The concept of letting go and detachment is one of the most used and mis-used concepts of our times. We have all heard about it and used it in our conversations. We have sometimes used these phrases to sound cool and sometimes because it made sense to use it though we may have no clue how to actually do it. We have often said things like
I wish I could let go
I want to let go
I want to master the art of letting go
How can I let go
I want to be detached
I am trying to operate from a place of detachment
How can I get detached

If we actually want to let go, then what do we have to do? There is no better way to explain it than this monkey story. There are different versions of this story and this is just one of them.

A fruit vendor who sat under a tree to sell his fruits to passers by was having a tough time keeping a monkey away from his fruits. He tried shooing the monkey away, scaring the monkey, throwing sticks at the monkey, etc. But the monkey always got the better of him.

Tired and frustrated, he decided to set a trap. He put some fruits in a glass jar and placed it near the fruits. The monkey came down, put its hand into the jar and tried to take the fruit out. It tried to pull the fruit out, but couldn’t. The fruit kept getting stuck at the neck of the jar. The monkey kept trying, and in the meantime, the fruit seller got there and started hitting the monkey.

The monkey kept getting hit and could not escape from there.

The poor monkey had to just let go of the fruit to be able to pull out its hand from the jar. It just had to let go of the fruit to escape from the torture by the fruit vendor.

The monkey simply had to open it’s fists and release the fruit into the jar so it’s hand would come out of the jar.

The monkey simply had to let go

Hence the first step in letting go is the understanding that the problem is because of holding on. It is not easy. Not at all easy. But it is good to understand it and whenever we are hurting too much, whenever we can see the fruit vendor standing next to us and hitting us, we can at least make an effort to see why we can’t move from there. It makes sense to look where our hands are, and what we are holding on to.

It makes sense to try to open our fist and release the fruit we are holding on to.

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