Perennial Wisdom
Join the search! Perennial Wisdom (formerly In Search of Wisdom) is a podcast for seekers and curious minds. Each episode explores philosophical and spiritual traditions in search of practical wisdom for modern living.
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Think Like a Monk: A Monastic Guide to Life
In this episode of Perennial Wisdom, we turn to monks and the monastic life for wisdom. In this video essay, we explore how to “Think like a Monk” by drawing from The Wandering Mind by historian (and previous podcast guest) Jamie Kreiner, as well as the wisdom of early Church Fathers. Expect to learn how medieval monks battled distraction, cultivated silence, practiced simplicity, lived lives of service, and much more.
Key Takeaways
The art of silence
The wisdom of simplicity
The path of service
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Episode Transcript
The following is a transcript from “Think Like a Monk: A Monastic Guide to Life” from the Perennial Wisdom podcast.
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Modern distraction feels new—but it’s not.
Historian Jamie Kreiner (a previous podcast guest) teaches in The Wandering Mind that medieval monks, far from being masters of focus, struggled profoundly with scattered attention. They didn’t shy away from this—they developed intentional practices to combat it on every front.
Thinking like a monk isn’t about donning robes or spending all day chanting. It’s about cultivating the mind, tempering the ego, and opening the heart. It involves learning to live with focus and purpose.
At its core, monastic life isn’t about fleeing the world; it’s a profound approach to engaging with it—full of awareness, humility, and love.
This video essay examines three monastic principles that can transform our daily lives: silence, simplicity, and service. As we will discover, these are not just abstract ideals, but concrete practices, rooted in monastic traditions.
1. The Art of Stillness
In monasteries, silence is not merely encouraged; it’s structured. The Great Silence—a nightly period of complete quiet—is observed in Benedictine communities to this day. Why? Because monks understand that noise, both external and internal, obscures the heart’s perception.
According to Kreiner, these early Christian monks weren’t merely battling distractions—they were practicing attention as devotion. “They believed the mind could be trained like the body,” she writes, “and silence was the gymnasium.”
