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Comment by math_denial | Hacker News Reader

I often yearn for the "unearthly quiet" and structure of a monastic life. I am not religious but I just feel as if I don't belong in society: I don't care about work, jobs, careers, riches, fame. I would like a life of study, contemplation and silence.

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I think there's a small mismatch of expectations. A monastery is not generally a "life of study". There may be study and prayerful contemplation, but there is definitely labor, physical labor -- generally starting with some measure of agriculture -- as the community supports itself.

It's also still a society, a small one at least, a group life. It is likely to impose on you much more than society in general, though in different ways. If you prefer solitude, you may be looking to become a hermit, rather than a monk.

In a secular context: You might care about work, jobs, careers, and riches, is not for their own sake, but because the riches can support you in a life of study. With a million or two from tech you can buy a small house somewhere quiet and study there all you like.

One other thing to note: permission to be a hermit is only granted to monks after many years of being part of the community of monks. To go off alone as a monk is very spiritually perilous for the first few years. It takes a long time to gain the discernment necessary to be a hermit monk, and some monks are never given that permission by their spiritual father.

Do you have more sources about this? I find it quite interesting

Here's a brief article about being a hermit from an Orthodox Christian perspective: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Hermit

The first half of this book is a recollection of life as a monk on Mt Athos (the second half is a collection of the monk's teachings as an elder): Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios.

Another good book is The Gurus, The Young Man, and Elder Paisios by Dionysios Farasiotis. This one has a lot more detail about life on Mt Athos. Also, it's important to note that Elder Paisios has been venerated and is now Saint Paisios.

A Benedictine once put it more or less this way to me: community life causes the monks to round off each other's sharp edges over time. A solitary life is generally not good for people.

Check out "Into Great Silence" for a film about life in the Grand Chartreuse, the motherhouse of the Carthusian order. I recall reading some years ago that it is one of the few (only?) orders in the Catholic Church that has never needed reform. Carthusians only talk to each other once a week I believe -- interesting monastic order.

There is also a relevant classic work on the Jesus Prayer so used by the East: The Way of a Pilgrim. It's about a man who is determined to find out how to pray without ceasing. He becomes a solitary mystic is how I would describe it.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgNj2Sf_mgo

ora et labora

I’ve been twice to Athos, staying at different monasteries each time. It’s unreal because the lifestyle there is very rudimentary. They wake up really early and spend most of the day either praying or working. You’ll hear no cars or any other mechanical sound whatsoever. There’s electricity of course, and you can bring a phone or laptop if you so wish, but most people don’t even bother. Add the fact that the region seems idyllic with monasteries buried deep into forests a few minutes walk from the sea and you can understand why spending a week there is so refreshing. By the way, not everyone visiting Athos is religious, nor is required.

Monastic live is actually pretty varied. There are orders large and small, in cities and in the countryside. It can vary from your traditional idea of a monastery to a shared house where people all work jobs but live a communal life. A good friend of mine was a monk in Atlanta; they have a house in a suburban neighborhood that you would be hard pressed to identify as anything other than a traditional family home from the outside. They had about 8-10 men in their order living under an Abbott, most working professional jobs.

If this is something you are interested in, many of the larger monasteries also function as retreat centers and welcome visitors. There's one about 45 minutes from me [0] that I have visited a few times and stayed for two nights once as part of the marriage preparation courses my wife and I did before getting married. You can have a chance to get a feel for what life is like for the brethren, even for only a few days.

[0] https://www.stbernardabbey.com/

In the book "Wanting", the author has a bit explaining silent retreats, which are basically vacations where no one is allowed to talk and everyone reads. I thought they were an interesting idea to kind of test out monkhood. Similarly, I have always wanted to try John Carmack's idea of taking a computer away to a hotel for a week and working on a project and ordering room service

This is really geeky, but I've taken the short trip cross the sound to Copenhagen at least three times in the last five years to have a weekend with me, myself and my laptop. Smoke weed, eat and drink hotel food and hack away at my hobby project. I've never felt so refreshed and happy than after a weekend like that. Highly recommend it.

