A Zen Story That Explains How Internal Dialogues Mark Us

It is said that once a monk and his disciple, walking, met a beautiful woman who did not dare to cross a river. The teacher put her on his back and helped her to the other shore. The disciple was enraged by the scene. And, upon reaching the door of the monastery, he snapped at the monk: “Master, I am going to denounce you. We cannot touch any woman. And you have not only touched her, but have carried her a few meters.”

“What are you talking about?” Asked the teacher. “From the woman who helped cross the river,” he replied. The teacher: “I took it a few minutes and left it in the river. While you are still carrying it.”

This Zen tale is a good example to explain, through what happens to the disciple, how we get to torture ourselves with the thoughts that make up our internal dialogue. The teacher, on the other hand, who lives in the present, lacks it. Nor does he remember the event.

Tangled in a mental loop

Being able to live in the present is the opposite of neurosis that is characterized by an internal dialogue that traps us and does not allow us to contact reality. We could fantasize about how the disciple was trapped from his meeting with the woman until his arrival at the monastery.

“We must not help this woman because we are forbidden to do so. How dare my master disobey the rules of the monastery?” He must have said to himself.

“He should be an example for me and look what he’s doing… How is he allowed to touch a woman when it is forbidden to even talk to them?” He thought. “Is my master possessed by desire? I do not want to be angry with him, but I cannot allow this! I am angry and when he arrives I will denounce him … He has broken the rules … It is that women are a temptation … But how could he have fallen into it? “, he could continue. “I have to leave him as a teacher. I can’t continue with him.”

Missing the present

This type of internal dialogue is what often tortures us, preventing us from living the experience as well. It is more than certain that this disciple could not enjoy a moment of the way, much less the company of his teacher, absorbed as he was in these thoughts that usually have no way out.

How many times have you experienced something similar? It has happened to all of us. We live in situations that lead us to enter a mental loop that exhausts us, confuses us and places us in a tunnel in which we lose sight of what is happening in reality, in the present moment. Many times, as you can read in this article, internal dialogues come from experiences that have marked us during childhood.

What happened to the disciple

We could assume that his injury or pain was related to not being able to express his fear in childhood, because his caregivers did not take care of him when he had it and forced him to follow the rules. Surely, instead of taking care of him, when he tried to share his fear, he was scolded, punished and accused of being a bad boy.

Consequently, he internalized that dialogue into himself in which, when someone is afraid and does not dare to do something, they have to try harder.

This conflict is the one he projected onto the teacher and the woman. In the event that he had been able to express his fear as a child, he would probably have exposed him to the teacher and he would have attended to him avoiding the internal struggle. From there, he could have seen that the teacher only helped and cared for a person in distress.

As Thich Nhat Hanh recounts, the struggle between the parts of oneself is absurd. And it is only transcended when one is able to look at oneself with acceptance and love in all its facets.

“One day I remember that I was driving a nail and my right hand was not very steady, and instead of hitting the nail, I hit the finger of my left hand. I left the hammer so that my right hand could take care of my left hand, in a very tender way, like taking care of herself. And she didn’t say, ‘Left hand, do you know I’ve taken care of you? You must remember it and return this favor.’ There is no such kind of thinking! And my left hand didn’t say : ‘Right hand, you have hurt me a lot, give me that hammer! I want justice!’ Because both hands know that they are joined and that they are the same. ” This is the attitude to silence internal dialogue and their voices.