Nature 22

Abandoned Places 20

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 8

 

A hasty judgment is a first step to a recantation.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.10

For, indeed, it is true that what a man has of himself it is idle and futile for him to receive from another. Am I then, who can get from myself the gift of a noble and lofty spirit, to get from you a field or money or office? 

 

Heaven forbid! I will not be so blind to my true possessions. But when a man is mean and cowardly, for him one must needs write letters as for one that is dead. 

 

“Make us a present of the corpse of so and so and his miserable quart of blood.” For indeed such a one is a mere corpse and a quart of blood and nothing more. If he were anything more, he would have realized that one man cannot make another miserable.

 

We somehow convince ourselves that there are so many things we must “get”, and yet it is not necessary to “get” anything at all, beyond a tender care for what we already possess. 

 

Give completely of yourself, without ever demanding to receive. Love, without ever expecting any further reward. Thrive with what you have, and never harbor a resentment over what belongs to another. Here is the Stoic formula for happiness, the simplest, and the most radical, change you can ever make. 

 

It is most certainly possible to do this, but only with absolute commitment; half-hearted efforts and remaining too attached to circumstances are the great stumbling blocks. Yes, it feels frightening, because we don’t know what will happen to us if we choose this path, though it helps to remember that we never really know what will happen to us. 

 

Should I perhaps also seek wealth, gratification, and fame, in addition to building my character, as a sort of further support? Once I have begun to modify my thinking, however, such diversions seem terribly shallow, and their appeal fades. If I know where my true good lies, I will lose my desire for any glittering prizes. 

 

Is Epictetus being too extreme when he says that a man of poor character might as well be dead? The language is strong because so much is at stake. Even if the body has life in it, when the proper exercise of the mind has been abandoned, the very identity that makes us human has withered. Without a sense of right and wrong, a man may walk and talk, while his soul is, in a sense, as if it were dead. The essential has been lost, and it must be recovered to live fully. 

 

I have known a good number of such people, and I have come far too close to joining them, more often than I care to admit. If only flesh and blood are left, men are just creatures of instinct, at the whim of every urge. Pity them, as you would those zombies you’ve seen in the movies: they don’t know any better, because they are dead to wisdom and virtue. 

 

When I find myself slipping away like that, I must recall the Divine kinship that Epictetus has described. That power of awareness will make the difference between freedom and slavery. 

Written in 11/2000

 

Stockdale on Stoicism 10

To a Stoic, bad luck is your fault; you've become addicted to externals. Epictetus: 

"What are tragedies, but the portrayal in tragic verse of the sufferings of men who have admired things external?" 

Not even God will intercede in your decisions. Epictetus:

"God gives you attributes, like magnanimity, courage, and endurance, to enable you to bear whatever happens. These are given free of all restraint, compulsion, or hindrance; He has put the whole matter under your control without reserving even for Himself any power to prevent or hinder."

As I have said, your deliverance and your destruction are 100 percent up to you.

—from James B. Stockdale, The Stoic Warrior's Triad 

Turf

Albrecht Dürer, The Large Piece of Turf (1503)

Cowslips

Albrecht Dürer, Tuft of Cowslips (1526)

Sayings of Ramakrishna 104

A true devotee who has drunk deep of the Divine Love is like a veritable drunkard, and, as such, cannot always observe the rules of propriety.

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ 3.34

That to him who loves, God is sweet above all things and in all things

1. Behold, God is mine, and all things are mine! What will I more, and what more happy thing can I desire? O delightsome and sweet world! that is, to him that loves the Word, not the world, nor the things that are in the world. My God, my all! To him that understands, that word suffices, and to repeat it often is pleasing to him that loves it. When You are present all things are pleasant; when You are absent, all things are wearisome. You make the heart to be at rest, give it deep peace and festal joy. You make it to think rightly in every matter, and in every matter to give You praise; neither can anything please long without You but if it would be pleasant and of sweet savor, Your grace must be there, and it is Your wisdom which must give unto it a sweet savor.

2. To him who tastes You, what can be distasteful? And to him who tastes You not, what is there which can make him joyous? But the worldly wise, and they who enjoy the flesh, these fail in Your wisdom; for in the wisdom of the world is found utter vanity, and to be carnally minded is death. But they who follow after You through contempt of worldly things, and mortification of the flesh, are found to be truly wise because they are carried from vanity to verity, from the flesh to the spirit. They taste that the Lord is good, and whatsoever good they find in creatures, they count it all unto the praise of the Creator. Unlike, yes, very unlike is the enjoyment of the Creator to enjoyment of the Creature, the enjoyment of eternity and of time, of light uncreated and of light reflected.

