In plain words
It grows very fat. No one is able to bring it under control. Is this what we should be decorating?
Why a gold-laced cap for a monkey? Why a garland of jasmine for a widow?
If you take this monkey and seat it on a throne, will it keep still? A fickle mind is the monkey's birthplace, the name it was given. It will spoil even that throne. That is why there is a little proverb in Telugu. ‘Take a strutting fellow and put him among the balukus, and he spoils all the balukus with his strutting, they say.’ That is, the strutting fellow, even if he goes among the balukus, will not stop swaying. He goes on dancing. In this way the mind is a monkey, a mad monkey. Because we keep on thinking of it, ‘mind, mind’, it grows still fatter. We must not think of the mind itself. If you must, think of God. Or else, think of the Buddhi. We must not think of the mind at all. It has no right at all to be thought of. Thinking of one who has authority brings some result. But what is there? What authority has this mind? This mind is a petty thing; this mind is bound up with desires. At all times the mind is the very thing that leads you down the wrong road. It makes evil grow. So we must not honour the mind at all, not in the least. So, if we are not to honour the mind, what must we do? It is just this: Less luggage, more comfort, make travel a pleasure. You must cut down your desires.
If you cut down your resolves, the very form of the mind goes. Look. This is cloth. This cloth is a joining of threads. By this joining of threads it appears to us as cloth. When we feel we have no more use for this cloth, taking it off somewhere. There is no need to burn it. Pull out one thread, one thread, one thread at a time. The cloth easily disappears. That is why: bundle of desires is mind. If you take out these desires one by one, one by one, the mind itself will not be there.