The modern world is steeped in distraction. Technological advancements in the age of information have provided an abundance of distractor stimuli and in parallel distorted the divisions between the offline and virtual world. The smartphone has facilitated cyberspace’s expansion into all realms we inhabit, diminishing boundaries and rendering us incapable of fully “unplugging.” Resultantly, our ability to focus is going out the window.

How many of us know a friend or colleague who, or ourselves for that matter, deactivated a social media account to “focus”; or went to the cabin for the weekend to “get away from it all”; attended a yoga class to be more “mindful”; or simply did the breathing thingy Apple watch instructs us to do “to decompress”? As we contend with the intrusion of screens and incessant scrolling on our modern scrolls, we tend to look to the past with nostalgia. We imagine monks as experts in discipline, possessing mastery of the mind. Yet, monks too struggled with distraction and went to phenomenal lengths to seek a state of pure concentration and stillness of the mind.

In her new book The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction, historian Jamie Kreiner provides a portal into the world of Christian monks in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages and their incessant battle with distraction. Kreiner is a professor of history at the University of Georgia and a specialist in the early Middle Ages. Her deep interest in the mechanics of culture—cognition, narrative, and the interplay between science and religion, and ecologies—is evident. The book is exquisitely researched, highly-detailed, and Kreiner writes with exuberance, wit, and fluidity—captivating the reader chapter by chapter. Historic figures, some known but many first-time introductions to non-theologians, are transported from antiquity to the present through the historian’s resurrection of their lives and philosophies.

Apart or In the World?

Monks no matter who they were or where they resided, believed distraction lay in many dimensions. As Gregory the Great put it, “The ship of my mind is battered by cyclones.” This vivid imagery speaks to the relentless struggle monks faced to dispel distraction. Monks were obsessed with distraction and concentration. The great desert father Abba Poemen from Scetis, today known as Wadi el-Natrun in Egypt, was famous for his analogies and is the most quoted abba in the Apophthegmata patrum or Sayings of the Elders. Christian monasticism was of course born in Egypt and stories of monastic heroes in Egypt from the fourth and fifth centuries called “desert fathers” and “desert mothers” were circulated far and wide. These elders became beloved monastic mentors across centuries.

The book tracks monks’ approaches from the outside in and monastic separation from the world is Kreiner’s first destination on the journey inwards. Renunciation was step one and worldly detachment was viewed as spiritual aptitude in Christianity, just like in the religions of the East. Conversion to monasticism was arduous in itself but disconnecting from people, possessions, and places seamlessly undistracted was near-impossible. The efficacy of renunciation was widely discussed and monks gravitated toward origin stories.

The methods employed to renounce the world and its distractions are humorously illuminated through some stellar examples. Macedonius “the pit” lived in holes in the ground. Frange lived in a pharaonic tomb in Djeme which would lead one to think that he sought unequivocal isolation. Nope! Despite his quirky choice of abode, he left behind correspondence showing he kept in touch with over seventy people. He sent them greetings, gave them blessings, asked for cardamom (why not?), and invited them to visit.

Monks reminded each other that regardless of their surroundings, they should feel detached from anything that distracted them from God. As desert mother Amma Syncletica said, “There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.” As one monk remarked in the seventh century, “It was the tropos that made a monk, not the topos.” How, not where, mattered.

To commune or not to commune? Monks’ views widely differed on whether living in a community would be disruptive to concentration or enhance focus, making a pastime of comparing and critiquing forms of monasticism. Ephrem the Syrian was very much “team solitude,” suggesting monks living alone in Syria and Mesopotamia possessed a state of tranquility only second to the silence of a tomb. Basil of Caesarea by contrast, was faithful to “team community,” firmly believing communal monastic life had a multitude of benefits from strengthening monastic vows to elevating the potency of prayer. He felt nobody was self-sufficient and an organized community could collectively maximize the good it carried out.

Despite the distinctions between solitary and communal monasticism, Kreiner tells us the types were often blurred and monastic arrangements were plural. At Kellia in Egypt known as “the Cells,” the fourth-century monastic community in the Nitrian Desert grew to encompass 1,500 buildings across twenty-five square miles by the ninth century.

