The art of putting the drunken monkeys to sleep – daily

The only way you can navigate your way through Life’s upheavals is by staying anchored, calm and happy. And that can happen only by learning to train your mind through doing what you love doing. 

​By the happynesswalas™, Vaani and AVIS

​9-minute read
Synopsis:
Life is a mind game. Forget about winning this game. No one can win against Life. But to even stay in the game, you must learn to tame your mind. You must be in control of your responses to your thoughts. And not allow your thoughts to control you.

In this blog post we share what we have learnt about the art of taming the human mind from our lived experience.

​We reflect on the wisdom of the Buddha, Kabir and Kannadasan, and explore some powerful ideas:

• How can we be non-suffering?
• Why must we tame and train the mind?
• And how do we do this?
• How can we find inner peace and Happiness in tumultuous and traumatic times?

Style guide: Vaani and AVIS spell Life with a capital ‘L’ and Happiness with a capital ‘H’. This is because both of them believe that Life is the greatest teacher and Happiness is the biggest wealth. However, when quoting the subjects of their writings, they use these two words without the accentuated capitalization of their first letters.

​Our friend is grieving the death of his young daughter.

It has been a year since she passed on. He calls AVIS frequently to share how he is feeling and AVIS plays the role of a good listener. It is difficult to see him go through so much pain and suffering though.
​
In the throes of thavippu
There is a word in Tamil called thavippu. It means suffering. But thavippu, in essence, has a grimmer connotation. It is a feeling that you experience in a dark, lonely, place within you. It is an unbearable ache that gnaws at your soul. It makes living feel pointless. It makes grace, prayer, divinity and other known forms of spiritual reasoning appear grossly inadequate. They turn irrelevant, in fact.

No one can escape thavippu. At some point in your Life, in your unique, personal context, you will experience and struggle with thavippu.

Just like our friend who is caught in its throes. 

He spoke to AVIS again yesterday. He said, “My mind is not peaceful. It is constantly throbbing with the same questions: ‘Why? Why me? Why us as a family? Why our child? Why now?’” He felt that he was traveling through a tunnel that was apparently endless. “It is inky black inside the tunnel. There is no light in sight,” he added. He wondered what was the way out for him.

We are glad that our friend reached out and sought perspective. That itself is a sign that he is seeking help to climb out of the dark depths of grief.

While thavippu is a natural human response to a traumatic situation, we surely have the opportunity to choose to be non-suffering. We can be non-suffering by dropping the ‘why’ questions in Life: ‘Why? Why me? Why me now?’

Asking these questions is not wrong. All these are normal questions that human beings crave answers for in any context. But asking these questions is futile. Because Life is never going to answer them. You see, pain is integral to the process of Life. You don’t get to choose pain. It will always arrive uninvited, unannounced and will stay on for as long as it wants to. We add suffering to any painful situation by asking the ‘why’ questions.

Consider the example of a headache. Surely it is painful. But instead of dealing with the pain, we bring suffering upon ourselves the moment we start asking the ‘why’ questions: ‘Why do I have this headache? Why now? Why?’ Suffering almost always makes an already painful situation unbearable. Choosing to be non-suffering is an intelligent way of dealing with pain.

The truth is that we humans cannot fight Life’s design. For instance, when someone’s time is up, they just have to go.  When this understanding is complete, there will be a realization that carrying on grieving is futile. That’s when you exercise the choice to be non-suffering. However, being non-suffering does not mean that there will be no pain. You cannot negotiate with pain. You have to simply accept it. But when you are non-suffering your ability to accept pain and deal with it improves significantly.

​Reaching this point of choosing to be non-suffering requires some serious effort from the individual, from you. In most painful situations, we humans are held hostage by the turbulent mind. Now, the only way to deal with Life’s upheavals, and to learn to remain unmoved despite all that Life throws at you, is to work on your mind. On your thoughts. We know this from our own lived experience. Once you are aware of what you are thinking, and you are able to control your responses to your thoughts, you can experience equanimity and inner peace in any situation. 

​​Drunken monkeys
Simply, Life is a mind game. Forget about winning this game. No one can win against Life. But to even stay in the game, you must learn to tame your mind. You must be in control of your responses to your thoughts. And not allow your thoughts to control you.

