Bodhiseeker12's blog: "Oi!"

You can view the full, unedited book at: http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.7.seven.html

1)  What is evil? It is that which you have often seen. And on the occasion of everything which happens keep this in mind, that it is that which you have often seen. Everywhere up and down you will find the same things, with which the old histories are filled, those of the middle ages and those of our own day; with which cities and houses are filled now. There is nothing new: all things are both familiar and short-lived.

2) How can our principles become dead, unless the insights (thoughts) which correspond to them are extinguished? But it is in your power continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame. I can have that opinion about anything, which I ought to have. If I can, why am I disturbed? The things which are external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind.- Let this be the state of yours affects, and you stand erect. To recover your life is in your power. Look at things again as you used to look at them; for in this consists the recovery of your life.

3) The idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread into fish-ponds, labourings of ants and burden-carrying, runnings about of frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings- all alike.It is your duty then in the midst of such things to show good humour and not a proud air; to understand however that every person is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

4) In discourse you must attend to what is said, and in every movement you must observe what is doing. And in the one you should see immediately to what end it refers, but in the other watch carefully what is important in their minds.

5) Is my understanding sufficient for this or not? If it is sufficient, I use it for the work as an instrument given by the universal nature. But if it is not sufficient, then either I retire from the work and give way to him who is able to do it better, unless there be some reason why I ought not to do so; or I do it as well as I can, taking to help me the person who with the aid of my ruling principle can do what is now fit and useful for the general good. For whatsoever either by myself or with another I can do, ought to be directed to this only, to that which is useful and well suited to society.

6) How many after being celebrated by fame have been given up to oblivion; and how many who have celebrated the fame of others have long been dead.

7) Be not ashamed to be helped; for it is your business to do your duty like a soldier in the assault on a town. How then, if being lame you cannot mount up on the battlements alone, but with the help of another it is possible?

8) Let not future things disturb you, for you will come to them, if it shall be necessary, having with you the same reason which now you use for present things.

10) Everything material soon disappears in the substance of the whole; and everything formal (causal) is very soon taken back into the universal reason; and the memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.

11) To the rational being the same act is according to nature and according to reason.

12) Straight, not straigtened.

14) Let there fall externally what will on the parts which can feel the effects of this fall. For those parts which have felt will complain, if they choose. But I, unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not injured. And it is in my power not to think so.

15) Whatever any one does or says, I must be good, just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were always saying this, Whatever any one does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.

18) Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And can you take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change? And can you be nourished, unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?

20) One thing only troubles me, lest I should do something which the constitution of man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it does not allow now.

21) Near is your forgetfulness of all things; and near the forgetfulness of you by all.

22) It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to you that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrong-doer has done you no harm, for he has not made your ability to reason worse than it was before.

25) Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which you see, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new.

26) When a man has done you any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when you have seen this, you will pity him, and will neither be outraged nor be angry. For either you thyself think the same thing to be good that he does or another thing of the same kind. It is your duty then to pardon him. But if you do not think such things to be good or evil, you will more readily be well disposed to him who is in error.

27) Think not so much of what you do not have as of what you have : but of the things which you have -- appreciate them, and then reflect how eagerly you would try to get them if you never had those things. At the same time however take care that you do not through being so pleased with them accustom yourself to overvalue them, so as to be disturbed if ever you should lose them.

28) Retire into yourself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.

29) Wipe out mispreception. Stop the pulling of the strings. Confine yourself to the present. Understand well what happens either to you or to another. Divide and distribute every object into the causal (formal) and the material. Think of your last hour. Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.

30) Direct your attention to what is said. Let your understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.

31) Adorn thyself with simplicity and modesty and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow God. 

31a) The poet says that Law rules all.- And it is enough to remember that Law rules all.

33) About pain: The pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own tranquility by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse. But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it.

34) About fame: Look at the minds of those who seek fame, observe what they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things they pursue. And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.

38) It is not right to vex ourselves at things, for the world care nought about it.

42) For the good is with me, and the just.

43) No joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion.

45) For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness of deserting his post.

46) But, my good friend, reflect whether that which is noble and good is not something different from saving and being saved; for as to a man living such or such a time, at least one who is really a man, consider if this is not a thing to be dismissed from the thoughts: and there must be no love of life: but as to these matters a man must intrust them to the deity and believe what the women say, that no man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.47) Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the mud of earthly life.

48) This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labours, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries.

52) Another may be more expert in casting his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbours.

53) Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear: for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.

54) Everywhere and at all times it is in your power piously to accept in your present condition, and to behave justly to those who are around you, and to exert your skill upon your present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined.

55) Do not look around you to discover other men's ruling principles, but look straight to this, to what nature leads you, both the universal nature through the things which happen to you, and your own nature through the acts which must be done by you. But every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of rational beings, just as among irrational things the inferior for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.The prime principle then in man's constitution is the social. And the second is not to yield to the persuasions of the body, for it is the peculiar office of the rational and intelligent motion to circumscribe itself, and never to be overpowered either by the motion of the senses or of the appetites, for both are animal; but the intelligent motion claims superiority and does not permit itself to be overpowered by the others. And with good reason, for it is formed by nature to use all of them. The third thing in the rational constitution is freedom from error and from deception. Let then the ruling principle holding fast to these things go straight on, and it has what is its own.

56) Consider yourself to be dead, and to have completed your life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed you.

57) Love that only which happens to you and is spun with the thread of your destiny. For what is more suitable?59) Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.

61) The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

62) Constantly observe who those are whose approval you wish to have, and what ruling principles they possess. For then you will neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor will want want their approval, if you look to the sources of their opinions and appetites.

64) In every pain let this thought be present, that there is no dishonour in it, nor does it make the governing intelligence worse, for it does not damage the intelligence either so far as the intelligence is rational or so far as it is social. Indeed in the case of most pains let this remark of Epictetus help you:  that pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if you keep in mind that it has its limits, and if you add nothing to it in imagination: and remember this too, that we do not perceive that many things which are disagreeable to us are the same as pain, such as excessive drowsiness, and the being scorched by heat, and the having no appetite. When then you are discontented about any of these things, say to yourself that you are yielding to pain.

65) Take care not to feel towards the inhuman, as they feel towards the humane.

68) It is in your power to live free from all compulsion in the greatest tranquility of mind, even if all the world cry out against you as much as they choose, and even if wild beasts tear in pieces the members of this kneaded matter which has grown around you. For what hinders the mind in the midst of all this from maintaining itself in tranquility and in a just judgement of all surrounding things and in a ready use of the objects which are presented to it, so that the judgement may say to the thing which falls under its observation: This you are in substance (reality), though in men's opinion you may appear to be of a different kind; and the use shall say to that which falls under the hand: You are the thing that I was seeking; for to me that which presents itself is always a material for virtue both rational and political, and in a word, for the exercise of art, which belongs to man or God. For everything which happens has a relationship either to God or man, and is neither new nor difficult to handle, but usual and apt matter to work on.

69) The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.

71) It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own faults, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's faults, which is impossible.

73) When you have done a good act and another has received it, why do you look for a third thing besides these, as fools do, either to have the reputation of having done a good act or to obtain a return?

75) The nature of the An moved to make the universe. But now either everything that takes place comes by way of consequence or continuity; or even the chief things towards which the ruling power of the universe directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle. If this is remembered it will make you more tranquil in many things.