Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day

by Jay Shetty

We humans have roughly seventy thousand separate thoughts each day.

Ernst Pöppel, a German psychologist and neuroscientist, has shown through his research that our minds are only in present time for about three seconds at a time. Other than that, our brains are thinking forward and backward, filling in ideas about present time based on what we’ve experienced in the past and anticipating what is to come.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions Are Made, describes it on a podcast, most of the time “your brain is not reacting to events in the world, it’s predicting … co...

The Samyutta Nikaya describes each thought as a branch, and our minds as monkeys, swinging from one branc...

The Dhammapada is a collection of verses probably collected by Buddha’s disciples.

In it, the Buddha says, “As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.”

The more we can evaluate, understand, train, and strengthen our relationship with the mind, the more successfully we navigate our lives and overcome challenges.

an old Cherokee story about these dilemmas which all of us agonize over: “An elder tells his grandson, ‘Every choice in life is a battle between two wolves inside us. One represents anger, envy, greed, fear, lies, insecurity, and ego. The other represents peace, love, compassion, kindness, humility, and positivity. They are competing for supremacy.’ “‘Which wolf wins?’ the grandson asks. ‘The one you feed,’ the elder replies.” “But how do we feed them?”

The Bhagavad Gita states, “For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his very mind will be the greatest enemy.”

A pair of researchers from Princeton University and the University of Waterloo have shown that the weight of a bad decision isn’t just metaphorical. They asked study participants to remember a time they’d done something unethical, then asked them to rate their perception of their body weight. People who’d been asked to recall an unethical action said they felt physically heavier than those who’d been asked to recall a neutral memory.

When we procrastinate, there’s a conflict between what researchers call our “should-self,” or what we feel we should do because it’s good for us, and our “want-self,” what we actually want to do in the moment.

In the introduction to his translation of the Dhammapada, Eknath Easwaran writes that in our everyday swirl of thoughts “we have no more idea of what life is really like than a chicken has before it hatches.

Our thoughts are like clouds passing by. The self, like the sun, is always there. We are not our minds.

In the Upanishads the working of the mind is compared to a chariot being driven by five horses. In this analogy, the chariot is the body, the horses are the five senses, the reins are the mind, and the charioteer is the intellect. Sure,

Pema Chödrön says, “You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.”

“Insanity is doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results.”

When someone says, “You really deserved that,” perhaps you say to yourself, “Oh no, I’m not sure I can do it again.”

If your mind says, “You can’t do this,” respond by saying to yourself, “You can do it. You have the ability. You have the time.”

Talking yourself through a project or task enhances focus and concentration. Those who do it function more efficiently. In a series of studies, researchers showed volunteers groups of pictures, then asked them to locate specific items from among those pictured. Half of the subjects were told to repeat the names of the items to themselves out loud as they searched, and the other half were told to stay silent. Those who repeated the items were significantly faster than the silent searchers. The researchers concluded that talking to yourself not only boosts your memory, it also helps you focus.

Psychologist Linda Sapadin adds that talking to yourself “helps you clarify your thoughts, tend to what’s important and firm up ...

There are three routes to happiness, all of them centered on knowledge: learning, progressing, and achieving.

For a study, a group of college students spent fifteen minutes a day for four days writing their “deepest thoughts and feelings” about the most traumatic experience of their lives. Not only did the students say they found the experience to be valuable, 98 percent said they’d like to do it again. But they didn’t just enjoy the writing, it also improved their health. Students who’d written about traumatic experiences had fewer visits to the university health center after the study. The researchers concluded that one of the benefits of the writing may have been helping students render their worst experiences as a coherent narrative. Distancing themselves from the moment in this way allowed them to see the experiences objectively and, one hopes, to conjure a happy ending.

an ancient samurai saying that the monks use: “Make my mind my friend,” over and over in your head.

We all know the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To that I would add: Treat yourself with the same love and respect you want to show to others.

Father Richard Rohr writes, “All spiritual teaching—this is not an oversimplification—is about how to be present to the moment. … But the problem is, we’re almost always somewhere else: reliving the past or worrying about the future.”

