How to focus : a monastic guide for an age of distraction (Record no. 34811)
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| 000 -LEADER | |
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| fixed length control field | a |
| 008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION | |
| fixed length control field | 251121b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d |
| 020 ## - INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER | |
| International Standard Book Number | 9780691208084 |
| Terms of availability | (hbk) |
| 082 ## - DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION NUMBER | |
| Classification number | 153.733 |
| Item number | CAS |
| 100 ## - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME | |
| Personal name | Cassian, John |
| 245 ## - TITLE STATEMENT | |
| Title | How to focus : a monastic guide for an age of distraction |
| 260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT) | |
| Name of publisher, distributor, etc | Princeton University Press, |
| Date of publication, distribution, etc | 2024 |
| Place of publication, distribution, etc | Princeton : |
| 300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION | |
| Extent | xxx, 257 p. ; |
| Dimensions | 18 cm. |
| 365 ## - TRADE PRICE | |
| Price amount | 1550 |
| Price type code | ₹ |
| Unit of pricing | 01 |
| 490 ## - SERIES STATEMENT | |
| Series statement | Ancient wisdom for modern readers ; |
| 504 ## - BIBLIOGRAPHY, ETC. NOTE | |
| Bibliography, etc | Includes bibliographical references. |
| 520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC. | |
| Summary, etc | A new translation of selections from the 5th century monk John Cassian's writings on ways to avoid distraction and enhance our concentration. Distraction is not just an artifact of the digital age, and we're not the first to complain about how hard it is to concentrate. Monks in the late Roman Empire beat us to it. Concentration was their job, which made them more aware of how hard it was to master. John Cassian was a monk who lived in the Roman Empire in the fourth and early fifth centuries, the very early days of monasticism. He was born in the Levant and joined his first monastery there, then spent over twenty years in Egypt, interviewing and learning from ascetic hermits. Eventually, he moved to Marseilles to start his own monastery. He found that the monks in Gaul were hungry for stories of what he'd learned in Egypt, and in the 420s, wrote a massive record of his most memorable conversations with the Egyptian ascetics called the Collationes (or Conferences), in which one of the central preoccupations is the art of staying focused. While many monks in Cassian's day blamed demons for their cognitive lapses, Cassian was more convinced that distraction was largely a self-inflicted problem of minds "driven by random impulses" that could be fixed (or at least mitigated) by disciplining the mind itself. A large portion of his Collationes is dedicated to helping monks accomplish this, and his thoughts about thinking influenced centuries of monks. Many of Cassian's techniques to stay focused became signature elements of the emerging Christian monasticism: renouncing property and family, avoiding sex, eating sparingly. These were all strategies to minimize the things that didn't matter in order to stretch the mind out to God. But he also recommended forms of mental discipline that are accessible today, even to the non-monks among us. In this addition to our Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers (AWMR) series, historian of late antiquity Jamie Kreiner selects and focuses on (no pun intended) those portions of Cassian's work that can help us poor, overloaded, overstimulated moderns cope with our inability to concentrate. |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | Christianity |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | Psychology |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | History and Surveys |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | Philosophy |
| 700 ## - ADDED ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME | |
| Personal name | Kreiner, Jamie |
| Relator term | tr. |
| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) | |
| Source of classification or shelving scheme | Dewey Decimal Classification |
| Item type | Books |
| Withdrawn status | Lost status | Source of classification or shelving scheme | Damaged status | Not for loan | Home library | Current library | Date acquired | Source of acquisition | Cost, normal purchase price | Total Checkouts | Full call number | Barcode | Checked out | Date last seen | Date last borrowed | Koha item type |
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| Dewey Decimal Classification | DAU | DAU | 21/11/2025 | BBC | 1550.00 | 1 | 153.733 CAS | 036309 | 15/05/2026 | 12/12/2025 | 12/12/2025 | Books |