Excerpt from the book

"The Zen Wisdom and the Monkey Mind":

The first monkey, with his hands covering his eyes, was called Mizaru. He personified the principle of “see no evil,” reminding all who crossed his path of the importance of not focusing on the bad in people and situations, nor obsessing over negative or harmful thoughts.

The second monkey, with its hands covering its ears, was called Kikazaru. He represented the idea of “hear no evil,” teaching others not to listen to gossip or harmful words that could cause discord and harm.

The third monkey, with its hands covering its mouth, was known as Iwazaru. He exemplified the concept of “speak no evil,” encouraging others to think before they speak and to use their words only for goodness and truth.

Together, the three monkeys taught everyone the importance of avoiding harmful thoughts, words and actions, to focus on seeing the positive in people and not the negative, to avoid listening to and spreading gossip and harmful words and to use words wisely and goodness.

Their simple but profound message taught everyone to strive to cultivate purity of heart and maintain a clear and calm mind.”

i (21M) was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, and i have been meditating consistently (missing a day or two on rare occasions). i wanted to ask people with GAD who have been meditating and practising mindfulness about their experiences, insights, and advice.

kindly share!

Hi all,

Undergraduate student who has always had random mental chatter / overactive inner monologue. Specifically, whenever I stop deliberately focusing on my surroundings, random songs or movie snippets will start playing involuntarily through my head. I don't suffer from anxiety or racing thoughts -- my mind is literally just random, chaotic junk.

While I am able to turn off the mental chatter somewhat easily while meditating, whenever I attempt to focus on a task that requires thinking (such as studying / reading a book), my brain starts to chatter away and cannot be stopped on command, no matter how hard I try to focus on the task at hand.

For this reason, has anyone managed to turn off the mental chatter while studying, and achieve sole focus? And if so, how?

For context, I have been practicing focus meditation for the past few months (i.e. focusing on thoughts and removing unnecessary ones whenever they pop up), but it has not helped much with studying.

Any true success stories would be deeply, deeply appreciated.

Sincerely,

nihaomundo123

I recognize how little in tune with I am with myself. I'm too busy rushing around like every other person out there. When I slow down and take in where I'm at I feel so much better and it makes me question why we don't more often. It seems like busy, fast, and hectic are more the norm and if you're not you're just different or don't fit the mold. I just find something terribly wrong with that.

1. silent meditation: sitting still and letting the thoughts flow, focussing and acknowledging that my entire body is separate than my mind where my thoughts are flowing freely (i can separate my mind + thoughts from the body and let them flow while knowing my body is there sitting). sometimes, i also start focusing on the imaginary black spot in between my eyes during the mind-body separation, which mostly leads to more thoughts to originate and flow.

2. breathing/mindful meditation: sitting and focussing on my in-breadth and out-breadth (saying stuff like-breathing in/out i know i’m breathing in/out). i breathe through any thoughts that arise, bringing my focus back to my breathing (the present moment)

what i have noticed for each type of meditation relative to the other type of meditation- •30 or more mins of silent meditation: more calm, slightly more anxious, slightly less confident . •30 or more mins of breathing meditation: less calm, more confident, less anxious

both when compared to no meditation: much calmer, more confident, less anxious

in any case, i do both daily, usually sitting meditation right after breathing meditation.

Whole energy is concentrated here when you do not run away from the uneasiness of sadness, embarrassment, insult, shame, any irritating situation. Thought is not able to gather relief by complaining or by solacing.

Discomfort is disturbance in the nervous system. It is healed automatically giving way to relief, pleasure. Relaxed and conscious action emerges.

The illusion sees discomfort as a threat as in the case of physical danger and reacts giving way to all the complications of living.

Like the title says, i literally don’t know how to move on. I’m 19 and I don’t know why I’m feeling these thoughts, I keep thinking of the past and how much I miss it from like early childhood to the end of high school grad. I’m in uni rn and everytime I think of the future it eats me up alive because I feel like there’s nothing for me. Even when I am having fun right now doing things I just have a guilty feeling in my head about nothing. Idk if anyone has gone through this, maybe growing up is just something I haven’t been able to handle well. Does anyone have any advice if they’ve felt or tips to improve my mind feeling like this. I’m sorry if this isn’t even the right subreddit to be in😭😭

I’ve been bullied for 9 years as a child in primary school. I was treated like some alien, nobody wanted to be my friend. They didn’t even have a particular reason.