> I have always wanted to try John Carmack's idea of taking a computer away to a hotel for a week and working on a project and ordering room service

How much of that desire has survived the lockdowns?

My version of the Carmack thing is taking my laptop on boat to Alaska and back for a week. Very limited internet access, relaxing scenery, and no interruptions. These have proven to be extremely productive weeks.

When I read Neal Stephenson's "Anathem", the thing that called out to me the most in that novel was the "mathic" life of the main protagonist and his contemporaries. A life of contemplation, study, and garden husbandry is very appealing.

I am convinced that in pre-secularism days, when "religious" was pretty much the default assumption, there were plenty of monks/nuns who went down that path not because they were particularly devoted but because they failed to fit into any of the conventional roles offered by society but didn't want to become outcasts either. Yes, this might be a misconception (inspired by Eco/Connery?), but it be surprised if there want some truth in it. From that perspective, contemplation and study is more a possible nice side effect than the actual function. With the modern awareness about how unsustainable a norm of spouse-and-three-kids is, perhaps we should consider freeing the monastic lifestyle from religious baggage and think about a mental framework for "orders" for other kinds of lifetime devotions?

I think this is probably a modern bias since we tend to under appreciate the sincerity of religious beleif that many people had , historically. I'm not saying everyone did, but many did.

I think the rigors of monastic life are also off putting to someone just wanting to hang out.

anway, if there is a formula for secular monasticism I would like to see it. In my view, without the orders and vows there is nothing keeping people from leaving - kinda like how communes sort of evapoeate after a while.

I wasn't trying to imply that they went monastic despite not believing, but something quite consistent with your first paragraph: today we assume that only people form, I don't know, the top percentile in the metric of belief sincerity could even consider the monastic path, the pieousest of the pieous. But back then religion was so much a basic part of everybody's mental model of the world, that I don't believe that anybody would be considered, even by themselves, as "not monk material" for lack of belief. Practical reasons to stick to a worldly path, sure, or incompatible desires, preferences. Or, most importantly, simply better options. But hardly ever lack of belief. Just like today people don't usually become a physicist because they are more convinced than others that gravity exists.

Back to secular monasticism: the closest we have are militaries (which have been substitute homes and families for a certain kind of person ever since the invention of standing armies) and the prison system. I wonder if UBI, even a UBI of the very low kind, might end up with something like secular monasticism emerging. Communities with absolute minimalism in terms of individual rooms and all remaining resources (rent and chore hours commitment) put in shared amenities. So many ways to make a setup like that a catastrophic failure, but there might be winning patterns

The Order of Dependency Management has requested you update your package dependencies to the latest versions.

I have always been fascinated with the thought of a post-society world, where technology still lingers but can only be wielded by few, and perhaps truly understood by none. All previous knowledge gone, people would have to tinker, poke and problem solve their way to understanding how these arcane artifacts and mysterious facilities.

I think it interests me because the idea of idle curiosity and discovery in a vacuum seems wholesome and rewarding. No roles to fill, no bills to pay, and all your capabilities are wrought from your own efforts not bestowed upon you by the exchange of money (smartphones, cars, etc).

Maybe you might want to read this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

I also have a hunch that people on the autism spectrum / Aspergers would end up gravitating towards monastic life in the past.

As far as I know monastic life is not really work-free or worry-free. It's still a society with a lot of baggage. You are even expected to work for free and don't question the authority of the "upper-class".

The only chance to be "free" would be to live in a very remote area, alone. That's a tough life but at least you don't have any answer to anyone.

Well you do answer to Nature but it isn't a person per se.

I would imagine part of enjoyment of Monastic life is surrendering to those in charge of the Monastery.

Good point about monastic life, it is always idealized but as with most things in the cosmos reality deviates.

I doubt that Nature says that only males are allowed to enter.

Unless you are a hermit and live in solitude (which is not the case on Athos) you still have to answer to the community members and obey the community rules which very are often made to favour specific members of the community.