3. O Light everlasting, surpassing all created lights, dart down Your ray from on high which shall pierce the inmost depths of my heart. Give purity, joy, clearness, life to my spirit that with all its powers it may cleave unto You with rapture passing man's understanding. Oh when shall that blessed and longed-for time come when You shall satisfy me with Your presence, and be unto me All in all? So long as this is delayed, my joy shall not be full. Still, ah me! the old man lives in me: he is not yet all crucified, not yet quite dead; still he lusts fiercely against the spirit, wages inward wars, nor suffers the soul's kingdom to be in peace.

4. But You who rules the raging of the sea, and stills the waves thereof when they arise, rise up and help me. Scatter the people that delight in war. Destroy them by Your power. Show forth, I beseech You, Your might, and let Your right hand be glorified, for I have no hope, no refuge, save in You, O Lord my God.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.9

Someone has asked me to write for him to Rome, one who, as the world thought, had had misfortunes; he had once been famous and rich, and had now lost everything and was living here. 

 

So I wrote for him in a humble tone. And he read my letter and gave it back to me and said, “I wanted your help, not your pity.”

 

 So, too, Rufus, to try me, used to say, “Your master will do this or that to you”; and when I answered him, “This is the lot of man”, “Why then”, said he, “do I appeal to your master when I can get everything from you?”

 

All noble theories aside, if I take the time to look back at the ups and downs of my life, I am amazed at the quite practical relationship between my thinking and my living. I suppose the proof is in the pudding, and I should not be surprised at all. 

 

Whenever I had sincerely directed my daily attention to a kinship with the Divine, there was also been a corresponding improvement in my power to be most fully human. Whenever I had been more concerned with the weight of my circumstances, that mastery over myself immediately began to slip away. 

 

If I remember where I come from, I am peace with myself. If I neglect where I come from, I am constantly at the mercy of my fears and longings. The focus provides the anchor. 

 

Some say this is a matter of psychology, and others say it is the work of grace, and the Stoic says it is a judgment of common sense. They may all be right—I simply know that it works. 

 

Thinking of myself as a bundle of flesh and desires, I am now just a slave to my own passions. Thinking of myself as possessing a divine spark, my own reason lifts me up. 

 

That self-reliance of Stoicism, then, does not exist in a vacuum, but works within the greater context of Providence. However hackneyed it might sound, God helps those who help themselves. 

 

We are all tempted to reduce ourselves to conditions, underestimating our ability to find the good in whatever might come our way. Even Epictetus succumbed to this, when his letter for a friend tried to tug at the heartstrings, instead of offering concrete assistance. Flattery, leverage, and manipulation are signs of weakness, not of strength; the wise man knows that his happiness comes from the good within him. 

 

Musonius Rufus had once offered Epictetus a useful lesson in this regard. Why appeal to a man’s master, when you can appeal directly to the man himself? Why work sideways, picking at the outside, when you can go straight to the source? It is our own internal judgments that will make or break us, not messing about by rearranging the furniture. 

 

By all means, have enough compassion to offer aid, and have enough humility to accept it, but never think that you can do someone’s work for him, or that he can be expected to do yours. 

Written in 11/2000

Stoic Snippets 92

If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.21

Hans Holbein, The Dance of Death 32: The Count

Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.8

How did Socrates approach these matters? Surely as one should who is convinced of his kinship with the gods. 

 

“If you tell me,” he says, “‘We acquit you on condition that you discourse no longer as you have done hitherto, and that you do not annoy young or old among us’, I shall answer, ‘It is absurd for you to suppose that, while I am bound to maintain and guard any post to which your general appointed me, and should rather die ten thousand times than abandon it, yet if God has appointed us to a certain place and way of life we ought to abandon that.’”

 

Here you see a man who is a kinsman of the gods in very truth. But as for us—we think of ourselves as if we were all belly and flesh and animal desire; such are our fears, such our passions; those that can help us to these ends we flatter, and at the same time fear.

 

Socrates annoyed me when I first read about him, since I assumed he was just being vain and stubborn. Like so many adolescents, I was busy being vain and stubborn myself, and this town wasn’t big enough for the both of us. 

 

It didn’t occur to me that someone could love something bigger than himself with such intensity, and so I didn’t recognize his wisdom and humility. 

