Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

“All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal said in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us.

What’s essential is invisible to the eye.

People who don’t read have no advantage over those who cannot read.

Marcus Aurelius would ask himself, “What am I doing with my soul? Interrogate yourself, to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul you have now. A child’s soul? An adolescent’s? . . . A tyrant’s soul? The soul of a predator—or its prey?”

That is why those who seek stillness must come to . . . Develop a strong moral compass. Steer clear of envy and jealousy and harmful desires. Come to terms with the painful wounds of their childhood. Practice gratitude and appreciation for the world around them. Cultivate relationships and love in their lives. Place belief and control in the hands of something larger than themselves. Understand that there will never be “enough” and that the unchecked pursuit of more ends only in bankruptcy.

Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more. Drop the old story. Try it, if you can.

Epicurus: “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”

There is a story about the Zen master Hyakujo, who was approached by two students as he began his morning chores on the farm attached to his temple. When the students asked him to teach them about the Way, he replied, “You open the farm for me and I will talk to you about the great principle of Zen.” After they finished their labors and walked to the master for their lesson, he simply turned to face the fields, which the sun was just then rising above, extended his arms out in the direction of the serene expanse, and said nothing.

the need to practice mitfreude, the active wishing of goodwill to other people, instead of schadenfreude, the active wishing of ill will.

When you step back from the enormity of your own immediate experience—whatever it is—you are able to see the experience of others and either connect with them or lessen the intensity of your own pain. We are all strands in a long rope that stretches back countless generations and ties together every person in every country on every continent. We are all thinking and feeling the same things, we are all made of and motivated by the same things. We are all stardust.

(Indeed, in addition to the importance of hard work, Johnson said the other four lessons from Churchill’s remarkable life were to aim high; to never allow mistakes or criticism to get you down; to waste no energy on grudges, duplicity, or infighting; and to make room for joy.) Even

Rise above our physical limitations. Find hobbies that rest and replenish us. Develop a reliable, disciplined routine. Spend time getting active outdoors. Seek out solitude and perspective. Learn to sit—to do nothing when called for. Get enough sleep and rein in our workaholism. Commit to causes bigger than ourselves.

There was nothing but a shirt between the Stoics and the Cynics, joked the poet Juvenal, meaning the Stoics were sensible enough to wear clothes (and refrain from bodily functions in public), unlike the Cynics.

If solitude is the school of genius, as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, then the crowded, busy world is the purgatory of the idiot.

“In real life,” George Orwell observed, “it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer.”

Work will not set you free. It will kill you if you’re not careful.

The overworked person creates a crisis that they try to solve by working harder.

“All individual things pass away,” he said. “Seek your liberation with diligence.”

It was Cicero who said that to study philosophy is to learn how to die.

We must learn to think rationally and clearly about our own fate. We must find spiritual meaning and goodness while we are alive. We must treat the vessel we inhabit on this planet well—or we will be forced to abandon it early.

Death brings an end to everything, to our minds, our souls, and our bodies, in a final, permanent stillness.