What we need inside the mind is the equivalent of a monastery, a part of the mind that lives by a different rhythm, that can stay on an even keel even in the midst of the ups and downs.

"Here at the monastery, there’s a rhythm that’s very different from the rhythm of lay life. And the difference is paradoxical. On the one hand, the day seems very long, especially when you’re new here and are new to the meditation. There’s nothing much to fill up the day. In fact, the length of the day sometimes seems threatening. But as you begin to get better at the meditation, you begin to notice the other side of the difference, which is that the days go very fast because there are not so many sharp ups and downs from day to day to day, and the days are pretty much the same. After a while, a week, a month, several months, a year, seems go very fast.

In lay life, people talk about having a good day, as if that were the biggest unit of time they can think about. Whereas here, life goes in larger seasons, larger cycles. And it’s useful for getting perspective on your mind, because the mind has a lot of ups and downs. We can ride the ups and downs like a roller coaster, and in riding them, we often exaggerate them. The ups go higher up, and the downs go further down.

What we need inside the mind is the equivalent of a monastery, a part of the mind that lives by a different rhythm, that can stay on an even keel even in the midst of the ups and downs. Ajaan Lee gives the image of a bowl full of water taken out of the ocean and set on the beach. The ocean may have waves, but once you separate that bowlful of water, it doesn’t have the waves like the ocean. Same water, but it’s got a different rhythm.

It’s important that the mind have that sense of the separate knower, the separate observer, that doesn’t get sucked into its moods. Coming to the monastery is one way of developing it. As you work on the meditation, you get used to living in a different rhythm. Even if you can’t live here but can come from time to time, it’s good to get in touch with a place where there’s a different rhythm. It reminds you that not all of the world is living by the rhythms of CNN, the newspapers and magazines, the ups and downs of daily life. There’s this part of the world that’s separate, and you want to get your mind in tune with it, so that even when you leave the monastery, you can still have a part of the mind that’s separate, that can simply observe the ups and downs."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Monastery Standard Time"

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