The Buddha is known to have referred to the human mind as a place that is infested with drunken monkeys. What he meant was that while monkeys by nature are boisterous, imagine the havoc that drunken monkeys can create.

Modern scientific research reveals that the human mind, on average, thinks up 60,000 thoughts daily. These thoughts are randomly swarming the mind every single day. The Buddha referred to most of these random thoughts as drunken monkeys.

​He was surely right. Like drunken monkeys would screech, chatter and jump around endlessly, most of our thoughts too are rushing through our mind wildly – they are restless, chaotic and unrestrained. Fear, anxiety, guilt, worry, anger, jealously, self-pity, temptation, hatred, sadness and frustration – these are some of the dominant and drunken monkeys. The mind thinks up quieter, calmer thoughts too. These are thoughts of Happiness, grace, gratitude, peace, love and compassion. But, like in any other context, the exuberant, bullying types dominate the space they inhabit. So the human mind is controlled by the drunken monkeys. This is why the human mind rarely finds peace or Happiness or celebrates grace and abundance in everyday Life. Whereas, it is incessantly steeped in worry or held hostage by debilitating thoughts – fear, anger, guilt, grief, hatred and jealousy, among several others. Understandably, therefore, most of humanity is more unhappy than happy. 

​Don’t be led by the mind
Kabir, the 15th century weaver-poet, describes the restless nature of the mind and warns against being led by it:
Mann lobhi mann lalchi mann chanchal mann chor,
Mann ke maate mat chaliye, mann palak palak mein aur.

It means:
The mind is greedy, the mind is avaricious,
The mind is fickle, the mind is a thief.
Don’t be led by your mind,
Because the mind changes every moment, in the blink of an eye.

Kabir calls the unsteady, wavering mind a thief because it robs you of your inner peace. The inference is that you cannot be anchored, calm and peaceful, if you keep responding to every thought that arises in your mind. Well, if you did that,  you will possibly be pulled in 60,000 different directions – daily!

Actually, think of the untrained human mind as an untrained dog. When a dog is not trained, it will tug at the leash and lead you to wherever it feels like going. Similarly, an untrained mind is running around in a frenzy. Fearful in one moment, angry in another, greedy and jealous at some time, and anxious and worried in yet another moment. All this aimless, uncontrolled, hyperactivity, in fact, can leave you exhausted, exasperated, overwhelmed and very, very unhappy.

But there is a way you can transform this situation and learn to be calm and happy despite the circumstances. For that to happen, you must train the mind through a meditative practice.

The key is to organize your 60,000 thoughts daily. Normally, these thoughts are in a state of constant chaos. When you become aware of the debilitating nature of a majority of these thoughts, you will realize that they must not be given any attention. Worry and fear, for instance, are powerless when you don’t give them any importance, when you don’t pick up those thoughts. Instead, when you learn to give attention to thoughts of grace, love, compassion, Happiness and peace, you will naturally feel calm and content with the Life you have.

Almost all our thoughts arise from our circumstances and experiences. You lose someone or something, you are bound to feel sad. You realize you made a mistake, you are likely to experience guilt. Someone lets you down, you will naturally get angry. You must not push away these feelings. In fact, you must hold them up and ask yourself if they are making you feel good or feel lousy. Invariably all debilitating thoughts make us feel unhappy. Importantly, when you understand the futility of holding on to thoughts that are making you unhappy and are injurious to your mental health, you will instantly set them down. Because, intrinsically, you dislike being unhappy, stressed, anxious and overwhelmed.

​The good news is that the human mind is like the human body. It responds well to training. A trained mind obeys its master – you. And when they are not given any attention and importance, the drunken monkeys, sloshed that they are, pass out. That is, the debilitating thoughts become powerless. They no longer control you. 

​Amazing return on investment
We both practice mouna, a form of meditation. This practice does not require us to find a quiet place and be in a certain posture to meditate. It simply calls for us to be silent for a certain period of time daily – doing what we love doing.

This practice is easy to understand and simple to follow. You just have to do what you love doing – for at least an hour daily. It can be practicing music, art, writing, cooking, dancing, gardening or whatever else you love doing. What is important is that you must not sleep. Ideally, when you are indulging in the activity, you must be silent. Which means that you must not engage with others around you verbally. But, of course, when you are practicing music, you may surely sing. Also, the activity you choose need not be what you normally do at work, and yet, it must be something that makes you lose track of time, and even yourself. It must be immersive.

