The Psychology of Stoicism, Buddhism & Epicurean (& Other Wisdom Traditions)

Quotes
Collected By Eric Sherman

“I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period, for the
loves, friends, habits and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting
clothes. I parted from them without pain and all that remained was to wonder
that I could have endured them so long.”

― Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

“If philosophy doesn’t help to make us happy, or less unhappy, what’s the use of
philosophy?”

—André Comte-Sponville

“Exercise yourself in these and related precepts day and night, both by yourself
and with one who is like-minded; then never, either in waking or in dream, will
you be disturbed, but will live as a god among men.”
—Epicurus

“Music makes my point most obviously: attend a music lesson, and you will think
it involves the most monotonous training of all. But the results please and
entertain everyone.

In our school, we picture the philosopher’s goal more or less as follows: bring the
will in line with events, so that nothing happens contrary to our wishes and,
conversely, nothing fails to happen that we want to happen. Pursue it, and the
reward is that neither desire nor aversion will fail in their aims.”

—Epictetus

“If we try to adapt our mind to the regular sequence of changes and accept the
inevitable with good grace, our life will proceed quite smoothly and
harmoniously.”

—Epictetus

“Some may find it easier to feel Zen than to think it. Certainly it pertains to the
world of poetry and music rather than to that of logic; to the heart and not to the
thinking mind. It is, as already described, like a joke. You see it or you don’t, for it
cannot be explained. The Japanese find it in nature and not in books. Steinilber-
Oberlin quotes a Master as saying, “Have you noticed how the pebbles of the
road are polished and pure after the rain? True works of art! And the flowers? No
word can describe them. One can only murmur an ‘Ah!’ of admiration. A Japanese
writer and bonze has said that one should understand the “Ah!’ of things!”

—Christmas Humphreys
“So changing one career for another does not relieve the soul of the factors which
vex and perturb it—inexperience, unreasonableness, incapacity, and ineptitude in
making proper use of what is available. Rich and poor alike are storm-tossed by
these factors, they infect the unmarried as well as the married. Because of them
men avoid the forum, and then find inactivity intolerable; because of them men
seek preferment at court, and when they have attained it find it a burden...their
wives annoy them, they find fault with the doctor, they are dissatisfied with the
bed, and “a visitor is a nuisance when he comes and a burden when he goes,” as
Ion puts it.”

—Plutarch, On Contentment

“Meditation is intended to purify the mind. It cleanses the thought process of

what can be called psychic irritants, things like greed, hatred and jealousy, things
that keep you snarled up in emotional bondage. It brings the mind to a state of
tranquility and awareness, a state of concentration and insight.”

—Henepola Gunaratana

“VI Passions of various kinds, when sudden, violent, or habitual.

The passions were undoubtedly implanted in our nature for wise, and beneficent,
purpose; but the folly of man has perverted them to the most absurd, and
pernicious. They are the servants, not the masters; the means, under the
guidance of reason, not the end, of human happiness: and to fulfil their appointed
destination, in promoting the well-being of mankind, they should be various,
gentle, calm, and manageable; and only in such a degree indulged, as is
proportioned to the attainment of some reasonable, and valuable purpose.

According to the doctrine of the stoics, and other philosophers, the passions are
founded on our notions, or opinions, of good and evil, whether present or absent.
If we form a proper judgment, and estimation, of the things, and occurrences, of
this life, we shall never be immoderately depressed by the evil, no elated by the
good, either present or impending, in prospect or in the enjoyment. But if we
suffer ourselves to judge irrationally of things, and occurrences; and value them,
not according to their real nature, and importance to human happiness, but
according to those erroneous notions, and opinions, which we may have been led
imprudently to form of them, by the misguidance of appetites, prejudices, and
irrational associations; we shall then be liable to experience all those excesses of
passion, which will inevitably mar the happiness which we seek after; and may,
possibly, in one way or other, drive us into madness.”

— Thomas Arnold (Observations On The Nature, Kinds, Causes, And Prevention

Of Insanity, p 328 ff)

“Let us neither censure the flesh as cause of great evils nor attribute our distress
to external circumstances. Rather let us seek their causes in the soul, and, by
breaking away from every vain yearning and hope for fleeting fancies, let us
become totally in control of ourselves. For it is either through fear that a person
becomes unhappy or through unlimited and empty desire. By bridling these
feelings a person can gain possession of blessed reason for himself. To the extent
that you are troubled, it is because you forget Nature, for you inflict upon yourself
unlimited fears and desires.“

—Porphyry (Epicurean)

“The problem is suffering, the cause is ignorance, the remedy is waking up, and
the path is living mindfully, meditating, and cultivating our wisdom.”
—Melvin McLeod

“Like an artist frightened

By the devil he paints,
The sufferer in Samsara
Is terrified by his own imagination.
Like a man caught in quicksands
Thrashing and struggling about,
So beings drown
In the mess of their own thoughts.
Mistaking fantasy for reality
Causes an experience of suffering;
Mind is poisoned by interpretation
Of consciousness of form.
Dissolving figment and fantasy
With a mind of compassionate insight,
Remain in perfect awareness
In order to help all beings.”

—Nagarjuna, Mahamudra Vision

“Develop a mind that is vast like space, where experiences both pleasant and
unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle or harm. Rest in a
mind like vast sky.”

-Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya

“Worry is a process. It has steps. Anxiety is not just a state of existence but a
procedure. What you've got to do is to look at the very beginning of that
procedure, those initial stages before the process has built up a head of steam.
The very first link of the worry chain is the grasping/rejecting reaction. As soon as
some phenomenon pops into the mind, we try mentally to grab onto it or push it
away. That sets the worry response in motion.

Luckily, there is a handy little tool called Vipassana meditation which you can use
to short-circuit the whole mechanism. Vipassana meditation teaches us how to
scrutinize our own perceptual process with great precision. We learn to watch the
arising of thought and perception with a feeling of serene detachment. We learn
to view our own reactions to stimuli with calm and clarity. We begin to see
ourselves reacting without getting caught up in the reactions themselves. The
obsessive nature of thought slowly dies. We can still get married. We can still step
out of the path of the truck. But we don't need to go through hell over either
one.”
—Henepola Gunaratana
“My faculties have become serene, like horses tamed by a charioteer. I have
abandoned conceit and defilements, becoming such that even the gods envy me.”

—Buddha, Brahmāli 2.43

“Life is so astonishing, it leaves very little time for anything else!”

—Emily Dickinson

"Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world."

—Albert Ellis
“There is, indeed, nothing unnatural in long periods of quiet sitting. Cats do it;
even dogs and other more nervous animals do it. So-called primitive peoples do
it–American Indians, and peasants of almost all nations. The art is most difficult
for those who have developed the sensitive intellect to such a point that they
cannot help making predictions about the future, and so must be kept in a
constant whirl of activity to forestall them. But it would seem that to be incapable
of sitting and watching with the mind completely at rest is to be incapable of
experiencing the world in which we live to the full. For one does not know the
world simply in thinking about it and doing about it. One must first experience it
more directly, and prolong the experience without jumping to conclusions.”

—Alan Watts, The Way Of Zen

“Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no
goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
Absence of hurry also involves a certain lack of interference with the natural
course of events, especially when it is felt that the natural course follows
principles which are not foreign to human intelligence. For, as we have seen, the
Taoist mentality makes, or forces, nothing but “grows” everything.”

—Alan Watts
“Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry...Do not let any
unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building
others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen...Be kind
and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other”

—Letter to the Ephesians

"Zazen means only sitting. It means dropping away anything extra to your
breathing, the air on your face, the weight of your body, the subtle energy in your
hands, the intimate sounds of lungs, heart, and belly, the sudden cry of a bird, the
coming and the going of thoughts and half thoughts, feelings and sensations.
None require anything beyond your steady, unpresuming attention."

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be
shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that
storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome: ”Do
your worst, for I will do mine!” Then the fates will know you as we know you.”

—Alexandre Dumas, The Count Of Monte Christo

“The greatest benefit of wisdom is that it teaches us to master the passions”

—Rene Descartes

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

—Eleanor Roosevelt
“As you think, so you become. Avoid superstitiously investing events with power
or meanings they don’t have. Keep your head. Our busy minds are forever
jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren’t there.”
—Epictetus

“Virtue, which is the target, does not appear very desirable when it appears by
itself; and contentment, the prize, cannot be won, unless you follow virtue. For
this reason, I think I can here conclude that happiness consists only in
contentment of mind”
—Rene Descartes

“You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and

actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you
use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting.”
—Albert Ellis

“Mendicants, before my awakening—when I was still unawakened but intent on

awakening—I thought:

‘Why don’t I meditate by continually dividing my thoughts into two classes?’

So I assigned all base, cruel, and unskilled thoughts to one class. And I assigned
thoughts of renunciation, good will, and compassion to the second class.
Then, as I meditated—diligent, keen, and resolute—a base, cruel or unskillful
thought arose. I understood: ‘This thought has arisen in me. It leads to hurting
myself, hurting others, and hurting both. It blocks wisdom, it’s on the side of
anguish, and it doesn’t lead to extinguishment.’ When I reflected that it leads to
hurting myself, it went away. When I reflected that it leads to hurting others, it
went away. When I reflected that it leads to hurting both, it went away. When I
reflected that it blocks wisdom, it’s on the side of anguish, and it doesn’t lead to
extinguishment, it went away. So I gave up, got rid of, and eliminated any
unhelpful and harmful thoughts that arose.
Whatever a mendicant frequently thinks about and considers becomes their
heart’s inclination.”

