‘Ben…look! Look at that stupid monkey …! He’s gonna be caught and probably killed …! Why doesn’t he let go…?! Oh boy…I can’t watch…!’ But we watched anyway…
‘Ben…you do know what they did…don’t you…? They deliberately trapped him! They made a little hole…put corn inside…he pushed his hand through to grab the corn…obviously made a fist…now…all he has to do is to let go of the corn and…Oh no…!!’
(Sometime later under my favourite tree…) ‘Ben…’ ‘Mmm…’ ‘That monkey…’ ‘Yes, Mickey…that monkey…no different from some humans…’ ‘Ben…? How…?’ I looked at Mickey… ‘It’s the clinging thing…Some humans love the clinging thing…They cling onto material things…their homes, plasma TV’s…they cling onto their husbands or wives or boyfriends …they cling onto their children…they even cling onto old, stale, heavy emotions of guilt, shame, anger…they cling onto their Ph.D’s as their identity… So…no time for energy to move, change, recycle… caught in the same energy…and the same patterns of life…and then you ask…why me…why is it always my car that breaks, my cat that gets run over, my …?’
‘Ben…you didn’t have to get so…so…’ ‘Verbal…?’ ‘Yeah…after all… it was only a movie…’