Monks were in agreement when it came to daily routines, deeming them a practical strategy for fighting distraction. They believed variation in scheduled activities beneficially conditioned them. Routine prevented boredom from creeping in, as the hermit Alexandra had remarked. A seventh-century tradition likely from a women’s monastery in Gaul suggested even the Virgin Mary adhered to a monastic schedule when residing in Solomon’s Temple. Her schedule consisted “of regular intervals of prayer, work, and study” leading to a transformation in her thinking which resulted in nothing other than—the Incarnation.

When it came to labor, monastic schedules implicitly took a position on the ethics and benefits. Some valued the monks locked in the agrarian cycle’s service to communities, whilst others were skeptical. Ferreolus of Uzès believed each monk had their assigned task and was part of a system designed to aid their concentration and “reorient the mind itself.” At his monastery in southern France, he was aware that monks would no doubt complain about their tasks, going further and predicting his aristocratic recruits would miss their former follies so much so that they may take the monastery dog hunting!

Reading and liturgies were integral to schedules, with stories about feats of liturgical concentration shared far and wide. Kreiner tells us of Palladius of Galatia, famous for his seminal work Historia Lausiaca, who spoke of the Cappadocian monk Elpidius who was stung by a scorpion during a night service yet remained unfazed and barely moved. Cognitive transparency was widely advocated. Like actions, thoughts were seen as consequential.

After taking us through centuries of history, Kreiner concludes by setting forth ways we can utilize monks’ systemic view of distraction and their monastic cognitive models.

Disciplining the Body

Authoritative leadership was a crucial element of monasticism and required an element of finesse. Yet Kreiner tells us a strong schedule and supportive culture of leadership alone were insufficient, and it was necessary to journey deeper into the body of monks for them to “reconfigure.” Unlike angels who were the epitome of consciousness and concentration, humans are burdened with biology and physics leading to distraction.

Monks had an array of practices to discipline their bodies in what we call today “asceticism.” Such mind-body practices drew from centuries-long traditions across philosophies and cultures. The body influenced the soul and thus the former needed conditioning.

Monks debated grooming practices, with some weary of their superficialities. Kreiner quotes Abba Poemen, the Apophthegmata favorite. When asked why he washed his feet when others did not, he frankly said, “We have not been taught to kill our bodies, but to kill our passions.” Sleep was seen as an enemy, with monks believing restriction of it increased mental acuity and concentration, often going to great lengths to avoid it. “Let us stand during psalmody so that our mind harmonizes with our voice,” instructed the Rule of Benedict. Simeon, the most famous stylite, was venerated for his record-breaking standing even when his feet were terribly infected. The Abba Sisoes of Calamon scared himself into staying awake by suspending his body over a cliff. A cliff!

Corporeal philosophical debates included inclinations to interact with the opposite gender and inclinations to cut all heterosocial encounters. Some monks went as far as to isolate and castrate themselves. Interestingly, Kreiner speaks of early medieval hagiographers’ accounts of monks assigned female at birth, presenting as male and living in male monasteries. Their trans-identities were posthumously discovered, leading to admiration as opposed to outrage. The hagiographers thus suggested differently sexed bodies did not necessarily threaten monks’ mental composure. In the influential traditions of Apophthegmata patrum, Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Religious History and Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, each celebrate monks of both social inclinations.

It was though hunger, above all, that monks battled with to maintain self-control. John Cassian surmised a full stomach weighed down the mind; thus, fasting was valuable to strengthen it. There was a clear consensus among monks that “mind, body, and culture were linked.” Monks knew that control of both body and mind were important to truly reach a state of unadulterated concentration.

Monks saw another double-edged sword in the form of the book or their technological iteration—the codex. The Bible of their time comprised individual books in separate codices. The problem monks saw with codex was the potential for distraction from its countable pages, aesthetics, and pillow-like structure. Others feared the codex’s contents could be far too engrossing!

What to read was vibrantly discussed. In upper Egypt’s Pachomian monastic houses, monks were copying and reading Christian texts alongside the likes of Homer and Thucydides. Evagrius of Pontus compiled a manual for combating demons from gluttony to pride called Antirrhetikos: Talking Back. Many of us have doodled in a textbook and monks similarly engaged with their texts by writing in the margins. Kreiner describes this world of marginalia and the depths of monks’ desire to remain alert and connect with the Divine.

