More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ryan Holiday
Read between
August 14 - September 29, 2020
“All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal said in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Stillness is the key to, well, just about everything.
to uncover and draw upon the stillness we already possess.
If the quiet moments are the best moments, and if so many wise, virtuous people have sung their praises, why are they so rare?
To achieve stillness, we’ll need to focus on three domains, the timeless trinity of mind, body, soul—the head, the heart, the flesh. In each domain, we will seek to reduce the disturbances and perturbations that make stillness impossible.
No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong.
Be fully present.
Empty our mind of preconceptions.
Don’t reject a difficult or boring moment because it is not exactly what you want.
That’s the nice thing about the present. It keeps showing up to give you a second chance.
In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’ ”
Knowing what not to think about. What to ignore and not to do. It’s your first and most important job.
We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us.
“Can a man stand alone, naked, and at his ease, wrist flexed at his side like Michelangelo’s David, without assistance, without diversion . . . in silence?”
‘Childlikeness’ has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think.”
The world is like muddy water. To see through it, we have to let things settle.
“Just be quiet and think. It’ll make all the difference in the world.”
We have to get better at thinking, deliberately and intentionally, about the big questions. On the complicated things. On understanding what’s really going on with a person, or a situation, or with life itself.
We have to do the kind of thinking that 99 percent of the population is just not doing, and we have to stop doing the destructive thinking that they spend 99 percent of their time doing.
It takes real work to grasp what is invisible to just about everyone else.
“Always look for the helpers,”
Think about what might be hidden from view.
Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain.
“How noble and good everyone could be,” she wrote, “if at the end of the day they were to review their own behavior and weigh up the rights and wrongs. They would automatically try to do better at the start of each new day, and after a while, would certainly accomplish a great deal.”
CULTIVATE SILENCE
People who don’t read have no advantage over those who cannot read.
We must also seek mentors and teachers who can guide us in our journey.
Wrestle with big questions. Wrestle with big ideas. Treat your brain like the muscle that it is. Get stronger through resistance and exposure and training.
Wisdom does not immediately produce stillness or clarity. Quite the contrary. It might even make things less clear—make them darker before the dawn.
Socrates looked honestly at what he didn’t know.
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
the perils of ego, the importance of humility, and the necessity of confidence.
Confidence is the freedom to set your own standards and unshackle yourself from the need to prove yourself.
confident person doesn’t fear disagreement and doesn’t see change—swapping an incorrect opinion for a correct one—as an admission of inferiority.
confident people are open, reflective, and able to see themselves without blinders.
Even a master or a genius will experience a period of inadequacy when they attempt to learn new skills or explore new domains.
But other skills required to master archery remained essential: focus, patience, breathing, persistence, clarity. And most of all, the ability to let go.
Most students, whether it’s in archery or yoga or chemistry, go into a subject with a strong intention. They are outcome-focused. They want to get the best grade or the highest score. They bring their previous “expertise” with them. They want to skip the unnecessary steps and get right to the sexy stuff. As a result, they are difficult to teach and easily discouraged when the journey proves harder than expected. They are not present. They are not open to experience and cannot learn.
He was demanding that they be present and empty and open—so they could learn.
the lotus flower is a powerful symbol. Although it rises out of the mud of a pond or a river, it doesn’t reach up towering into the sky—it floats freely, serenely on top of the water.
we aim too intensely for the target—as Kenzo warned his students—we will neglect the process and the art required to hit it.
The closer we get to mastery, the less we care about specific results.
So we ignore the noise. We zero in on what’s essential. We sit with presence. We sit with our journals. We empty our minds.
“The mind tends toward stillness,” Lao Tzu said, “but is opposed by craving.”
The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Virtue is not holiness, but rather moral and civic excellence in the course of daily life.
No one has less serenity than the person who does not know what is right or wrong.
How many great men and women end up losing everything—end up, in some cases, literally behind bars—because they freely chose to indulge their endless appetites, whatever they happened to be?
Indeed, most desires are at their core irrational emotions, and that’s why stillness requires that we sit down and dissect them.
What we need then is a philosophy and a strong moral code—that sense of virtue—to help us resist what we can, and to give us the strength to pick ourselves back up when we fail and try to do and be better.
