Articles for the first class

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the course blog of CBI Class! Here are two articles for you to read and comment on. Please open the links below, read and join our discussion!

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/

Thank you!

it is quite interesting to see one of the conclusion from "shock themselves". Mental difference btw men and women resides the right place for the reason of men looking for excitement rigorously when life is boring.

The girl sit nearby me is the few ones who can successfully be along with her thoughts and not think about other things for a while during the first class. I asked why she could do it. She said she is too tired recently for taking care about a newly born baby, and have no energy to think about other things.
Does the mini-me also need biochemical energy like our own body? As I assume Mini-me is something beyond biochemistry.

Monkey mind in the first article is very common in the daily life, almost everyone has experience on deal with it. When you are willing to sit down to meditate, monkey mind comes out and disturbs your mindset. However, don't worry, you needn't inhibit it but can tame and train it. Make your mind and body stay together is a good way to solve this problem.

The second article tells us that it become more difficult for people to think and stay alone in nowadays. Daydreamer is no longer easy. Smart phones and Internet plays a very important role in our life today, these distractions limit people to disengage from the real life, or sensation. People feel uncomfortable when they cannot check the business email or Wechat for half day. Although normally there is not a new mail or message. It's not a healthy tendency for our mind. So please regularly stay away from the digital phones for some time, try to clear your mind and relax. You might have a better understanding for the meaning of your life.

The way Ali introduced us to do to clear our mind is more or less like what my yoga trainer do before her course. Our brain isn't a machine, that need always work. A short stop from busy life is good for our body and mind. I'm ready to have another try today!

The brain is more difficult to control than you thought. We need a lot of practice to know how to use our brain. Once you learn how to use your brain, you become yourself.

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

Monkey brain is a nature of human being. On the one hand, we need taming it to concentrate on one single issue; on the other hand, we need utilizing it as well since I believe the monkey mind is a source of inspiration and vision, quite often the Aha! moment comes from the monkey mind.

Minqiang Tim WU wrote:The girl sit nearby me is the few ones who can successfully be along with her thoughts and not think about other things for a while during the first class. I asked why she could do it. She said she is too tired recently for taking care about a newly born baby, and have no energy to think about other things.  
Does the mini-me also need biochemical energy like our own body?  As I assume Mini-me is something beyond biochemistry.

"Synchronizing mind and body". If you calm down, empty yourselft and just focuse on actual physical sensation of your body, it's not so difficult to tame the monkey mind. Deep breath is an effective way to do it.

Minqiang Tim WU wrote:The girl sit nearby me is the few ones who can successfully be along with her thoughts and not think about other things for a while during the first class. I asked why she could do it. She said she is too tired recently for taking care about a newly born baby, and have no energy to think about other things.  
Does the mini-me also need biochemical energy like our own body?  As I assume Mini-me is something beyond biochemistry.

Oh...my dear Tim, you obviously took the joke i told you as a serious anwer, sorry for misleading you  ...

well, back to your question, my feeling is the more you try to use your "energy", the less you can really find your deep meditation, because you are trying to use your every effort to control your mind, just let it go, let it float by itself - that's it !!

btw, you are so kind, thank you very much still calling me "girl" which makes me feeling i am back to young again even though the truth is not

The article of 'Enter The Monkey' is not about judging the style of monkey mind. It instead discloses us an interesting way of how our mind works. The term 'wisdom' that we talk about very often in daily life may have something related to the ‘monkey mind’, which in my opinion, I think a man with the true 'wisdom' is someone who is able to leverage the ‘monkey mind’, to focus on the present, to separate from 'here' and 'there' or 'past' and 'future', to let his/her mind fly to wherever he/she would like to fly to, in Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's words, 'to synchronize the mind and body'. Yet, not as easily as it is said, how to synchronize the mind and body in an efficient and stable manner remains as a continuous issue for researchers and us.

When I was sitting to do the meditation in class, I found my monkey mind is so strong. I was thinking about why we need to do this meditation in a MBA class and try to interpret the purpose of doing that. The interesting thing was that I questioned more and the monkey brain was more active. It is the exact 'Self-aggression'. So I felt tired after the meditation because I just had a battle with my Monkey mind.

Next time I may try to focus on the sensation of my body and find my own way to deal with the Monkey mind. Hope it works better for my meditation!

To start with, let’s talk about the main content of the article Enter the Monkey Mind, where the author stated about the definition of the Monkey mind and the way how to tame the mind, instead of killing it simply.