—Buddha, Majjhima Nikāya 19

"Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things and has cast beneath his
feet all fears, unavoidable fate, and the din of the devouring Underworld"

—Virgil

“You should entirely rid the mind of any kind of sad thoughts, and even avoid any
kind of serious meditation on intellectual matters, and instead concentrate on
doing the same as those people who, when they gaze at the green of a wood, the
colours of a flower, the flight of a bird, and such things as require no attention,
convince themselves they are thinking of nothing. That is not wasting time, but
using it well; for one can in the meantime have the satisfaction of hoping in this
way to recover perfect health, which is the foundation of all the other goods one
can have in this life.”

—Rene Descartes

“For whoever has lived in such a manner that his conscience cannot reproach him
with ever having failed to do all those things that he has judged best (which is
what I mean here by ‘pursuing virtue’) receives thereby a satisfaction that has so
much power to make him happy that the most violent surges of the passions are
never strong enough to trouble the tranquillity of his soul.”

—Rene Descartes
“Fear, anger, stress—these negative, undermining emotions and strained
behaviors have an antidote. It is called Fudōshin: to be the calm in the eye of the
storm, possess and maintain inner calm and focus in the face chaos, adversity,
and conflict.”
—Winslow Swart

“I TOO AM AN EPICUREAN. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of

Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece and
Rome have left us. Epictetus, indeed, has given us what was good of the Stoics.”

—Thomas Jefferson

“I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus...

-Happiness is the aim of life.

-Virtue the foundation of happiness.
-Utility the test of virtue.
-Pleasure active and Indolent.
Indolence [ataraxia] is the absence of pain, the true felicity.
-Active, consists in agreeable motion; it is not happiness, but the means to
produce it.
-Thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity; eating the means to obtain it.
-The summum bonum is to be not pained in body, nor troubled in mind.i.e.
Indolence of body, tranquillity of mind.
-To procure tranquillity of mind we must avoid desire and fear, the two principal
diseases of the mind.
-Man is a free agent.
-Virtue consists in:
1. Prudence
2. Temperence
3. Fortitude
4. Justice.
To which are opposed:
1. Folly.
2. Desire.
3. Fear.
4. Deceit.
—Thomas Jefferson
“As to things that are not in any way in our control, however good they may be,
we should never desire them passionately, not only because they may not come
to pass, and may therefore afflict us all the more, the more we wished for them,
but mainly because, by occupying our thoughts, they distract us from setting our
affections on other things of which the acquisition is entirely in our control.”

—Rene Descartes

“In life, too much leisure produces extraneous thoughts, and too much work
keeps you from your true nature. Thus you cannot completely ignore worrying
about your own welfare, at the same time you should not completely shun the
pleasures of leisure.”

—Hong Zicheng
“And it seems to me that the error we most commonly commit in relation to our
desires is to fail to distinguish sufficiently between things that are entirely in our
control and those that are not. For, as to those that are entirely in our control,
that is, that depend on our free will, provided we know they are good, we cannot
desire them too fervently, because to do good things that are in our power is to
pursue virtue, and it is certain that we cannot have too fervent a desire for
virtue.”

—Rene Descartes

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
—Seneca
“Our passions cannot be directly aroused or banished by the action of our will;
but they can be indirectly, by the representation of things that are habitually
associated with the passions we want to have, and that are contrary to those we
wish to reject. Thus, to arouse boldness in oneself, and banish terror, it is not
enough to will to do so: we must instead set ourselves to consider the reasons,
objects, or examples that will persuade us that the danger is not all that great.”

—Rene Descartes
“Now, to know such things is very useful to anyone as an encouragement to
concentrate on regulating his passions. For since, with a little well-directed effort,
one can change the movements of the brain in animals, it is clear that this can be
done even more successfully in human beings, and that even those who have the
weakest souls could acquire a very absolute command of all their passions, if one
were to take the trouble to train them and guide them properly.”

—Rene Descartes
“Since our will tends to pursue or avoid only what our intellect represents as good
or bad, we need only to judge well in order to act well, and to judge as well as we
can in order to do our best—that is to say, in order to acquire all the virtues and
in general all the other goods we can acquire. And when we are certain of this, we
cannot fail to be happy.”

—Rene Descartes
“One of the main points of my own ethical code is to love life without fearing
death”

—Rene Descartes
“Though anger’s indignation comes from an excessively high opinion of itself, so
that it fancies itself high-spirited, it’s in fact puny and petty.”
—Seneca

“I would next observe that the word ‘pleasure’ is used by Epicurus with a different
meaning from that in which it is used by his adversaries.
For they have all restricted the meaning of the word to sensual pleasures;
whereas he extended it to cover all the contentments of the mind, as can readily
be seen from what Seneca and some others have written about him. Now, among
the pagan philosophers, there were three main opinions concerning the supreme
good and the end of our actions, namely, that of Epicurus, who said it was
pleasure; that of Zeno, who held that it was virtue; and that of Aristotle, for
whom it comprised every perfection, both of body and of soul. All these three
opinions, it seems to me, can be accepted as true, and made compatible, as long
as they are favourably interpreted.”

—Rene Descartes
“How stupid, getting angry at things that neither deserved nor feel our anger...
What’s more, as it’s a mark of a lunatic to become angry with objects that lack a
soul, so it is to become angry with animals incapable of speech, who do us no
wrong because they lack the will:
for it’s not a wrong unless it proceeds from an intention.”

—Seneca
“For anyone who judges himself despised is inferior to the one who despises him,
but the one who is indeed a great spirit and a true judge of his own worth takes
no vengeance for an injury, because he just doesn’t feel it.”

—Seneca
“This was Sextius’s practice: When the day was spent and he had retired to his
night’s rest, he asked his mind, “Which of your ills did you heal today? Which vice
did you resist? In what aspect are you better?” Your anger will cease and become
more controllable if it knows that every day it must come before a judge. Is there
anything finer, then, than this habit of scrutinizing the entire day? What sort of
sleep follows this self-examination—how peaceful, how deep and free, when the
mind has been either praised or admonished, when the sentinel and secret censor
of the self has conducted its inquiry into one’s character! I exercise this
jurisdiction daily and plead my case before myself. When the light has been
removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that’s now mine, I
examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing
from myself, passing nothing by. For why should I fear any consequence from my
mistakes, when I’m able to say, “See that you don’t do it again, but now I forgive
you. In that discussion you spoke too aggressively: from now on don’t get
involved with people who don’t know what they’re talking about. People who’ve
never learned don’t want to learn. You admonished that fellow more candidly
than you should, and as a result you didn’t correct him, you off ended him; in the
future consider not just whether what you say is true but whether the person
you’re talking to can take the truth. A good man delights in being admonished,
but all the worst people have the hardest time putting up with correction.”
—Seneca

“Virtues are habits; for, indeed, when we go wrong it is seldom because we lack
the theoretical knowledge of what we ought to do, but only because we lack the
practical knowledge, that is, the firm habit of belief as to what we ought to do.”

—Rene Descartes

“If someone could take these two words to heart, and use them to govern and
control himself, he will be free from fault for the most part and live a most
peaceful life. These two words, he used to say, are anechou and apechou [bear
and forbear].”

—Epictetus, Fragments
“Trees, laced in mountain mist, the wind scatters a rainstorm of fragrant petals.
The green willows, it is said, are without feeling—why then do they try so hard to
touch the traveller with their catkins?”

—Yang Wanli
“If we take the universe as a great melting pot, and nature as a great foundryman,
what place is it not right for us to go? Calmly we die; quietly we live.”

—Chuang Tzu
“The wise man is calm and even handed in dealing with error; he is not the enemy
of the mistaken, but corrects them; and as he goes forth each day he will think:”I
will meet many who have given themselves over to wine, many who are lustful,
many ungrateful, many greedy, many who are driven by the madness of
ambition.” He will view all these things in as kindly a way as a physician views the
sick.”
—Seneca, On Anger 2.10.6
“Looking behind, I am filled with gratitude,
looking forward, I am filled with vision,
looking upwards I am filled with strength,
looking within, I discover peace.”

—Quero Apache Prayer

“Having killed anger
you sleep in ease.
Having killed anger
you do not grieve.
The noble ones praise
the slaying of anger
— with its honeyed crest
& poison root —
for having killed it
you do not grieve.”

—Buddha
“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve
it.”
—René Descartes
“If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it
comes.”
—Seneca
“Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him
overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth!”
—Buddha
“What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for
you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is
gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in
one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of
misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter
doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough
if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If
your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes
can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of
others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize
above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not
hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you
simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be
how you are imprinted on their memory.”

—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call a real driver; other
people are but holding the reins.”

—Buddha
“Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.“

—Alfred Tennyson

“Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches; trust is the best of
relationships, Nirvana (being without negative emotions) the highest happiness.”

