Articles for the first class

Hello, everyone! Welcom to the blog discussion part of Creativity and Business Innovation class. Please open the following links, read the two articles and share your analytical and innovative opinion.

https://badlamaguide.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/enter-the-monkey/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/07/03/most-men-would-rather-shock-themselves-than-be-alone-with-their-thoughts/

Thanks!

Mobile internet is originally designed to help us to improve efficiency of our work on the go, however, it seems that our lives have been teared into fragment as the digital trend prevailing all over the world. The more time we spend in the internet, the more difficult we can manage to concentrate on single thing.

Seems the so called monkey mind in the article has been bothering me since I was in school long time ago whenever I want to focus on doing something practical, for instance on doing a math test. However, in the other time it turns to be useful for example when I was writing an essay. Only a leaping mind can bring me imaginations and ideas which are necessary for formulating something mentally. And as I get to know more and more people, it seems to me not everybody can be the same level in conceptual things. Maybe those people who have a more active monkey mind can be more creative.

The first article shows us how to deal with your active monkey mind when you are willing to sit down to meditate.
Monkey mind is one of your intrinsic properties.We needn't inhibit it but we can guide it by ourselves.
An available meditation can make you think broadly,deeply and effectively.That's the key step for us to imagine creatively.
So to conbine one's body and emotion togeter is important.What shall we do?In my opion,it's not so hard.
Just let it go.Go where?Along the avenue which you are establilshing when meditating with the monkey mind.
Maybe you can close your eyes,stay in the quiet environment,listen to the light music,even hear the sound from the
fountain.Also you can lay on the lawn to watch the blue sky.

One more comment regarding the second article: nowadays as there are more and more external sensational distractions such as smart phones, people have sufficient excuses not to focus on thinking alone anymore or simply have no time to do it. When people are assigned a task, instead of thinking by themselves, the first thing they do is to search on internet if there is any information worked out by the others in the past which they can refer to or simply copy. Referring to past experiences is a clever way, however, if that is the only thing we do and we don't add in our own thinking wisdom, we will loose it one day. Thinking also needs to be practiced.

Monkey mind,likewise, negative emotion and positives are package for us to live with. The substantial steps to get along with it in the rest of our life is as what the author suggested in the articles to tame monkey mind once it occurs to us and repeat if necessary without hesitation. Besides, in my point of view, logic practice is another good way as well to keep us to focus on the situation we stand at presnt and consequently get sensation or speculation resulted by monkey mind back to our body very soon. So what I mean is monkey mind is not such bad thing as we imagin, it's just a quite normal part of our behavior.

It becomes a common phenomenon that people keep themselves busy by using the smart phone, safaring the internet, reading news or social network, and it is quite difficult for them to live without that. I think I have found the reason by reading the article 2, that some distractions must be there so as to fill up the space. On the other hand, these distractions also limit people to disengage from the real environment, or real sensation. Become a good daydreamer is not easy, but we can have a try, try to focus on one thing, bring it into deep considerations, and to create own value. Finally, the most important I think is to be balance!

In this time of socialization, it's hard to create innovation without any connnections with the world and ourselves. Further, we are able to do less change the environment bring to us both in benefits of technology advancement and the dark side of it. But besides these above factors, shall we think about the point of why we are easily distracted by other things whenever we're busy or just sitting alone in a room.The root reason I guess is maybe we probably don't know what we truly want to do at all.

The 1st article ‘Enter the monkey’ explains a phenomenon of what’ll usually happen in our minds during meditation, and analyzes why it’s the case and how to deal with it. I think everyone has that experience: we all want to suppress those random ideas - that monkey, to keep our minds empty, but end up with a worse case, and the monkey will always come back. I’ve learnt to realize the monkey, accept its existence and calm it down. This method can be applied during a personal thinking, a decision making process, a relaxing rest, or a meditation before sleep.

The 2nd ties with the 1st article, it represents a few researches of how the brain works, and also related to psychology, to  show an interesting result: People prefer doing than thinking, and are desperate to be distracted. With this result, we can then explain why nowadays people are so addicted to their phones and online social media. They can’t endure with a bit time doing nothing, because there’s a monkey in people’s mind. With the method provided in the 1st article, we might try to look into our wandering thoughts, to calm the monkey down, to reach a quite mind, for better rest our mind, , and for better concentration afterwards.

