“Think Like a Monk” Life lessons – Learn Easy in 3 minutes

“Is philosophy always boring? Do philosophers have a boring life? How can we even enjoy reading a non-fiction book? Monk life?

No, no, not for me., allow me to enjoy the way I am.’’ these are some commonly heard questions when we talk about philosophy, meditation, Divinity.

There is a misunderstanding that talking about Philosophy, Meditation, and Divinity is always boring stuff; we should be at least in our 50s and 60s.

“It is not so”, says an enthusiastic former Monk, Jay Shetty, in his book Think Like a Monk. His motto is to uplift our fellow human beings from our day to day problems and challenges.

He believes that MONK PHILOSOPHIES, written many years back, supports this present life. Let the wisdom go viral!

He does not say that we need to be a monk to live a monk’s life; instead, some practices can bring in peace, harmony, true happiness, love, and good life, which monks are experiencing.

His ideology is new, fresh and practical. In this book, he breaks down the monk’s philosophies to practicality.

Some practical, easy techniques and methods are given. The entire book is written based on ancient wisdom and his own life experiences.

He lists some differences between the monkey mind (untrained mind) and the monk mind. This book has three parts.

You can buy this book from here  Think Like a Monk: The secret of how to harness the power of positivity and be happy now

Part one from the monk – Let Go;

It has four chapters, identity, negativity, fear, and intention.

The book begins with the chapter Identity. He quotes his favourite saying by Charles Horton Cooley,

“I am not what I think I am,

and I am not what you think I am.

I am what I think you think I am.”

Our identities are masked by our friends, relatives, social media and other external factors. He also gives some exercises and tasks to find out our core values.

Negativities – He lists out some types of negative people, their nature and how to get rid of them. He also states that individually everyone is responsible for generating negativities.

He teaches us “spot, stop and swap technique, to deal with it. In this chapter, we have an activity to monitor our contribution to gossiping chains and other negativities.

Fear – We can learn to know our fear, deal with it, and use it as a tool to develop ourselves.

Fear management is not getting rid of fear but categorising, forming a friendship and dealing with it. He asks us to go deep into the fear and re-enter those areas.

Intention- He teaches us about our intention identification, seed weed techniques and four motivators of our intentions.

Living intentionally is living the life within; that is, without the judgements and needs of the external – outward definition of success.

Part two from the monk – Grow;

It has four chapters, purpose, routine, the mind and ego.

Purpose – He explains the purpose, what a “purpose” is, and how we can find that out. He teaches us how to utilise our passion for purpose, aligning our passion to our purpose.

He also gives a Vedic personality test for identifying our personality.

Routine – He shares his monk routine, the importance of having a healthy routine, the importance of time, place and energy of place and time.

He distinguishes between multi-tasking and single-tasking.

The mind – this chapter begins with the quote from Katha Upanishad, “When the five senses and the mind are calmed, when the reasoning intellect rests in silence, then begins the highest path.”

It is an important chapter where he explains characteristics of mind, monk mind, monkey mind, dealing with the mind, reframing the subconscious mind, and conscious feeding.

Ego – An unchecked ego harms us; in this chapter, he says about the different plays that ego plays with us how it manipulates, masks and separates.

Part three from the monk– Give;

It has three chapters, gratitude, relationships and service.

Gratitude – He begins with #gratitude (#hashtag), stating how people practice gratitude.

It should not be present only in our social media posts, and it should come from our deeper self. The importance of gratitude, relationship with mind and kindness is explained here.

Relationships – He begins this chapter by sharing his monk – experience. He explains the circle of love, four types of trusts in a relationship and stages of trust.

He also clarifies the two major points, attraction and connection. Overcoming heartbreak is also explained in detail.

Service – He states that the highest purpose is to live in service. He also explains the relationship between service, mind and soul.

There are three interludes, breath, visualise and chant. He trains how to do breath works in meditation visualisation. Some sacred mantras are included in this chapter.

Think like a monk is a great book to buy. It provides you with a lot of wisdom and self-realisation moments. Happy reading!

Do read about our book review on “The Science of Mind Management by Swami Mukundananda“

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