Dhammapada 188, 189

Men, driven by fear, go to many a refuge, to mountains and forests, to groves and sacred trees. 

But that is not a safe refuge, that is not the best refuge; a man is not delivered from all pains after having gone to that refuge. 

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ 3.43

Against vain and worldly knowledge

1. "My Son, let not the fair and subtle sayings of men move you. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. Give ear to My words, for they kindle the heart and enlighten the mind, they bring contrition, and they supply manifold consolations. Never read you the word that you may appear more learned or wise; but study for the mortification of your sins, for this will be far more profitable for you than the knowledge of many difficult questions. 

2. "When you have read and learned many things, you must always return to one first principle. I am He that teaches man knowledge, and I give unto babes clearer knowledge than can be taught by man. He to whom I speak will be quickly wise and shall grow much in the spirit. Woe unto them who inquire into many curious questions from men, and take little heed concerning the way of My service. The time will come when Christ will appear, the Master of masters, the Lord of the Angels, to hear the lessons of all, that is to examine the consciences of each one. And then will He search Jerusalem with candles, and the hidden things of darkness shall be made manifest, and the arguings of tongues shall be silent.

3. "I am He who in an instant lifts up the humble spirit, to learn more reasonings of the Eternal Truth, than if a man had studied ten years in the schools. I teach without noise of words, without confusion of opinions, without striving after honor, without clash of arguments. I am He who teach men to despise earthly things, to loathe things present, to seek things heavenly, to enjoy things eternal, to flee honors, to endure offenses, to place all hope in Me, to desire nothing apart from Me, and above all things to love Me ardently.

4. "For there was one, who by loving Me from the bottom of his heart, learned divine things, and spoke things that were wonderful; he profited more by forsaking all things than by studying subtleties. But to some I speak common things, to others special; to some I appear gently in signs and figures, and again to some I reveal mysteries in much light. The voice of books is one, but it informs not all alike; because I inwardly am the Teacher of truth, the Searcher of the heart, the Discerner of the thoughts, the Mover of actions, distributing to each man, as I judge meet." 

Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.3

Very well. How are you suddenly converted to wisdom? What an angry temper you show!

 

Why then are we angry? Because we admire the material things of which they rob us. For only cease to admire your clothes, and you are not angry with him who steals them; cease to admire your wife's beauty, and you cease to be angry with the adulterer. 

 

Know that the thief and adulterer have no place among things that are your own, but only among things that are another's and beyond your power. If you let them alone and count them as nothing you have no one to be angry with anymore. But as long as you admire these things you must be angry with yourself rather than with them. 

 

For, look you, you have fine clothes, your neighbor has none: you have a window, you wish to air them. He does not know what is the true good of man, but fancies, as you do too, that it is to have fine clothes. Is he not to come then and carry them off? 

 

Why, if you show a cake to greedy men, and gobble it down all to yourself, do you expect them not to snatch at it? Do not provoke them, do not have a window, do not air your clothes. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.18 

 

Feelings of anger and hatred may at first appear to be far beyond our control, yet the Stoic comes to learn how deeply the patterns of our thoughts shape the patterns of our emotions. When I am suddenly overcome by a wave of resentment, the key to resolution is in examining my appraisal of meaning and value. I will find that the mindset governs the moods. 

 

I will only be frustrated by the loss of the things I hold dear, and where I consciously choose to no longer attach such great importance to these conditions, their presence or absence will gradually cease to rule over my passions. My foul temper, and all the lashing out that goes along with it, is not the fault of the world, but a disorder of my judgments. 

 

In line with a central theme of the Discourses, I make myself miserable by worrying about the things that were never mine to begin with, and I find contentment by looking after my own nature. 

 

Do I, for example, define myself by how I look, or by a sense of sexual pride? Then it should come as no surprise that the man who steals my wardrobe or runs off with my wife will drive me into a rage. The scoundrel has no doubt done wrong, though there is no cause for me to therefore destroy my own peace of mind in the process. I am not what I wear. A woman is not somehow my property. Correction and forgiveness become achievable when possessiveness is tamed. 

 

If I have spent so much of my time and effort on buying trinkets and winning bragging rights, can I blame the criminal for wanting them just as much? We are then the same in our lusts, and we differ only in our methods of acquisition. 

 

Tending first to my character, and deciding upon an indifference to circumstances, there is no need to show them off, and no great hardship in their transience. 

 

I think of that classic cartoon trope, where the character is enticed by the smell of a pie cooling on the windowsill. If he is hungry, or even if he just has a sweet tooth, he will be tempted to run away with it. When watching such cartoons as a child, I wondered why anyone would be at all surprised to lose the pie once it had been left unattended. 

