Sayings of Ramakrishna 27

The landlord may be very rich, but when a poor cultivator brings a humble present to him with a loving heart, he accepts it with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction.

Seneca, On Peace of Mind 10.2

In every station of life you will find amusements, relaxations, and enjoyments; that is, provided you be willing to make light of evils rather than to hate them.

Knowing to what sorrows we were born, there is nothing for which Nature more deserves our thanks than for having invented habit as an alleviation of misfortune, which soon accustoms us to the severest evils. No one could hold out against misfortune if it permanently exercised the same force as at its first onset.

I will regularly hear people tell me how certain things in this world are boring, or offensive, or frustrating. In response to an unpleasant state of affairs, the solution will often be to hammer away at the circumstances until they are more gratifying, or, if all possible convenience has been extracted from them, to discard things entirely and replace them with new diversions.

This only seems reasonable as long as we are under the illusion that the world will bend to our wills. As soon as it becomes clear, as it must inevitably, that this is hardly the case, all that remains is our own dissatisfaction. We grow accustomed to having our happiness given to us by Fortune, and so we are then quite helpless in providing it for ourselves from Nature.

I will look quite the fool when I insist that nothing is boring but our own disinterest, that nothing is offensive but our own irritability, and that nothing is frustrating but our own resentment; if I allow that to annoy me, then I am just failing to follow my own advice. When I discover value in whatever has come my way, I can be at peace, but if I impose my demands and conditions upon events, I will forever be restless.

Such a shift of attitude, from working with Nature instead of against Nature, does not come easily, and it does not come quickly. It will be the deliberate strengthening of habit that brings order to impressions that are at first so overwhelming, and this may take some time. Old inclinations and routines must be broken down, and new ones built up in their place.

Once again, it will be up to me whether I think of the effort as worthy or wasted, if I take joy in the progress or find fault with the obstacles. What makes good habits so uplifting, and bad habits such a heavy burden, is the force of repetition, that the many small actions work together with an ever-increasing momentum. Have I taken too many steps in the wrong direction? I can always start by taking just one step back in the right direction, and the improvement has already begun.

How many times have I thought a task impossible, only later to laugh at my own doubts? Nature gave me this power, by granting me my own reason and choice, and making me able to give firm direction to my own purpose.

I may once have said it was unbearable, but I needed only a bit of fortitude and practice, and now I can actually navigate my way through the hardship, tame the trouble, and harness the aggravation. The world doesn’t change for me, but I change myself. It isn’t magic, but the forging of my own character. 

Written in 10/2011

Contrast

M.C. Escher, Contrast (Order and Chaos) (1950)

Sayings of Socrates 36

Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers, wholesale or retail, who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing which are really beneficial or hurtful. 

—Plato, Protagoras 313c

Stoic Snippets 24

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and you too are wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you shall choose to retire into yourself. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3

Tao Te Ching 61

What makes a great state is its being like a low-lying, down-flowing stream; it becomes the center to which tend all the small states under heaven.

To illustrate from the case of all females: the female always overcomes the male by her stillness. Stillness may be considered a sort of abasement. 

Thus it is that a great state, by condescending to small states, gains them for itself; and that small states, by abasing themselves to a great state, win it over to them. In the one case the abasement leads to gaining adherents, in the other case to procuring favor.

The great state only wishes to unite men together and nourish them; a small state only wishes to be received by, and to serve, the other. Each gets what it desires, but the great state must learn to abase itself.

Seneca, On Peace of Mind 10.1

Suppose, however, that your life has become full of trouble, and that without knowing what you were doing you have fallen into some snare that either public or private Fortune has set for you, and that you can neither untie it nor break it.

Then remember that fettered men suffer much at first from the burdens and clogs upon their legs: afterwards, when they have made up their minds not to fret themselves about them, but to endure them, necessity teaches them to bear them bravely, and habit to bear them easily.

When there are troubles, people will often tell you to hang in there, to wait it out, to hope for something better. “It will pass,” they say. “Everything will work out in the end.”

I hate to be the one to point this out, but that is not always the case. For many of us, the situation is not going to improve; it is just as likely to become more painful as it is to become more pleasant. Though it might offer a temporary comfort, the promise of better conditions just around the corner is still the kind of thinking that makes a life dependent on the whims of Fortune.

