12 Stoic Lessons from a Benedictine Monk

Music of Silence by David Steindl-Rast and Sharon Lebell

You’re surely familiar with Gregorian chant, that beautiful music sung in Latin by choirs of Christian monastics, which reverberates around vaulted cathedrals and seems to exemplify serene faith. Even though I’m not religious myself, I’ve always loved this music and the experience of listening to it in a cathedral or chapel. There is something so touching about that space and the spiritual music created within it.

I recently discovered a short book called Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day, which describes the structure and experience of these chants from a monk’s point of view. Co-created by Brother David Steindl-Rast—the centenarian monk who for many years has spearheaded interfaith dialogue between the Christian, Buddhist, and Jewish traditions—and spiritual wordsmith Sharon Lebell—whose book The Art of Living is a must-read for any Stoic (or really anyone interested in living a good life)—Music of Silence is itself a comforting and inspiring read.

Beautifully crafted by Steindl-Rast and Lebell, the book is well-matched to its subject, lifting the reader up on the wings of song as it explores themes relevant to all of us: fear, love, duty, togetherness, overcoming challenges, and being human. While of course its central theme is religious chant, and it is organized around the eight chants of the monastic canonical hours, Music of Silence is about so much more than Gregorian chant or even monastic life. It offers practical and timeless wisdom for people from any spiritual or philosophical tradition.

One of the book’s central themes is time. Not only do we get to reflect on the temporal nature of music itself—which exists briefly, note by note, only to fall away again forever—but also on the special monastic way of looking at time:

Chant music evokes a different relationship to time, one in which time, while precious, isn’t scarce. It conjures the archetype of the monk’s way of life, wherein time flows harmoniously; the time available is in proportion to the task at hand. (p. 1)

One of the reasons we feel so ill at ease in our daily lives is that we are either ruminating about the past, or worrying ahead into the future, and thus we are not present in the here and now, which is where our real selves reside…Chant calls us out of chronological time, in which “now” can never be located, and into the eternal now, which is not really found in time. (p. 7)

I love these observations so much. I think it’s accurate to say that our experience of now is not found in time. Now doesn’t seem like time at all—it feels like a constantly rolling window onto the world, like the phenomenon of being on a slowly moving train; you know the train is moving, but it seems like the scenery is moving instead of you. And imagine living a life where “time flows harmoniously” and “the time available is in proportion to the task at hand.” Yes, please, how do we get there? One way of doing this, the authors note, is structuring your life in such a way as to promote constant mindfulness of the present moment:

The rationale for monasticism could be most succinctly described as an effort to live in the now. The monastery is a place in which everything is arranged so that it is made easy to be here now. And one way of achieving that is to follow the natural rhythm of the hours of the day. (8-9)

So monks and nuns have a strict daily schedule that involves rising very early in the morning, eating together at designated hours, working on chores and tasks that serve the community (their own monastic community and sometimes the surrounding lay community), and gathering together at regular intervals to chant and sing. Most of us would see this degree of scheduling as rigid and constraining, but according to Steindl-Rast and Lebell, the rigidity is actually the point:

The hours are the inner structure for living consciously and responsively through the stages of the day. The monastic relationship to time through the canonical hours sensitizes us to the nuances of time. And as this sensitivity deepens, we become more available to the present moment. (p. 5)

Another one of the book’s most important themes, I think, is the value nature’s rhythms and boundaries. Our contemporary Western culture frequently tells us that we should free ourselves of any constraints in order to develop our potential, whether it’s financial potential, career potential, athletic potential, or even the potential for self-discovery and self-exploration. The view is that binding yourself to other people will hold you back. And in one sense, this is true—you can’t prioritize everything. If your greatest treasure is some type of achievement, then other people will surely get in your way.

But Music of Silence reminds us that the rhythms and boundaries inherent in life are actually essential to living as a fully developed human. Our culture has tried relentlessly to free ourselves from the bonds of nature, both the natural world and our own human nature. In the process we’ve made ourselves miserable and almost ruined the planet. We only find happiness and live in harmony with nature when we acknowledge our place within the wider scheme of things. That means paying attention to and honoring the seasons: of the year, of the day, of our lives.

Seasons are qualitative experiences: We sense a subtle difference in the quality of light, the length of daylight, the feel of the air on our skin. We know intuitively that something is happening in nature. (p. 3)

Earlier generations of our human race, not ruled by alarm clocks, saw the hours personified, encountered them as messengers of eternity in the natural flow of time growing, blossoming, bearing fruit. In the unfolding rhythm of everything that grows and changes on earth each hour had a character and presence infinitely richer and more complex than our sterile clock time. (pp. 3-4)

Within this structured attention to nature and the now, monks and nuns are free to ponder the great questions of life and the mysteries of the universe. And this is exactly what Steindl-Rast does, offering us his insights into questions of happiness, joy, and living together with other people. Due to his openness to other wisdom traditions and his long history of interfaith dialogue, he comes across as welcoming and inclusive. And couched in writer Sharon Lebell’s beautiful prose, his observations are very relevant for us here at Stoicism for Humans.

