More fun than a Temple full of Monkeys.

(Shocked Monkey can't believe this post.)

I attended a "mini-retreat" on Friday night. This is a small get away, three hours of meditation (with little breaks) from 7-10 at night. It is also more traditional then we do as regular service, we face the wall and don't talk during the breaks. I had a great time all the way through. The first meditation period I was getting a little sleepy, but was wide awake after that first one.

Part of what was good, is I am still focusing my time on the thoughts I had the previous weekend (see the pineapple post). This also was the fodder of a good conversation on that idea with Cindy, a professor of psychology and student in my Iai class. It is very interesting to me how close science, psychology and Buddhist philosophy come on these issues...I may have to ask her if I can post that conversation to some degree on here someday...

It is always a good idea to pull yourself away from your daily grind and focus on controlling your crazy-ass mind.

Today in service a new family came to visit for the first time, with a six year old. This was prompted by a religion class (we have a lot who come to the temple because of that reason), but they determined that they were interested in general and wanted to come. We don't have a kids group anymore (we are working on it) and I was at first stammering a bit when they showed up because I had a feeling this would be hard for a six year old...

So they went through the beginning of the service, with the cha nting and that all seemed fine, then the meditation period started (30 minutes). Now, its hard for a lot of adults to sit still for 30 minutes. For a six year old, that is nearly impossible. So almost instantly, probably three minutes in and the poor kid is already bored out of his mind and started to sigh heavily, within 10 minutes he was asking his mom in a loud whisper "how long do we have to do this" and just five minutes later, "I'm tired of sitting here".

So this type of thing used to really bother me. My thoughts on this is usually how people don't discipline their children anymore. They want everyone to treat them like special snowflakes no matter what, and let them get away with murder. Its "new parenting" gone haywire...

However, what I was really thinking this time was to not laugh out loud. This little kid was probably mirroring the same thing that was going through all of our heads - he was the reflection our our wondering minds in meditation. Our minds, no matter how old, act like a bored six year old during meditation. They call this the "monkey mind" at times, but its the same thing (you can see a lot of similarity between a six year old boy and a monkey, actually). Its hard to keep focused on the task at hand, keeping the mind still. Much like a six year old sitting on a mat (or fidgeting mostly) our minds are constantly trying to get our attention and distract us. That is why we practice. That may not excuse parents for not teaching children how to behave, but it does say a lot about adults. If we can't focus for five seconds as adults, how can we teach our children how to focus? By the way, we are the examples for them if we forgot that.

(Thoughtful Monkey Agrees with the paragraph above)

So, overall it worked out just fine. I hope we in time do get a children's group together. I think it is important to teach these values and techniques when kids are young. Not many people think to do that...