 

I saw many modern intellectuals praising Socrates, even as few of them ever lived like him. Perhaps they were impressed by his sharp mind, or considered him to be a fellow radical, or simply reveled in seeing him leave his questioners frustrated and speechless, but most of them still kept on doing the very things Socrates had explicitly warned us about. They basked in their cleverness, pursued promotions, and allowed their appetites to lead the way. 

 

This taught me very quickly to avoid falling, at any cost, for the sort of sophistry I claimed to despise. I must be on my guard. This work is still in progress. 

 

At the root of his calls for justice, his indomitable courage, and his dedication to wisdom, Socrates was a godly man. This may not be a fashionable thing to say, though I believe it to be true. All his values were bound together by a deep sense of order, that what is lesser must be in submission to what is greater, and this was the Divine calling that inspired his life. The morality goes together with the piety. 

 

He wasn’t terribly fond of hypocrisy, and he had no place for being lukewarm, because he knew that if something was an absolute good, it required an absolute commitment. His religion was not color by numbers, or an expression of tribalism, or a means for feeling comfortably superior—the mission was one of universal service. 

 

A sense of duty asks us to look at what we should wish to give, before what we might wish to receive. When that duty is to the fullness of all Being, we will find it so much easier to share in a kinship with all beings; the one acceptance leads right into the other. 

Written in 11/2000

IMAGE: Pietro Perugino, Socrates (c. 1500)

Dhammapada 145

Well-makers lead the water wherever they like; fletchers bend the arrow; carpenters bend a log of wood; good people fashion themselves. 

Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 16

XVI.

You would be wise, I'll teach you if you please,
Withdraw you mind from such wild thoughts as these:
"If I my wonted diligence forget,
My gainful drudgery; how shall I eat?
I certainly shall starve for want of meat.
If I indulge, and not chastise my boy,
My lenity his morals may destroy;
He still will steer the course he hath begun,
And to the very height of lewdness run."
I tell thee, mortal, that 'tis better far,

To dye with thirst and hunger, free from care,
With a serene and an undaunted mind,
Than live in wealth to its dire cares confin'd.
As for the boy, 'tis better far that he 
Become a proverb for debauchery;
'Tis better he were hang'd, than thou should'st share
A moment's grief by thy reforming care:
"But this is more than difficult," you say,
"Too hard a rule for flesh and blood t'obey."
Yet by a former rule 'tis easy made:
Begin by smallest things, as I have said;
Suppose thy wine be stolen, thy oil be shed;
And thus take comfort: "Where's the loss, if I 
At such a rate tranquillity can buy?
If constancy at such a rate be bought?
And there's not anything that's got for nought."
Suppose you call your servant, he's at play;
Or when he's present, mind not what you say;
And is the quiet of thy soul perplex'd
At this? He gets the better if thou'rt vex'd'
He grows your master, while he can torment;
Give not such pow'r to the vile negligent.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.7

Such should be the answer of the teacher to his gifted pupils. How different is what we see! There is no life in your master, and no life in you. When you have had your fill today, you sit groaning about the morrow, and how you are to find food. 

 

Slave, if you get food, you will have it; if not, you will depart: the door is open. 

 

Why do you whine? What room is there for tears anymore? What occasion for flattery anymore? Why should one envy another? Why should he gaze with wonder on them that are rich or powerful, especially if they be strong and quick to anger?

 

For what will they do with us? We will pay no heed to what they have power to do, what we really care for they cannot touch. Who, I ask you, will be master over one who is of this spirit?

 

I have long noted the great divide between what is taught and what ends up being done. My own alma mater would promote itself as a school that built character, and yet the reality was that we were building an empire of wealth and fame. 

 

In public, there was much talk of “Men and women for others.” In private, there was much sniggering about “Men and women for themselves.” Both masters and pupils maintained the façade.

 

Put it to the test. For all the fine language of principles, observe how much of the time and energy is then spent on gaining status and making money. There is mainly anxiety about getting more, and fear about losing it. 

 

“But we need to make more money so we can do more good things!”

 

No, you don’t. You can be just as good if you are rich or poor, satisfied or hungry, esteemed or reviled. If you insist on putting on a show or winning a profit while doing something good, it isn’t really the good itself that you are interested in. The scale of degree does not increase the merit of kind. 

 

Would I prefer for my body to be well-fed and comfortable? Would I prefer to be admired and respected? Of course, and if such things are available to me, I would be a fool not to work for them. 