 

Yogi Bear shouldn’t be stealing pies and picnic baskets, but Ranger Smith shouldn’t get so worked up about them either. 

—Reflection written in 1/2001 

Hope

Gustav Klimt, Hope I (1903)

Gustav Klimt, Hope II (1908)

The Three Ages of Woman

Gustav Klimt, The Three Ages of Woman (1905)

Hans Holbein, The Dance of Death 41: The Drunkard

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 48

The rich miser suffers more from a loss than a poor sage. 

Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.2

“What!” you say. “Ought not this robber and this adulterer to be put to death?”

 

No, say not so, but rather, “Should I not destroy this man who is in error and delusion about the greatest matters, and is blinded not merely in the vision which distinguishes white and black, but in the judgement which distinguishes good and evil?” 

 

If you put it this way, you will recognize how inhuman your words are; that it is like saying, “Should I not kill this blind man, or this deaf one?” 

 

For if the greatest harm that can befall one is the loss of what is greatest, and a right will is the greatest thing in everyone, is it not enough for him to lose this, without incurring your anger besides? 

 

Man, if you must harbor unnatural feelings at the misfortune of another, pity him rather than hate him; give up this spirit of offence and hatred: do not use these phrases which the backbiting multitude use, “These accursed and pestilent fools". 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.18

 

I have shared this story, which I first came across in the fragments of Musonius Rufus, many times, and I believe it deserves to be repeated here once again: 

 

Who of us does not marvel at the action of Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian? For when he had been blinded in one eye by one of his fellow citizens, and had received the young man at the hands of the people to punish as he saw fit, he did not choose to do this, but trained him instead and made a good man of him, and afterward escorted him to the public theater. 

 

And when the Lacedaemonians regarded him with amazement, he said: "This man I received from you an insolent and violent creature; I return him to you a reasonable man and a good citizen."

 

If a crime so offends me that I would go to the ends of the earth seeking retribution, do I not also have the option of going to the ends of the earth seeking rehabilitation? The effort involved might be the same, though the motive would be radically different. It is one thing to revere the dictates of the law, and another to remember the beneficent ends the law is intended to serve. 

 

Everything centers on the attitude, and my willingness to focus on the welfare of each and every individual who crosses my path, however he might choose to treat me. Sweeping generalities are cheap, while personal commitments are priceless. 

 

Lycurgus could, after all, have had the man killed, but instead decided to educate him. I am deeply moved by the example of someone who makes it his own responsibility to help a lost soul acquire responsibility. 

 

When I begin by insulting a man, that says far more about my shortcomings than it does about his. When I continue by wishing to see him suffer, whether through shame, deprivation, torture, or death, I have revealed the weakness of my principles. When I finally glorify in his demise, I have only condemned myself. 

 

The poor fellow has already suffered the worst possible fate by being ensnared in the wickedness of ignorance. Will I now do the same to myself? Indeed, if I must be consumed by passion, pity is here more fitting than anger. Even if the disability followed from a voluntary choice, it still calls for healing. 

 

Compassion and mercy do not negate justice, but rather perfect it.

 —Reflection written in 1/2001

Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 25

XXV. 

When any man of greater pow'r you see
Invested with the robes of dignity,
In honour's gaudiest, gayest livery
Dreaded by all, whose arbitrary will,
Whose very breath, whose ev'ry look can kill;
Whose power, and whose wealth know no restraint,
Whose greatness hardly flattery can paint;
Take care you be not here intangled by
The too great lustre that beguiles your eye;
Beware you do not envy his estate,
Nor think him happier because he's great.
For if true quiet and tranquillity,
Consist in things which in our pow'r do lie,
What residence can emulation find?
What room hath restless envy in the mind?
Envy and happiness can ne'er reside
In the same place, nor in one breast abide.
Nor do you wish yourself (if we may guess
Your real thoughts by what you do profess)
To be a senator or general,
But to be free, (that's greater than them all)
This freedom you would gladly learn, you say,
To which there is but one, one only way:
Which is to scorn, with brave and decent pride,
All things that in another's pow'r reside. 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 144

A Brâhmana was laying down a garden, and looked after it day and night. 

One day a cow straying into the garden browsed away a mango sapling which was one of the most carefully-watched trees of the Brâhmana. 

The Brâhmana seeing the cow destroy his favorite plant gave it such a sound beating that it died of the injuries received. The news soon spread like wildfire that the Brâhmana killed the sacred animal.

