What’s in it for me? Learn how to live like a monk – without quitting your day job.
In recent years, many of us have become interested in the ancient spiritual practices of the East.
But let’s be honest – we’ve got jobs to do, bills to pay, and families to take care of.
We can barely manage to attend a yoga class once a week, let alone a month-long meditation retreat.
We’re definitely not about to head off to the Himalayas and join a monastery.
But without that level of dedication, how can we experience the inner peace enjoyed by those monks who live in the mountains?
The answer is to become an urban monk: someone who integrates ancient wisdom into the urban – or suburban – lifestyles that most of us live nowadays.
And there is no better person to learn how to do this from than Pedram Shojai.
Shojal is a former Taoist monk.
He’s dedicated his life to helping people lead more fulfilling lives using his own experiences and knowledge of ancient practices.
Through his Urban Monk podcast, his teaching, and books such as The Art of Stopping Time, Shojai has helped countless people.
Let these blinks help you.
In these blinks, you’ll learn why chopping wood and fetching water are more than just chores; why meditation is like an operating system, not an icon; and why you should learn kung fu.
Our ancestors can teach us how to live in better alignment with our needs.
Despite advances in technology, medicine, and living standards, we modern humans aren’t exactly the happiest or healthiest bunch.
We’re lacking in time, energy, sleep, and exercise.
We’re lonely, stressed, disconnected from nature, and pumped full of junk food.
And on top of all of that, we’re missing a sense of purpose in our lives.
What’s going on?
And what can we do about it?
Well, the short answer is that our modern ways of life are out of alignment with our needs.
To fix this problem, we’re going to have to recalibrate our lifestyles.
Fortunately, we don’t have to start from scratch.
There’s a lot of ancient wisdom we can learn from.
Much of it’s been passed down to us by the Eastern spiritual traditions, but some of it comes from an even older source: our ancestors.
The key message here is: Our ancestors can teach us how to live in better alignment with our needs.
To be an Urban Monk, you don’t have to subscribe to any particular belief system.
You’re free to learn from any source of wisdom.
Our ancestors are a great place to start, because their lifestyles were in natural harmony with human needs.
If we lived more like them, we’d solve many of our modern problems.
Consider sleep – one of our most fundamental needs.
When the sun went down, our ancestors didn’t have any light to fill up the darkness, except for the soft glow of fire, moon, and stars.
But the resulting dimness was a blessing in disguise.
It triggered a series of biochemical reactions that prepared their bodies for sleep.
In contrast, we modern humans bathe ourselves in the artificial brightness of light bulbs and electronic screens late into the night.
This tricks our brains into thinking it’s still daytime, which results in the release of hormones designed to keep us awake, making it difficult to sleep.
So, how can we get ready for bedtime more like our ancestors?
Easy: turn off your devices after 7:00 p.
m.
Better yet, lay off the light bulbs, too, and illuminate your home with soothing candlelight instead.
It’s the perfect way to wind down at night.
And it illustrates a more general point: You don’t have to join a monastery to be an Urban Monk.
With the help of some simple but effective hacks, you can change your life without heading to the mountains.
We need to spend more time being physically active, connecting with other people, and enjoying the great outdoors.
Getting ready for bed is just the beginning of what we can learn from our ancestors.
If we look at how they lived their lives, our Palaeolithic forebears can give us a whole master class on how to avoid many of our modern problems.
Loneliness?
They lived in tight-knit extended families and tribes.
Lack of exercise?
They spent their days hunting prey, gathering fruit, walking through forests, climbing cliffs, jumping across gorges, and running from predators.
Disconnection from nature?
They were surrounded by it all day long, and they needed intimate knowledge of their environments to survive.
The list goes on, but you get the idea.
Before we turn to Eastern spiritual practices, let’s see what else we can do to live more like our ancestors.
Here’s the key message: We need to spend more time being physically active, connecting with other people, and enjoying the great outdoors.
Don’t let the words “urban” or “monk” fool you.
Being an Urban Monk doesn’t mean being a city slicker who sits around in solitude, pondering the meaning of life all day.
If you want to feel a sense of inner peace, you’ve got to work on meeting your needs – and, for many of us, that means more exercise, more socializing, and more time spent in nature.
Our ancestors met these needs automatically, just by living their hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
In contrast, we moderns have to make a conscious effort.
