Monkey Mind Quotes

“Only about two percent of one percent of our thoughts deserve to be taken seriously.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The route of true happiness, the Buddha argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens. To truly tame the 'monkey mind' and defeat our habitual tendency toward clinging, meditation was the prescription, and sitting and actively facing the 'voice in your head' mindfully for a few minutes a day might be the hardest thing you'll ever do. Accept that challenge and improve your life drastically. It's about mitigation, not alleviation. It's that simple. The only way out is through.”
― Dan Harris, 10% Happier

“in the heart’s rain
in the eye’s fog
in the winter’s smoky snow
in whirling snow
in storms
wind which wants to tear my coat off
legends stories
the blood red dawn of the mind
the warm spring between your thighs
the only haven”
― Nils-Aslak Valkeapää

“My faith is with technology and with psychedelics. Politics aren't going to take us much further. We're awakening as a planet to the very good news that all ideology is parochial and culturally defined, like painting yourself blue or scarifying your penis. A culture is a limited enterprise. How could someone be so naive as to imagine that an ideology, a thought system generated by the monkey mind, would be adequate to explain the universe? That's preposterous. It's like meeting a termite who tells you he's a philosopher. What could you do but smile at the very notion.”
― Terence McKenna

“Shut up, she tells her monkey mind. Please shut up, you picker of nits, presser of bruises, counter of losses, fearer of failures, collector of grievances future and past.”
― Leni Zumas, Red Clocks

“Mindfulness is the difficult art of simply replacing thinking with experiencing.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Some people are not really good listeners. They are merely good at keeping quiet for a long time, while someone is talking to them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Mindfulness is by far the most supreme expression of gratefulness for being alive.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We cannot really experience something while we are thinking, not even the act of thinking.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The mind is either a visitor, or an oppressor.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The mind is a sweetheart, when it is wondering; and a bitch, when it is wandering.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The mind is a drama queen that gets too embarrassed to continue acting up, after only a few seconds of getting our undivided attention.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A restless mind makes a problem of a resting body.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Our mind cannot be freed into the present moment while we are caged by the illusion of multitasking.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We live life passively whenever we are not practicing mindfulness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Teach him to call it ‘real-life and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’. (...) Never having been human (...) you don’t realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. (...) Thanks to processes we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. (...) But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is ‘the results of modern investigation’. Do remember you are there to fuddle him.”
― Clive Staples Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Mindlessness often leads to headlessness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We can realize, not that our mind is wandering, but that it was.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The breath is the rein for the mind.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The mind cannot really rest or be still: it is either busy, or non-existent.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“What is meant figuratively by ‘mindfulness’ is meant literally by ‘mindlessness’.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The mind exists intermittently.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Meditation is generally an alternation between the feeling of bliss and the witnessing of a thought having a problem with the having of thoughts.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Photography created, and then social media aggravated, the vast majority of people’s inability to enjoy what is happening … without the urge to capture it.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We are happy by nature, and our happiness is interrupted by thoughts.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Thinking protects us against experiencing the overwhelming wonderfulness of life.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Meditation produces, in an awake man, calmness that rivals that of a sleeping boy.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We invite mindfulness when the doing is, or is at least treated as, the desired result.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“If we can unify the apparent duality between the great uncontrollable energy and the natural wisdom of our monkey mind, if we moderate its impulsive tendencies and incorporate its intuitive wisdom, we can express our being in all its capacity and transform into calm and enlightened individuals.”
― Oeset Drakir, The Zen Wisdom and the Monkey Mind: Zen Teachings to Unify Your Inner Self, Calm Your Mind, Overcome Anxiety, and Live with Wisdom and Fulfillment

“Your real nature is to move at your own pace but your conscious mind and all its conditioning is constantly racing around like a monkey swinging from branch to branch looking for something it can never find.”
― Oli Anderson, Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace