Let me address this issue of monkey (detachment) a bit more. Sometimes it becomes difficult to explain complex issues in pure intellectual language thus i am using simpler form of analogy to make it easily comprehensible.
Let us take a common example like habit of eating salt. There is a man who has a habit of eating too much salt. Thus, we can say that he is attached with salt. Now, he wants to be detached from salt. So, what should he do?
The common answer is that he should try to reduce having salt gradually and if he carries on, the day will come, when he would be able to avoid salt and thus, detached from it.
But, it is not true as even stopped having salt, he is still not detached from the salt. He just shifted the sides. At first, he had the habit of eating salt and now he has developed the habit of not eating salt. Thus, the habit regarding salt is still very much there thus we cannot claim that he is detached from the salt.
This is not detachment but escapism merely.
Now let us adopt a different procedure. Instead of reducing salt in his meals, he starts using salt alternatively. Now he uses to have supper with a heavy dose of salt and dinner totally without any salt. Now, what happens if he continues to do the same? The stage will come when the salt would lost relevance to him. He would not mind having meals either with salt or without salt.
This is actual detachment as he has been gone beyond all the habits regarding salt, either positive or negative.
This is precisely the meaning of phrases like “just be there” often used in eastern religions, especially Buddhism. Complete the full circle first and only after that just be there, not from the starting. This is the precise reason why monks and sages used to return to the society after spending years in meditative isolation. We should not draw the conclusion from their example that it is useless to have isolation and “just being there” in the society is detachment. They used to come back to test and thus complete the process of detachment.
The same is with the monkey of our story. If the monkey is not there, so be it, and even he is there, so be it. Let him do what he is supposed to and let us do what we are supposed to do.
If a log of a wood is in the sea, its waves will force the log to move here and there continuously. And, if a log wants to be absolutely still, it has to make a lot of effort doing so. By doing so, it may appears still to a third person but it is not so neither by intent nor by effort. On the other hand, if the log stop resisting, it will start moving with the waves. Again, now it may look unstable to the third person, but it is very much still both by intent and action, thus detached from the waves.
And that is what really matters.
with love,
sanjay