 

If, however, I do not make them completely relative and subservient to first acting with conscience and conviction, I am reversing the means and the ends. No amount of obfuscation will change that. No one is actually fooled, even as most everyone is pretending to be fooled. 

 

When my belly is leading the way, instead of my head, philosophy is reduced to a gimmick. Whatever happens to end up on my plate is far less important than what I choose in my soul. The clock will inevitably run down, but what I do with the minutes is still up to me. 

 

Words like these will understandably make people feel uncomfortable, maybe even offended; I know that my own knee still jerks on most days. The tension comes from wanting to have it both ways, not from the truth of it. Stoicism, like any way of life that cuts to the bone, is perhaps only for those ready to follow Nature with no further qualifications or conditions. 

 

Once I have begun to embrace that choice, however, the resentment is not as biting, the tears don’t sting as much as they used to, and I feel less need to impress anyone or acquire anything. 

 

Bigwigs and blowhards start to look more like jesters than kings. I don’t have to be quite as afraid of them, since they now come across as children squabbling over toys. 

Written in 11/2000

Vanitas 43

Aelbert van der Schoor, Vanitas Still Life (1662)

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 7

To do two things at once is to do neither.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.6

Hereupon I answer: “Men as you are, wait upon God. When He gives the signal and releases you from this service, then you shall depart to Him; but for the present be content to dwell in this country wherein He appointed you to dwell. 

 

“Short indeed is the time of your dwelling here, and easy for them whose spirit is thus disposed. What manner of tyrant or what thief or what law-courts have any fears for those who have thus set at nothing the body and its possessions? Stay where you are, and depart not without reason.”

 

Don’t be eager for the world to go away; be eager to change your attitude about the world, so that you will no longer feel the need for it to go away. 

 

Then it will not be necessary to think that our circumstances are burdensome, or that other people are a hindrance to happiness; the happiness will be in appreciating why these things are simply necessary. 

 

Though the Stoic and the Existentialist may share a stress on self-discovery and self-reliance, they must part ways when it comes to the bigger picture. For Stoicism, human nature is not inherently thrown and forlorn, but already exists within a service to all of Nature. Freedom does not exclude the Divine, but itself expresses the order of the Divine. When we build our own meaning and purpose, we are working with something far greater and richer than merely ourselves. 

 

There is no contradiction between being myself and being a part of the whole, and there need not be any conflict between the self and the other. Bowing to God can itself be my form of making my stand. 

 

If it has happened, it has happened for a reason, as no effect proceeds without a cause. Once I understand this, I am now free to offer my complete loyalty to Providence, and to joyfully receive the lot that is meant for me. All of it is given so that we can choose to make ourselves better, and thereby happier. Anything and everything, however horrifying or absurd, can be transformed within this context.

 

This will be quite impossible, of course, if I insist solely upon myself. Egoism becomes the only real enemy, with relativism as its enabling sidekick. 

 

The language of piety, of reverence, and of gratitude begins to make far more sense when I reconsider it in such a light. It ceases to be a chore, and instead becomes a privilege. With my spirit disposed differently, the whole world is reconceived. 

 

The many hurts and hardships, which seemed unbearable, are put in their place. The obstacles are certainly real, yet with a new measure of the good life they can appear as opportunities. If I care first for following my nature, by improving my own character, I do not need to be a slave to money, pleasure, or fame. 

 

What can the tyrant, the thief, or the courts really do? They are not dealing in the things that define my worth, and so I can let them be. Providence asks me to stay and do the right thing, not to rage, despair, or flee. 

Written in 11/2000

 

Chuang Tzu 1.2

And moreover, to speak of the accumulation of water; if it be not great, it will not have strength to support a large boat. Upset a cup of water in a cavity, and a straw will float on it as if it were a boat. Place a cup in it, and it will stick fast; the water is shallow and the boat is large. 

So it is with the accumulation of wind; if it be not great, it will not have strength to support great wings. Therefore the Phang ascended to the height of 90,000 lì, and there was such a mass of wind beneath it; thenceforth the accumulation of wind was sufficient. As it seemed to bear the blue sky on its back, and there was nothing to obstruct or arrest its course, it could pursue its way to the South.

A cicada and a little dove laughed at it, saying, "We make an effort and fly towards an elm or sapanwood tree; and sometimes before we reach it, we can do no more but drop to the ground. Of what use is it for this creature to rise 90,000 lì, and make for the South?" 

