“I’m reading Bhagavad-gītā whilst playing Old School RuneScape,” says the aptly named Old School Monk, casually launching into hours of verses from the Hindu scriptures core to Hare Krishna teachings.
This may be the most extreme example I’ve ever seen of a tried-and-true MMO motto, which burns bright in OSRS: you don’t quit, you only take long breaks. Old School Monk, or Ben Xi in-game, put OSRS down for 19 years, spent six of those years “living as a Hare Krishna monk” in Wales amid a surprisingly bustling scene, but inevitably came back to the MMO’s timeless drip of fun and satisfaction.
“I quit being a monk to play RuneScape,” Ben Xi’s first YouTube video proclaims. “The idea is that you can pop the video on in the background and learn a bit of spiritual wisdom on the backdrop of massively popular Old School RuneScape, a game dear to all of our hearts!”
Ben Xi says his years in the temple were among the best in his life, and since moving out, he’s had more freedom and found OSRS to be “quite a blast from the past.” He says his “entire childhood” was devoured by the game – on this, at least, I can relate – and he first made his account at the age of 11. He’s nearing 31 now, just to put this game’s legacy into perspective. “RuneScape is deeply meshed into my being,” he says in the video.
“To some people in the spiritual community, it might seem like, ‘OK, this guy’s made a little bit of a step down,'” he reasons. “‘He used to be a monk, now he’s back playing video games. Surely that’s a bit of a waste of time.’ That’s a common misconception about spirituality. A lot of people think that to be spiritual, you have to go and sit in silence in a cave or in a room, and just be alone with your thoughts and meditate like that. That’s not really the case, actually.”
Many OSRS players will tell you that the game can be quite meditative, especially during long grinds with laid-back skills like Woodcutting, but this is a new level entirely. OSRS is primo second monitor material, but of all the things to put on – Netflix, Twitch, the ever-handy wiki – Hindu scriptures and lessons shared by an actual monk who’s also a longtime player is maybe the last thing I’d ever think of. That said, I’ve also written about and spoken to some diehard OSRS players in my time, and I can genuinely see the overlap between this sort of spiritual discipline and the raw patience it takes to play this frickin’ game.
Each video from Ben Xi chronicles his OSRS journey, as many of the game’s content creators do in popular progress update videos, but uniquely blends it with Hare Krishna lessons and practices. The August 22 upload focuses on how “whatever we listen to impacts the things we think about and the way we act. In today’s ramble we discuss the power of choosing our own destiny by paying attention to the sound vibrations we are exposing ourselves to.”
It goes without saying that the comments on this channel are a goldmine, the likes of which we may never see again, not unless there’s another monk out there hankering for a retro MMO. “My guy became a monk and still couldn’t quit,” reads one top comment. “Bro’s 99 Prayer IRL,” jokes another.
In a recent video, Ben Xi prepared the supplies to get 99 Prayer, maxing out a famously costly skill. At the time of writing, he’s 93 Prayer on the high scores. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
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