Chuang Tzu 6.1

He who knows the part which the Heavenly in him plays, and knows also that which the Human in him ought to play, has reached the perfection of knowledge. 

He who knows the part which the Heavenly plays knows that it is naturally born with him; he who knows the part which the Human ought to play proceeds with the knowledge which he possesses to nourish it in the direction of what he does not yet know—to complete one's natural term of years and not come to an untimely end in the middle of his course is the fullness of knowledge. 

Although it be so, there is an evil attending this condition. Such knowledge still awaits the confirmation of it as correct; it does so because it is not yet determined. 

How do we know that what we call the Heavenly in us is not the Human? And that what we call the Human is not the Heavenly? There must be the True man, and then there is the True knowledge. 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.35

M. Now, the cure for one who is affected in this manner is to show how light, how contemptible, how very trifling he is in what he desires; how he may turn his affections to another object, or accomplish his desires by some other means; or else to persuade him that he may entirely disregard it: sometimes he is to be led away to objects of another kind, to study, business, or other different engagements and concerns: very often the cure is effected by change of place, as sick people, that have not recovered their strength, are benefited by change of air. 
 
Some people think an old love may be driven out by a new one, as one nail drives out another: but, above all things, the man thus afflicted should be advised what madness love is: for of all the perturbations of the mind, there is not one which is more vehement; for (without charging it with rapes, debaucheries, adultery, or even incest, the baseness of any of these being very blamable; not, I say, to mention these) the very perturbation of the mind in love is base of itself, for, to pass over all its acts of downright madness, what weakness do not those very things which are looked upon as indifferent argue? 
 
Affronts and jealousies, jars, squabbles, wars,
Then peace again. The man who seeks to fix
These restless feelings, and to subjugate
Them to some regular law, is just as wise
As one who’d try to lay down rules by which
Men should go mad. 
 
Now, is not this inconstancy and mutability of mind enough to deter anyone by its own deformity? 
 
We are to demonstrate, as was said of every perturbation, that there are no such feelings which do not consist entirely of opinion and judgment, and are not owing to ourselves. For if love were natural, all would be in love, and always so, and all love the same object; nor would one be deterred by shame, another by reflection, another by satiety. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.35 
 
A diversion can offer me a bit of relief from the agitation, or some support in overcoming my fixation, but it is never, in itself, a complete solution. I nod as I go over Cicero’s list, recalling how a change of scenery helped me for a time, or some fresh company lightened the load, or a new project kept my mind occupied, and yet my troubles always returned if I didn’t go to the root, by addressing the errors in my thinking that produced such disordered feelings. 
 
Lust, as the twisted version of love, comes over me when my judgments about the good are confused. While I might wish to blame my beloved for not desiring me in return, or to curse the world for not providing me with the satisfaction I demand, the cure for what ails me is a thorough reform of my priorities. An obese man will not become healthy without finally mastering his own cravings. 
 
What is the point to moving around, when every place will ultimately offer the very same temptations? Where is the benefit to finding new friends, if I fail to understand what it even means to be a friend? As much as I can keep myself busy, won’t there eventually come the time when I am once again idle? The change must occur in the substance on the inside, not in the accidents on the outside. 
 
A fellow I knew some years ago was convinced that hanging out a different pub would relieve him of his melancholy, and I rudely laughed at him, even as I later convinced myself to take a completely different job as a repellant against my own version of the Black Dog. I wish I could meet him again, so we might now laugh together, in much better spirits. 
 
When a girl in college lied to me once too often, I promptly became enamored of a totally different girl, and when her attention quickly drifted elsewhere, I foolishly assumed that I simply had poor taste. I certainly did have poor taste, but in my own values, not in the merits of others. Find fault with the agent, or the efficient cause, not with the occasion, or the material cause. 
 
I have now acquired many eccentric hobbies, and though each of them has brought me great joy, not a one of them has exorcised my demons. Collecting obscure records only goes so far to engage my interests, and it just takes a single sour mood to turn the words and music of any song into a sad reflection of my own resentment. 
 
There is an elephant in the room, and he is my own discontent, which is the inevitable offspring of my distorted expectations. I wish him no harm, but he’s the one who needs to find some new digs. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Jan Steen, The Lovesick Maiden (c. 1660) 

Dhammapada 387

The sun is bright by day, the moon shines by night, the warrior is bright in his armor, the Brahmana is bright in his meditation; but Buddha, the Awakened, is bright with splendor day and night. 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.34

M. Now we see that the loves of all these writers were entirely libidinous. There have arisen also some among us philosophers (and Plato is at the head of them, whom Dicaearchus blames not without reason) who have countenanced love. 
 
The Stoics, in truth, say, not only that their wise man may be a lover, but they even define love itself as an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty. 
 
Now, provided there is any one in the nature of things without desire, without care, without a sigh, such a one may be a lover; for he is free from all lust: but I have nothing to say to him, as it is lust of which I am now speaking. But should there be any love—as there certainly is—which is but little, or perhaps not at all, short of madness, such as his is in the Leucadia—
 
“Should there be any God whose care I am—"
 
it is incumbent on all the Gods to see that he enjoys his amorous pleasure.
 
“Wretch that I am!”
 
Nothing is more true, and he says very appropriately,
 
“What, are you sane, who at this rate lament?”
 
He seems even to his friends to be out of his senses: then how tragical he becomes!
 
“Thy aid, divine Apollo, I implore,
And thine, dread ruler of the wat’ry store!
Oh! all ye winds, assist me!” 
 