—Buddha, Dhammapada

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of
thinking.”
—Marcus Aurelius

“As the Epicureans say, gratitude is the most important factor contributing to a
pleasant life.”
—Plutarch

“The vitality of all people inevitably comes from their peace of mind. When
anxious, you lose this guiding thread; when angry, you lose this basic point. When
you are anxious or sad, pleased or angry, the Way has no place within you to
settle.
Passions and desire: still them!
Folly and disturbance: correct them!
Do not push it! Do not pull it!
Good fortune will naturally return to you, and that Way will naturally come to you
so you can rely on and take counsel from it. If you are tranquil then you will attain
it; If you are agitated you will lose it.”
—Kuan Tzu, Inward Training

“If you are able to cast off sorrow, fleeting joy, anger, desire, and profit-seeking,
your mind will revert to equanimity. The true condition of the mind is that it finds
calmness beneficial and, by it, attains repose. Do not disturb it, do not disrupt it
and harmony will naturally develop.”
—Kuan Tzu, Inward Training

“When your body is not aligned, the inner power will not come. When you are not
tranquil within, your mind will not be well ordered. Align your body, assist the
inner power, then it will gradually come on its own.”
—Kuan Tzu, Inward Training
"As Ajahn Chah taught, 'When you have wisdom, contact with experience is like
standing at the bottom of a ripe mango tree. We get to choose between the good
and rotten mangoes. It is all to your profit, because you know which fruits will
make you sick and which are healthy.'"
Quoted by Jack Kornfield in "The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings
of Buddhist Psychology"

“Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins
of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human
mind: Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as
compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly
influences our experience of the world.”
—Sam Harris

“Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want
to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the
treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be
taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm
you”
—Oscar Wilde

“The practices of self-discipline advocated in the Kuan Tzu and its companion
texts parallel practices advocated in other textual sources of early Taoism. In fact,
they are not altogether unlike those found in many other mystical traditions
throughout the world.They are essentially apophatic that is, they involve a
systematic process of negating, forgetting, or emptying out the contents of
consciousness (perceptions, emotions, desires, thoughts) found in ordinary
experience based in the ego-self. This systematic emptying leads to increasingly
profound states of tranquility until one experiences a fully concentrated inner
consciousness of unity, which is filled with light and clarity and is not tied to an
individual self.”
—Harold D. Roth
“Epicurus was always saying, “display greatness of soul.”

—Philodemus of Gadara

“Control yourself

Control anger

Cling to discipline

Praise virtue

Practice what is just

Exercise nobility of character

Shun what belongs to others

Nothing to excess

Speak well of everyone

Act when you know

Test the character

Give back what you have received

Look down on no one

Be jealous of no one

Gain possessions justly

Be happy with what you have

Live without sorrow

Finish the race without shrinking back

Deal kindly with everyone

Be courteous

Pursue harmony”

-My favorite Delphic maxims are a set of 147 aphorisms inscribed at Delphi.
Originally, they were said to have been given by the Greek god Apollo's Oracle at
Delphi and were therefore attributed to Apollo himself”

"Therefore give careful consideration to hope and fear alike; and whenever the
situation remains uncertain, do yourself a favor and give credence to the thing
you prefer. If the weight of opinion rests with fear, throw your support the other
way.

"Accordingly, weigh carefully your hopes as well as your fears, and whenever all
the elements are in doubt, decide in your own favor; believe what you prefer. And
if fear wins a majority of the votes, incline in the other direction anyhow, and
cease to harass your soul"
“Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a
project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has
nothing to lose. What he desires is non-desire; what he learns is to unlearn.“
—Lao Tzu

—Seneca, Letter 13
“By attending to the details of this present moment, by choosing not to recollect
the past or plan for the future, you are engaged in a process of creating yourself
in a specific and deliberate way.”

—Stephen Batchelor

"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of

books."

-Walt Whitman

“Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this
hour.”

—Walt Whitman

“Why do you scrutinize too keenly your own trouble, my good sir, and continue to
make it ever vivid and fresh in your mind, but do not direct your thoughts to
those good things which you have? "Hunting bad when good was at hand."

Most persons, in fact, do pass by the excellent and palatable conditions of their
lot and hasten to those that are unpleasant and disagreeable... For it is the act of
a madman to be distressed at what is lost and not rejoice at what is saved, but
like little children, who, if someone takes away one of their many toys, will throw
away all the rest as well and cry and howl; in the same way, if we are troubled by
Fortune in one matter, we make everything else also unprofitable by lamenting
and taking it hard.”

—Plutarch

“Often a man leaves his spacious mansion, because he is utterly bored with being
at home, and then suddenly returns on finding that he is no better off when he is
out. He races out to his country villa, driving his Gallic ponies hell-for-leather. You
would think he was dashing to save a house on fire. But the moment he has set
foot on the threshold, he gives a yawn or falls heavily asleep in search of oblivion
or even dashes back to the city. In this way people endeavor to run away from
themselves; but since they are of course unable to make good their escape, they
remain firmly attached to themselves against their will, and hate themselves
because they are sick and do not understand the cause of their malady.”

—Lucretius (Epicurean)

“They (The Stoics) make a division of the mind into two parts, one of which has a
share in reason, while the other does not. In the part which has a share in reason
they put tranquility that is, a calm and quiet consistency; in the other, the
turbulent motions of anger and desire, which are opposed to reason and inimical
to it.”

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4.10

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take

eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life
belongs to those who live in the present."

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Just like a punch coming at you, words have energy. Even when the words show
up inside of your own mind, they have energy. You feel that energy when
someone criticizes you. You also feel that energy when you criticize yourself. You
already know how to slip a punch. Even if the punch only misses you by a fraction
of an inch, the energy sails right by you. Words are like that; the combat is close,
it’s within you. So the best thing a fighter can do is “slip” or redirect the words,
the same way they might “slip” or redirect a punch."

"Life and death, profit and loss, failure and success, poverty and wealth, value and
worthlessness, praise and blame, hunger and thirst, cold and heat—these are
natural changes in the order of things. They alternate with one another like day
and night. No one knows where one ends and the other begins.

Therefore, they should not disturb our peace or enter into our souls. Live so that
you are at ease, in harmony with the world, and full of joy. Day and night, share
the springtime with all things, thus creating the seasons in your own heart. This is
caIled achieving full harmony."

—Chuang Tzu

“In the hearts of the wise, there should be no room for hatred. Only a fool would
hate good men; and as for the bad, there is no reason to hate them either.
Weakness is a disease of the body, and similarly wickedness is a disease of the
mind. We feel sympathy rather than hatred for those who are sick, and those who
suffer from a disability greater than any physical ailment deserve pity rather than
blame.”

—Boethius

“But look at what the universal laws decree. Suppose that you have devoted your
mind to higher things. You would not then need a judge to give you some kind of
prize. It is you yourself who have achieved this excellent state. And suppose you
turn to the bad. You don’t need someone else to say that this must be punished,
because you have done this to yourself.”

—Boethius

"More things frighten us, Lucilius, than really affect us, and we are more often
afflicted in thought than in fact."

"My advice to you is this, rather: don’t be miserable before it is time. Those things
you fear as if they were impending may never happen; certainly they have not
happened yet."

"Real dangers have an inherent limit; anything that arises from uncertainty,
though, is given over to conjecture and to unrestrained anxiety. Hence our most
pernicious, our most uncontrollable fears are the crazy ones. Our other fears are
unreasonable; these are unreasoning. So let us look carefully at the facts."
"How many unexpected things have come to pass! How many of our expectations
never happen at all!

Even if it is to come, what good does it do to anticipate your grief? You will grieve
soon enough, when it comes; in the meantime, allow yourself something better."
-Seneca, Letter 13

“But what is it that you really want? You want to fortify yourself against need by
storing up plenty, and yet what you do has exactly the opposite effect. You have
precious furniture, but that requires guards. Those who have a lot need a lot. It’s
expensive to be rich! Those who have almost nothing measure themselves by the
requirements of nature rather than by the extravagances of ambition or vanity.
Are you not able to find value in yourself? If you could see that, you wouldn’t
need all those external trinkets. Is your world so topsy-turvy that a living, rational,
almost godlike being would need the possession of all this lifeless stuff to be
happy?"

-Boethius

"It is difficult for both of us if you wallow in grief and universalize it, complaining
that if you are not absolutely happy then you must be absolutely miserable. After
all, who is so happy that there is not a single thing he wouldn’t prefer to change?
The human condition is such that even the most
fortunate are not free from worry. Good fortune is not something we possess
entirely or forever...

Consider, too, that most people who are extremely lucky in their lives are the
most sensitive to any slight adversity because they aren’t used to having to deal
with disappointments and frustrations, and therefore they are the most easily
upset. There are people in the world who would trade places with you–just as you
are now–and think that they were in heaven. This place that you complain about
as remote and an exile is home to the people who live here. Almost nothing is
inherently miserable unless you think it is. And contrariwise, a man who knows
how to find contentment can be happy in almost any circumstance. Whose
happiness is so complete that, if he were in a mood to complain, he could not find
something he might prefer to change or improve? And how is it that troubles,
however bitter, can besmirch a man’s contented mood? Happiness is a good
thing, surely, but it is a mood and no matter how pleasant it may be, one cannot
prevent its passing when it will, as moods do. Which means that happiness itself is
wretched, inasmuch as it neither endures reliably nor, even when it is present,
satisfies. Why then do men look outside themselves for happiness when it is
surely to be found inside? It is error that confuses you, and ignorance...If
happiness is the highest good of a rational man, and if whatever can be taken
away cannot be the highest good (because that which can’t be taken away must
be a higher good), then it makes no sense to say that
good fortune can supply happiness"

--Boethius

"That my nature is changeable you know perfectly well. I, Fortune, have a wheel,
and I turn it so that what is low is raised high and what is up is brought down. You
ascend? Fine! But you must acknowledge that it can’t be wrong for you to have to
descend again. You were not unaware of how a wheel works...You have had more
than an average share of the good things I can give, but even now I have not
deserted you entirely, for my mutability still gives you reason to hope for better
things to come. But it is irrational to pine away and to suppose that you are
different from the rest of mankind and that you live under a law that applies only
to yourself.’"

