Yogis work hard to achieve chitta vritti nirodha1. This is not easy, because the mind, being a part of Prakriti, was built to be curious and engaged. So, vrittis keep passing through it. The yogi struggles with this situation, and feels frustrated, and calls her mind “monkey mind”, akin to a monkey which is always jumping around, jittery and easily distracted.
This may be a good analogy, but there is a lot of frustration and rejection in this phrase. When they use the term “monkey mind,” I usually detect a layer of anger, stemming from the ardour for liberation.
I feel this rejection of the intrinsic nature of one’s own mind cannot be good. I prefer to call it “child mind.” If you watch a toddler’s attention, see how it jumps from one thing to another, you realise the true nature of the adult mind. We don’t get frustrated with the toddler. Why not accept our own minds similarly, and embrace it instead of rejecting it? We do not need to give up our quest for chitta vritti nirodha, but we can at the same time smile at the antics of the child-mind. Let the mind be.
- “Yoga is the stopping (nirodha) of perturbations, disturbances, modifications (vritti) of the consciousness (chitta)” — the official definition of yoga from the official text on the subject. โฉ๏ธ