Under a wide variety of distractions in our daily life, monkey mind has formed as a symptom which the majority of the general public would suffer from. Staying focused or concentrated so that our minds can be set into a still module has become a tougher process than ever before. And that is the reason why sometimes we are so scared to have self reflection by sitting alone facing all these potential inner voice dominating in our mental state. To achieve the power of individual, our perceptional notion is supposed to conquer all negative thoughts and fulfill the proactive side of the unique capacity of self healing.

The articles above explicate the fact that most people can not just sit along with their thoughts,and the first article also tell us how to meditate, taming and training the monkey mind.But do we need this? The answer is yes! In my opinion,we need sit alone to slow down the pace outside to think about various possibilities ,and it is closely related with the upcoming sessions"CBI", with the core word "Creativity".As the article "Human Creativity:The Starting Point of Innovation"says,this is the process of "Incubation".

It’s amazing to realize that monkey mind has been internally with us all the time. For me, it seems that it always jumps from one scenario to another. It seldom deals with current moment and ongoing issue. In my opinion, it seems that a busy working schedule with considerable pressure can help our mind focus on the current moment – here and now. As per the article, the conceptual mind takes the nonexistent and makes it existent. The good control or taming of monkey mind, as well as proper use of the beneficial effect of monkey mind, may facilitate the possibility of creativity and innovation in our daily life and work.
2015 HKU FUDAN IMBA GB – Lu Qingheng

The experiments presented that the majority of the people cannot tolerate to stay alone with their thoughts only. They tend to find distractions from time to time. It seems that people have a kind of coherent tendency of going outwards, finding distractions etc. These characteristics, if properly managed, may help a group improve in the aspects of collective thinking differently, process creativity and innovation.
2015 HKU FUDAN IMBA GB – Lu Qingheng

Both ariticls" Enter The monkey" and "Most men would rather shock themselves than be alone with their thoughts" mentioned the distraction in the form of the monkey mind or mind wandering. On the one hand, we need mindfulness which is not easy to get for the most modern people under pressure. Meditation is really good way to tame the monkey mind by focuing on the sensation of body and then make the stressful people calm down and concentrated. On the other hands, sometimes, mind wandering is not a bad thing. It can also be contributed to increase creativity. We just need to learn how to well manage our distraction for different purpose.

The 1st passage explains what is monkey mind, and takes meditation as an example to show how to deal with monkey mind when we need to focus. The 2nd article states the research which reveals that people dislike being alone with their mind and that they are desperate for distractions. It’s reasonable that with all the available nowadays, it's hard for people to disengage.

After reading these two passages, it can be concluded that people prefer to be busy doing instead of busy thinking. Complains as such are always heard: “what a busy day, but I don’t remember what I’ve done”. Nowadays too many distractions draw our attention away from what we should pay attention to, and we waste our time on them because we feel comfortable with them. We don’t use bulks of time concentrating on things that needs continuous attention and deep thinking, instead we let distractions break our time into fragments and enjoy being busy dealing with slight things. But if we want to accomplish something, we need to control our desire of distractions and manage to tame and train the monkey mind.

My body and my soul are two different person,my job is to let them work as one.

Oh yes,the disgusting Monkey mind.I have the experience that when I tried to concentrate and calm my mind down the monkey mind popped out untimely.I even doubt that my mind has paradoxical characters,basically it is peaceful, but sometimes it is willful,acting as a naughty monkey.
As it has been indicated , trying to rid monkey mind is always proven to be vain.So what can I do? After enduring anger and anxiety,I told myself to coexist with monkey mind in harmony.The basic thing I tried to do was just "let it go".When I stayed with monkey mind instead of standing in the opposite,little changes emerged,it became obedient.
There is something interesting me.When I looked back to the traditional Chinese philosophic or religious ideas,I found some valid ways to tame monkey mind.First step was to concentrate on my mind which could be practiced as "eyes viewing nose,nose viewing mouth, mouth viewing mind",further step was to try to think nothing,even the thought of "think nothing".By that way,I explored the possibilities for improvement.