Left to our own devices, we can easily spend all our time surrounded by artificial environments, sitting on chairs or sofas, and staring at televisions, computers, or smartphones instead of interacting with each other.
Fortunately, there’s no shortage of things we can do to get out there, get moving, and get together more often with others.
To reconnect with nature, you can volunteer with a local conservation group, sign up for a survival-skills training course, or go camping, fishing, birdwatching, hiking, biking, rock climbing, kayaking – the list goes on and on.
Many of these outdoor activities can also double or even triple as enjoyable forms of exercise and great ways of meeting new people or cultivating the relationships you already have.
All you have to do is join an outdoor activity club, invite your friends or family to accompany you on your next adventure, or strike up conversations with the strangers you meet along the way.
“Now wait a minute,” you might be thinking.
Being an Urban Monk takes hard work, both physical and mental.
“Getting outside to exercise more is certainly good health advice, but what does it have to do with being a monk?
The two things seem completely unrelated.
” But that might be because you have some common misconceptions about what being a monk is all about.
The monks of ancient times didn’t just sit around their monasteries, meditating all day.
They spent much of their time outside doing physically demanding chores, like fetching water and chopping wood.
In fact, Zen Buddhist monks even had an old saying about this: “Before Zen, fetch water, chop wood.
After Zen, fetch water, chop wood.
” In other words, there’s a lot more to being a monk than just being a “spiritual” person.
The same goes for being an Urban Monk.
The key message is this: Being an Urban Monk takes hard work, both physical and mental.
In addition to their chores, many ancient Eastern monks also practiced martial arts, like tai chi and kung fu.
In Chinese, “kung fu” means “hard work.
” The description is apt.
Learning a martial art can be difficult, painful, and time-consuming, so it requires discipline, commitment, and persistence to master.
You can’t avoid the challenges; you’ve got to throw yourself into them – embracing them as opportunities to push past your physical and mental limits.
That’s how you grow as a martial artist.
And it’s how you grow as a human being as well.
The hard work of mastering kung fu is a metaphor for the hard work of mastering life itself.
That’s why monks dedicated themselves to it.
Kung fu provided them with a way of cultivating the mindset they wanted to apply to every aspect of their lives.
As an Urban Monk, you can follow their lead by learning kung fu, tai chi, or some other martial art yourself.
The point isn’t just to learn some self-defense skills.
It’s to learn how to approach everything in life as a form of kung fu, in its literal sense.
You could be rock climbing, avoiding electronic devices at night, or simply gritting your teeth while you push yourself to complete a difficult task (“chop wood, fetch water”).
It’s all kung fu.
It’s all about accepting the challenges in front of you, welcoming them as opportunities for personal growth, and devoting yourself to the hard work of overcoming them.
To improve your diet, eat slowly and softly.
At this point in your journey to becoming an Urban Monk, you’ve transformed yourself from a modern couch potato into an active human being.
You’re getting outside and exercising more.
You’ve taken up kung fu or tai chi.
You’re chopping wood and fetching water.
Okay, maybe not literally – but you’re adopting a tougher, more monk-like mindset that embraces challenges and chores.
To fuel all this activity, you’ll probably need to follow a diet healthier than that of most modern people.
The problems with the food we eat are numerous, but a lot of them boil down to two issues: a lack of nutritional quality and an excess of caloric quantity.
In simpler terms, we eat too much food that contains too little nutrition.
What can we do about these problems?
Here’s the key message: To improve your diet, eat slowly and softly.
Many of us have an unfortunate tendency to rush through our meals.
We chew too quickly, and we don’t chew enough.
Then we quickly swallow and move onto the next bite – repeating the process until our food is gone before our bodies and minds have even had time to register it.
That’s a big problem, because if we don’t give ourselves time to savor our food, chew it up, and let it settle in our stomachs, we cannot fully appreciate it, digest it, and realize when we’re satiated.
As a result, we end up eating too much food, and we don’t get all the nutrients from it.
To prevent this, slow down.
With each bite, chew at least ten times – maybe even 20 or 30.
Relish the tastes and textures.
Swallow, pause, breathe, and continue in this way until you feel halfway full.
Then stop for five to ten minutes to give your stomach time to catch up.
At that point, you may feel completely full, and you can bring your meal to a close.
Overeating averted!
That will help with the quantity problem.
As for the quality issue, take another page of wisdom from the Eastern spiritual traditions and embrace the power of soft, liquid-based foods.
