Sunday, February 9, 2014

MA XII 26

If you are annoyed at something,
it is because you have forgotten:
  • that everything happens in accordance with universal Nature;
  • that whatever fault was committed is not your concern;
  • and, moreover, that everything that happens has always happened thus and will always happen thus, and is, at his very moment, happening thus elsewhere;
You have also forgotten:
  • that the intellect of each person is God, and that it flowed down here from above;
  • and that nothing belongs to any of us in the strict sense, but that our child, our body and our soul comes from above;
  • and that everything is a judgement - value;
  • and the only thing each of us lives and loses is the present.
Or perhaps:

When you fret at any circumstance,
you have forgotten a number of things.
You have forgotten that all comes about in accordance with the nature of the Whole;
that any wrong done lies with the other;
further, that everything which happens was always so in the past, will be the same again in the further, and is happened now across the world;
that a human being has close kinship with the whole human race - not a bond of blood or seed, but a community of mind.

And you have forgotten this too,
that every man's mind is god and has flowed from that source:
that nothing is our own property, but even our child,
our body, our soul have come from that source;
that all is as thinking makes it so;
that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose.

Between these interpretations, there are two glaring discrepancies, but both are within stoic view. That is, what is beyond our control is none of our concern, and if we live virtuously, any wrong in a relationship, must therefore lie with the other. This is what cause virtue to be so powerful at producing joy. But which or both?

The second are similarly both stoic like: there are three primary disciplines; judgement or assent, desire, and impulse. Judgement, our values, is the primary place for problem, often in our impressions. But also our thinking frequently makes it so in opinion.

The third item, is a wordy version of the congregation: as it is, as it was, as it will be.  We also note that natural processes also follow this logic. The stoics may not have realized we are also descended from common ancestry, but the hold nature, natural forces and reason as god.

But what do I know?
 

Sunday, February 2, 2014

a bit of poetry

http://newstoa.info/article99.html

 a bit on meditation
 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/more-mindfulness-less-meditation