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 rid...