Since ancient times, many monks have eaten lots of soup, stew, and congee (a type of porridge made out of rice).
Full of healthy vegetables that are slow-cooked over low heat, these meals are packed with nutrients that are easily digestible and fully extracted.
If you follow the advice we’ve looked at so far, you’ll end up better meeting your needs for sleep, exercise, nutrition, social connection, and time spent in nature.
Feeling more energetic isn’t just about obtaining more energy; it’s also about letting it flow more freely.
That’s good news by itself, but there’s an added bonus that comes with it: you’ll also have more energy – another thing that many of us modern humans lack.
Now, it’s probably no surprise that better sleep, more exercise, and improved nutrition will boost your energy levels.
But there’s another energy-booster that’s often overlooked these days: spending time in nature.
Even if you’re just sitting still or going on a leisurely walk, there’s something deeply invigorating about being surrounded by trees, flowers, and other living things.
Improving our social connections can also be energizing, but to understand this, we’ll first need to take a closer look at the nature of energy.
This is the key message: Feeling more energetic isn’t just about obtaining more energy; it’s also about letting it flow more freely.
Energy doesn’t come from nowhere.
You’ve got to find ways of generating it from within or obtaining it from without, and then you’ve got to keep replenishing it as you use it up.
Sleeping, exercising, eating, and spending time in nature are four ways of doing that.
To have enough energy at your disposal, you need to make sure you’re covering all four of these bases.
A lack of sleep, exercise, nutrition, or time spent in nature will result in a lack of energy.
But even if you’ve got plenty of energy to go around, it won’t do you much good if it ends up getting stuck inside you.
To do its thing, energy needs to flow – and the freer the flow, the more energetic you’ll feel.
On a physical level, your energy can get blocked if your body is stationary for too long – another reason why exercise is so important.
On a mental level, it can get blocked if you’re experiencing too much stress, feeling stuck on some problem in life, or are suffering from emotional injuries that have never healed.
These injuries are often the result of other people having hurt us in various ways, so this is where our social connections come into the energy equation.
Over the next few blinks, we’ll look at some ways you can unblock your energy, feel less stress, and heal from the past.
You can improve your energy flow by practicing qigong, meditating, and spending less time sitting.
As long as you don’t overdo it to the point of exhaustion, just about any form of exercise can help you generate more energy and get it flowing better: walking, running, swimming, dancing, lifting weights, practicing yoga, doing push ups – anything, as long as it involves movement.
Add to it all of those outdoor activities we talked about earlier, along with kung fu, tai chi, and other martial arts.
And don’t forget chopping wood and fetching water – chores can be another great way to get your body moving and your energy flowing!
All that being said, if you want to improve your energy flow, there are three more things you can do to take it to the next level: qigong, meditation, and getting off your butt.
The key message here is: You can improve your energy flow by practicing qigong, meditating, and spending less time sitting.
In Chinese, “qigong” means “energy work.
” As the name suggests, it’s an ancient form of exercise that’s all about taking your energy (“qi”) and doing work with it (“gong”).
The exercise involves a mixture of movement, meditation, posture-holding, and deep breathing.
Think of it as a way of either shaking off your blocked-up energy or gently pushing it out of you, depending on the type of qigong exercise you’re doing.
To see how it works, just look up some videos online and follow along.
Practice it for five to ten minutes in the morning, in the evening, on work breaks, or whenever you’re feeling tension.
In the author’s experience, this hack can bring about a tremendous improvement in people’s energy flows.
But even if you periodically practice qigong or some other form of exercise, it’s only going to get you so far if you spend most of your day sitting around.
If you have a desk job, consider investing in a standing desk, so your body has to support itself.
While you’re there, you can even practice your kung fu stances to give your legs a workout!
Just don’t be too focused on your body.
Remember that your energy can also get blocked on a mental level by stress and unresolved emotional pain.
For stress, breathing meditation exercises can give you some relief.
As for emotional pain, there are two meditation exercises that can help with that.
We’ll take a closer look at all of these exercises in the next blink.
Let’s begin with a stress-relief meditation.
Meditation can be therapeutic.
Find a comfortable sitting position, set a timer for five to ten minutes, and focus on your breath.
Inhale and exhale gently through your nose, down into your lower abdomen.
Next, put your left hand on your left knee, and place your right hand on your nose.
Using your thumb and index finger to cover up first one nostril, then the other, alternately inhale and exhale from each side of your nose.