He thinks that the whole world ought to apply itself to help his love: he excludes Venus alone, as unkind to him.
 
“Thy aid, O Venus, why should I invoke?” 
 
He thinks Venus too much employed in her own lust to have regard to anything else, as if he himself had not said and committed these shameful things from lust. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.34 
 
When I am not making cheap excuses for myself, I have to admit how almost all the problems of my life revolve around extreme passions derived from disordered judgments, and why the most cringeworthy of these anxieties are ultimately about the selfish entanglements of romantic love. 
 
I try to defend this, of course, by insisting that love is a noble and glorious thing, but I know on the inside how I am really just talking about various forms of lust, whether for physical or emotional gratification. As soon as I say that it can’t be helped, and I elevate my suffering to the status of some honorable burden, I must bow to the deeper truth of what Cicero, and the Stoics, are trying to teach me. 
 
Once again, it is a shame that I use the term “love” so broadly and lazily, confusing a dazed feeling that “comes over me” with a deliberate act of the will: “falling” in love has brought me despair, while choosing to love has been my redemption. If professional definitions can be so precise, why do our moral distinctions lag so far behind? The difficulty is in our thinking, not in any complexities of the subject matter. 
 
Songs, films, poems, and novels about the power of the love, along with the grief from the broken hearts that follow, surely have their place, yet they will only rub salt in the wound when my soul is already in disarray. Self-pity is hardly the right medicine for the illusion of irreparable loss. 
 
Be a lover, but don’t be lecherous. Once we bicker about the technicalities, we are forgetting how the purity of the intent is the deciding factor, and I can finally understand something of why Justice Potter Stewart didn’t wish to get caught up in defining pornography, even as he clearly knew it when he saw it. 
 
I, too, have found myself blaming God for cursing me with love, quite oblivious to the fact that God also gave me the power of reason to determine my own actions. I, too, have begged for some sort of magical intervention, only to learn the hard way that relying on the fickle nature of the passions, and the inconstancy of fortune, is a sure path to misery. 
 
No, Apollo won’t be bothered to satisfy my lusts, because he is occupied with something greater, and Venus won’t quench my desires, because she is too busy tending to her own. I have made my own bed, and now I have to lie in it. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Giulio Romano, The Lovers (c. 1525) 

Careful . . .

Why the Stoics?

When people bother to learn anything about me, they are often confused about why I have such a strong commitment to the Stoics, in contrast to the many other schools of philosophy I so deeply admire. 

“Wait, you taught me all about St. Thomas Aquinas, and now you’re telling me that you don’t really follow Aquinas?” 

“I spent a whole year reading Plato with you, and it seemed like you were consumed by anything and everything Plato had to say. What gives with your constant private quotes from Marcus Aurelius? Were you lying to us?” 

“Did we just waste a whole semester studying Aristotle, only to learn that he was wrong?” 

No, no, and no. 

I love you enough not to force you into a corner, and I love myself enough not to bow down to any mortal tribe. The slavery to any “-ism” is your greatest enemy. 

For your sake, I ask you to think for yourself. For my sake, I demand an openness to Truth, in all of its forms, and I sadly know that I am at my worst when I narrow my vision. 

But why that annoying love for the Stoic tradition? 

On the level of theory, I have never read a philosopher who hasn’t taught me something of great value, either positively or negatively, so I continue to broaden the horizon. 

On the level of practice, however, the only thing that has saved me from total despair, and from a completely pointless death, has been the Stoic principle that nothing is good or bad for me except for my own moral judgments. 

Aquinas will nudge you that way through his complete search for the Divine, and Plato will remind you to follow the Good above all else, and Aristotle will insist that happiness depends upon the habit of virtue. 

All three, however, are still enamored of supposedly ideal circumstances, by the best lay of the land, so to speak, and yet only the Stoic will take it all the way, with absolutely no footnotes, limitations, or conditions. 

I am as good a man, and thereby as happy a man, as I choose to be. In this, I serve God, I serve the Good, and I serve virtue. In making something of myself, I have found myself as a part within the harmony of the Whole. 

Only the Stoic has the balls, pardon my French, to completely transcend the conditions, and thereby to express happiness in its purest form. The Stoic makes no apologies for being poor, or sick, or ugly, or unpopular—he knows exactly where he’s at, and so he doesn’t waver. 

Why should he need to, when he sees his own nature in its naked purity, as but one instance of Nature itself, a sliver of Providence given to him, as his own power to make his own mark? However small, it is always significant. No piece is ever disposable. 

Stoicism speaks to me with such force because it cuts through the nonsense, the excuses, the mediocrity. I have already cursed once, but I will also add that Stoicism tolerates no bullshit. 

I need no longer listen to the arrogant priest who commands me to blindly obey, only so that he might be gratified in this world. 

I need no longer suck at the teat of the fat politician, who requires my vote for his supposed favors. 

I need no longer be terrified of the mighty boss, because he really has nothing to offer me, and, most importantly, he really has nothing he can take away from me. 

Stoicism is a “high octane” philosophy, and, in the Western tradition, it stands as a pinnacle of wisdom, in its most down-to-earth form. I also see something of that same strain in Mystic Catholicism, or in Vedanta Hinduism, or in Vajrayana Buddhism, or in Sufi Islam, but that is a discussion for another time. 

The Stoics, quite literally, saved my life. That says far more than any academic degree, or business promotion, or pious posturing. 

—4/2016