Sometimes, I will be dealt a hand that offers me no chance of winning that game we all like to play. I can bluff all I want and try to delay the inevitable, but I am going to walk away from the table with empty pockets. There will be no wishing it away.

We surely all know that moment, where we are so vividly aware that this is not going to end the way that we would like. It will be irrevocable. Some of us are going to lose all we possess in the world, to suffer long and hard, to be cast aside and forgotten, to be crippled in body or in spirit, to face the certainty of an inglorious death.

It will also be a moment that offers the opportunity for complete self-realization. The illusions fall away. There remains only the awareness that the circumstances are entirely beyond my control, even as my own judgments are still completely within my power. The world will act as it will, but I can also act as I will. I can think of this as a limitation, or I can think of it as a liberation.

I am reduced to what is purely myself, and if I only so choose, I can firmly hold onto this for whatever time is given me, in whatever surroundings I may find myself. There is never a need to surrender what is absolutely my own. The hardship can now become a vehicle for courage and conviction, and the act of standing firm now builds a strength of habit.

I no longer tell people that everything will get better, but rather that they have been given a chance to become better. I think this a kindness and not a cruelty, because it encourages them to uncover the beautiful dignity that is within them. It replaces a reliance upon what is done to us with a reliance on what we do with ourselves. 

Written in 10/2011

The Wisdom of Solomon 4:1-9

[1] Better than this is childlessness with virtue,
for in the memory of virtue is immortality,
because it is known both by God and by men.
[2] When it is present, men imitate it,
and they long for it when it has gone;
and throughout all time it marches crowned in triumph,
victor in the contest for prizes that are undefiled.
[3] But the prolific brood of the ungodly will be of no use,
and none of their illegitimate seedlings will
strike a deep root
or take a firm hold.
[4] For even if they put forth boughs for a while,
standing insecurely they will be shaken by the wind,
and by the violence of the winds they will be uprooted.
[5] The branches will be broken off before they come to maturity,
and their fruit will be useless,
not ripe enough to eat, and good for nothing.
[6] For children born of unlawful unions
are witnesses of evil against their parents
when God examines them.
[7] But the righteous man, though he die early, will be at rest.
[8] For old age is not honored for length of time,
nor measured by number of years;
[9] but understanding is gray hair for men,
and a blameless life is ripe old age.

Seneca, On Peace of Mind 9.6

Thus in the houses of the laziest of men you will see the works of all the orators and historians stacked upon bookshelves reaching right up to the ceiling. At the present day a library has become as necessary an appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath.

I would excuse them straightway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and to serve as wall furniture.

Is it bad for me to love my books? Not at all. What matters is why I love them, and toward what end I will put them to use. It will be similar with most every other thing I come across in this world, in that I must decide where I will find its meaning and value, and how I will go about respecting what is good within it.

Some people treat a job as a way to increase their influence, and other people treat it as a way to be of service. Some people consider possessions to be ends, and other people consider them to be means. Some people will look at their friends and ask what they can receive, and other people will look at their friends and ask what they can give.

So it also is with learning in general, and with books in particular. The inner life of a man will become clearer by observing how he relates to the power of understanding, whether he employs it to glorify himself, or to glorify the truth.

I seem to notice more and more how certain people are engrossed in playing a grand role in life; what is important to them is not who they are or what they are doing, but how they are perceived and what they are seen to be doing.

It is common not just in the world of entertainment, but in business, politics, and academics as well, where acting skills are thought of as more profitable than living skills.

I have become so conscious of the tendency that I will often go out of my way not to deliberately promote or advertise myself. As much as I enjoy being admired and recognized, I think it more important to first practice integrity; I should be in the business of working on my merits, not the selling of impressions. Perhaps I am too weak, but it is too easy for me to get these things confused, to flip necessity with preference.

If a man is a liar in his trade, I think it likely that he will also be a liar in the other aspects of his life, and so I am hesitant to trust him. It is the danger of what my daughter calls being “such a fake”, of failing to be true to others because one can’t even be true to oneself.

My own library is hardly extensive, and I am at the point where a volume must be passed on to someone else before a new one might be added, but there are still times when someone will look at my shelves and ask, “Have you read all of these books?”