Gently breathe out of and into your left nostril.
Then gently breathe out of and into your right nostril.
Keep repeating.
Do you feel your stress melting away?
Great – but that’s just one of the amazing powers of meditation.
It can also help you open up to other people and heal emotional pain.
This is the key message: Meditation can be therapeutic.
For the next exercise, begin with a few minutes of breathing meditation.
Then move your attention to your heart, bringing your hands together into a prayer position in front of it.
Breathe into your heart, and feel it start to warm up.
Focus on turning this feeling into a sense of unconditional love for every living being in the world.
Feel this love with each inhalation, and when you exhale, mentally project it in all directions.
Through several more breaths, extend your love to everyone – acquaintances, loved ones, enemies, strangers, and people you need to forgive.
Continue expanding your love until it encompasses the entire Earth.
Let it enfold the solar system, the galaxy, the universe.
End the meditation by sitting with this feeling in your heart for a few minutes.
Carry it with you through the rest of the day.
Allow it to soften your personality and help you feel more connected to the people you encounter.
This is called a heart-centered meditation, and it’s also a warm-up exercise for the last meditation we’re going to look at, which is about healing from painful episodes in your past.
First, repeat all the steps we just went through.
Then, once you’ve got that feeling of vast, unconditional love in your heart, focus your attention on your emotional injury and direct the feeling of love toward it.
Observe it heal in the present.
Then imagine going back into the past and healing it there as well.
Replay the scenario in which you got hurt; freeze it, and let your feeling of love enclose all the people involved.
Then unfreeze the scene and let it play out the way you wish it had.
Pour your love into this vision, and let it imprint itself on your mind.
Now you’re ready to move on.
Think about meditation as a mental operating system, rather than an icon.
Meditation has become quite a buzzword in recent years, so the fact that it can offer therapeutic benefits might seem like old news.
But hold on – even if you’re already familiar with the benefits of meditation, there’s still something to be learned here.
As ideas and practices become popular, they are often oversimplified and misunderstood.
Unfortunately, that’s been the case with the ancient art of meditation.
Many people now think about it the wrong way, and even those of us who already practice it might be approaching it from the wrong angle as a result.
Fortunately, a modern metaphor can help to set us back on the right path.
Here’s the key message: Think about meditation as a mental operating system, rather than an icon.
Many of us think of meditation as something we do in response to stress.
It’s like a “help” icon on a computer desktop.
You click on it when your system gets overloaded.
Then you sit back and let it do its thing.
As soon as it’s finished, you click away and go back to your normal routine.
Now, as we’ve seen, meditation can be a great way to calm yourself down when you’re already stressed.
But it’s so much more than that.
Among other things, it’s a way to avoid getting overstressed in the first place.
To tap into the full power of meditation, you need to view it as a “mental operating system” rather than an icon.
It’s got to become the general framework that guides the way your mind works – something that’s always humming in the background.
But if meditation is an operating system, how do you “install” it?
Well, here’s a simple but effective technique: periodically pause throughout the day and ask yourself, “What am I doing right now?
” Scan your body and mind to see what kind of thoughts and feelings you’re having.
When you notice negative ones, don’t try to fight against them or push them away.
Just observe them, breathe into them, and let them dissipate naturally.
Then go on with your day.
If you keep on practicing this technique, it will eventually become a habit.
Tranquility comes from within.
At that point, you’ll have successfully installed meditation into your mind as your mental operating system.
And as we’ll see in the next blink, that will really put you on a path to inner peace.
Imagine you’re at the grocery store, waiting in line at the checkout counter.
Something is wrong with the cash register, and it’s holding everything up.
Five minutes later, you’re still waiting.
How do you react?
If you’re like most people, you probably get stressed.
But what if, instead of grinding your teeth, you checked in with yourself and used those five minutes of downtime as a chance to practice a quick meditation exercise?
If you've already installed meditation as your mental operating system, you’ll be ready to do just that – nipping your stress in the bud, enjoying a few minutes of calm, and further developing a monk-like mentality in the process.
Those are two very different ways of responding to and experiencing a situation.
But the moral of the story extends far beyond the checkout counter.
The key message here is: Tranquility comes from within.
Of course, waiting in line is just the tip of the iceberg.
Modern life is full of things that can stress us out.
Many of us would put our jobs at the top of the list.