-Boethius

"Who has composed himself in the face of fate and crushed it beneath his heel?
Who has a life in proper order, prepared for good fortune or bad? Only he can
hold his head high, untroubled by the tides of contingency the waves of the sea,
Vesuvius’ showers of fire, or the mighty thunderbolts that descend from above to
demolish lofty towers. Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power,
the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not understand that anger is
helpless, fear is pointless, and desire is all a delusion...
“Now,” Lady Philosophy said, “have you understood what I have been saying? Has
it sunk in, or are you a donkey hearing a lute? Why are you still weeping? As
Homer tells us, ‘Speak out, don’t hold it buried in your heart. If you want the
physician’s cure, you must bare your wound.”

-Boethius

“Since the powers of office are rarely given to good men, what reason do we have
to honour the office rather than the quality of the man who holds it? What power
does any of us have over anything outside of ourselves? Can a free mind be
commanded in anything? If an office had any natural good in it, would it not
convey such virtue to the man who held it?”

—Boethius

“Apply reason to difficulties: what is hard can be softened, what is narrow can be
expanded, and heavy loads can be less of a burden on the shoulders when borne
skillfully.”

—Seneca

"If the wise man gets angry at every infraction and gets excited and saddened at
every injustice, then is there nothing more unhappy than the wise man, for all his
life will be spent in anger and grief."

—Seneca

“The man of tranquil mind causes no annoyance either to himself or to others.”

—Epicurus

“There is no need to spoil the present by longing for what is not; rather reflect
that even what you have was beyond your expectations.”

—Epicurus
“One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole
propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf.
He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a
fish.

About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach trying to relieve
some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach
and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder
to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish
that way,” said the businessman. “You should be working rather than lying on the
beach!”

The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will
my reward be?”

“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s
answer.

“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling.

The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat,
which will then result in larger catches of fish!”

“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.

The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s
questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he
said.

“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.

The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a
fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish
for you!”
Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”

The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you
understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your
living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking
at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing
right now?”

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of a

universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”

—William James

“The benefits of this deeper breathing are manifold. Chest breathing is mainly
emergency breathing. One only has to think of the heaving breast of anger, grief,
or excitement to realize this. To breathe all the time using emergency breathing
means one is always on edge, in an unnatural state of tension. Simply by using the
stomach to breath, one can experience a release of tension, a calmness and poise
not known before. Furthermore, a greater portion of the capacity of the lungs is
used, so the system can adjust more readily to the needs for more or less oxygen.
The body’s metabolism can in this way be more finely tuned to the needs of the
situation, and so the body becomes healthier at a very fundamental level. There
have been a number of studies carried out on the physiological benefit of this
slower, deeper breathing.”

“What is meant by a "true man" The true men of old were not afraid when they
stood alone in their views. No great exploits. No plans. If they failed, no sorrow.
No self-congratulation in success. They scaled cliffs, never dizzy, plunged in water,
never wet, walked through fire and were not burnt. Thus their knowledge
reached all the way to Tao.

The true men of old slept without dreams, woke without worries. Their food was
plain. They breathed deep. True men breathe from their heels. Others breathe
with their gullets, half-strangled. In dispute they heave up arguments like vomit.
Where the fountains of passion lie deep the heavenly springs are soon dry. The
true men of old knew no lust for life,
no dread of death. Their entrance was without gladness, their exit, yonder,
without resistance. Easy come, easy go. They did not forget where from, nor ask
where to, nor drive grimly forward fighting their way through life. They took life
as it came, gladly; took death as it came, without care; and went away, yonder,
yonder! They had no mind to fight Tao. They did not try, by their own contriving,
to help Tao along. These are the ones we call true men. Minds free, thoughts
gone. Brows clear, faces serene. Were they cool? Only cool as autumn. Were they
hot? No hotter than spring. All that came out of them came quiet, like the four
seasons.”
-Chuang Tzu

“Meditation is a relaxed attentive state, a passive activity. Both aspects are

important. So when Zen talks about “no mind,” it does not mean complete
mental blankness, as though one were asleep. It implies freedom from thought
pollution. When the incessant chatter drops out, what remains are those few
mental processes essential to the present moment.”

—James Austin

"Let us be bold enough not only to prune away the branches of unhappiness, but
to yank out its very roots, down to the last fiber...Of this one thing you must be
assured: unless the mind is healed—which cannot happen without philosophy—
there will be no end to our unhappiness."

—Cicero

“Those who lack within themselves the means for living a blessed and happy life
will find any age painful. But for those who seek good things within themselves,
nothing imposed on them by nature will seem troublesome.”
—Cicero

"Seeds of the virtues are inborn in our characters, and if they were allowed to
mature, nature itself would lead us to perfect happiness."

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

"When thoughts form an endless procession I vow to notice the spaces between
them and give the songbirds a chance to be heard."

-Robert Aiken

"Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your
mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will
come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty:
'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be
ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what
has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much
diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it
cannot stand up to it when taken on its own."

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.36

“Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame
and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the
improvement of your soul?”

—Socrates

“Let us become wholly masters of ourselves. For a man is unhappy either from
angst or from unlimited desires, but if a man bridle these he may secure for
himself the blessing of reason. In so far; as thou art in distress, thou art in distress
because thou hast forgotten what Nature teaches.”

—Epicurus
“Vain is the discourse of that philosopher by which no human suffering is healed.”

—Epicurus

“We can look upon another's possessions without perturbation and can enjoy
purer pleasure than they, for we are free from their arduous struggle.”

—Diogenes of Œnoanda (Epicurean)

“The just man enjoys the greatest peace of mind, the unjust is full of the utmost
disquietude and turbulence.”

—Epicurus

"Let yourself be carried along by things so that you can let your heart-mind
roam."

-Chuang Tzu

“Retreat into yourself, then, as much as you can.

Spend your time with those who will improve you; extend a welcome to those
you can improve. The effect is reciprocal, for people learn while teaching.”

—Seneca

"Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating
and thinking. “Child-likeness” 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.

He thinks like the showers coming down from the sky, he thinks like the waves
rolling on the ocean, he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens, he
thinks like the green foliage shooting forth in the relaxing spring breeze.

Indeed, he is the showers, the ocean, the stars, the foliage. When a man reaches
this stage of “spiritual” development, he is a Zen artist for life.”

—DT Suzuki

We don’t find anything strange about spending years learning to walk, read and
write, or acquire professional skills. We spend hours doing physical exercises to
get our bodies into shape. Sometimes we expend tremendous physical energy
pedaling a stationary bike. To sustain such tasks requires a minimum of interest or
enthusiasm. This interest comes from believing that these efforts are going to
benefit us in the long run.

Working with the mind follows the same logic. How could it be subject to change
without the least effort, just from wishing alone? That makes no more sense than
expecting to learn to play a Mozart sonata by just occasionally doodling around
on the piano.

“For where there are disturbances, and sorrows, and fears, and unsatisfied
desires, and aversions and envies and jealousies, how can happiness find its way
in among all of that?”

—Epictetus

"The reason why the ancients taught us to pursue the best life and not the most
pleasurable was so that the will that is right and good might have pleasure as its
companion, but not as its leader."

—Seneca, On The Happy Life

"If you don't want an angry temper, then don't feed the habit. Give it nothing to
help its increase. Be quiet at first and reckon the days in which you have not been
angry. "I used to be angry every day; now every other day; and then every third
and fourth day." As time goes on, the habit is first weakened and is then
eventually overridden by a wiser response."

-Epictetus, On Forming New Habits...

“I teach about important matters and endeavor to disentangle the mind from the
strangling knots of superstition.”

—Lucretius (Epicurean)

“Watch the stars in their courses as one who runs alongside them, and frequently
contemplate the reciprocal transformations of elements, for thoughts such as
these cleanse away the dross of earthbound life.”

—Emperor Marcus Aurelius

“A courtesan having told the philosopher Aristippus that she was with child by
him, he replied, "You are no more sure of this than if, after running through
coarse thickets, you were to say you had been pricked by one in particular."

“Diogenes, the Cynic, washing the dirt from his vegetables, saw Aristippus, The
Cyrenaic passing and jeered at, in these terms,

"If you had learnt to make these your diet, you would not have paid court to
kings," to which his rejoinder was,

“And if you knew how to associate with men, you would not be washing
vegetables."

“When the wind blows through the scattered bamboos, they do not hold its
sound after it has gone. When the wild geese fly over a cold lake, it does not
retain their shadows after they have passed. So the mind of the superior man
begins to work only when an event occurs; and it becomes a void again when the
matter ends.”
—Hong Zicheng

"Only a fool fears death. Because it causes pain ahead of time, not because it will
cause pain when it comes. For something that causes no trouble when present
causes only a groundless pain when anticipated."

-Epicurus

“With Epicurus the great obstacle to happiness is neither pain nor poverty, nor
the absence of the ordinary good things of life; it is rather whatever contributes
to disturb our serenity and mental satisfaction, whatever causes fear, anxiety in a
word, mental trouble... Groundless fear must be removed by the study of nature,
which shows that the fear of death, the fear of the gods, belief in Providence and
divine retribution are chimeras; desire must be regulated by prudence and the
virtues cultivated as true indispensable means to a pleasant life.”

—R.D. Hicks

"It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without
ever being worsted."

—Aristippus

“Virtue, when it considers what should be done and what should not be done, is
called prudence; when it controls desire and defines what is moderate and
seasonable in pleasures, it is called temperance; when it is concerned with
dealings and contracts with other men, it is called justice.”

