My Monkey Mind

To be fair, ist it really just my mind that has monkey mind? More accurately, it could be the I/You/Me/We/Us mind.  We all have it and I, for one, appreciate the symbolism in this description.  I believe I first picked this idea up several years ago as I was reading such works as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and When Things Fall Apart. And, TBCH (to be completely honest), it may have met my mind during that time and didn't quite make it to the heart for several years later.

So, in essence -- monkey mind.  Our mind that swings from branch to branch (thought to thought), makes screechy noises (noises/words that sting in our mind when we hear them), and at times throws poo (as does our mind likes to throw poo at us).  And in the funny twist of things, watching it out there....the monkeys...in the wild or in captivity, its entertaining.  And, when it goes on in our mind, its suffering.  Its entertaining for the monkeys to do what monkeys do but its suffering when our mind does what the mind does?

Oh and lets not forget, the perspective that the monkeys (when observing us) aren't really thinking anything.  They are not judging us.  They arent holding something from our past against us.  They are just being an observer of the observer.  They are observing and we, while we may be observing them, are forming judgments, narratives, measurements of good/bad/evil, etc.

So, how many of the I/You/Me/We/Us want to be the observer of the observer.  Ok, lets start a little bit smaller.  The observer.  Of the monkeys....in the mind.... watching as an observer, like one being entertained...and not getting attached to them.  I think that I can say, on good authority, that the thoughts are not judging us (similiar to the monkeys are not judging us).  Its us doing the judging.  The perceived power of the thought is really our own judgement about it.  A thought is a thought.  How do you measure a thought?  Whats the data of the thought?  Where is the evidence that one is having a thought?

Ok, so does that mean that we are responding and judging things that aren't real?