Your Bananas

Here is how they catch monkeys in India and South America. They tie a narrow neck bottle to a tree. In the bottle they place a banana. The monkey passes by, perceives the banana and very smartly manages to squeeze his hand into the bottle and slips his fingers around the banana in the larger inner area of the bottle.

Now it tries to pull its hand out in order to eat the banana, but it won't come out because its hand, which is now holding the banana and is in the form of a fist, cannot pass through the neck of the bottle. It pulls and pulls, but cannot get its hand out. It sees the trapper approaching it and tries to get away, but cannot, because its hand is wrapped around the banana and thus unable to be removed from the bottle.

Although it is obviously going to suffer under the hands of trapper, and although the bottle and the banana are the cause of its demise, it never thinks of letting go of the banana so that it can extract its hand and be free. It is literally attached to the banana, and the banana, which was previously a potential source of happiness, has become a source of his suffering.

We are all like those monkeys. We have a variety of "bananas" in our lives to which we are attached, and although they create much suffering for us, we cannot let go of them. Some are physical or material attachments such as cigarettes, coffee, tranquilizers, alcohol, denatured foods, money or material possessions. Not that these are inherently bad, but they might be in some cases ruining our health or happiness. And, although we are aware of this, we are unable to get free from them, because we are attached to them.

Source : articlesbase