Monkey Mind is the happy result of doing a Group101 Film inspired on the theme of obstacle.

As I quickly found out, the word is very loaded for those who practice meditation, specifically when trying to raise families and lead productive "in the world" lifes. Monkey Mind is also a very appropriate title as anyone who has tried meditation has some idea of what it means.

Thoughts pull attention here and there and may seem to take us out of meditation altogether; they become obsessive. Feeding the monkeys is buying into the show of proliferating thought, reifying it, being led off by it. It is taking thought too seriously. A related metaphor is the allegory of a monkey stretching as far as he can to grab the reflection of the moon in water. He cannot understand that he is looking in the wrong place. Taken from Don't Feed the Monkeys! by Gordon L. Smith

I only found out about Shambhala Training last year when one of my best friends, Raji, mentioned that Crazy Wisdom was a Buddhist term.

We made day trip to view the Great Stupa, located on the Red Feather Lakes campus in Colorado, and the rest is history.

Unbeknowst to me at the time that I had named my short film company, Crazy Wisdom Films, the Founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder and Shambhala Training, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, had first coined the phrase Crazy Wisdom in December 1972.

As I study Trungpa Rinpoche's teachings, I feel he would have appreciated my monthly filmmaking practice. I hope that this film can inspire others to see the world with a little more crazy wisdom.

Production Notes: Shot on JVC Digital Video Camera MiniDV during a family retreat at the Shambhala Mountain Center located in Red Feather Lakes Colorado in July 2005.