That is what the books are for, I tell myself, and I suppose I could take offense at the question, but I need to remember that books, like framed diplomas, are decorations for most people, sometimes even symbols of vanity.

They will really only matter to me if I read them, not in public but in private, and if they help me to improve myself, not in my appearance but in my character.

“If you see any with a layer of dust on them, you are free to take them. I ask only that you not sell them, and that you not let them stay dusty.” 

Written in 10/2011

Allegory of Intemperance

Hieronymus Bosch, Allegory of Intemperance (c. 1500)

The Art of Peace 52

To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. 

To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace. 

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 9.12

These things I used to repeat to myself and I say them to you now. If you are wise, you will not consider that exile is a thing to be dreaded, since others bear it easily, but that evil is to be dreaded. It makes wretched every man in whom it is present.

And neither of the two necessary alternatives is a just cause for repining. For either you were banished justly or unjustly.

If justly, how can it be right or fitting to feel aggrieved at just punishment?

If unjustly, the evil involved is not ours, but falls upon those who banished us—if in fact you agree that doing a wrong (as they have done) is the most hateful thing in the world, while suffering a wrong (as has been our fate) in the eyes of the gods and of just men is held a ground not for hate but for help.

What I have come to call “making a Stoic turn” is a fundamental shift of priorities, far more transformative than changing a career, or finding new friends, or moving to a new town. It involves a complete rebuilding of the self, from the bottom up, based upon living with Nature instead of following mere convention, caring for what I do more than what is done to me, and defining myself by the goods of the soul over the goods of the body.

I will only understand what Musonius tells me if I look at my life from this perspective. Others will surely find me ridiculous, but I will have found for myself a source of unassailable happiness, confident that while anything around me can change or be taken away, I will still possess power over my own character.

Musonius would remind himself that he should fear evil within his own soul far more than any form of exile, and I hope I am in good company when I cling to this same principle, each and every day.

Another rule I keep ready to hand, one that has helped me more often than I can count, is to directly confront my eagerness to complain. When I do not enjoy a situation, I will feel frustration, and when I am angry, I am inclined to cast blame.

“If only this had not happened, or if only that person had acted differently, my life would be so much better!” Careful. If I am brutally honest with myself, I will remember that I am the only one who determines how I choose to live, and so I am the only one who is responsible for my happiness.

Keeping this in mind, all the incrimination can pass away. Either it is something I can fix for myself, so I should get down to it, or it is something I can do nothing about, so my resentment affects only my own serenity.

Say that I have been exiled or cast aside, and I am tempted to point the finger for my perceived loss. There are really only two options for the situation I find myself in, and neither one justifies anxiety or despair. I can’t help but smile at how Stoicism always puts me in win-win situations, if only I take the time and effort to understand myself correctly.

First, I may have done wrong myself, in which case I should rightly pay a just retribution for my errors, and take up the opportunity to redeem myself. If it is a punishment for my sins, let me use exile as a means for undoing what I have done. A penalty is only unbearable when I do not embrace my need to return what I owe.

Second, another may have done wrong to me, in which case the weight does not rest upon me. I can still find in my struggle the chance to become more just myself, even as someone else may have treated me unjustly, and so I may transform his vice into my own virtue. Who is truly hurt? I have lost my fortune, but he has lost his character.

I admittedly have obscure and eccentric interests when it comes to narratives, but I am drawn to them not because they are unknown, but because I think they contain wisdom that should be more widely known.

One of these is the legend of Bladud, a prince in ancient Britain who was set to inherit the crown from his father. He contracted leprosy, however, and was exiled from the kingdom, reduced to becoming a swineherd in the wilderness, separated from all he had previously known.

He noticed that his pigs would roll about in the mud by some hot springs, and that this seemed to cure any ailments they had. He bathed in the water himself, only to find that that his leprosy had disappeared. Later, after assuming the throne, he established the city of Bath on the site of the springs, in gratitude for his healing, and for the health of his people.

Yes, it has the happy ending, where the hero’s rights are in this case restored, but what always struck me about the story is the way exile gave the young Bladud not only the opportunity to heal his body, but also to improve his soul, to use his experience to be of service to others.

If Bladud could become a better man by spending some time with pigs in the mud, so can any one of us. Blessings and curses are not in events themselves, but in our estimation of events. 

