A trap for monkeys - Destination: Buddha

There is a story—some of you must have read it in various Buddhist books—about a trap for monkeys in Asia. There is a way of trapping monkeys where you have a coconut nailed to a tree, and in the coconut there is a little hole which is just big enough for a monkey to put his hand into. Inside this hollowed-out coconut, there is some sweet. When the monkey comes, he smells the sweet, he puts his hand inside the hole and he clutches the sweet. Now he has a fist, but he can’t get the fist out of the hole. So he is stuck there, with the greed in his mind making him unable just to open up his hand and relinquish the sweet. The hunters come and they pick him up. Nothing is holding that monkey there; the monkey just has to let go and he’s free. But the clinging, grasping mind will surmount even his fear of the hunter. He cannot let go. He wants to be free, but he wants to hold onto his sweetie too.

This is a perfect example of our predicament. Oh yes, we want to be free, we want to be enlightened, but we don’t want to let go. We want to be free and enlightened and keep everything else with us at the same time. We want our clinging mind, our greedy mind. We like it because we are deluded, and we think this clinging, greedy mind is what will give us happiness if only all our greedy wishes can be fulfilled. We don’t understand that our genuine happiness lies in letting go of that type of mindset so that when things come—nice things—we appreciate them, we enjoy them, but we hold them lightly: when they’re not there, that’s fine too. But we don’t believe it.