Time to tame that monkey mind

Are you walking around like your tail is on fire? Like you’ve got to be some place else this very moment? A study shows city folks the world over are walking 10 percent faster today than in the 90s. And it’s not healthy. It affects the heart and the digestive system.

If you’re driven, competitive and impatient, your intense, continuous restlessness stimulates your adrenal glands to secrete excess adrenaline and noradrenaline. Blood pressure rises, heart works strenuously until, one day, poof!

Your speed forces the gut to accelerate the digestive process. Where it normally takes a day to extract water from the food and pass it into the blood to keep you healthily hydrated, the hastened process leads to diarrhoea, severe dehydration and weakness. If you relax, your heart and digestive system function optimally.

Remember, the monkey mind is a clever deceiver. It pooh poohs slowing down. It loves racing. The rush of adrenaline is heady and addictive. To stop speeding is to die of boredom or stagnate, it hints. Thus, it roots you in restlessness. Craftily, it changes direction, goals, but continues to speed. Speeding distorts the perspective. It even fools you into feeling powerful, trendy and superior. But there are contrary indications - hair loss, calf pain, high blood pressure, intermittent headaches and fatigue. The mind blames the weather, water, food, people, but never looks at
itself.

It is perfectly alright to slow down and take it one step at a time. You will miss nothing. This is illustrated by a powerful Zen story:

Once, Zen master Rengetsu, an enlightened woman on a pilgrimage, reached a village at nightfall. The villagers were inhospitable and drove her out of the village. Calmly accepting the situation, Rengetsu laid down under a cherry tree. Cold and hungry, she could not sleep.

Suddenly, at midnight, she saw the cherry blossoms bloom, open out and laugh  amicably with the magnificently luminous moon climbing the star-studded night sky…
Overwhelmed by the mesmerising beauty, she blessed the village folk, “Through their kindness in refusing me lodging, I found myself beneath the blossoms on the night of the mystical moon!

Such is the magic of acceptance. The heart remains strong, its beat slow, sweet and rhythmic. Thoughts slow down where there are no expectations, no desires and no criticisms. There is no frenzy to get anywhere because acceptance says
whatever happens is exactly as it was meant to happen; wherever I am is exactly where I was meant to be.

So come, let’s walk restfully, so that we have time to touch the thousand wonders of life and be touched by them. Let’s walk the royal walk of wellbeing.