Written in 12/2016 

IMAGE:Benjamin West, Bladud in Exile (1807)

The Death of Seneca in Art

Peter Paul Rubens (1613) 
School of Gerard van Honthorst (c.1625)
Jacques de l'Ange (c.1650)
Luca Giordano (c.1685)
Noel Halle (1750)
Jacques-Louis David (1773)
Manuel Dominguez Sanchez (1871)

Fragments of Parmenides 7

Come now, I will tell you—and do you hearken to my saying and carry it away—the only two ways of search that can be thought of. 

The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the way of belief, for truth is its companion. 

The other, namely, that It is not, and that it must needs not be—that, I tell you, is a path that none can learn of at all. 

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 9.11

The reflections that I employ for my own benefit so as not to be irked by exile, I should like to repeat to you.

It seems to me that exile does not strip a man entirely, not even of the things which the average man calls goods, as I have just shown. But if he is deprived of some or all of them, he is still not deprived of the things which are truly goods.

Certainly the exile is not prevented from possessing courage and justice simply because he is banished, nor self-control, nor understanding, nor any of the other virtues which when present serve to bring honor and benefit to a man and show him to be praiseworthy and of good repute, but when absent, serve to cause him harm and dishonor and show him to be wicked and of ill-repute.

Since this is true, if you are that good man and have his virtues, exile will not harm or degrade you, because the virtues are present in you which are most able to help and to sustain you. But if you are bad, it is the evil that harms you and not exile; and the misery you feel in exile is the product of evil, not of exile. It is from this you must hasten to secure release rather than from exile.

On my bad days, I am tempted to feel a resentment toward those who are so proud to offer empty advice. Sometimes they insist that they can provide the rules of success and happiness, even as they speak nothing about Nature, and offer no measure of right and wrong. At other times they tell me all about how the world really works, though they are quite oblivious to the immediate circumstances that most people must face.

But why grow angry at them for what they don’t know? I recall that whenever I am terribly mistaken, no amount of condemnation has ever helped me. Encouragement has helped me, compassion has helped me, being taught by example has helped me.

I am accordingly grateful for the advice of Musonius, so different from most any of the advice I have heard before. I obviously never met the man, but from what he tells me, I suspect that I can trust him.

He shows me that he has a moral compass, that he views the worth or our lives through the characteristics that define us as human, the powers of reason and choice. He also shows me that he is grounded in the real world, that he is acutely aware of the struggles of everyday living. His theory and his practice fit together, and he points straight to the simple essence of human happiness.

So concerned that my contentment must rely upon the things that happen to me, I will worry that any sort of hardship, like poverty, or disease, or the exile discussed in this lecture, will make it impossible for me to live a good life. It may seem so obvious, but I will still neglect to address the critical questions: what really is good for me, and what place do my circumstances play in that good?

Musonius first reminds me that some changes in my situation might be drastic, but this does not mean that they will necessarily reduce my fortune. I may lose some worldly possessions, but I may also gain others, and my own resourcefulness and self-reliance will make the biggest difference. Events are never good and bad in themselves, but become good or bad by how I learn to use them as an opportunity.

Yet given that so many of my conditions are ultimately beyond my power, what am I to do when they stubbornly refuse to conform to my preferences? Here is where Musonius offers his second, and more fundamental, point: it will hardly matter if I lose what I prefer, because that is not what will make or break me.

Nothing can stop me from practicing the virtues, from being understanding, brave, temperate, and just, and so nothing can infringe on what defines my very humanity. Whether the externals come or go, their value depends entirely on the content of my character. Wealth will not make a wicked man good, just as poverty will not make a good man wicked.

What is lower becomes worthy through its conformity to the higher, and so my circumstances do not make something of me, but I make something of my circumstances.

I have a vivid memory from childhood of seeing a painting of Napoleon, on board a ship taking him into final exile on St. Helena. I was only a pup, but I gazed at it for quite some time, and I wondered what that man was thinking, and whether the British officers behind him were being curious or contemptuous.

How must it have felt for Napoleon to lose everything he had worked for? You may think of him as a hero or as a villain, or as someone in between, but the entire scene just screams of loss.

I have faced my own losses as the years passed by, and while I have never been sent to a rock in the middle of the Atlantic, I have seen people I love turn away, and things I desire kept from me. There were many times I thought I could no longer bear it. And then some basic insights about life started to turn it all around for me.

