During the pandemic I have noticed a rise in conversations about the benefits of mindfulness meditation practice. I’m skeptical of those people who claim they use it to be more focused, more awake, more aware, more attentive, more directed. As the proud owner of a monkey mind, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to focus attention. My monkey mind isn’t unique; I think everyone has a monkey mind and anyone who claims otherwise is lying.
People talk about staring at a candle flame and achieving a state of perfect concentration. They then take that state with them from their meditation to think great thoughts, imagine cutting edge technology, implement never before heard of investment strategies, write Man Booker winning novels, and calculate in their heads the trajectory of the next mission to Mars.
I try. Honestly, I do. But my monkey mind keeps hopping around. There are bills to pay. Stupid conversations to replay in my mind. Infuriating comments on social media that won’t go away. Ear worms from the latest music. An itch on the back between my shoulder blades.
I’m inclined to think the mindfulness meditation narrative, or at least the one that’s pitched to us by the oversimplifying media, is grossly unfair. It presents us with an impossible ideal: a perfect focus that is supposed to unlock astonishing creative potential. Although I’m no expert when it comes to human cognition (if you discount the fact that I engage it every second of my life), I suspect that we can’t help but entertain a split perspective. Part of us lives in the moment while, simultaneously, another part of us detaches from our present self and looks down on us, observing and commenting on that part of us that lives in the moment. This is our monkey mind and we can’t help but give it free play.
I’m an advocate of a far less utilitarian mindfulness, one that puts no stock in achieving a perfect focus, and concerns itself instead with loving kindness, starting with the self. It forgives us for failing to meet impossible standards. We are a monkey mind people. Consciousness is a necessarily fragmented state. We are present both within and without it. We do, and at the same time we narrate our doing.
