The Urban Monk summary

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. 

“Now wait a minute,” you might be thinking. “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.” 

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. 

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. 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. 

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! 

Let’s begin with a stress-relief meditation. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.