The Gita defines detachment as doing the right thing for its own sake, because it needs to be done, without worrying about success or failure.

Only by detaching can we truly gain control of the mind.

A quote from Alī, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammed, best explains the monk idea of detachment: “Detachment is not that you own nothing, but that nothing should own you.”

Actually, the greatest detachment is being close to everything and not letting it consume and own you.

Like most monk endeavors, detachment is not a destination one arrives at, but a process one must constantly, consciously undertake.

Matthieu Ricard, “the World’s Happiest Man,” told me that we should cultivate inner peace as a skill. “If you ruminate on sadness and negativity,” he explained, “it will reinforce a sense of sadness and negativity. But if you cultivate compassion, joy, and inner freedom, then you build up a kind of resilience, and you can face life with confidence.”

As the Bhagavad Gita advises, “Cultivate buddhi or your discriminating intelligence to discern true knowledge, and practice wisdom so that you will know the difference between truth and untruth, reality and illusion, your false self and true self, the divine qualities and demonic qualities, knowledge and ignorance and how true knowledge illuminates and liberates while ignorance veils your wisdom and holds you in bondage.”

They are forever free who renounce all selfish desires and break away from the ego cage of “I,” “me,” and “mine”

The Bhagavad Gita draws a distinction between the ego and the false ego. The real ego is our very essence—the consciousness that makes us aware and awake to reality. The false ego is an identity crafted to preserve our sense of being the most significant, the most important, the one who knows everything.

The Sama Veda says, “Pride of wealth destroys wealth, pride of strength destroys strength and in the same manner pride of knowledge destroys knowledge.”

Fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus (also called Evagrius the Solitary, because sometimes monks get cool nicknames) wrote that pride is “the cause of the most damaging fall for the soul.”

Vanity and ego go hand in hand. We put enormous effort into polishing the appearance of the self we present to the world.

As the aphorism goes, “You are who you are when no one is watching.”

The Dalai Lama says, “Under the bright sun, many of us are gathered together with different languages, different styles of dress, even different faiths. However, all of us are the same in being humans, and we all uniquely have the thought of ‘I’ and we’re all the same in wanting happiness and in wanting to avoid suffering.”

According to the Gita, “Perfect yogis are they who, by comparison to their own self, see the true equality of all beings, in both their happiness and their distress.”

The arrogant ego desires respect, whereas the humble worker inspires respect.

So, before judging others, pause for a moment and ask: Am I finding fault in order to distract myself or others from my own insecurities? Am I projecting my own weakness onto them? And even if I’m doing neither of those things, am I any better than the person I’m criticizing?

When Reed Hastings, the cofounder of Netflix, offered to sell a 49 percent stake in the company to Blockbuster in 2000, he was turned down. Ten years later Blockbuster went bankrupt, and today Netflix is worth at least $100 billion.

Nan-in, a Zen master, received a university professor who had come to inquire about Zen. When Nan-in served tea, he poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” You can only be filled up with knowledge and rewarding experiences if you allow yourself to be empty.

If you don’t break your ego, life will break it for you.

Lord Brahma, the god of creation, prays to Krishna, the supreme god. He is apologizing to Krishna, because in the course of building the world, Brahma has been pretty impressed with himself. Then he encounters Krishna, and he confesses that he is like a firefly. At night, when a firefly glows, it thinks, How bright I am. How amazing! I’m lighting up the whole sky! But in the light of day, no matter how brightly the firefly glows, its light is weak, if not invisible, and it realizes its insignificance. Brahma realizes that he thought he was lighting the world, but when Krishna brings the sun out, he realizes that he is no more than a firefly.

The two things that we were told to forget are the good we’ve done for others and the bad others have done to us.

He told us to be like salt and pointed out that we only notice salt when there is too much of it in our food, or not enough. Nobody ever says, “Wow, this meal has the perfect amount of salt.” When salt is used in the best way possible, it goes unrecognized. Salt is so humble that when something goes wrong, it takes the blame, and when everything goes right, it doesn’t take credit.

True humility is one step beyond simply repressing the ego as I did.

When we aren’t defined by our accomplishments, it takes the pressure off.