Most of this knowledge cannot even be set down in words; it must be learned by practicing, over and over again. Monastic education is best understood, I think, on this apprenticeship model, more like masonry or carpentry than anything in the modern academy. It is an apprenticeship to a craft which is also a way of life. It is "practice" both in the sense of being "preparation" for a perfect craft mastery which can never be fully achieved, and in the sense of "working in a particular way." . . . Meditation is a craft of thinking. People use it to make things, such as interpretations and ideas, as well as buildings and prayers. . . . the basic craft involved in making thoughts, including thoughts about the significance of texts, has been treated as though it were in itself unproblematical, even straightforward. It is neither. In the idiom of monasticism, people do not "have" ideas, they "make" them. The work (and I include both process and product in my use of this word) is no better than the skillful hand, or in this case the mind, of its user. . . . Toolmaking is an essential part of the orthopraxis of the craft.– Mary Carruthers (2000)