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The diet sounds similar to those of other monastic orders. Are monks in general where know for their comparative longevity?
by sorokod 8y ago
The diet sounds similar to those of other monastic orders. Are monks in general where know for their comparative longevity?
- shams93 8y agoYes monks in general lived longer back then https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/science/want-to-live-longer-be-a-monk-5360664.html%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/scie...
- sorokod 8y agoNot surprising,why then compare Templar lifespan to the average rather to the lifespan of some other monastic group?
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoI'd expect so, given how they generally live a quiet, secluded life without hard labor and away from conflicts, for the most part. (not so for the knights templar, who fought in the odd war, but even then I expect these wouldn't be deployed or expected to die like the common footsoldiers)
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago> they generally live a ... life without hard labor Monks work, a lot, both in order to maintain the monastery itself and to produce goods for the outside community. You can easily see this for yourself in Eastern Europe: except for a few highly touristic sites, you are generally welcome to stay at a monastery for a time without being asked to pay anything, but you will be expected to assist the monks in the work they do each day. The work – from chopping wood to weeding gardens – is exhausting. It is a mystery to me how the monks manage to keep up with everything and maintain a very positive attitude, all on 4 hours of sleep a night and diet that is fasting half the year.
- masklinn 8y ago> all on 4 hours of sleep a night and diet that is fasting half the year. not sure where you got 4 hours of sleep. Monks generally wake up early but they also retire early. For example: http://www.stmarysmonastery.org/daily_life.html http://www.stmarysmonastery.org/daily_life.html wake at 4:35, retire (though not necessarily sleep) at 20:15. The schedule has about 6~7h of work tops: * following Mass + Terce + community meeting of 0930 (so probably about 1000~1015) until 1300 * following the Office of Nones (which starts at 1500) until 1800, and that can also be studies
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoThe schedule you are describing is a Roman Catholic one. I am speaking about Orthodox monasteries. Often monks will be expected to attend one last hour of prayer around midnight. Following that, they retire, but then they will have to return to the church very early the next morning for matins, and apparently they wake up a couple of hours before that for personal devotions. As a guest at monasteries, I have been allowed slightly less than 6 hours of sleep because I am expected to attend all hours of prayer, so if the monks are waking up even earlier, then 4 hours for them sounds about right.
- pdfernhout 8y agoWondering if biphasic sleep was involved with those schedules -- but it is not obvious to us now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_sleep#Historical_norm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_sleep#... "Historian A. Roger Ekirch has argued that before the Industrial Revolution, interrupted sleep was dominant in Western civilization. He draws evidence from documents from the ancient, medieval, and modern world. Other historians, such as Craig Koslofsky, have endorsed Ekirch's analysis. According to Ekirch's argument, adults typically slept in two distinct phases, bridged by an intervening period of wakefulness of approximately one hour. This time was used to pray and reflect, and to interpret dreams, which were more vivid at that hour than upon waking in the morning. This was also a favorite time for scholars and poets to write uninterrupted, whereas still others visited neighbors, engaged in sexual activity, or committed petty crime. The human circadian rhythm regulates the human sleep-wake cycle of wakefulness during the day and sleep at night. Ekirch suggests that it is due to the modern use of electric lighting that most modern humans do not practice interrupted sleep, which is a concern for some writers. Superimposed on this basic rhythm is a secondary one of light sleep in the early afternoon."
- zbentley 8y agoYep. Living a (relatively) hermetic/isolated/minimal-external-contact lifestyle while the rest of the world was getting ravaged by plagues probably got them a long way. To say nothing of being generally granted greater autonomy/self-sufficiency without invasion/domination by political orders, and living a lifestyle that emphasized self-sufficiency and discipline.