Monkey Business

In times of the past, monkeys would routinely destroy crops in the fields. The farmers, non-violent at heart, wanted to employ some way of catching the monkeys without inflicting permanent injury on them. “After observing these monkeys and their habits” one wise farmer said. “I’ve discovered a way to catch them without hurting them.”

To demonstrate, he cut a small hole in a coconut, just big enough so the monkey could slide its hand in. He then tied the coconut to a tree and put a banana inside. In practically no time a monkey came and, smelling banana, put his hand inside the coconut and grabbed his lunch. When he tried to pull his hand out, however, his clenched fist wouldn’t pass out of the small hole! As the wise farmer began climbing up the tree, the monkey had a decision to make. Although he could let go of the banana, withdraw his hand, and jump to safety in the next tree, he instead opted to hold on tightly and struggle. The monkey was his own hostage. Though screeching and struggling, the man calmly walked up to the monkey and captured him. Job done! They hung hundreds of coconuts, filled them with hundreds of bananas and caught hundreds of monkeys. The moral of the story: attachment is monkey-business!

On a more serious note, the story is a graphic example of how attachment binds us to this world. The monkey placed a greater value on the banana than his own freedom. In the same way, the defect of the conditioned soul is his perpetual attraction towards temporary sense objects, which not only fail to satisfy his desires, but simultaneously divert him from the real source of happiness. Philosophical systems like sankhya deconstruct the principles of matter and help to awaken a detachment within us. For example, one may see a sumptuous cake and be immediately drawn to devour it. If, however, we break apart the cake and view it as its separate ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, etc.), it doesn’t hold the same attraction. In the same way, sankhya helps one to look at the world from a more detached and sober perspective by dissecting it into its constituent elements.