise. A wise person will relax and let the monkeys be monkeys.

So next time you’re angry at someone for being an ass, just remember that this is only human nature (or at least the nature of that particular human), and let it go. Let the monkeys be monkeys.

Bye for now.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2004 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.