He who goes to the grassy suburbs, returning to the third meal of the day, will have his belly as full as when he set out; he who goes to a distance of 100 lì will have to pound his grain where he stops for the night; he who goes a thousand lì, will have to carry with him provisions for three months. 

What should these two small creatures know about the matter? The knowledge of that which is small does not reach to that which is great; the experience of a few years does not reach to that of many. 

How do we know that it is so? The mushroom of a morning does not know what takes place between the beginning and end of a month; the short-lived cicada does not know what takes place between the spring and autumn. These are instances of a short term of life. 

In the south of Khû there is the tree called Ming-ling, whose spring is 500 years, and its autumn the same; in high antiquity there was that called Tâ-khun, whose spring was 8000 years, and its autumn the same. 

And Phang Tsu is the one man renowned to the present day for his length of life—if all men were to wish to match him, would they not be miserable?

 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 103

A born farmer does not leave off tilling the soil, though it may not rain for twelve consecutive years, while a merchant who has but lately taken himself to the plough is discouraged by one season of drought. 

The true believer is never discouraged, if even with his lifelong devotion he fails to see God. 

Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.5

And so your teacher and instructor, if he were a true teacher, should engage in this conflict of argument:

 

You come saying, “Epictetus, we can bear no longer to be bound with the fetters of this wretched body, giving it meat and drink and rest and purgation, and by reason of the body having to adapt ourselves to this or that set of circumstances. 

 

“Are not these things indifferent and as nothing to us, and death no evil thing? Are we not kinsmen of the gods, from whom we have come hither? Suffer us to depart to the place whence we have come, suffer us to be released from these bonds that are fastened to us and weigh us down. 

 

“Here are robbers and thieves and law-courts and so-called kings, who by reason of our poor body and its possessions are accounted to have authority over us. Suffer us to show them that they have authority over nothing.”

 

I immediately think of certain kinds of religious zealots, who somehow manage to make God so great in their own eyes that they must draw an imaginary line between the spirit and the flesh, praising the one and despising the other. It doesn’t matter which tradition of faith they happen to be impersonating; they cannot grasp that if they truly loved the Creator, they would also love the creatures.

 

Some people tell me that we don’t have this problem anymore, since we are now supposedly a post-religious society. Nonsense. It is intrinsically human to seek higher meaning, and so there will always be religious expression, whatever the form. The real problem is when a devotion to the whole is perverted into an elevation of one part at the expense of another part, regardless of the ideology. 

 

You’ve heard it all before, in many different guises: Free us from the sinners! Liberate us from the oppressors! Kill the rich! Deport the poor! Why can’t those liberals shut up? Why won’t those conservatives stop breeding? Deliver us from this world, we demand to have a different one! 

 

The Stoic is hardly immune to such fracturing. I can only wonder if the current revival of interest in Stoicism will have legs, though I cannot help but notice the same old weaknesses already creeping in. I have, for example, now repeatedly seen the term “indifference” used by self-styled Stoics to mean dismissal, rejection, or reducing something to irrelevance. 

 

As someone wrote to me recently, “I am indifferent to your views, so they don’t matter to me.” Even if you’re not listening, I would dare to suggest that being indifferent, in the Stoic sense, is not about denying that things matter, but rather about coming to understand how they matter. Instead of throwing it away, learn that the good in it will be in what you make of it. 

 

Apparently, Epictetus had students who also got caught up in this error. I am glad he chose to help them along over casting them out. I’m seeing more and more how the old man had it right. 

Written in 11/2000

Stoic Snippets 91

If a thing is difficult to be accomplished by yourself, do not think that it is impossible for man: but if anything is possible for man and conformable to his nature, think that this can be attained by yourself too.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.19

Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita 35

26. Whoever with devotion offers Me a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water, that I accept—the devout gift of the pure-minded.

27. Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer in sacrifice, whatever you give away, whatever austerity you practice, O son of Kunti, do that as an offering unto Me.

28. Thus shall you be freed from the bondages of actions, bearing good and evil results: with the heart steadfast in the Yoga of renunciation, and liberated, you shall come unto Me. 

29. I am the same to all beings: to Me there is none hateful or dear. But those who worship Me with devotion, are in Me, and I too am in them.

30. If even a very wicked person worships Me, with devotion to none else, he should be regarded as good, for he has rightly resolved.