—Aristo

“Virtue is a disposition conformable to reason, desirable in and for itself and not
because of any hope or fear or any external motive. And well-being depends on
virtue, on virtue alone, since the virtuous soul is adapted to secure harmony in
the whole of life.”
—Diogenes Laertius, On The Stoics

“The philosophical systems of Zeno and Epicurus may profitably be studied

together. For, in spite of obvious differences, over which their adherents for
centuries waged internecine warfare, it is easy to discern the fundamental
similarity between them. Both schools sought by devious paths one and the same
goal. Both exalted practice above theory, and conceded to sense and experience
their full right. Both, in short, were crude forms of realism, which for the time
(and not for that time alone) had come into its inheritance and held full sway over
the minds of men.”

-Robert Hicks

"Misfortune must be cured through gratitude for what has been lost and the
knowledge that it is impossible to change what has happened."

-Epicurus, Vatican Saying 55

"The great earth burdens me with a body, causes me to toil in life, eases me in old
age, and rests me in death. That which makes my life good, makes my death good
also."

-Chuang Tzu

”Do not let your tongue outrun your thought. Control your temper. Do not desire
impossibilities. Do not hurry on the road. Obey the laws. Remain calm.”

—Chilon

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some
things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have
faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you
can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become
possible.”
—Epictetus

Seneca said, "Do everything as if Epicurus were watching you"...

"Put the question voluntarily to yourself:

Am I tormented without sufficient reason, am I morose, and do I convert what is

not an evil into what is an evil?"

—Seneca

“Suppose that we are together at my house and I invite you to have a cup of tea.
You take your cup, you taste the tea which is contained in the cup, and you drink
a little of it. You seem to take pleasure in the tea. You put your cup on the table
and we continue our conversation.
Now, suppose that I should ask you what you think of the tea. You are going to
use your memory, your
concepts, and your vocabulary in order to give a description of your sensation.
You will say, for example,
"It is very good tea. It is the best Tieh Kuan Ying tea, manufactured at Taipei. I can
still taste it in my mouth. It refreshes me." You could express your sensation in
many other ways. But these concepts and these words describe your direct
experience of the tea; they are not
this experience itself. Indeed, in the direct experience of the tea, you do not make
the distinction that you are the subject of the experience and that the tea is its
object; you do not think that the tea is the best, or the worst, of the Tieh Kuan
Ying of Taipei. There is no concept or word that frames this experience, this pure
sensation resulting from experience. You can give as many descriptions as you
wish, but it is only you who witness this direct experience of the tea that I have
given you. When someone listens to you he can only recreate for himself a certain
sensation, basing this on experiences that he might have had himself in the past
concerning tea. And you yourself, when you try to describe your experience, are
already no longer in the experience. In the experience, you are one with the tea,
there is no distinction between subject and object,
there is no evaluation, there is no discrimination. This pure sensation can be
presented as an example of non-discriminative knowledge. It is that which
introduces us to the heart of reality.”

—Thich Hanh, Zen Keys

“We begin every session with a practice called setting your intention. This is a
contemplative exercise adapted from traditional Tibetan meditation, a kind of
checking-in where we connect with our deeper aspirations so that they may
inform our intentions and motivations.... At the end of a day, or a meditation, or
any other effort we have made, we reconnect with the intentions we set at the
beginning, reflecting on our experience in light of our intentions and rejoicing in
what we have achieved. This is like taking stock at the end of the day. It gives us
another opportunity to connect with our deeper aspirations.”

-Thupten Jinpa

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you
have learned how to live.”

—Lin Yutang

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden
again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises
rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master
seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral
flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself
toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus
happy."

—Albert Camus

“But usually, without being aware of it, we try to change something other than
ourselves, we try to order things outside us. But it is impossible to organize things
if you yourself are not in order.”
—Suzuki Roshi

“We could say that meditation doesn’t have a reason or doesn’t have a purpose.
In this respect it’s unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making
music and dancing. When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a
certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of
music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are
dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a
journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music
the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation.
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the
immediate moment.”

—Alan Watts

"If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts."

Alan Cohen

"The baby looks at things all day without winking; that is because his eyes are not
focussed on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going and
stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself with the surroundings
and moves along with it. These are the principles of mental hygiene."

—Chuang Tzu

“An undeveloped mind is truly harmful. A developed mind is truly beneficial. The
mind when undeveloped and uncultivated entails great suffering. The mind when
developed and cultivated entails great happiness"

—Buddha

“When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation

between a butcher and his customer.
"Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer.

"Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You cannot find here
any piece of meat that is not the best."

At these words Banzan became enlightened.”

“The winter night was so cold that Tanka took the wooden Buddha of the
monastery, chopped it into pieces and lit a bonfire to keep himself warm.”

On the day of his enlightenment, in front of the lecture hall, Tokusan burned to
ashes his commentaries on the sutras.

He said: "However abstruse the teachings are, in comparison with this

enlightenment they are like a single hair to the great sky. However profound the
complicated knowledge of the world, compared to this enlightenment it is like
one drop of water to the great ocean."

Then he left that monastery.

"There is as much freedom of the spirit in watching sparrows on a city street as in

meditating in some mountain solitude under the stars."

-Alan Watts, The Meaning of Happiness

“There are profit and loss, slander and honor, praise and blame, pain and pleasure
in this world; the Enlightened One is not controlled by these external things; they
will cease as quickly as they come.”

—Buddha

Tibetan Mahamudra Meditation:

“IN these twenty-one practices, you will initially develop the state of calm which is
the root of all meditation, and you will learn to contemplate one-pointedly. You
will first use external objects (such as an ordinary pebble or twig, or a holy image
of the Buddha) to meditate upon and only then begin to meditate without using
any external objects at all. Following this, subsequent practices will lead you to
examine the nature of mind and to the realization of Mahamudra. Develop these
practices one by one.

PRACTICE 1: Focusing upon an ordinary pebble or twig. For this session, set out a
small pebble in front of you as your meditative object; and just stare at it one-
pointedly, letting your awareness neither stray from it nor identify with it.

PRACTICE 2: Focusing upon an image of the Buddha. Here you may concentrate
upon an image to symbolize the body of the Buddha, a syllable to symbolize his
speech, or a glowing dot to symbolize his mind.

PRACTICE 3: In this practice, you will focus upon a syllable; so visualize in front of
you the disc of a moon, the size of a fingernail, and upon it the syllable HUM, as
fine as if it were written with a single hair, and concentrate upon this.

PRACTICE 4: Now you should focus upon a glowing dot visualized in front of you,
in the shape of an egg and about the size of a pea, shining and wondrous, and
concentrate upon this as before.

PRACTICE 5: Focusing upon the moving breath. Let your body and your mind be
tranquil, and focus upon the inhalation and exhalation of your breath; and with
no other thoughts simply count your breaths as they move in and out.

PRACTICE 6: In this practice, you will follow your breath as it is inhaled and
exhaled; and note for how long the breath is exhaled, and for how long it is
inhaled, and through how much of your body it moves.

PRACTICE 7: Now let your awareness move with your breath, from the tip of your
nose all the way down to your navel, and watch how it goes and comes and is
held within.

PRACTICE 8: Now spend the sessions examining individually the five elements of
earth, air, fire, water, and space which make up your body, and you will become
aware of how the breath increases and decreases as it moves in and out.

PRACTICE 9: And finally sense the air to be white as it is exhaled, blue as it is

inhaled, and red as it is held within, and the motion of the breath will become
visible to you.

PRACTICE 10: Holding the breath. Breathe out forcibly three times, then gently
draw in the upper air through your nose and draw up the lower air from your
intestines, and try to hold it as long as you can until your thoughts are stopped
and your mind no longer strays to external objects.

PRACTICE 11: Cutting off every thought that occurs, in the next session you will
begin to meditate without using any external objects at all. Continue to
contemplate as in the previous practice; you will find your mind following after
external objects, imposing its constructs upon them, and thinking that things are
real. Do not let this continue, but discipline yourself with mindfulness, and try to
prevent every single one of these thoughts. And thus contemplate, cutting off at
its very root any thought that occurs.

PRACTICE 12: During these sessions, you will be able to contemplate like this for
an ever increasing period of time; indeed, it will seem that these thoughts are
becoming more numerous than before, and following one after the other as if in a
continuous stream. This is what we call recognizing your thoughts as you might
become aware of an enemy; it is what we call the first state of calm, like the
rushing of a mountain cataract.

PRACTICE 13: In this practice, you will now let these thoughts do whatever they
want, not cutting them off at all, yet not falling under their spell. PRACTICE 14:
You now enter the middle state of calm, like the gentle flowing of a river. Now
your thoughts can no longer move you one way or the other, and you can begin
to abide one-pointedly in a state of calm. To remain in this state continuously
settles all the sediment in your mind. As Gampopa says: If you do not stir the
water, it is clear; and if you leave your mind alone, it is blissful.
PRACTICE 15: Leaving your mind alone. In this practice you will keep your mind as
if you were spinning a thread, keeping an even tension upon it. For if your
contemplation is too tight, then it snaps; and if it is too loose, then you slip into
indolence.

PRACTICE 16: Now in these sessions, you will keep your mind as if it were a
snapped rope. For all our prior antidotes to thoughts have been thoughts
themselves; it is a thought to think that you must impose no constructs upon
reality. You have simply substituted one thought for another: this is what we call
mindfulness chasing an object, and it is a fault in contemplation. So cast aside
your mindfulness itself: keep your mind free of all effort and let it flow naturally
and spontaneously in the stream of calm; this is what we call keeping your mind
as if it were a snapped rope.