Now the Brâhmana was a so-called Vedântist, and when taxed with the sin denied it, saying, "No, I have not killed the cow; it is my hand that has done it, and as Indra is the presiding Deity of the hand, so if any one has incurred the guilt of killing the cow, it is Indra and not I." 

Indra in his Heaven heard all this, assumed the shape of an old Brâhmana, came to the owner of the garden, and said, "Sir, whose garden is this?" 

Brâhmana—"Mine." 

Indra—"It is a beautiful garden. You have got a skilful gardener, for see how neatly and artistically he has planted the trees!"

Brâhmana—"Well, sir, that is also my work. The trees are planted under my personal supervision and direction."

Indra—"Indeed! O, you are very clever. But who has laid out this road? It is very ably planned and neatly executed."

Brâhmana—"All this has been done by me."

Then Indra with joined hands said, "When all these things are yours, and you take credit for all the works done in this garden, it is a hard line for poor Indra to be held responsible for the killing of the cow."

Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.1

Chapter 18: That we should not be angry at men’s errors. 

 

If what philosophers say is true, that in all men action starts from one source, feeling, as in assent it is the feeling that a thing is so, and in denial the feeling that it is not so, yes, by Zeus, and in withholding judgement, the feeling that it is uncertain. 

 

So also impulse towards a thing is originated by the feeling that it is fitting, and will to get a thing by the feeling that it is expedient for one, and it is impossible to judge one thing expedient and will to get another, and to judge one thing fitting and be impelled to another. 

 

If all this be true, why are we angry with the multitude?

 

“They are thieves”, he says, “and robbers.”

 

What do you mean by thieves and robbers?

 

“They are gone astray and know not what is good and what is evil.”

 

Ought we then to be angry with them or to pity them? Only show them their error and you will see how they desist from their faults. But if their eyes are not opened, they regard nothing as superior to their own judgement. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.18

 

From a very early age, it was sadly clear that I was not going to become an obedient worker, and one sure sign of this was my confusion about the nature of punishment. It baffled me when we said it was wrong to deliberately inflict harm, and then we turned around and did precisely that; what was even more troubling was the schadenfreude, the pleasure many people found in the suffering of wrongdoers. 

 

While I certainly recognized how justice required me to return what had unrightly been taken, and by such a path to improve my own awareness of responsibility, I could not make sense of the deep hatred for the offender. While I saw why a heavy hand was sometimes necessary to encourage such correction, I was also sure that merely a fear of further pain would not help anyone at becoming better. 

 

And then it occurred to me that justice was too often being confused with vengeance, and so the good for all was being replaced with the gratification of some at the expense of others. The key to making this appear acceptable was to claim that one act of aggression was simply a reaction to another; anger and violence felt justifiable when presented as reciprocal. 

 

A man may well be acting poorly, yet this does not excuse me to act poorly in return. If I insist that my response gave me a feeling of satisfaction, I must understand why the transgressor was also aiming for a feeling of satisfaction, however misguided his means may have been. If his apprehension of the good was indeed mistaken, wouldn’t we both benefit by attending to the ignorance? 

 

“There’s no fixing him, he refuses to change! He deserves to rot in prison or to die in agony!” 

 

Perhaps he does, but I will not be the one to cast aside my own humanity because he happens to be confused about his own. Though it is natural to grapple with an initial instinct of anger, it is blameworthy for me to dwell upon it or to feed it. 

 

Our virtues and vices proceed from our judgments, and so it is proper to look to the order of our thoughts when there is a disorder in our deeds. To consider my neighbors as fellow subjects, instead of reducing them to the status of disposable objects, demands that I do my best to bring our minds closer together—only then can our hearts come closer together. 

 

Each any every one of our acts is out of a certain estimation, which determines our desires and aversions. Whenever I want something, or whenever I shun it, or whenever I am uncertain about what I should do, I am always working from a reckoning about the true and the false, the right and the wrong. Where the understanding is modified, the wish is modified, and where the wish is modified, the conduct will follow. 

 

If I do not transform my comprehension, it is impossible for me to transform my behavior. Now why would I think it any different for the behavior of the man who mistreats me? Let me give him the very same assistance in reforming his character that I would hope to receive for myself. 

 

Though I have not yet been a prisoner myself, I have seen more than enough of prisons on the inside to know that just wrapping barbed wire around the lawbreakers has far more to do with indulging our own resentments than it does with repairing theirs. 

