Monkey moments: what i choose

See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil… What if it’s not about avoiding—but choosing?

Most of us know the three wise monkeys. One covers his eyes, one covers his ears, one covers his mouth.

See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.

I’m pretty sure I learned them as a kid. I knew the gestures long before I knew their names—Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru—or that they were carved into a seventeenth-century building at the Tōshōgū Shrine in Nikkō, Japan. I didn’t know they showed up in ancient Chinese teaching, too.

I just knew what I thought they meant: don’t look, don’t listen, don’t say anything. Avoid it.

And honestly, I carried that into my spiritual life for a while, especially when it came to other traditions. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that it was safer not to look too closely at beliefs outside the one I knew. Keep your distance. Don’t let unfamiliar ideas get too near.

Then curiosity got involved.

I started listening. Really listening. Sometimes I heard spirit in a gong instead of a hymn. Sometimes the words were unfamiliar—different names for the Divine, different stories, different rhythms of prayer. Incense instead of candles. Silence instead of song.

Different.

And still, underneath it all, I kept hearing something I recognized.

Love.

Not sameness. Not everything saying the exact same thing, but a thread—a quiet, steady thread of Love running through it all.

Curiosity didn’t pull me away from faith. It opened it, widened it, let it breathe. I found myself standing in a faith that could stretch without losing the Truth at its center.

Love, it turned out, wasn’t limited to the language I first learned to speak it in.

And that brought me back to the monkeys, especially “see no evil.”

I don’t understand that the same way anymore.

For me now, it begins here: there is only One Power. I’m not even sure I can truly see what does not exist.

If Divine Love is the One Power, then evil doesn’t feel like something standing across from it. It’s something else. It’s what happens when our awareness of that Power gets dimmed… blocked… forgotten for a while.

Like walking into a dark room. At first, you can’t see anything. The edges disappear, and you reach out with your hands, feeling for the chair, the wall, the doorway. But nothing is actually gone.

Then someone flips a switch.

Light spills across the floor. The edge of the table appears. A face comes back into view.

The light doesn’t fight the darkness. It reveals what was already there.

Now, I want to be clear. I’m not talking about pretending harm isn’t real. There are heinous acts that are perpetrated, or harsh words that land. Something unjust still needs to be named.

We can protect. We can respond. We can say, “That is not okay.”

But we don’t have to give what we call evil a footing with the One Power.

I don’t deny the darkness. But I recognize the Light, and I choose where I keep my attention.

So “see no evil” doesn’t mean closing my eyes. It means noticing where I’m looking, because I can fix my gaze on fear, fault, and limitation until they fill the whole frame.

Or I can notice the morning light catching the steam above my coffee, the slow curl of it rising, a green shoot pushing up through a crack in the pavement, a stranger holding the door just a beat longer so the next person doesn’t have to reach.

What I focus on expands—not because Light needs help being Light, but because I start to notice it more.

“Hear no evil” feels like the same invitation. The world is loud—voices layered on voices, outrage, gossip, notifications chiming, a television in the next room spilling anger into the house.

I don’t have to let all of that move in. I can choose what I listen for… and what I let in.

Birds beginning before the sun comes up. A child laughing from somewhere deep in the belly. Good, uplifting conversation.

Underneath all the noise, I can listen for the heart.

And then there’s “speak no evil.”

Words can be harsh, coming at us at times like a sucker punch.

Ouch.

A sharp sentence can tighten a whole room. A gentle one can let someone’s shoulders drop—just a little.

Before I speak, I can pause and ask: Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?

Sometimes speaking good isn’t grand. It’s simple. “Thank you.” “Take your time.” “I see you.” “You’re not alone.”

A few words, offered with care, can give someone room to breathe.

The three monkeys aren’t asking me to hide from life. They’re reminding me that my eyes, my ears, and my mouth are doorways.

And I have some say in what comes through them—what I welcome, what I carry, what I send back out into the world.

Every glance. Every conversation. Every thought.

A choice.

I can look for the Light. I can listen for Love. I can speak what reveals the wholeness that’s already here.

So today—

What will I choose to see?
What will I choose to hear?
What will I choose to speak?