<p>Who is the author of The Urban Monk?</p>

<p>The author of The Urban Monk is Pedram Shojai.</p>

Personal Development

The Urban Monk Book Summary - The Urban Monk Book explained in key points

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The Urban Monk summary

Name: The Urban Monk
Rating: 4.6 (114 reviews)
Author: Pedram Shojai

Pedram Shojai

Eastern Wisdom and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace

4.6 (114 ratings)

30 mins

Brief summary

The Urban Monk by Pedram Shojai is a guidebook to finding peace and balance in modern life. It provides practical tips for living mindfully and cultivating healthy habits, allowing us to achieve our full potential in a hectic world.

Topics

Spirituality Success Happy Self-Help Meditation Diet

Table of Contents

The Urban Monk
Summary of 10 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 10

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.

Being an Urban Monk takes hard work, both physical and mental.

“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.”

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.

Feeling more energetic isn’t just about obtaining more energy; it’s also about letting it flow more freely.

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.

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!

Meditation can be therapeutic.

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.

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.

Tranquility comes from within.

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.

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.

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What is The Urban Monk about?

The Urban Monk (2016) is a field guide for how to navigate modern life with a more monk-like mentality. Drawing on Eastern spiritual traditions, contemporary science, and the lives of our ancestors, it’s packed full of practical tips on how we can integrate ancient wisdom into our modern lifestyles. It addresses a wide range of personal problems, including stress, unhealthy diets, and a lack of time, energy, and sense of purpose.

The Urban Monk Review

The Urban Monk (2016) is a book that offers practical insights and guidance for finding balance and peace in our modern, fast-paced lives. Here are three reasons why this book is worth reading:

It provides down-to-earth strategies that can help us navigate the chaos of everyday life and cultivate a sense of calm and clarity.
By blending ancient Eastern wisdom with modern scientific research, the book offers a unique perspective on achieving overall well-being, both mentally and physically.
With its engaging storytelling and relatable anecdotes, it not only educates but also entertains, ensuring that readers stay engrossed throughout the book.

Who should read The Urban Monk?

Lifestyle hackers
Those who suffer from stress and low energy
People interested in Eastern spiritual traditions

About the Author

Pedram Shojai, a former Taoist monk, is a doctor of Oriental medicine, a qigong master, and a decades-long practitioner of kung fu and tai chi. He is the host of The Urban Monk podcast, the founder of Well.org, and the producer of the documentary films Vitality, Origins, and Prosperity. His other books include The Art of Stopping Time and Inner Alchemy.

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