>"The only chance to be "free" would be to live in a very remote area, alone"

That's the route Daniel Shellabarger [aka Daniel Suelo] took[1]. He quit his job and went to live life as a hermit/hobo in the Am-Southwest. It's not an easy life --most people would not take that deal, but maybe for him it is. It's very ad-hoc and with very little regimen.

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/homeles...

If you don’t care about careers, riches, and fame, and want to engage in a decade or more of quiet contemplation, then join a Ph.D. program. You will be very poor and exist apart from society, where you are neither student nor employee. You can study as much as you want!

Both the PhD experience and the monastic experience have a common root in the 6th century BC Pythagorean communities in southern Italy.

I think a lot about the right to be a monk. It solves a lot of other human rights issues along the way. Monks create their own food, have a place to live and work, and don't cost a lot of money. Let people monk.

Who is stopping them again?

I am an atheist. I still want to monk. I want to monk in my own way, which would probably be growing vegetables, keeping chickens, and making open source software. I don't see how that's possible given the way society is currently organized - it requires periods of time spent to commercial toil, in order to pay landlords, taxes, etc.

So I'm trying of think of something monastery like, but without the religious aspect, and I'm really drawing a blank. Since you basically surrender your life to the community and ultimately to whoever is leading it, the religious element seems almost necessary to make this work. I think the only exceptions to this are probably something like the military or meditation/yoga practice communities - but they almost inevitably come with religious elements to them(although in some you can be much more lax about actually subscribing to the spiritual elements).

The Glass Bead Game (aka Magister Ludi) by Herman Hesse is more or less about a secular monastery. I highly recommend it.

Oh, ok. Religions seem to get a lot of legacy exceptions in society whether that be something like you described here, certain Native American peoples having freedom to use certain otherwise controlled substances, or like someone else mentioned a waiver for the “no women allowed” thing.

Sounds like you want to join a commune? You could look into that.

I think you're underestimating the extent to which monasteries are commercial, and have been for many many centuries. You don't go there to chill, you go there to work hard and earn money for the monastery. In past times, they were helped along because they were given a monopoly over certain economic activities. Getting a job at a sclerotic state-owned enterprise is probably the closest equivalent today.

The point is not to LARP as a 15th century monk, the point is to live a non-commercial life of quiet, focused service.

I dig it, I just think monk is the wrong model.

Monks work for their living. They make soaps, candles, bread, icons, prayer ropes, translations of holy books, etc. There are cooks, and they rebuild/repair the buildings. Their work is generally more "local", but one of the ways the monasteries survive is by selling their goods to the outer world.

The main reason for being a monk is to crucify one's ego each day in obedience to one's spiritual father and more importantly, to God. "I want to monk my own way" completely undermines the whole way of life of a monk.

In order to monk, you need a sponsor. Religious monks may have a sponsor in their religious organization (although their commercial activities may make them self-sufficient or often self-sufficient). As an atheist monk, you'd need to find someone or group to sponsor you, or do it yourself. If you're raising chickens and growing vegetables, you may qualify your property to be taxed as a farm, which typically is a much reduced rate than a property with just a home. If you monk out in the countryside, the property is likely to be inexpensive to start with.

There's some amount of commercial utility to chickens (and their eggs) and vegetables, so you might be able to make your sponsorship go farther.

I relate.

I used to live in a communal religious house. Ananda Marga Yoga Society.

Vegetarian kitchen. Meditation room. Some rules. Chill people.

It was nice.

USA culture seems committed to keeping you busy, anxious and offbalance.

What's stopping you from attaining that?

"wherever you go, there you are"

And yet here you are, posting on an internet tech forum :)

I hope this doesn't come off sounding the wrong way, but there is a difference between being religious (doctrine) and belief (faith) in something. I hope you consider what that might mean.

I've been warned by moderators on here for being "too preachy" before, so I will leave it at that, but if you wish to talk more about it in a different venue, let me know. Cheers.

Amen

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