Native tribes used to catch monkeys by hollowing out a coconut
and filling it with rice or other delicacies, then leaving it
tethered to a tree for a monkey to find. A monkey would reach in
and grab the desired delicacy and be trapped because the hole
had been deliberately made just big enough for a flexible hand
to enter but not for a closed fist to leave. In short order, the
monkey went from getting his dinner to being someone else’s
dinner. Clearly it was not the coconut that was the trapping the
monkey. Rather the true trap was in the monkey’s own mind, the
monkey’s greed, the monkey’s attachment to his physical
possessions, the monkey’s unwillingness to “Let Go.” From that
perspective, how are we trapping ourselves? Where are we
creating our own boxes? Our own predicaments? Where would an
outside perspective, one free of our emotional attachments, one
unencumbered by our cultural norms, see a way out that we do not
let ourselves see? How could we see the world differently?
Monkey’s Fist is also a name fo