Monkey moods?
Vastmind
Memphis, TN Veteran
Yesterday was one of those days. Bad/busy days with a million things to do and a million things that went wrong...I kept a positive attitude and was really evenly keeled through it all. Well, last night I was talking on the phone with someone, and noticed the day might have been catching up with me...as in...I noticed i was becoming short and getting frustrated with what the friend was saying/suggesting. So, after a few minutes...I said " I'm going to have to go and get off off the phone, I got serious monkey moods right now and I feel them coming and going faster than a fireball". So I got off the phone, and it hit me what I said. Monkey moods??? Of course, I'm familiar with the 'monkey mind'...but would the comparison/analogy also hold water with our moods/emotions? Anyone ever heard this said?
Or did it just fly out of my mouth and kinda made sense? hahahaha
I will admit, it helped to label the awareness that was so present at the moment. Any thoughts/opinions/teaching on this.....??
Comments
Funny, I too have had the word "monkey" floating around in my consciousness, when I feel my emotions starting to tumble. How about a new breathing gatha a la TNH:
Breathing in, I recognize my monkey mood
Breathing out, I calm my monkey mood
Another one for the notebook! makes sense, when you correlate our mental machinations with how they actually make us feel, physically! We manifest Monkey Mind, into Monkey Words, which lead to monkey Actions, so I think you're right, it follows that sometimes, we ae subject to 'Monkey Moods'...!
Y'all hurd it here furst, folks!!
Good term.
Be interested what it correlates to in the official jargon lexicon.
me too! hahaha
lexicon.
Had to look it up
I hate the monkey mood where we'all start throwin our own sh** at each other.
That's when a good ping-pong bat comes in handy...
@Vastmind
When delving into the subtleties of monkey mind, what first appears as mayhem and chaos, can eventually be seen as the structured consequences of our identity (ego, selfish self) co-opting our natural thought processes.
When delving into the subtleties of finding yourself more susceptible than normal for being emotionally vulnerable to anything, that same identity can be backtracked to it's manipulations of our hearts flow of feelings simply for it's own maintenance.
Likewise for all what we see & hear & taste & smell.
Mindfulness offers us the only chance I know to see how our manipulation of our sense data are the very manacles that makes us identity's slave.
It is quite amazing how by just allowing our sense data to freely pass where we were otherwise manipulating them, we are offered that same freedom.
I'm reading Buddhadasa Bhikkhu's Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree at the moment and in it he says the whole of the Buddha's teaching can be summed up in the phrase nothing should be clung to as I or mine. Which is basically what @how is saying.
@Vastmind. The term monkey moods is so eloquently descriptive. I shall add it to my general list of non orthodox terms.
"Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved"
It's nice to monkey around sometimes though.
Indeed. Excellent term.
We also have ape/monkey body. For example physical cravings. This is why I consider the body, emotions and mind all have to be enlightened. The body is often easier in my experience to understand than the emotional side. However that depends very much on our personal histories. I have a history with yoga and spiritual martial approaches that emphasise body.
I learned emotional dharma from the dervishes.
I would suggest Buddhists focus predominantly on the mind in the west. Good thing. However the potential calm abiding is also physical and emotional.
What's the difference between mind and moods / emotions?
Hmmmm (scratches head)....I guess I just always so easily labeled the monkey mind as in, thoughts. One minute I'm thinking about last night's dinner, the next how much those shoes cost, the next about Kofi's broken bike wheel, the next about work and so on... But this was really the first time I took notice of them manifested as actual emotions...like...this moment I feel like crying, the next I wanted to ring her neck on the phone, the next minute I was happy for her, I dunno, It's hard to explain....I was feeling...but not thinking....Does that make sense? I usually notice the thoughts that lead to the emotions, but this time I didn't, so I think by default or practice, one,... I labeled it without any proceedings.
This could have been my deep emptiness moment, hahaha....or too tired to just keep it together and my ropes came a loose....who knows....I like learning/exploring words and languages and communication, so the words and the concept they convey just caught my attention afterwards, that's all. It doesn't take much to excite me...lololololol
Personally for me, thinking vs feeling translates as say 'a focus in thinking vs another focus in thinking'.
In that sense, I don't think I make a distinction between thinking and feeling (or which leads to which) but rather consider the consciousness experience as say one interconnected and interdependent experience.
So I guess for me, phrases like 'listen to your heart' or 'listen to your feelings' or other such that attempt by analogy, metaphor or simile to express such a distinction, tend to fall away.
In that sense, I have found in certain phases (perhaps at the outset of an exploration) my definitions seems to increase but that after a period, common denominators work to erode the distinctions such that definitions decrease or homogenise.
In your scenario, I think it is greatly encouraging that you were able to recognise and avoid and simultaneously (?) to distil fresh insight.
I think my point may be, from a personal perspective, that picking up definitions is all good as long as one accepts that the very same may also be put down.
We have a thread on evolution and another on monkeys.
Darwin must be having a field day today
Yeah, you could say he's a busy 'man-key'.
for me thoughts are just passing through without much invested in them. Feelings are more messy. I heard it described that thoughts can be pulverized like a stone being crushed whereas feelings are like a lotus flower is pulled apart and strands of the petals pull or stick together.