It’s not just the numerous demands they place on us.
It’s the fact that our livelihoods depend on them.
As a result, a problem at work can seem like a matter of life or death.
You lose a client.
Next thing you know, you’re worrying about losing your job, your income, and your ability to pay your living expenses.
Now your very survival is in question, and your body enters fight-or-flight mode in response, releasing stress hormones into your bloodstream.
Meanwhile, your mind keeps on replaying what happened, fixating on everything that went wrong.
As a result, you not only lose your client once in reality – you lose him over and over again in your mind, setting off all those worries about your job yet again.
But notice what’s happening here.
It’s not really losing your client that’s stressing you out.
It’s the cascade of thoughts you’re having in response to that event.
And all those thoughts revolve around the remembered past (losing your client) or the imagined future (losing your job).
That’s why meditation is so useful.
It helps you to bring your focus back to the present moment.
And that stops your mind from spinning out of control.
Ultimately, all of that emotionally turbulent spinning comes from within – and so must the inner peace you wish to feel instead.
Meditation can help you slow down time and remind you of your place in the universe.
Our journey through these blinks is coming to an end, but your journey to becoming an Urban Monk is just beginning.
At this point, you’ve got your energy flowing, you’ve reduced stress, your meditating operating system is up and running, and your kung fu mindset is firmly established.
Now you’re ready to tackle two more problems that afflict many of us in the modern era: a lack of time and a lack of a sense of purpose.
In this final blink, we're going to look at two final mediation exercises that can help you with these problems.
The key message is this: Meditation can help you slow down time and remind you of your place in the universe.
We usually blame our lack of time on being too busy.
Now, it’s true; we are too busy, and that’s an issue in its own right.
But the larger truth is that we also waste a lot of time – not just on frivolous activities like watching TV, but also by failing to pay attention to the experiences we’re having.
As a result, our time rushes by us as if it never existed.
To stop losing time, we need to slow it down, so we can savor it.
Since meditation is all about paying attention to the present moment, it’s the perfect tool for the task.
If you really want to see its time-slowing power in action, try this exercise: sit by a river, focus your attention on the sound of the water, and let it wash your thoughts away.
Notice how it’s both ever-changing and ever-constant – just like time.
That’s why they say that “time is like a river.
” Give this exercise a good 20 or 30 minutes to let it sink in.
Your time is precious – and nothing makes that clearer than remembering the inevitability of death.
That’s what this final meditation is all about.
It comes from the Shaivite Hindu tradition, and it’s a powerful reminder that our lives are brief contributions to a cycle of life that’s infinitely bigger than we are.
Ready?
This could be unsettling, so brace yourself: imagine you’re dead.
Now visualize your body rotting away in graphic detail – worms and all.
Observe it decompose into the earth.
And now watch as flowers grow out of the soil you’ve returned to, and see the butterflies fluttering in the air around them.
Life goes on without you, and you only get to experience it for a relatively short time.
Try to make the most of it.
The key message in these blinks: By combining some modern hacks and tips with a handful of techniques and exercises borrowed from our ancestors and the ancient Eastern spiritual traditions, you can tackle many of the personal problems that afflict people today.
Final summary
Turning off your electronic light sources and doing outdoor activities, alone or with other people, can help you sleep, exercise, socialize, and spend more time in nature.
Kung fu, qigong, and meditation can help you feel more energetic, overcome stress, slow down time, and develop a sense of purpose.
Finally, eating more slowly and integrating soups, stews, and congees into your meal rotation can improve your diet.
Actionable advice: Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
As you start your journey to becoming an Urban Monk, don’t try to tackle everything at once.
Instead, take a single hack and turn it into a “100-day gong.
” That means trying to do it for 100 days straight, before you move onto the next one.
The reasoning here is that it takes roughly 100 days to turn a new behavior into a habit – and that’s exactly what you need to do with these hacks.
To get a lasting benefit from them, you can’t just try them once or twice; you need to integrate them into your lifestyle permanently.
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What to read next: The Art of Stopping Time, by Pedram Shojai Interested in learning more about those ideas on slowing down time?
Well, the same author, Pedram Shojai, wrote an entire book on just that topic.
In fact, in this work, he goes even farther and shows how meditation and a variety of other tips, techniques, and exercises can help you not only slow down time, but stop it altogether.
Want to find out more?
Make sure you stop by and spend some time with our blinks to The Art of Stopping Time!