—Reflection written in 1/2001 

Vanitas 54

Juan de Valdes Leal, Finis Gloriae Mundi (The End of Worldly Glory) (c. 1672) 

Vanitas 53

Juan de Valdes Leal, In Ictu Oculi (In the Blink of an Eye) (c. 1672) 

Stoic Snippets 132

It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.37 

Chuang Tzu 2.4

By means of a finger of my own to illustrate that the finger of another is not a finger, is not so good a plan, as to illustrate that it is not so by means of what is acknowledged to be not a finger; and by means of what I call a horse to illustrate that what another calls a horse is not so, is not so good a plan, as to illustrate that it is not a horse, by means of what is acknowledged to be not a horse. 

All things in heaven and earth may be dealt with as a finger; each of their myriads may be dealt with as a horse. Does a thing seem so to me? I say that it is so. Does it seem not so to me? I say that it is not so. 

A path is formed by constant treading on the ground. A thing is called by its name through the constant application of the name to it. How is it so? It is so, because it is so. How is it not so? It is not so, because it is not so. Everything has its inherent character and its proper capability. There is nothing which has not these. 

Therefore, this being so, if we take a stalk of grain and a large pillar, a loathsome leper and a beauty like Hsì Shih, things large and things insecure, things crafty and things strange—they may in the light of the Tâo all be reduced to the same category of opinion about them. 

It was separation that led to completion; from completion ensued dissolution. But all things, without regard to their completion and dissolution, may again be comprehended in their unity—it is only the far reaching in thought who know how to comprehend them in this unity. 

This being so, let us give up our devotion to our own views, and occupy ourselves with the ordinary views. These ordinary views are grounded on the use of things. The study of that use leads to the comprehensive judgment, and that judgment secures the success of the inquiry. That success gained, we are near to the object of our search, and there we stop. When we stop, and yet we do not know how it is so, we have what is called the Tâo. 

When we toil our spirits and intelligence, obstinately determined to establish our own view, and do not know the agreement which underlies it and the views of others, we have what is called "In the morning three." 

What is meant by that "In the morning three?" A keeper of monkeys, in giving them out their acorns, once said, "In the morning I will give you three measures and in the evening four." 

This made them all angry, and he said, "Very well. In the morning I will give you four and in the evening three." 

His two proposals were substantially the same, but the result of the one was to make the creatures angry, and of the other to make them pleased—an illustration of the point I am insisting on. 

Therefore the sagely man brings together a dispute in its affirmations and denials, and rests in the equal fashioning of Heaven. Both sides of the question are admissible. 

Dhammapada 186, 187

There is no satisfying lusts, even by a shower of gold pieces; he who knows that lusts have a short taste and cause pain, he is wise. 

Even in heavenly pleasures he finds no satisfaction; the disciple who is fully awakened delights only in the destruction of all desires. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 22.8

A man has caught the message of wisdom, if he can die as free from care as he was at birth; but as it is, we are all aflutter at the approach of the dreaded end. Our courage fails us, our cheeks blanch; our tears fall, though they are unavailing. But what is baser than to fret at the very threshold of peace?

 

The reason, however, is, that we are stripped of all our goods, we have jettisoned our cargo of life and are in distress; for no part of it has been packed in the hold; it has all been heaved overboard and has drifted away. 

 

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long. Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 22

 

Having been born free, why would I wish to die as a slave? And yet that is precisely what will happen if I choose to procced with half measures. It won’t even take some wicked tyrant to push me around or to lock me up; I will have done it to myself, by settling for second best, by compromising what is greater for what is lesser. 

 

It does take courage to follow through, but not the sort of beastly bravado we regularly confuse with conviction. A gentle soul can be so strong in understanding and in love that, in one of those wonderful twists of life, he becomes immune to the bitterness and the hatred of the bully. Muscles are useful things to have, while virtue is an indispensable thing to have; true power is not where we might at first think it to be. 

 

Death will dispose of everything the ruffian holds dear, so of course he is terrified of his extinction; his apparent control over others must not only persist, it must always increase. In contrast, the decent man is happy to excel for himself, however brief the span, and content with his own thoughts and deeds, however quickly they might end. 

 

The urge to always want more is tamed by the serenity of embracing the moment. Nothing can be added to what is already complete at any given time. 

 

When I ask myself who I am, how much of my answer refers to conditions that have no bearing on my essence? A name? A place? A job? A salary? A title? Those to whom I pander? Those who pander to me? All secondary. 

 

The baggage perversely becomes more important than the bearer, and the outer appearance is mistaken for the inner reality. As Seneca says, when the ship goes down, I’ll need to leave the petty cargo behind, in order to save what is most precious. 