I think one reason the book spoke to me so much is that there is actually a good bit of Stoic philosophy in it, since the Christian monastic tradition in its formative years was highly influenced by Stoicism. (To learn more about this, see my previous post on The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner. We review the many Stoic spiritual exercises that made their way into Christian monasticism.) Through early monks like Evagrius of Pontus and John Cassian, Stoic attitudes and practices became standard features of monastic life and some have been preserved through the centuries.

Below I’ve pulled out 12 of my favorite passages from the book. Each one offers a Stoic-related lesson that inspires reflection or action. I had a hard time narrowing down my list to just 12 passages, so I suggest checking out the book for yourself if you’d like to see more. For anyone who enjoys reading about Christianity—or anyone enjoys reading from a variety of spiritual and philosophical traditions—I would recommend Music of Silence as a beautiful and peaceful repository of wisdom.

On the nature of time

Time is a series of opportunities, of encounters. We live in the now by attuning ourselves to the calls of each moment, listening and responding to what each hour, each situation, brings. (p. 5)

On achievement

We know that achieving our goals only on the pragmatic, material, temporal (and thus temporary!) level is not what makes us really happy. What gives us deep abiding joy is finding ourselves at home where we really are, fully alive and present in the now. (p. 15)

On perfection

What counts is not that we have this peace as a firm possession, but rather that we never cease to strive for it. Perfection is not achievement; perfection lies in untiring striving. (p. 16)

On joy

Joy is that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens. Normally, we are happy when something good happens, and we are unhappy when something happens that we do not consider good. We pick and choose. But joy is our wholehearted response to whatever opportunity is given to us in any moment. It does not depend on what happens. (p. 32)

On disciplining the senses

People associate monasticism and monks with asceticism, and that is correct. But they often think asceticism means a denial of the senses, and there they go wrong. We’ve learned from traditions like Zen that asceticism means disciplining the sense so that you develop your capacity to experience every dimension of existence with heightened sensitivity. Monasticism at its best has emphasized this always and in all traditions. To the truly alert palate, a drink of spring water is full of flavor. (p. 38)

On work

We learn in the monastery to savor our work as we are doing it—doing it for its own sake, not just doing it to have it done, or to get it over with. We need to resist our tendency to rush into things and to hurry through our activities…The monastic attitude is to begin deliberately and to do anything we do with an even, stately pace and with whole-hearted attention…That way even difficult tasks can be done leisurely and with joy, for their own sake. And then they become life-giving. (p. 48)

On moral choice

There is a message in everything that happens, in every situation in which we find ourselves, whether we like it or not. If we make the right response, it will be life-affirming and life-giving for us and for others. It’s in those moments that our character is decided. That’s when morality really happens. With every moment we have a choice: to respond whole-heartedly, authentically, or to wimp out and betray our true self. (p. 50)

On purpose

If we are not intentional and mindful in our work, then we are slaves to it and end up feeling alienated and empty. Even people who have to do jobs they don’t like and find meaningless can still be free within them, at least to a certain extent, by reminding themselves, deliberately and often, why they do them. As long as we do our work out of love for those whom we love, we do it for a good reason. Love is the best reason for our labors. Love makes what we do and suffer rise like music, like a soaring line of chant. (pp. 54-55)

On blessings

To be conscious of the myriad blessings in our life is to be like a rich person who can be generous without fear of ever running out of resources. We can practice, if only for a few moments, paying attention to our breathing: Each breath flows in as a blessing; each breath flows out as a sharing of that blessing. (p. 61)

On communion

Even though you may be eating all by yourself, you are in communion with all. Eating is always a communion, a celebration with all those who have labored to bring you this food, with all those creatures who have lived and died to give you this food, and with all others who eat on earth. (pp. 72-73)

On death

The more fully we live, the easier it is to let go, to die. Monks are taught to have death at all times before their eyes. Remembering death does not mean being preoccupied with death. It means that you are preoccupied with life because you know this is now your opportunity. (p. 85)

On boundaries

We notice the limits and boundaries that give our lives structure. The hour of None wants to lead us to the right understanding of limits: to see them not as prisons, but to face them and work within them. And if they are arbitrary limits that inhibit our genuine growth, then we must overcome them. Our lives have many structures—our jobs, our families—because it’s only within limits that anything meaningful can happen. If all possibilities were available at all moments, if there were no limits, no boundaries, no definitions, we’d be lost. People mistakenly think that happiness comes from removing all limits. The lesson of lengthening shadows is to forgive and to live to the full within the inherent limits and boundaries of our lives. (p. 90)

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Image credit: Luis Feliciano on Unsplash

Music credit: Nicholas Panek on Pixabay