How to Focus: A Monastic Guide for an Age of Distraction (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) - Hardcover

Buch 28 von 46: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers

Cassian, John

 
9780691208084: How to Focus: A Monastic Guide for an Age of Distraction (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0691208085 ISBN 13: 9780691208084
Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

How you can learn to focus like a monk without living like one

Distraction isn’t a new problem. We’re also not the first to complain about how hard it is to concentrate. Early Christian monks beat us to it. They had given up everything to focus on God, yet they still struggled to keep the demons of distraction at bay. But rather than surrender to the meandering of their minds, they developed powerful strategies to improve their attention and engagement. How to Focus is an inviting collection of their strikingly relatable insights and advice—frank, funny, sympathetic, and psychologically sophisticated.

This wisdom is drawn from John Cassian’s fifth-century CE Collationes, one of the most influential manuals for monks from late antiquity. The Collationes follow Cassian and his friend Germanus as they travel around Egypt, asking a series of sage monks how they can make their minds stronger. In response, these monks offer a range of techniques for increasing focus, including setting goals, training the body, managing the memory, using mantras, taking breaks, consulting others—and, most of all, being honest about yourself. As Cassian and Germanus eventually realize, we can’t escape distraction—but we can learn how to confront it and, eventually, to concentrate.

Featuring an engaging new translation by Jamie Kreiner and the original Latin on facing pages, How to Focus can help even the least monkish of us to train our attention on what matters most.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jamie Kreiner is professor of history at the University of Georgia and the author of The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction.

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Verlag
Princeton Univers. Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0691208085
ISBN 13 
9780691208084
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
257
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Princeton University Press
https://press.princeton.edu/books

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