Obviously speaking, it’s extremely useful for all of us to know what is exactly interfering with our mind during our mediation and work, as the Monkey mind is one of the the component of our life nature. With the full understanding of monkey mind, we could leverage those practices the anther mentioned in the article to learn how to work with this mind type. Once you have went through the period of taming the monkey mind successfully, you will consequently experience the advantages from that, including the concentration on what you plan to do, the efficiency that contributes to better deliverable and etc.

Furthermore, we should not forget to appreciate what the Prof. A.F instructed us to do mediation practices in the beginning of each class. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect, we could have opportunity to practice how to control our monkey mind during the course, the practice which is very good startup for us to work with monkey mind. Otherwise, maybe only a few of us will consider doing the practice to taming the monkey mind.

Last but no least, per my personal experience, I would strongly recommend one book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind 《禅者的初心》 to all my classmate, which also influenced a lot on Steve jobs. You could explore more about the mediation which is very important practice to control the Monkey mind.

In overall, the article described a research whose result seemed surprising to us. The participants, especially men, part of them would choose to shock themselves after being left alone in the room for a while .

At first glance of the research result, I can’t help but to doubt whether those participants have some problems in their mind. However, I began to understand the root cause behind the research after having went through the analysis from the research team. Due to the evolution of the society, everyone has been distracted from thinking or mediating by so many electronic devise, social media and etc. Therefore, those who are stuck in those distractions will feel crazy when going through such kind of loneliness experiment.

The key point is not to blame the disadvantages that those distractions have brought to us, similar to what the author argued,as the Facebook, the twitter and other modern distraction might even lead to the advantages including maintaining our networks more efficiently, receiving information more timely and etc, but it’s important for us to learn how to be alone and to get rid of the close tie-up to the modern device for us. The nature of life is be happy, so just as what Profess. A.F. taught in the class, when we learn to trade off unnecessary things, we will feel much better and find out that happy is just the simplicity.

CHANG Yan, Carol wrote:

Minqiang Tim WU wrote:The girl sit nearby me is the few ones who can successfully be along with her thoughts and not think about other things for a while during the first class. I asked why she could do it. She said she is too tired recently for taking care about a newly born baby, and have no energy to think about other things.  
Does the mini-me also need biochemical energy like our own body?  As I assume Mini-me is something beyond biochemistry.

Oh...my dear Tim, you obviously took the joke i told you as a serious anwer, sorry for misleading you  ...

well, back to your question, my feeling is the more you try to use your "energy", the less you can really find your deep meditation, because you are trying to use your every effort to control your mind, just let it go, let it float by itself - that's it !!

btw, you are so kind, thank you very much still calling me "girl" which makes me feeling i am back to young again even though the truth is not

Thank you to clarify it. Actually, I feel that sometimes, it's more easy for me to focus on something without be distracted by Monkey mind when I'm really tied. Maybe it's because when I'm not tired, I'm fresh, the brain have also full of energy, and the Monkey mind too.

Echo your approach to meditation, I think it's something like doing Yoga though I don't have try that, but I hear about that.

panping wrote:When I was sitting to do the meditation in class, I found my monkey mind is so strong. I was thinking about why we need to do this meditation in a MBA class and try to interpret the purpose of doing that. The interesting thing was that I questioned more and the monkey brain was more active. It is the exact 'Self-aggression'.  So I felt tired after the meditation because I just had a battle with my Monkey mind.

Next time I may try to focus on the sensation of my body and find my own way to deal with the Monkey mind. Hope it works better for my meditation!

My monkey mind is also very strong. It was found since when I was a child. It was noticed by others that I never stopped to think about anything. Though I can focus on something, but if I don' t focus on anything, my brain will try to think about something by itself.
I don't treat it as good or not, but sometimes my monkey mind will lead to some unnecessary worries. Just like the example in the article 1(Enter the monkey), some feeling in my throat, will lead to think about  whether it's the beginning of a cold? how it comes? will it affect my kids？ If the kids get a cold too, how to deal with? I have to take leaves... While in most cases, these are the unnecessary worries.  
I tried not to think about like that, but I never seriously try to find a way to prevent it.

As the article and Prof. Ali's course, it shows something method to tame the monkey mind, and to “synchronizing mind and body”. It maybe something I can try next time.