PRACTICE 17: Now you will try to keep your mind as if it were a child looking at
the murals painted on a temple wall. For you are now without thought and
without feeling in your body and mind: and thus you will see visions of smoke and
other forms of emptiness: you may feel you are fainting, or as if floating in empty
space. When these ecstatic visions occur, you must neither enjoy them nor fear
them and thus neither think they are important nor cling to them: this is what we
call keeping your mind as if it were a child looking at the paintings in a temple.

PRACTICE 18: And finally you will keep your mind as if it were an elephant being
pricked by a pin. For while your mind is fixed, your mindfulness is automatically
recognizing every thought that occurs. What is to be cast aside and that which
casts aside meet each other, and your thoughts can no longer jump about from
one to the next. The antidote to thought now occurs spontaneously and naturally,
without needing any effort at all on your part: this is what we call mindfulness
holding its object. Thus you feel your thoughts occur, but you yourself never cut
them off nor react to them in any way: this is what we call trying to prick an
elephant with a pin. And this is what we call the final state of calm, like an ocean
without waves. You recognize the changing within the changeless, and you simply
leave it alone, for you see the changeless within the changing.

PRACTICE 19: In these sessions, you will now analyze this changeless and
changing, to gain the realization of insight, and you may finally reach the state of
meditationless meditation. Enter the state of calm wherein you are no longer
imposing any constructs upon reality, but simply letting it appear before you.
Look upon your changelessness and see its true nature; see how it is changeless
and see how it changes from its state of changelessness. Are the changes in the
mind something other than the changeless, or is it a changing within the
changeless itself? What is the true nature of this changing? And how does the
changing stop?

PRACTICE 20: And now you are beginning to realize that you cannot see the
changeless apart from the changing, or the changing apart from the changeless;
you cannot find the true nature of the changeless or the changing. You are
beginning to see that your introspection is finding nothing there at all, that the
watched and the watcher are both the same. You cannot set out its true nature: it
is what we call the vision beyond all thought.

PRACTICE 21: The realization of final insight. Now you know how to leave every
thought and passion entirely alone, not cutting it off at all yet not falling under its
spell. During these sessions, try simply to recognize every thought for what it is:
let it spontaneously become emptiness, pure in and of itself, without your casting
it aside. In this way you learn how to make use of all hindrances; this is what we
call making a hindrance into the path itself. By just recognizing the thought, the
imposition of a construct, you are freed from it spontaneously; you realize that
there is no difference at all between what you cast aside and that which casts
aside. And now too there is born in you exceeding compassion for all those living
creatures who do not realize the essence of their minds. And you will spend your
lives working for the sake of these others, but all your meditations have now
cleansed away any idea that these others really exist. And it is with regard to
practice such as this that we say: I neither keep nor cast aside anything that
happens on the path.

CONCLUSION: Meditationless meditation. And now you have realized that every
event is innate and spontaneous and is the body of reality itself, as the world
appears before you in your meditationless meditation. For the passions are
finished, the antidote which casts them aside is finished; and the circle is broken.
There is no place else to go; the journey is over; there is no place higher than this.
As it is said: Ha! This is the knowledge of my own experience. It is beyond the
ways of speech; it is not an object of the mind. I have nothing to teach at all: know
it yourself, for you yourself are its symbol. Do not think, do not ponder, do not
ask, do not meditate: but stay in your natural and spontaneous flow. adapted
from THE MANUAL OF THE SPONTANEOUS GREAT SYMBOL, translated by Stephan
Beyer

"Before I had studied Ch'an [Zen] for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains,
and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the
point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers.
But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see
mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers."

-Qingyuan Weixin

“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind become still. The ten thousand things
rise and fall while the self watches their return. They grow and flourish and then
return to the source. Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of
nature.”

—Lao Tzu

“We ought to lay claim to the things that are in our control, but what is not in our
control we ought to entrust to the universe and gladly yield to it... The character
of Nature is to change and once a man resolves to focus his thoughts and
persuades himself willingly to accept the inevitable, he will lead
a life well measured and in harmony with the universe.”

— Musonius Rufus

“The wise man does not think that disgrace lies in enduring so called injuries and
insults, but rather in doing them. To scheme how to bite back the biter and to
return evil for evil is not the act of a human being but of a wild beast. How much
better the conduct of the philosopher who finds worthy of forgiveness anyone
who wrongs him. A good man can never be wronged by a bad man.”

—Musonius Rufus, Frag. X.

“Virtue is not theoretical knowledge, it is practical application, just like the arts of
medicine and music. Practical exercise is more important for the student of
philosophy than for the student of medicine or any similar art, because
philosophy is a greater and more difficult discipline than any other study.”

—Musonius Rufus, Frag. VI.

“To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it occurs.”

—Epictetus

“Guests whom we anxiously expect often fail to come. So the world runs always
contrary to our wishes. How rarely in a hundred years do we open our hearts!”

—Chen Shidao

Asked to name the first principle of Divine Truth, Bodhidharma faced the emperor
and said,

“Who knows?”

—Su Dongpo

“How ridiculous, what a stranger in his own land, is the person who is surprised by
anything that happens in life.”

—Marcus Aurelius

"Moderation increases enjoyment, and makes pleasure even greater."

—Democritus
“Such heinous acts does superstition prompt.”

—Lucretius (Epicurean)

“When you are practicing zazen meditation do not try to stop your thinking. Let it
stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in and let it go out. It
will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered
by it. Do not be bothered by anything. It appears that the something comes from
outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind and if you are
not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer . . .
Many sensations come, many thoughts or images arise but they are just waves
from your own mind. Nothing comes from outside your mind . . . If you leave your
mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.”

—Shunryu Suzuki

Why sit?

'When you sit, everything sits with you.'

—Shunryu Suzuki

A monk was anxious to learn Zen and said : "I have been newly initiated into the
Brotherhood. Will you be gracious enough to show me the way to Zen?

The master said : "Do you hear the murmuring sound of the mountain stream?"

The monk answered : "Yes, I do."

The master said : "Here is the entrance."

“For if men believe, as I do, that this present earth is the only heaven, they will
strive all the more to make heaven of it.”
—Sir Arthur Keith

“The intellectual content of Buddha’s teaching is only half his work, the other half
is his life, his life as lived, as labor accomplished and action carried out. A training,
a spiritual self-training of the highest order, was accomplished and is taught here,
a training about which unthinking people who talk about “quietism” and “Hindu
dreaminess" and the like in connection with Buddha have no conception; they
deny him the cardinal Western virtue of activity. Instead Buddha accomplished a
training of himself and his pupils, exercised a discipline, set up a goal, and
produced results before which even the genuine heroes of European action can
only feel awe.”

—Hermann Hesse

“Our eyes, above all those misused, overstrained eyes of modern man, can be, if
only we are willing, an inexhaustible source of pleasure. When I walk to work in
the morning I see many workers who have just crawled sleepily out of bed,
hurrying in both directions, shivering along the streets. Most of them walk fast
and keep their eyes on the pavement, or at most on the clothes and faces of the
passers-by. Heads up, dear friends!

Just try it once — a tree, or at least a considerable section of sky, is to be seen

anywhere. It does not even have to be blue sky; in some way or another the light
of the sun always makes itself felt. Accustom yourself every morning to look for a
moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the
scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You
will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its
own special lighting. Pay it some heed if you will have for the rest of the day a
remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and
without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights, to
contemplate nature and the city streets, to appreciate the inexhaustible fun of
daily life. From there on to the fully trained artistic eye is the smaller half of the
journey; the principal thing is the beginning, the opening of the eyes.

A stretch of sky, a garden wall overhung by green branches, a strong horse, a

handsome dog, a group of children, a beautiful face — why should we be willing
to be robbed of all this? Whoever has acquired the knack can in the space of a
block see precious things without losing a minute’s time… All things have their
vivid aspects, even the uninteresting or ugly; one must only want to see.

And with seeing come cheerfulness and love and poesy. The man who for the first
time picks a small flower so that he can have it near him while he works has taken
a step toward joy in life.”

—Herman Hesse

“People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea, and near the
mountains; and you too are especially prone to desire such things. But this is a
sign of ignorance, since you have the power to retire within yourself whenever
you wish. For nowhere can a person retire more full of peace and free from care
than into one’s own soul; above all, if one has that place within oneself into which
one can turn one’s attention, one is immediately at ease.”

— Marcus Aurelius

“The search for the exotic, the strange, the unusual, the uncommon has often
taken the form of pilgrimages, of turning away from the world, the 'Journey to the
East,' to another country or to a different religion. The great lesson from the true
mystics, from the Zen monks, and now also from the Humanistic and
Transpersonal psychologists -- that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be
found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard,
and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred -- this lesson can be
easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance
that everything is miraculous.”

—Abraham H. Maslow

"He said, "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is
rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with
fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you
could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as
you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin begin it well and serenely, with too high a
spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its
hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Look for magic in the daily routine."

-Lou Barlow

"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Whether time is long or short, and whether space is broad or narrow, depend
upon the mind. Those whose minds are at leisure can feel one day as long as a
millennium, and those whose thought is expansive can perceive a small house to
be as spacious as the universe."

-Hong Zicheng

“Anger and the sorrow it produces are far more harmful than the things that
make us angry.”