In essence, the practice of mouna is this:

• Be silent.
• Do what you love doing for at least an hour daily.

And this is what you will experience: You will lose yourself to the process. You will lose track of time. You will let go of the worldly issues that worry you and hold you hostage. You will be non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. And so you will be happy in the moment, celebrating your love for what you love doing.
Now, for one hour of your time daily, wouldn’t that be an amazing return on investment?

​When you experience the power of mouna, you will want to do more and more of what you love doing. That will, in turn, make you calm and happy no matter what situation you are facing in Life. 

​The antidote to fear, worry and anxiety
Kannadasan, the legendary Tamil poet, recommends precisely this approach to help us navigate through the upheavals of everyday, turbulent, worldly Life.

He wrote this song for the Tamil film, Sumaithaangi (1962):
Makayamma, kalakkamma?
Manathile kozhappama?
Vazhkaiyyil nadukkama?
Vazhkaiyendral aayiram irrukkum,
Vasal thorum vedanai irrukkum.
Vandha thunbam ethuvendralum,
Vaadi nindral oduvathuillai.
Ethayum thangum idhayam irunthaal,
Iruthivaraikkum amaithi irrukkum.
Yezhai manathai maaligai aaki,
Iravum pagalum kaaviyam paadi,
Nalai pozhuthai iraivannukku alithu,
Nadukkum vazhvil amaidiyai thedu,
Onakkum keezhe ullavar kodi,
Ninaithu paaru, nimmadi naadu.

It means:
Are you confused, confounded, distraught, lost and fearful in Life?
Know that everyone has their share of pain, sorrows, grief and challenges. By allowing yourself to be beaten and pinned down by your circumstances, your problems are not going to disappear. Instead, if you have a strong heart, you can possibly last the course of this lifetime.

Now, how does one develop a strong heart, you may wonder. Kannadasan recommends that you focus on doing what you love doing. Of course, in the song, he refers to writing poetry, as that was what he loved doing. But you could surely do what you love doing, do whatever makes you come alive.

Kannadasan continues:
The impoverished mind must be transformed into an abundant palace by doing what you love doing. Do this day in and day out and make this doing, this process of enjoying what you love doing, an offering to your inner God. That’s the way to inner peace in any given circumstance. Also, spend a moment reflecting on the innumerable people who are faced with bigger challenges in Life. Then count your blessings, be grateful and be content with what you have.

Kannadasan’s reference to the impoverished mind is important. He is pointing to that fact that the mind that is caught in the throes of thavippu, or that which is held hostage by debilitating thoughts, is impoverished. And so he invites us to consider filling this mind with thoughts of abundance, by doing what we love doing, and transforming it into a palace. We must not do this for fame or money or seek anything in return. He suggests that we must follow this routine selflessly, day in and day out, making each day’s effort an offering to our inner God.

​Clearly, when the God within you feels satiated, you feel fulfilled. You can then only be happy.

Happiness is the way
We have wholeheartedly embraced this idea of training the mind, by doing what we love doing, prescribed by Kannadasan. And we have greatly benefited from it. We find that his advice is not just poetically brilliant, it is downright practical.

In fact, going through a crippling bankruptcy for 16 years is not easy. Yet we have not just survived, we are thriving because we have learned to be happy despite our challenging circumstances. This is how we awoke to our Life’s purpose of Inspiring ‘Happyness’™! This is how we learned that Happiness is being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. This is how we are the happynesswalas™ today.

What we both have also realized, through exploring the journeys of others and from our own lived experience, is that no matter how hard you try to protect yourself, your Life’s journey is bound to have its share of lows, loss, pain, grief and darkness. Such is Life. So the only way you can navigate your way through Life’s upheavals is by staying anchored and calm. And that can happen only by learning to train your mind through doing what you love doing.

Like a gardener would tend to their garden by diligently weeding it, you have to weed your mind by putting the drunken monkeys to sleep. This is a daily process. And no matter how well the previous day went, you start over every new day. In fact, with discipline and diligence, you can perfect this process into an art.

​Remember: Only when the drunken monkeys sleep, is your mind calm and you are peaceful – and happy.

[Vaani and AVIS are the happynesswalas™. They are expert writers and biographers, accomplished speakers and conversationalists, and culture specialists. To know their fascinating story, click here.] 
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