"You have to assemble your life yourself - action by action. And be satisfied if each one achieves its goal, as far as it can. No one can keep that from happening. -But there are external obstacles... Not to behaving with justice, self-control, and good sense. - Well, but perhaps to some more concrete action. …
Tag: postaday
The Dance of Life
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” - Marcus Aurelius The retaliatory, quid pro quo, "eye for an eye" mindset is oddly and persistently common, despite its obvious shortcomings. It is the preferred approach of those who are ensnared in the toils of judgment. In it is the promise of …
Relatedness
"Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are one." - Marcus Aurelius Every time you come to …
Wisdom is Justice
"On the verge of dying and still weighed down, still turbulent, still convinced external things can harm you, still rude to other people, still not acknowledging the truth: that wisdom is justice." - Marcus Aurelius To those who hold a grudge against another or who judge any externality for that matter, know this: wisdom is justice. …
The Value of Attentiveness
"The age of Vespasian [9AD-79AD], for example. People doing exactly the same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die, complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting way money, seeking high office and power. And that life they led …
Part of a Whole
"Have you ever seen a severed hand or foot, or a decapitated head, just lying somewhere far away from the body it belonged to...? That's what we do to ourselves - or try to - when we rebel against what happens to us, when we segregate ourselves. Or when we do something selfish. You have …
External Things
"External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your own character, who's stopping you from setting your mind straight? And if it's that you're not doing something you think you should be, why not just do it? - But there …
Illuminating Thoughts
"We speak of the sun's light as "pouring down on us," as "pouring over us" in all directions. Yet it's never poured out. Because it doesn't really pour; it extends. Its beams ("aktai") get their name from their extension ("ekteinesthei"). To see the nature of a sunbeam, look at light as it falls through a …
To Live a Good Life
"To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. This is how we learn: by looking at each thing, both the parts and the whole. Keeping in mind that none of them can dictate how we perceive it. They don't impose …
The Compulsion to Truth
"All of us are working on the same project. Some consciously, with understanding; some without knowing it. (I think this is what Heraclitus meant when he said that "those who sleep are also hard at work" - that they too collaborate in what happens.) Some of us work in one way, some in others. And …
Gregory Hake 