This continued throughout high school, university and later life. Every friend I seemed to make usually wanted to ghost me, or go away or treat badly, despite the amount of kindness I would try to give them.

As a result, I live thinking I’m a burden to everyone I meet. I find it incredibly hard to make new friends for the fear they will ghost me or treat me badly. I have trust issues with friendships and don’t really know how to get through that - I’m lonely but I don’t want to be with people that make me feel alone.

Hi! I am taking free clients (no payment needed at all!) to receive an auric cleanse & chakra healing! If you’re interested — shoot me a dm. 🤍🧚🏾✨

I've always been uncomfortable at the holiday table. I interpreted it as social anxiety until I learned to relax. Now I can sit, quietly bored, without caring how that looks. I'm excited about the fact that I'm changing and about what's coming next. I'm becoming aware of my ability to affect people around me and the responsibility to do that properly. In this way, I speculate that boredom might get replaced by love.

Happy holidays 🎄

P.S. What's a good mindfulness-oriented personal growth sub?

Wanted to share this video with you in hopes that it helps. https://youtu.be/Th4wKmExImA?si=ZK7V8JDqpJd-Zol6

Good morning!

I'm approaching meditation/mindfulness after a stressful spell and a neck/nerve injury that I attribute largely to stress.

I'd love to hear some inspiring stories about folks who have taken similar paths and how it's helped; what the challenges are; any tips, etc.

Thank you in advance.

Take a breather with a cup of tea and a few minutes of meditation. Remember, the holidays are for you to enjoy! 🍵😄

I’ve been exploring different breathing patterns for stress relief and mindfulness. A common one is the 4-7-8 technique - inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds, repeating a few times. However, I customise it to 4-7-5 which I feel comfortable.

Do you follow a common breathing pattern when you’re trying to relax? Or have you customised it differently?

We all know how important mindfulness is, but let’s be honest—who has time for hour-long meditations? Not me.

That’s why I started a simple 5-minute routine with my Zen garden. I grab a cup of tea, sit down, and rake patterns in the sand. It’s so calming and creative, and it reminds me to be present.

It’s proof that mindfulness doesn’t have to be complicated. What’s your favorite quick way to reconnect with yourself?

Hi everyone,

I’m 14 years old (almost 15 in a few days), and I want to share something I’ve been feeling deeply lately. I’m in a moment of my life where everything feels so perfect that it hurts to think it won’t last forever. I love what I do, I have time for myself, and I feel deeply loved by my family and friends. But there’s this constant shadow: time.

I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to face the future, the day when my grandparents (the greatest fountain of love I have in the world) are no longer here, or when I stop being a kid (I am not a kid longer, but paradoxically I am afraid to stop being one), or when I have to leave this phase of my life that feels so full of meaning. I wish I could encapsulate these moments, put them in a jar, and stay here forever. But I know I can’t. I know change is inevitable, and that thought breaks me.

I keep thinking about the day when all of this is gone. How life will push me forward even when I just want to stay. And I feel fear. Fear of losing what I have, fear of facing the unknown, fear of watching these precious moments fade away.

Sometimes it feels like time is this unstoppable force, dragging me forward while I desperately try to hold onto the present. I think about how fragile everything is—relationships, places, even myself—and it’s overwhelming. I find myself trying to savor every little detail: the way my grandparents laugh, the warmth of my family, the freedom I feel right now. But no matter how much I try to hold onto it, it feels like sand slipping through my fingers.

What scares me the most is how inevitable it all is. I can’t stop the clock, I can’t keep people around forever, and I can’t remain in this moment. It makes me question so much about life: Why are we so deeply connected to things and people if we’re destined to lose them? How do you balance cherishing the present while accepting that it won’t last?