Losing persons, places, or things wasn’t the issue at all, since they were not mine to lose. Losing myself was the issue, and that was entirely up to me.

How would Napoleon have taken to such advice? Could he still have learned to revere the beauty of his own soul, instead of the glory of an empire? 

Written in 12/2016 

IMAGE: William Orchardson, Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon (1880)

Marcus Aurelius in Sculpture

Sayings of Heraclitus 26

Man kindles a light for himself in the night-time, when he has died but is alive. The sleeper, whose vision has been put out, lights up from the dead; he that is awake lights up from the sleeping. 

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.32

“God looks forth from the high watchtower of His Providence, He sees what suits each man, and applies to him that which suits him. Hence then comes that conspicuous cause of wonder in the order of Fate, when a wise man does that which amazes the ignorant. For, to glance at the depth of God's works with so few words as human reason is capable of comprehending, I say that what you think to be most fair and most conducive to justice's preservation, that appears different to an all-seeing Providence.

“Has not our fellow-philosopher Lucan told us how ‘the conquering cause did please the gods, but the conquered cause pleased Cato?’ What then surprises you when done on this earth, is the true-guided order of things; it is your opinion which is perverted and confused.

“But if there is any one whose life is so good that divine and human estimates of him agree, yet he must be uncertain in the strength of his mind; if any adversity befall him, it may always be that he will cease to preserve his innocence, by which he found that he could not preserve his good fortune.

“Thus then a wise dispensation spares a man who might be made worse by adversity, lest he should suffer when it is not good for him to be oppressed. Another may be perfected in all virtues, wholly conscientious, and very near to God. Providence holds that it is not right such an one should receive any adversity, so that it allows him to be troubled not even by bodily diseases.”

—from Book 4, Prose 6

I think of that wonderful line from Tolkien: “Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

I could be so very clear in my thinking, but I would still not perceive all aspects of the whole. I could be so very diligent in avoiding my prejudices, but I would still only be looking from my own limited perspective. I could tell myself that I have considered the circumstances fully, but I would still only be gazing from the outside in.

I know that everything should be for the sake of the good, even as I do not always comprehend the fullness of how and why the good will unfold as it does. Perhaps it seems right and fair that a villain should feel pain, or that a hero should feel pleasure; is that truly looking to what is best for him, or only to what is easiest for him? I do not know how his circumstances will affect him, or how he will respond to them, or whether this or that action will ultimately make his judgment better or worse.

I do not know how it will play itself out; Providence most certainly does know. It gives me a whole new dimension of what it means for a man to play God. “If there was a God, He would never have allowed this to happen!” Might it instead be that I am missing something that is essential?

When Cato the Younger stood up against Julius Caesar, who was the better man, and who deserved to win? It is all the more important to consider what actually makes the better man, and what really constitutes winning, to view choices and events in the context of Nature, not of Fortune.

Cato failed in the political struggle, and died by his own hand. Caesar made himself the master of Rome, only to die later through betrayal. History would speak of Cato as the conquered, and Caesar as the conqueror, though it really all depends on whether we think that possessing character or possessing power is the greater reward.

Perhaps the gods really did want Cato to be defeated in his body, so that he could be greater in his spirit, and Caesar to be victorious in his body, so that he could learn a very important lesson about his spirit.

There have been times when suffering an expected punishment has helped me to become better, but there have also been times when being granted an unexpected reprieve has helped me to become better. It will depend on my state of mind, the disposition of my habits, the balance of my strengths and weaknesses, and the weight of the circumstances.

Justice will always be justice, even as the particulars of how it is best applied will be variable. We suffer under different conditions, and so require different remedies. Providence takes all of this into account, sometimes giving, sometimes taking away.

Imagine, for example, someone who is struggling to live with virtue, while still quite susceptible to giving up the fight. A punishment of hardship might actually encourage him to become worse, not better. There are all sorts of possible combinations, just as there are people in all sorts of situations.

In the end, whether it expresses itself through prosperity or adversity, it will be just where it strengthens moral worth, and unjust where it weakens moral worth. 

Written in 11/2015

Pieter Bruegel, The Seven Virtues: Fortitude

Stoic Snippets 23

Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.2