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January 13 - January 18, 2020
ancient philosophers were veritable warriors of the mind,
Bhagavad Gita!
it became evident to me that most of my clients who suffered from anxiety or depression benefited from the realization that their distress was due to their underlying values.
I realized that I’d been looking everywhere except in the right place. “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (118th Psalm).
of Depression, “The philosophical origins of cognitive therapy
Bhagavad Gita!
“cognitive theory of emotion,” which holds that our emotions are mainly determined by our beliefs. Anxiety largely consists of the belief, for example, that “something bad is going to happen,” according to Beck.
not quite true..…its a message to be prepared
myself and speaking at conferences, I was able to guide rooms full of experienced therapists and trainees, up to a hundred at a time, through my version of the exercise. I was
told her the secret of his wisdom: he asked lots of questions about the most important things in life, and then he listened very carefully to the answers. So I kept telling
little girl but to other people as well. Next, I asked myself who was the best candidate to use as a Stoic role model, about whom I could tell stories that would bring the philosophy to life and put flesh on its bones. The obvious answer was
not quite true..…its a message to be prepared
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be; just be
To learn how to die, according to the Stoics, is to unlearn how to be a slave.
This is how he contemplates his own mortality: using one of
As death is among the most certain things in life, to a man of wisdom it should be among the least feared.
times, has practiced his response to it so often, that he no longer weeps uncontrollably.
He no longer adds to his natural grief by complaining and shaking his fist at the universe.
Our bodies are no longer the ones to which our mothers gave birth, as Marcus put it. Nobody is the same person he was yesterday.
and afraid. He complains that he risks contracting the plague by remaining among the legions in the north
philosophy has taught him to be grateful for life and yet unafraid of dying—like a ripened olive falling from its branch, thanking both the tree for giving it life and the earth below for receiving its seed as it falls.
Stoic teachings Marcus held dear. Never say that anything has been lost, they tell us. Only
tribes. Fleeing from the army camps will undermine, at one fell swoop, whatever credibility he had with the troops who were
Like all Stoics, Marcus firmly believed that virtue must be its own reward.
at the pretentious and bookish nature of Plato’s Academy. The Academics, in turn, thought the doctrines of the Cynics were crude and too extreme—Plato reputedly called Diogenes “Socrates gone mad.” Zeno must have seen his
been better, though, if he’d been handsome, wealthy, and praised by everyone?
He tells himself to dye his mind with the wisdom of philosophical precepts handed down from his Stoic teachers.
Marcus Aurelius, indeed, viewed himself as a Stoic first and an emperor second.
Put crudely, external things do have some value, but they’re not worth getting upset over—it’s a different kind of value.
if something can be used for either good or evil, it cannot truly be good in itself, so it should be classed as “indifferent” or neutral.
The true goal of life for Stoics isn’t to acquire as many external advantages as possible but to use whatever befalls us wisely, whether it be sickness or health, wealth or poverty, friends or enemies.
The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to “need” countless things, but he uses them all badly.
Stoic ethics involves cultivating this natural affection toward other people in accord with virtues like justice, fairness, and kindness.
Another popular misconception today is that Stoics are unemotional.
they distinguished between three types of emotion: good, bad, and indifferent.
They also taught that our initial automatic feelings are to be viewed as natural and indifferent.
Seneca, as we’ll see, noted the paradox that before we can exhibit the virtues of courage and moderation, we need to have at least some trace of fear and desire to overcome.
Some pains have the potential to make us stronger, and some pleasures to harm us. What matters is the use we make of these experiences, and for that we need wisdom.
knew him but later wrote about his manliness and humility, drawing from what he learned of his father by reputation
and what little he remembered. Marcus was brought up by his mother and
told his friends, “if you don’t allow me to regard the most learned of men as being the one who owns thirty legions.”2 Hadrian didn’t like being wrong. Worse, he carried
putting up with Hadrian’s relentless one-upmanship. However, the emperor was clearly on very good terms with Epictetus’s most famous student, Arrian, who wrote
them to achieve wisdom and virtue.3 Rhetoricians thrive on praise, which is vanity; philosophers love truth and embrace humility. Rhetoric is a form of entertainment, pleasant to hear; philosophy is a moral and
psychological therapy, often painful to hear because it forces us to admit our own faults in order to remedy them—sometimes the truth hurts. Epictetus’s own teacher,
intellectuals who later became his friends and teachers. Marcus mentions that his Stoic mentor, Junius Rusticus, taught him to write letters
doubtless paved the way for his later interest in Stoic philosophy. Indeed,
an exceptionally young age. The Historia Augusta says that he was already wholly dedicated
in his mother’s household.8 It’s truly remarkable that Marcus seems to credit a humble slave with more influence
how to avoid sticking his nose into other people’s concerns. This is very different from the example set by Hadrian or the famous Sophists competing to win the emperor’s favor and
toward external things and disregarding both praise and condemnation from others. Doing so allowed them to speak the truth very plainly and simply. We’ll never know
Plato’s saying was always on Marcus’s lips: those states prospered where the philosophers were kings or the kings philosophers.
“The master ought not come to the pupil, but the pupil to the
Marcus also saw in him a clear example of what it meant for Stoics to engage in a course of action with great vigor and determination while simultaneously remaining relaxed and unperturbed about the outcome.
Krishna!
They graze him but do not wound him.