Both articles tell us that "THINKING" is an essential habit for everyone, and that make our own company ready to run projects. With the information explosion, more and more data shock us every second. We post our selfish photos, receive the comments from the followers, read fragmented articles from the net, watch weird video to stimulate our vision… When we stay alone with thoughts, "Monkey mind" is always by our side.
And therefore, we should control the "Monkey mind" and cultivate the "concentration". We should recommend this principle, "Focus on ONE purpose and don't let other things disturb it".
In addition, mind wandering is a good way to practice concentration. The more time we focus on the goal, we are more likely to catch the monkey and be a success.

Those Two paragraphs draw us together to a phenomenon we experienced everyday, but seldom do we look into it. The disturbance from outside world become more and more serious nowadays with too many choices and hi-tech devices around. It is the right time for us to see clearly of the mechanical system of how it's happening before it's too late.
The first passage talked about human 'Monkey Mind' and the reason why it's difficult to concentrate or do meditation. The importance of doing meditation is quite obvious since people are rushing out 'fire fighting' everyday with less thinking or resting at the meantime. It's hard to calm down to quietly rest of our brain, which can bring us more inspiration of deep thinking. I myself has been bothered with this problem also. 'Monkey mind' keeps annoying me. 'Result Driven' attitude forces us even work much harder without thinking or resting.Only the sleeping time maybe silent inside my mind. 'Stay and think of nothing' looks super luxury in daily life. I realized I should persuade myself to some meditation, try some light music and sweep out all the 'Monkeys' away from mind. It'll be grateful to find a brand new refreshed brain to a better tomorrow!
The second article pulled out the problem of the disturbance of IT information devices around. It has been adherent to life as breathing. I also missed out the right station/floor to get off because of watching Cellphone. I feel totally released in the airplane when all mobile devices are forced to be turned off, flying upon the air, feeling free in thinking. We should try to get rid of it before it kidnaps our behavior and mind. So sad but true, the fast developed technology brings us both convenience and disturbance. We should force ourselves back to the nature, and back to the human nature on purpose.
Thanks to this pre-reading material, we can pull the real dedication and smart thinking back through some particular actions on time. The therapy to manage our Monkey mind will be a long time training. Look forward to see the result.

The second article uncover an interesting phenomenon that people are easy to distract rather than to think deeply and quietly. It may be unreadable why our minds are so unsettled.Is that rooted in biological structure of brain? or is that a psychological appearance? Maybe both.
Suggested by the first article,the way to rid the distraction is to learn how to concentrate.even through we recognize that our living environment has changed and everyone has to undertake more pressure and also more responsibility,it is no reason to stop thinking and enjoying the beautiful scene in the life journey.Just slow down our hurried footsteps.as someone has said,sometimes the most random everyday encounters remind us to rethink the truths of life and the perceptions we have ingrained in our minds.In one ward,we all should think seriously what we really want?and what is happy life?

As both articles said ,It seems that it is really difficult to sit alone with our own thoughts nowadays. We always have monkeys jumped in and out of mind when we are trying to do something. In fact, this is what most of us have experienced in our daily life or even in an examination ,which we really dislike.
If our mind is always wondering during we are trying to focus on something, the quality of thoughts will be kept on the surface as professor Ali said and our brains will be changed thinking in a different way in the long term of this custom.
So what brings so many things interrupted us ? Firstly, it is the electronic products, such smartphone ,IPAD and other social mideas. We can see in lots of public places like subway, bus, restaurants or even in the company ,lots of people are refreshing their wechat or other social platforms every few minutes and waiting for the response from their friends. People are relying too much on them and even cannot live freely even if one day without the electronic devices.
Secondly, we are living with high pressure and also with lots of worries surrounding us which will also get us disengaged in one particular thing. I have seen that lots of people are struggling for the pressure from family like Children education, housing loans and so on, And some others also desire to get other luxury materials which are difficult to get for them because of the unhealthy demand of psychology. On top of this, there are also another group of people who are always focus on negative events in the past and image some non-existing events in future which will create stress in the present and also robs of the joy in the moment.
Since mind wandering or Money mind is a natural component in our mind which we are not able to get rid of it, we have to find some solutions to tame or train our brain in order to lead this mind in a positive way which is beneficial to us.
1. Meditation is the priority one . Meditation is a way which is common used in YOGA which will bring your focus your thoughts back to your body after taking a breath and relax. Some research also show that meditation is also helpful for promoting tolerance to other people and removing the negative emotion.
2. Clean our mind. The best thing that clean our mind is trying to focus on one project or a hobby. Loss yourself for some minutes in one good book or find other things you are interested and immerse in it . This is an very good way to bring positive activities into your life and take a break from stress and worry.
3. Writing about your thoughts. If your brain are filled with some negative emotions ,it will be helpful to write them down. You can experience and examine deeply your emotions through journaling, brainstorming the solutions for your problems which will help to let it go.
Let’s try to find more solutions to train our brain in order to get us only stuck in one thing . I am also waiting if some other comments can share with some good suggestions.