The era brought forth a number of technological innovations from punctuation (we are all grateful) to text mashups. The most prominent was philosopher Origen’s Hexapla. With help from a scribe, Jewish and Christian consultants, and a wealthy patron, he produced a body of work on forty codices with parallel columns of Hebrew, Hebrew translated into Greek, and a number of other Greek translations. Eusebius too experimented to create the milestone cannon table. The cross-referencing grid system of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John enabled readers to read these texts with and against each other. Canon tables functioned as a mnemonic device. Such devices were invaluable and allowed monks to delve deeper into their memories.

Kreiner speaks of monks’ memories as templates and references for ethical behavior. Memory was where monks undertook their most complex concentrating. They subsequently utilized mnemonic devices to enhance recollection and repurpose memories whilst keeping their minds kinetic. Anchoring knowledge spatially was important and led to the creation of geographic narratives from pilgrimages to cosmographies. “Visceral seeing” and “corporeal imagination” are prominently seen in hagiography where their “stylistic strategy” was to compress content into appealing human-centered stories.

Graphics served as a vehicle for memory organization, retrieval, decoration, and also for visually communicating arguments thus inviting the reader to reach deeper in thought. Ladders, trees, angels, and monks went beyond memory palaces to build intricate “ascetic discipline in the mind’s eye.” The renowned angelic device was derived from the prophet’s vision of a six-winged seraph in a passage in Isaiah (6:1–2). It was popularized by monk Clement of Llanthony in his text The Six Wings where each wing denoted a form of spiritual purification.

One cannot speak of journeying inwards from memory without focusing on meditation. Abbot Aldhelm of Malmesbury’s hermeneutic-styled Collection of Riddles (Aenigmata) engaged readers in often surprising and challenging meditations. The practice of meditation was to facilitate a constant state of attentiveness. In the twelfth-century Little Book about Constructing Noah’s Ark by Hugh of Saint Victor, the theologian masterfully amalgamated mnemonic and meditational techniques to induce new memories out of meditation. Kreiner shares that her students’ favorite exercise by far is meditation taken from Hugh’s book, in what becomes high-level studying in an immersive and exploratory way.

The Journey Inward

Toward the end of the book, Kreiner looks at the mind—the final destination on the journey inwards. Even in Late Antiquity, monks found discernment challenging as it required constant critical thinking. Thought observation was the first step of monastic metacognition. Monks around the Red Sea enjoyed narrating the story of a desert father who used baskets to track his thoughts throughout the day. When the father had a good thought, he would put a stone in the basket to his right; when he had a bad thought, it would go into the basket to his left. If by dinnertime the “bad” basket had more rocks, he would punish himself by abstaining from eating that night. His thoughts had physical consequences.

Epistemological certainty became paramount, calling for monks to triangulate their conscience with God and their mentors in perpetuity. Dorotheus of Gaza encouraged his monks to do what we call today “journaling.” He told them to go over a mental checklist every day and ask a series of questions such as “Was I held captive by turbulent thoughts (logsimon empathon)?” Monks were to then investigate distracting thoughts and search for their origin—this was “discernment.”

Thinking about thinking naturally extended to prayer. Monks devised a metacognitive tactic to improve the integrity of prayer and concentration: to imagine the mind corralling its thoughts back together. Shem’on believed thoughts could be “let out to pasture” so surely, they could be herded back together. John Climacus shared a similar tactic after his visit to a monastery in Alexandria where he came across a monk who particularly stood out for his unwavering engagement in prayer. When asked how the monk managed to concentrate in prayer so deeply, the monk shared it was customary to begin prayer with the gathering of his thoughts, mind, and soul and then communicate to them, “Come! Let us worship and fall down before Christ, our King and God.”

A good monastic field of vision should be both microscopic and macroscopic. Metacognition could extend to the universe. Cosmic fields of vision extended beyond death experience of a soul, putting them in a state of mind called “pure prayer” or “undistracted prayer”—coined by Evagrius. This concept for the most advanced monks was popularized and further theorized by successors in the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia in the seventh and eighth centuries.

After taking us through centuries of history, Kreiner concludes by setting forth ways we can utilize monks’ systemic view of distraction and their monastic cognitive models. I shall leave you to peruse (!) but what is clear is that distraction is inherent to the human experience in any epoch. At first glance, one may believe the book’s leitmotif is purely “distraction” but as one delves deeper, a more nuanced picture emerges and a fundamental question. To solve the issue of distraction, one must first identify what is truly worthy of total concentration. Monks’ attention centered on the divine order, what should we center ours on?

Kreiner’s codex gifts us a profound insight: The mind will wander but where it should dwell is for us to passionately decide.