I know people say that change can bring growth, but right now, I don’t want growth—I want stability. I want to stay here, in this moment, where I feel safe and loved. Yet, deep down, I know that resisting time is impossible. I know that life is about change, but I just wish it wasn’t so hard to accept.

So, I’m here, trying to find a way to live with this. How do I stop fighting against time? How do I stop fearing it? I want to be able to live fully, to embrace what’s here without being consumed by the fear of losing it.

If you’ve been through something similar, or if you’ve found a way to make peace with the passage of time, I would truly appreciate hearing your thoughts. Any advice, stories, or practices you can share would mean a lot to me.

Thank you for reading this (and also sorry if I had any grammatical errors, my native language is spanish). Writing it down already feels like a step toward understanding and accepting these emotions.

I've been meditating for a couple years consistently using a focus method, just focusing on the breath and whenever a thought comes up I come back to the sensation of breathing, now this technique has helped me immensely, especially in the beginning of my practice, it has helped me with focus and clarity, but nowadays, it leaves a lot to be desired, sure it feels nice to feel the breath and it is relaxing, but I feel like it doesn't have applications outside of when I'm meditating, I feel like my problems are still there and I don't do anything to address them, ie when a problem comes up I just go back to the breath and ignore it.

My goals
I want to cultivate more positive thinking and less reactiveness to negative thought patterns, less identification with them so I can choose another way to think and to move on with my issues.

The problem
I try doing what seems like the opposite of focus meditation, which is open awareness/mindfulness meditation (I'm not sure if these two are the same thing) but I often find myself lost in thought or forgetting to be aware of my thinking when I practice in this way without an anchor.
When I practice with just breath concentration I find myself ignoring thoughts instead of letting them pass and observing them.
I also have confusion whenever a thought arises, should I just see what thought it is and stop it? or should I continue with the thought train while observing it and see what might be wrong thinking patterns so I can correct them?
So my question is, how can I balance the two approaches in a way that would fit my goals?

Is it better to be mindfulness 24/7? Or is there “too much “?

Hello all, hope you are all well and happy holidays! May I ask how long it took you to let go of controlling (in and out) and just managing to observe the breathing? This is the main thing I noticed while doing the mindfulness program. I have been doing the program (guided meditations) for awhile now and it does state to just observe the breathing without controlling it and it seems impossible if my attention is solely focussed on my breathing. If I observe the body first, the breathing comes in and out naturally (without me controlling it,i.e.in and out). This is my main struggle at the moment.

Dear community,

I hope you can give me some profound advice , but I practiced mindfulness the last 15 years with periods where I sat daily, now I am just mindful 24/7 when I'm awake. And you would think oh great that's the goal, but I can't stand it, it makes me crazy. Every time my minds start to wander and to daydream I am aware of that and I'm immediately here now focusing on the surrounding or my body, or both . I don't really know what I did wrong, and how people try to achieve that state, but I can't stand it and I think it makes me crazy. And no, I cant let it go, and no I can't accept it. I accept that I can't accept it. But will it ever stop, will it ever turn to something great what I can enjoy or at least be ok with it. And if there is nobody who is mindful, and it all happen by it self, then the not accepting happen by it self also, right?

And one more question, for most of you being mindful means the observer dissapears but in my case it makes my self awareness so fkn strong cause I'm always present but not only present I am always aware that I am present...

Please help 🙏

Edit:

Thank you all for the answers, some of them were really helpful. I think I have to learn to be ok with always being mindful, there is not method where I can return to mindlesness , I wish I never started this journey but you can not undo what you started.

IMO, mindfulness is the process of suppressing your CONSCIOUS THOUGHTS in order for your UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHTS to take place

In this state your mind becomes more intuitive and automatic so that it is able to perform normal mental processes that have been tampered with by conscious thinking.

Also UNCONSCIOUS MIND will naturally replace your useless thoughts with more natural and more accurate thoughts in order for you to observe them and get more insightful thoughts

So suppressing your thoughts won't stop the thoughts, but give more deterministic and more natural informations to you mind

So if you have any suggestions or any problems that you face comment down and let me know. ☺