It seems that "Monkey Brain" is such a bad thinking habit that everybody needs to be well trained to beat it back, and we'd better turn our brain to be the opposite "Mindful Brain". But sometimes the most innovative idea comes from an Aha moment when your mind is wandering without certain objective. And mindless daydreaming is also another way to let the brain take a break and get recharged. Is it really true that Monkey plays no productive role in our daily life and work?

"Monkey Mind" is a very interesting theory or observation of the brain. I did not notice the "Monkey Mind" before I read the articles, but now I feel "Monkey Minds" interrupted me all the time. I need to practice to be more concentrate and control the "Monkey Mind". Professor Ali's way of light music meditation is good, I will keep doing it during daily work.

In Saturday's class, the professor Ali said to me: Amazing, monkey brain jump!Because I'm playing mobile phone when the teacher in class.I began to think about this matter,my monkey thinking is very strong,it seems to have been so start from when I was a child,I am always thinking is jumping,I think that I should change it,I should start to learn how to calm down and meditation,thank you very much for Ali professor,your remarks have set me thinking.

I think it is very important to focus on one thing for anyone,if you can't control your monkey thought you might find it hard to fully on one thing,if you fully emerge yourself into one things, you will maybe reach the state of flow,so,it is very important to training your monkey brain,calm down and meditation,focus on your body.

In modern society, we have too many different choices to kill the time, e.g. Mobile phone, iPad, kindle. Just like Mr. Ali mentioned brain like the easy work. Even when we sit alone, monkey brain come out to disturb us. Telling us the past and future, allowing us compare this with that, trying to get of rid of us from current moment.
I'm so shocked that people will choose shock rather than thinking. Obviously thinking is not a easy job.
Before class, I even don't know the monkey brain, but I aware that I spent less and less time to do the real things. Expect for yoga time, I rarely sit alone to enjoy the current moment. Everyday quite a lot things fill my life. What surprised me is that when I let thought floating, it seems I go to a new world and have new ideas which can refresh my thinking.
Monkey brain is not that horrible, I can accept my money brain, but truly appreciate the thought floating time.

I was quite surprised to find that people are so afraid of being alone with their thoughts, especially men, that they would rather take a painful shock to get away from monkey mind. Mind wandering takes place everyday every second actually. But for sensation seeking man kind, thinking for more than 15 minutes will be unpleasant. Maybe escaping from thinking too much or thinking nothing at all are the evolution instinct to enable human just work. That is why nowadays people actually pay a lot to learn how to meditate.

I think it's easier to have a try for clear mind early in the morning. I have tried many times in classroom or late in the night. But never have I sucessesed. If we do it in night, our monkey mind will be more active. Besides of many common causes that lead to monkey mind, our memory for the experience of the day life also disturb us. So I will try tomorrow morning.

It's quite hard to get rid of "Monkey Brain" but we can find ways to control it via exercises.Understood it's a natural reaction of neural stimulation based on your experience, mediation on regular time under certain environment could help focus on something or nothing. One way might be to focus on inner voice or totem throughout the mediation and find connections on the scene transfer to pull ourselves out of the disordered Daydreaming. Practice and practice give the hindsight how to "catch" the monkey in our brains.

I've been practiced meditation for 6 years now.

6 years ago, at the beginning, I couldn't last for 5 minutes since my mind was so scattered and thought about so many different things.
So to get through the 5 mins, I used meditation music to calm the mind.
Also, what mentioned in the article that be aware of your body senses is also very useful.
Whenever you feel some parts of the body are not comfortable, just bring your breath to there and relax that part.
Gradually, your can sit longer without thinking stuff like "am I wasting my time?", or "Am I doing this right?"
Till now, I can sit 1 hour in meditation and I keep this habit every day.
I find it's really good for my body and my mental health.

During the 6 years of meditation, I tried different techniques and read tons of books about meditation and breathing.
"Just Sit" is a good one and it actually is also a very difficult state to achieve in meditation.
When you achieved "just sit" state, you will feel so connected with the universe and your mind will be totally in peace with ZERO thoughts. That's truly a bliss state.

Also, meditation skills need be learned by heart, not by brain.
As the second article states, the brain needs "distraction" and always goes for something to think.
You actually CAN "meditate on certain topic" after you can sit for 15min without feeling uncomfortable. It's a good trick to train you to sit longer.
After you can sit longer, just try the "Just Sit" technique with "no where to go, no goal to catch" attitude, and you will simply reach the "bliss".