The Truth of Gandhiji's 3 Wise Monkeys....That even the Mahatma didn't know

We have all seen the iconic 3 wise monkeys which have been rather popularized the world over by Gandhiji’s association with it. It also occupies a distinct spot at the Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat, where Mahatma Gandhi stayed through the most intensive years of India's Independence struggle.

However, not many know that this statue made of china clay was gifted to the Mahatma by a Japanese monk named Nishidatsu Fuji. It soon became one of Gandhiji's favorite collectible and came to be an extension of his own ideologies.

Ordinarily, the message that connotes this statue is - See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

However, the true wisdom behind the Japanese maxim is under-discovered and rarely understood for what it is.

When a human being forcefully refrains his most prominent sense organs from experiencing something malevolent and evil, he/ she is considered to be applying the power of self control. However, it’s important to note that when you numb your senses to certain experiences by forcibly interfering with it, they don't quite produce the result we expect. In fact you most likely would fall prey to one of the most debilitating blindsides.

There was once a man who used to give into anger very quickly. He decided to give up his family and all his worldly possession in pursuit of a higher self, so that he may master his senses. He put on the grab of a sage and lived in an aloof Himalayan cave, all by himself, feeding on leaves, drinking the glacial waters and performing extreme austerities. He kept doing so for over a decade. Away from the hustles of daily life and the pangs of joy and sorrow, he felt that he had finally mastered his senses. So, one day he decided to come back to civilization and share his teachings with the unlearned villagers. He was welcomed by the peasants of the village with great pomp and grandeur, and was seated on a marble chair with many garlands adorning his chest.

Just then, a small kid started throwing tantrums in the crowd that had gathered around the sage. The sage tried to ignore him for a while, but when it got unbearable, he gave up and pelted some curses at the mother who couldn't pacify the child. The peasants on the other hand were calm all through the tantrums and could easily ignore it.

Immediately, the sage realized the trap he had given into.

All through his stint in the cave, his mind was never subjected to any form of negativity, irritability or evil of any kind. But even after a decade of penance and austerities, his mind was no better. The impulsive reactions of the mind that had only become dormant and slid under the veil, had now resurfaced again.

The fact is that we have no way of restraining our sensory organs from the good and bad influences around us. It's only once we have penetrated through the two extreme ends of experiences can we develop our power of discernment and clarity. More so, in the modern age it’s often a struggle to even separate the good from the evil.

Curiously, the animals used to convey this message are one of the most irritable species in the animal kingdom. In the Upanishads, the mind is referred to as a monkey that has been drunken steep in wine, then bitten by a scorpion and has been assaulted by a hive of bees. Such is the condition of our mind as we navigate through life relying on it. And so also the famous connotation - Monkey Mind.

If anything, the status of the 3 Monkeys signifies that whilst working with the Monkey Mind, there is no way we can stay above the two extremes of good & bad - pleasure & pain, joy & sorrow, success and failure etc. The only way you can win your mind is by transcending these extreme states and experiencing them as a witness.

It’s not by rejecting these experiences, but by subjecting the mind to them is how you will find transcendence.