 

At a point in my life where the world around me seemed to be crashing down, I caught myself complaining that I had lost everything. Not at all—I retained the only thing that counted, and the quantity of the “stuff” wouldn’t change the quality of living, just as a longer life is not necessary for a better life. 

 

Let the base riches sink to the bottom of the sea; I can only float when there is no excess weight to drag me down. 

—Reflection written in 9/2012

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 47

Money does not sate Avarice, but stimulates it. 

Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita 44

45. Overjoyed am I to have seen what I saw never before; yet my mind is distracted with terror. Show me, O Deva, only that Form of Yours. Have mercy, O Lord of Devas, O Abode of the Universe. 

46. Diademed, bearing a mace and a discus, You I desire to see as before. Assume that same four-armed Form, O You of thousand arms, of Universal Form. 

The Blessed Lord said: 

47. Graciously have I shown to you, O Arjuna, this Form supreme, by My own Yoga power, this resplendent, primeval, infinite, universal Form of Mine, which has not been seen before by anyone else. 

48. Neither by the study of the Veda and Yajna, nor by gifts, nor by rituals, nor by severe austerities, am I in such Form seen, in the world of men, by any other than you, O great hero of the Kurus. 

49. Be not afraid nor bewildered, having beheld this Form of Mine, so terrific. With your fears dispelled and with gladdened heart, now see again this form of Mine. 

Sanjaya said: 

50. So Vâsudeva, having thus spoken to Arjuna, showed again His own Form, and the Great-souled One, assuming His gentle Form, pacified him who was terrified. 

Arjuna said: 

51. Having seen this Your gentle human Form, O Janârdana, my thoughts are now composed and I am restored to my nature. 

The Blessed Lord said: 

52. Very hard indeed it is to see this Form of Mine which you have seen. Even the Devas ever long to behold this Form. 

53. Neither by the Vedas, nor by austerity, nor by gifts, nor by sacrifice can I be seen as you have seen Me. 

54. But by the single-minded devotion I may, in this Form, be known, O Arjuna, and seen in reality, and also entered into, O scorcher of foes. 

55. He who does work for Me alone and has Me for his goal, is devoted to Me, is freed from attachment, and bears enmity towards no creature—he enters into Me, O Pândava. 

—Bhagavad Gita, 11:45-55 

Seneca, Moral Letters 22.7

I was just putting the seal upon this letter; but it must be broken again, in order that it may go to you with its customary contribution, bearing with it some noble word. And lo, here is one that occurs to my mind; I do not know whether its truth or its nobility of utterance is the greater. "Spoken by whom?" you ask. By Epicurus; for I am still appropriating other men's belongings.

 

The words are: "Everyone goes out of life just as if he had but lately entered it." 

Take anyone off his guard—young, old, or middle-aged; you will find that all are equally afraid of death, and equally ignorant of life. No one has anything finished, because we have kept putting off into the future all our undertakings. No thought in the quotation given above pleases me more than that it taunts old men with being infants. 

 

"No one," he says, "leaves this world in a different manner from one who has just been born." That is not true; for we are worse when we die than when we were born; but it is our fault, and not that of Nature. 

 

Nature should scold us, saying: "What does this mean? I brought you into the world without desires or fears, free from superstition, treachery, and the other curses. Go forth as you were when you entered!" 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 22

 

I think of my mother, way back when I was in the second grade. I had already walked out the door for school, and she came running down the path after me to put a little bag of candied orange peels, an old Austrian delicacy, into my lunchbox. So Seneca reopens the letter, out of a deep love for his friend, to include the usual Epicurean saying. 

 

Here is a wonderful insight, as Seneca finds both a profound truth and a troublesome way it could be misinterpreted. I simultaneously appreciate its force and its subtlety. 

 

Yes, death is the great equalizer, in the sense that it makes light of all our vanities, our presumption that collecting all sorts of trinkets, or surrounding ourselves with a troop of followers, will make any sort of difference. 

 

Why do we even fear death? Our extinction, after all, is a vary part of the coming and going that rightly balances existence. What we fear is rather the horror of going out dissatisfied, still crying for more; we are acutely aware that we haven’t finished the job. 

 

But no, we do not necessarily die in the same moral state as we came in—we too often die in a far worse state than we came in. 

 

What did Nature give to each one of us? A mind to be open, a heart to reach out, a freedom from hatred and prejudices, an opportunity to be a creature of joy. 

 

What do we then do with these gifts? We refuse to reflect, we grow cold and insensitive, we get bogged down in tribalism, and we accordingly suffer in misery. 

 

It is never too early to reconsider the path I am following. Let me pass on in harmony with the dignity that God gave me. 

—Reflection written in 9/2012