The Monkey Mind is quite a vivid comparison about our style of thinking which describes what exactly we do when we are trying to sit down to meditate and stay alone ourselves. We say human beings are social animals. Most people don’t know how to just sit without doing anything.
The process of taming the monkey mind is not that easy for us. Every time I tried hard to bring the monkey mind back to the actual physical sensations of the body, it will come out to play again.

The Experiment in the 2nd article surprised us. We never thought people even choose to shock themselves than spend time alone doing nothing. People’s desperation for distractions makes them far from focus. Nowadays, people have just too many modern distractions, like the social media, smartphone and other electronic devices etc. It is even harder for us to stay alone with our mind.

I love the sentence in the picture of the little monks which says nothing happens next. This is it. It teaches us to be always treasure the moment and be concentrate on everything we do at this moment. Try to learn to tame the monkey in our mind and stay peaceful to feel our happiness.

After reading these 2 articles , I am kind of shock by the outcome of the study and experiment , although , they just stated the phenomenon.
Sure, people are indulging themselves into busy and anxious day to day life, we don’t think about what’s the meaning and object of clicking a network connection links if everyone else is “like “ or “ doing “ it . Normally, people prefer do it before wandering the point of what could happened if we not do that . We are desperate to engage with the rest of world without thinking whether we should have or not. In some way, I think this is the result of monkey mind.

The 1st article ‘Enter the monkey’ is mainly about what would happen during meditation, the discursive thinking and conceptual mind . Also, it analyzes how we should synchronizing mind and body and conquer the self-aggression .
In my personal experience, I’ve learnt to realize the monkey mind , accept its existence and try to calm it down. But sometimes, the monkey mind is just messing with my head. However, I still think meditation is a very power way to clear and get rid of a variety of monkey thoughts and give back a clear discussion space.

Monkey mind comes up at any time when we sit quietly. It's an unavoidable mind which exits in everyone's mind. Monkey mind is a mind that jumps from thought to thought like a monkey jumps from tree to tree. It's not content with existing in the present moment, but rather is constantly distracted by the thoughts that pass through. It's really difficult to focus on clearing our minds as the monkey mind always comes up everywhere. I used to read an article about if you are able to think nothing for 10 minutes that your rest could be compared with sleeping through 7 hours. We don't need to be afraid of monkey mind's jumping up when we try to focus on something. But we need to master a way of how to balance this mind and practice more of focusing on our breath as a tool to remain the in the present moment, rather than letting our monkey mind take over.

The other blog is kind interesting as it’s talking about people don't like being left alone with their thoughts which I fully agree with that. You can see more and more people addicted to their mobile facilities, for instance they use mobile to chat instead of getting the phone and call somebody for something; or they watching a movie from an ipad while they were on the subway or other transportation. The worst thing I’ve noticed is although people gathered together to have a catch-up meal with friends, but almost everyone only paid attention to their phones instead of talking to people. This is a very popular phenomenon you could see all over the world. We are living in a fast speed society, somehow we need to slow down and think deep and care about the surrounding. It’s similar to clear your monkey mind as we do need to give ourselves sufficient time to do nothing but just rest and relax to welcome to the next more challengeable task.

Both monkey mind and conceptual mind exist in people’s body. In modern society, it’s hard for most of us to concentrate as a result of rapid pace of life, and I usually have discursive thinking especially reading which I haven’t been familiar with. How to tame the monkey mind? This article informs us ways to do that such as “meditation instruction”. Although I know that , there’s a long way for me to go.