31. Soon does he become righteous, and attain eternal Peace, O son of Kunti, boldly can you proclaim, that My devotee is never destroyed.

32. For, taking refuge in Me, they also, O son of Prithâ, who might be of inferior birth—women, Vaishyas, as well as Sudras—even they attain to the Supreme Goal. 

33. What need to mention holy Brâhmanas, and devoted Râjarshis! Having obtained this transient, joyless world, worship you Me. 

34. Fill your mind with Me, be My devotee, sacrifice unto Me, bow down to Me; thus having made your heart steadfast in Me, taking Me as the Supreme Goal, you shall come to Me.

—Bhagavad Gita, 9:26-34

 

Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.4

I think that the old man who sits here to teach you ought to devote his skill not to save you from being low-minded, and from reasoning about yourselves in a low and ignoble spirit, but rather to prevent young men from arising of the type who, discovering their kinship with the gods, and seeing that we have these fetters attached to us in the shape of the body and its possessions and all that we find necessary for the course and management of our life by reason of the body, may desire to fling all these away as vexatious and useless burdens and so depart to the gods their kindred.

 

Whenever I make an attempt at teaching, my instinctive fear is that I will fail to make any mark. This can be rather misleading for me, since I should never assume that education is about somehow “imprinting” knowledge on others; we are all the agents of our own understanding, and the teacher is only one occasion for committing to that work of self-awareness. 

 

Still, will I be offering the best assistance that I can? Hard experience has shown me that most students are not listening to me of their own choice, and so they are hardly inclined to pay me much heed. I see a good number come in unreflective, simply going through the motions, and I then see a good number leave unreflective, having jumped through the hoops as their masters have commanded. 

 

I sometimes feel discouraged that they might end up just settling for a life of thoughtless consumption and gratification, that it may not occur to them how they are free to live on very different terms. It doesn’t help any when I have a group of bitter colleagues who cynically refer to their own students as “the herd of grazing animals.” 

 

I must remember that people are in their own unique places, and that they will decide to make their changes when they are good and ready. If I have done my best, and I have still not tickled an interest, I have, at least, done them no harm. 

 

What could be far worse is if I manage to grab on to a smidgeon of truth, twist it out of shape, and present it so poorly that I end up encouraging folks to hate this life, instead of encouraging them to love it. Better to have little effect, than be an accomplice in breeding yet another form of resentment. 

 

I have seen the sort of intellectual misery that Epictetus describes, sometimes in others, and sometimes in myself. 

 

Start with a noble ideal, whether it be called the Truth, or Virtue, or God, and then dress it up to be so glorious that it exists only far away from everyday life, demanding that we feel disgust for what is common. It is now a wonderful abstraction, and we can’t wait to run away from the real world to live out our fantasies. 

 

If I am telling people that they must always be angry at the way things are, I am forgetting that an acceptance of the way things are is a condition for growing up. 

 

If I am preaching that everything is suffering, I haven’t carefully looked at anything.

 

If I am insisting that it must get better in some next life, I am neglecting to live this life with any responsibility. 

 

It would be much better if I appreciated the beauty in the most ordinary of things, and that any teaching I stumble into becomes a sharing of those values with others. 

Written in 11/2000

Epictetus, Golden Sayings 143

Asked how a man should best grieve his enemy, Epictetus replied, "By setting himself to live the noblest life himself."

Wisdom from the Early Cynics, Antisthenes 11

Favorite themes with him were the following. He would prove that virtue can be taught; that nobility belongs to none other than the virtuous. 

And he held virtue to be sufficient in itself to ensure happiness, since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. 

And he maintained that virtue is an affair of deeds and does not need a store of words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficing, for all the goods of others are his; that ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain; that the wise man will be guided in his public acts not by the established laws but by the law of virtue; that he will also marry in order to have children from union with the handsomest women; furthermore that he will not disdain to love, for only the wise man knows who are worthy to be loved.

—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.10-11

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 35

Genus (in logic) is the comprehension in one of a number of inseparable objects of thought: e.g. Animal; for this includes all particular animals.

A notion or object of thought is a presentation to the intellect, which though not really substance nor attribute is quasi-substance or quasi-attribute. Thus an image of a horse may rise before the mind, although there is no horse present.

Species is that which is comprehended under genus: thus Man is included under Animal. 

The highest or most universal genus is that which, being itself a genus, has no genus above: namely, reality or the real; and the lowest and most particular species is that which, being itself a species, has no species below it, e.g. Socrates. 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.60-61