Summary of Ralph De La Rosa's The Monkey Is the Messenger

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 The American educational system is the main fuel source of the Little Engine That Could of U. S. society, as it has taught us how to train our attention but has not taught us how to train our attention well.

#2 The issue of overstimulation and continuous distraction is as old as the hills. The Buddha could have told you about Killingsworth and Gilbert’s findings 2,500 years ago: Nothing can hurt you more than an untrained mind, and nothing can help you more than a well-trained mind.

#3 In meditation, some people try to kill their monkey minds, by thinking that the thinking mind is of no value and just a bunch of garbage on repeat. However, this contradicts a key tenet of neuroscience: the brain can’t not be doing something.

#4 The space between things is a key that can unlock the mystery of how we experience the mind and how we might bring it under our own auspices. It’s often called the third thing. Everything we experience involves a subject and an object, but the quality of our relationship to those objects determines the nature of everything we think, feel, say, and take in from the world around us.