—Marcus Aurelius

“Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or
unnecessarily hurt or dominate or reject another human being, they become
forces for the creation of psychopathology, even if these be small forces. Let them
recognize that every person who is kind, helpful, decent, psychologically
democratic, affectionate, and warm, is a psychotheraputic force, even though a
small one.”

—Abraham H. Maslow
“Some people are content in the midst of deprivation and danger, while others
are miserable despite having all the luck in the world. This is not to say that
external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than
circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is
the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the
lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.”

—Sam Harris

“What is the method of liberation, Tao-hsin asked?”

Who is enslaving you? Seng-ts'an asked.

“No one is enslaving me.”

Then why are you looking for liberation?

At this moment, Tao-hsin awakened.”

Bodhidharma asked Hui-k'o what he desired.

“I have no peace of mind, pacify my mind, I beg you!”

Bring your mind here in front of me and I will pacify it!

“But when I look for it, I can't find it.”

That's it! I have pacified your mind.

At that very moment, Hui-k'o achieved awakening.

“To meet a master, a man who says everything by his simple presence, is to open
oneself to an intense and profound upheaval that passes like a tidal wave over all
the ideas that one might make of a doctrine.”

—Daniel Odier

"We are, therefore, seeking how the mind can follow a smooth and steady course,
well disposed to itself, happily regarding its own condition and with no
interruption to this pleasure, but remaining in a state of peace with no ups and
downs: that will be tranquillity"

—Seneca

“Virtue, finally, is both the cause and guide of pleasure: it constrains us and warns
us that we should pursue each thing within those same limits by which virtue
itself is circumscribed. Why then should virtue be desired if not to allow us to lead
an enjoyable life by avoiding those pleasures we should not seek and seeking
those we should? If virtue brings no pleasure or delight, why should we want it or
make much of it? But if it does, why not concede that the greatest of all goods —
what we should seek above all — is that for the sake of which virtue itself is
desirable?

If perhaps some think that by this Epicurus meant that we should spend our days
wallowing in feasting and drinking, in gambling, games and the pleasures of sex,
such a wastrel Epicurus would hardly deserve our praise. His teaching would
indeed be lamentable if he wanted us to be gluttonous, drunken, debauched,
boastful and promiscuous. But that is not what Epicurus in his wisdom said or
recommended. In fact, so far was he from wanting us to live without virtue that
virtue is actually essential for living up to his teaching, since it constrains and
directs, as it were, all the bodily senses (as we argued already) and does not
permit us to make use of them except when needed. Epicurus does not slide into
pleasure in the manner of animals, without the exercise of judgment and when
necessity does not require it, but rather enjoys it with restraint when it is right to
do so. His theories, therefore, should not be neglected, nor should they be
treated as condemned; and it is clear that the Peripatetics have not sufficiently
understood what it is they are saying.”
—Cosma Raimondi, 1429 CE

“Tzu Chi leaned against an armrest. Looking towards heaven he breathed deeply
and slowly, seeming to lose all sense of self. It seemed as though time had
stopped and he was floating freely in the firmament.

His friend, Yen Cheng, said to himself, “What is going on here? I see before me
Tzu Chi, yet he is not the person I have known. It seems as though his body has
become as wood or as a withered log, it is so still. And, listening to him breathing
and watching, his sight on so far a distance, it seems to me as though his heart
has turned to ashes. How is this possible?”

Later, when Tzu Chi was done with his meditation, Yen Cheng questioned him
about this. “Yes,” answered Tzu Chi, “your question is a good one. Indeed, when I
meditate like that it is as though I lose all sense of myself completely. Can you
understand this?”

— Chuang Tzu

“And what do you think, Kalamas? Are these things healthy or unhealthy?”

“Healthy, sir.”

“And when entered upon and undertaken, do they incline toward welfare and
happiness or don’t they?”

“We agree, sir, that they do.”

“That person, Kalamas, who is a follower of the noble path is thus free of wanting,
free of harming, and without confusion. Clearly conscious and mindful...with a
mind dedicated to loving kindness, compassion, good will, and equanimity that is
abundant, expansive, immeasurable, kindly, and free of harming.”

—from the ANGUTTARA NIKAYA, translated by Andy Olendzki

“Perhaps the inexorable law of Fate constrains us; perhaps God, the universal
arbiter, governs all events; perhaps it is chance that drives human affairs, and
disrupts them: all the same, it is philosophy that must preserve us. Philosophy will
urge us to give willing obedience to God, and but a grudging obedience to
Fortune. It will teach you to follow God/Fate and to cope with chance.”

—Seneca

“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is
destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain.
The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”

—Ramana Maharshi

“ONCE the nun Soma, having returned from her alms round and after her meal,
entered the woods for a noonday rest. Plunging into the depths of the woods, she
sat down under a tree. Then the tempter Mara, desirous of arousing fear,
wavering, and dread in Soma, and wishing to cause her to interrupt her
concentrated meditation, went up to her and said, “The goal is hard to reach,
hard even for sages; it cannot be won by a woman with whatever wisdom she
may have.” Then Soma thought, “Who is this, a human or a nonhuman, who is
saying this? Surely it is the evil Mara who wants to interrupt my concentrated
meditation.” Knowing that it was Mara, she said to him, “What does one’s gender
matter to one whose mind is well-composed, in whom insight is functioning, and
who comprehends the Dharma?” Then the evil Mara thought, “The nun Soma
knows me.” Being sad and sorrowful, he vanished there and then.

—from the SAMYUTTA NIKAYA, translated by C. A. F. Rhys-Davids

"What does virtue achieve for us?

Serenity."

—Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.5

A monk asked a Zen master, “What happens when we die?”
Master replied, "I don’t know.”
The monk said, “What do you mean? Aren’t you a Zen master?”
Master replied, “Yes, but I’m not a dead one.”

“Beyond meditation practice, there is attitude. A beginner must learn to cultivate

what is called, “the poise of a dying man”. What is this poise? It is the poise of
knowing what is important and what is not, and of being accepting and forgiving.
Anyone who has ever been at the bedside of a dying man will understand this
poise. What would the dying man do if someone were to insult him? Nothing.
What would the dying man do if someone were to strike him? Nothing. As he lay
there, would he scheme to become famous or wealthy? No. If someone who had
once offended him were to ask him for his forgiveness would he not give it? Of
course he would. A dying man knows the pointlessness of enmity. Hatred is
always such a wretched feeling. Who wishes to die feeling hatred in his heart? No
one. The dying seek love and peace.”

—Hsu Yun

“If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the
spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your
head about it.”

—Michel de Montaigne

“And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!”

-Marcus Aurelius

“We denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled
and demoralized by the charms of the pleasure of the moment, so blinded by
desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue;
and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will,
which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.”
—Torquatus (Epicurean)

I was not, I was, I am not, I care not (Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo).

-Epictetus

“If passions are excessive impulses and mistaken judgements resulting in

emotional disquietude, there must also be appropriate impulses and correct
judgements resulting in emotional peace. It is a mistake to assume that if the
Stoics reject passion that they seek a life void of any emotion, that is, that they
seek to be emotionally flat. A better reading of Stoicism is that the goal is not
absence of emotion, but a well-disposed emotional life. This is a life in which
impulses are rational, moderate, and held in check. It is a state in which one's
impulses are appropriate to and consistent with the nature of things, both
regarding the truth of the judgement and the degree of the response.”

“A right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life

enjoyable...For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly
comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.”

—Epicurus

“REHEARSE THIS EVERYDAY, so that you will be able to let go of life with
equanimity. Many people grasp and hold on to life, like those caught by a flash
flood who grasp at weeds and brambles. Most are tossed about between the fear
of death and the torments of life: they do not want to live but do not know how
to die. Cast off your anxieties for life, then, and in doing so make life enjoyable for
yourself.”

“He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires and fears is more
than a King.”

—John Milton

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only
ridiculous.”

—David Hume

“But just as we are elated by the anticipation of good things, so we are delighted
by their recollection. Fools are tormented by the memory of former evils; wise
men have the delight of renewing in grateful remembrance the blessings of the
past. We have the power both to obliterate our misfortunes in an almost
perpetual forgetfulness and to summon up pleasant and agreeable memories of
our successes. But when we fix our mental vision closely on the events of the
past, then sorrow or gladness ensues according as these were evil or good.”

—Torquatus, The Epicurean in Cicero’s, On Ends

“Reshape yourself through the power of your will; never let yourself be degraded
by self-will. The will is the only friend of the self, and the will is the only enemy of
the self. To those who have conquered themselves, the will is a friend.”

—The Gita

Have you ever caressed the earth with your eyes and looked into the leaves of a
tree like your lover? Hands sliding through grass, ecstasy through both our bodies.
Leaves shake but nobody responds in kind.
Bright sunlight douses, forgetful of time.
Leaning against you, third eye soft and clear
Each of us should commit to holding each and every one of you dear.

"I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can
perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength,
desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself."

—Hermann Hesse

“Whenever our love becomes too attached to one thing, one faith, one virtue
then I become suspicious...
A long time I castigated myself before gods and laws which were only idols for
me. That was what I did wrong, my anguish, my complicity in the world’s pain. I
increased the world’s guilt and anguish by doing violence to myself, by not daring
to walk toward my own salvation.

The way to salvation leads neither to the left or to the right: it leads into your own
heart and there alone is God and there alone is a peace.”

—Hermann Hesse

“Once seated, strive to still your thoughts. Make your mind one-pointed in
meditation, and your heart will be purified”

—Bhagavad Gita

“It is true that the mind is restless and difficult to control. But it can be
conquered, Arjuna, through regular practice and detachment. Those who lack
self-control will find it difficult to progress in meditation; but those who are self-
controlled, striving earnestly through the right means, will attain the goal”

—Bhagavad Gita

“The only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves anything,
namely trying to see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never been
taught at universities; all that has ever been taught is a critique of words by
means of other words.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

“If you have the strength to tackle any one aspect of misfortune you can tackle all.
When once virtue has toughened the mind it renders it invulnerable on every
side”

—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

THE SERENITY PRACTICE:

“Cultivate the serenity that accepts the things you cannot change, courage to
change the things you can change, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“When you actively turn your thoughts to all the bad consequences of the desires
as they arise in you, the passion for them gradually dries up. As your passion
diminishes, your mind comes under control”

—Bhagavad Gita

“Meditation dissolves sorrow and destroys mental pain.”

—Bhagavad Gita
“Are the gods willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then they are not omnipotent.
Are they able, but not willing? Then they are malevolent. Are they both able and
willing? Then where does evil originate? Are they neither able nor willing? Then
why call them gods?”

—Epicurus

"Now Socrates certainly knew how to play ball.

‘How do you mean?’

...there in court, what ball was in play? Life, imprisonment, exile, a draught of
poison, the loss of his wife, and having to leave his children behind as orphans.

That was what was involved, that was what he was playing with, but play he did
nonetheless and threw the ball with dexterity. That is how we too should act, with
the close attention of the cleverest of ball players, while showing the same
indifference to what we are playing with, as being no more than a ball."

—Epictetus
"Flowers in pots ultimately lack the will to live, just as birds in cages are reduced
in their natural joy. Isn’t it much better to let birds and flowers shape their
random pattern in the mountains, soaring and flourishing freely and naturally,
expressing themselves?"

—Hong Zicheng

“All the approaches we’ll meet in the school are branches of what I call the
Socratic tradition (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, etc, etc).

They all follow these three Socratic steps:

1. Humans can know ourselves. We can use our reason to examine our
unconscious beliefs and values.

2. Humans can change ourselves. We can use our reason to change our beliefs.
This will change our emotions, because our emotions follow our beliefs.

3. Humans can consciously create new habits of thinking, feeling, and acting.”

-Jules Evans

“Treat every day that dawns for you as the last. The hour that’s unhoped for will
be welcome when it comes. When you want to smile then visit me: sleek, and fat
I'm a hog, well cared-for, one of Epicurus' herd.”

—Horace (Epicurean)

“Consider the trees which allow the birds to perch and fly away without either
inviting them to stay or desiring them never to depart. If your heart can be like
this, you’ll be near to the Way.”

—Zen Proverb
“When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I
strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and
palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am
welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I
was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their
actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I
forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more
at death…”

—NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI

“Any skilled carpenter will tell you, “Let the saw do the work, let the teeth do the
cutting.” And you find that by going at it quite easily, and just allowing the blade
to glide back and forth, the wood is easily cut.”

—Alan Watts

“Remember that, although you are mortal and have only a limited life-span, yet
you have risen, through the contemplation of nature, to the infinity of space and
time, and you have seen all the past and all the future."

—Metrodorus (Epicurean)

“The rational soul travels through the whole universe and the void that surrounds
it ... it reaches out into the boundless extent of infinity, and it examines and
contemplates the periodic rebirth of all things.”

—Marcus Aurelius

“An Epicurean knows how to master their thought, in order to represent mainly
pleasurable things to ourselves, to resuscitate the memories of the pleasures of
the past, and to enjoy the pleasures of the present. We must recognise how
intense and gratifying such immediate pleasures are, and deliberately choose
relaxation and serenity. We should live in profound gratification toward nature
and life, which constantly offer us pleasure and joy—if only we know how to find
them.”

—Pierre Hadot

"It is not true that one needs anger in order to act courageously, for courage is
inherently reasonable, while anger is closely connected with insanity. In fact,
neither anger nor any other emotion is required for humans to act energetically,
rightly, and effectively. Once the best life is properly understood, it is clear that
(negative) emotion can be no part of it."

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

“So death, the most terrifying of evils, is nothing to us, because as long as we exist
death is not present, whereas when death is present we do not exist. Death is
nothing to those who live since they are not dead and it is nothing to those who
have died since they no longer exist, feel pain or sense anything.”

—Epicurus

“One day a man of the people said to the Zen master Ikkyu: “Master, will you
please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?” Ikkyu immediately
took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.”

“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?”
Ikkyu then wrote twice running: “Attention. Attention.”

“Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or
subtlety in what you have just written.”
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: “Attention. Attention.
Attention.”

Half angered, the man declared: “What does that word attention mean anyway?”
And Ikkyu answered, gently: “Attention means attention.”
—The Three Pillars of Zen

"Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, by strong arguments advised that we should not be

anxious about things past or future; arguing, that not to be troubled at such
things, is a sign of a constant clear spirit. He also advised to take care only for the
present day, and in that day, only of the present part, wherein something was
done or thought; for he said, the present only is in our power, not the past or
future; the one being gone, the other uncertain whether ever it will come."

—Aelian, Various Histories Book 14.6

“The philosopher, the enlightened or educated man, wills only to get those goods
which are in his power, and that being so, his will never fails; in the same way he
wills to avoid only the evils which it is in his power to avoid, and he therefore
never incurs those evils. On the other hand, if a man directs his will to get or to
avoid what is beyond his control he is always liable to failure and
disappointment.”

—PE Matheson, Introduction, Epictetus’, Discourses

“And yet Hadot, who was first and foremost a scholar of ancient philosophy,
suggests a way of reviving core aspects of the old philosophies of life while
retaining a respectful sense of the immense gulf separating their time from ours.
He suggests that we seek access to the therapeutic philosophies of the ancient
world on very particular terms; that philosophical schools such as Epicureanism
‘must be detached from their antiquated cosmological and mythical elements, so
that their fundamental positions, which the schools themselves considered
essential, can be brought out.’ Ultimately, Hadot believed, these ‘fundamental
positions’ strike universal chords. He is right: much of the wisdom of the
Hellenistic schools can also be found in the philosophies of India and China. The
Epicurean’s attempt to attain some distance from the urgings of incessant desire
to gain some mastery of the self is, I think, strikingly in tune with strains of
Buddhist, Taoist and Zen thought. Running through the classics of Taoism, for
example, is a powerful sense of the value of detachment and the disease of
obsessive desire, and this is reflected as well in the Chinese saying: ‘Absence of
desire generates strength.’

“This emblema was significantly displayed in a triclinium and is one of the most
striking for the clarity of its allegorical representation. The topic is Hellenistic in
origin and presents death as the great leveller who cancels out all differences of
wealth and class. It is a theme that has come down to our days, as for example in
the famous poem ’A livella by the comic actor A. de Curtis (Totò). In fact the
composition is surmounted by a level (libella) with a plumb line, the instrument
used by masons to get their constructions straight and level. The weight is death
(the skull) below which are a butterfly (the soul) and a wheel (fortune). On each
side, suspended from the arms of the level and kept in perfect balance by death,
are the symbols of wealth and power on the left (the sceptre and purple) and
poverty on the right (the beggar’s scrip and stick). The theme, like the skeletons
on the silverware in the treasure of Boscoreale, was intended to remind diners of
the fleeting nature of earthly fortunes.”

“We value the art of medicine not for its interest as a science, but because it
produces health. We commend the art of navigation for its practical, and not its
scientific value, because it conveys the rules for sailing a ship with success. So also
Wisdom, which must be considered as the art of living, would not be desired if it
produced no result...

Thus we need the aid of Wisdom to rid us of our fears and unnatural desires, to
root out all our errors and prejudices, and to serve as our infallible guide to the
attainment of happiness... Only wisdom is able to teach us to bear the hardships
of fortune with moderation, and only wisdom is able to show us the paths that
lead to calmness and to peace. Why then should we hesitate to proudly affirm
that Wisdom is to be desired, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the
happiness it brings”

—Torquatus, The Epicurean

“Herein, Vyagghapajja, a householder knowing his income and expenses leads a
balanced life, neither extravagant nor miserly, knowing that thus his income will
stand in excess of his expenses, but not his expenses in excess of his income.”

—Buddha

“One solution to this problem is called worry scheduling. Worry scheduling is a

well-researched strategy to limit worrying to a certain time every day. Choose a
15-20 minute period near the end of the day to devote to worrying about all of
the important things you have to worry about. When you have a worrisome
thought during the course of the day, remind yourself you have an appointment
with this worry later on, and postpone it. Then you can put your mind on
whatever you were doing before the worry appeared. If you need to, you can
even make a note of what the worry was about so you can focus on it later.”

“Nothing to fear in God;

Nothing to feel in Death;
Good can be attained;
Evil can be endured.”

—Philodemus (Epicurean)

“Better to lie serene upon a bed of grass than to be full of troubles on a golden
chair at an overflowing table.”

—Epicurus

“When your body gets used to simple living, don’t preen over it; if you’re a water
drinker, don’t take every opportunity to announce it. If you want to train for
physical austerities, do it for yourself, not for outsiders.”

—Epictetus

“If conversation turns to a philosophical (religious or political) topic, keep silent

for the most part, since you run the risk of spewing forth a lot of ill-digested
information. If your silence is taken for ignorance, but it doesn’t upset you —well,
that’s the real sign that you have begun to be a philosopher.”

—Epictetus

“There are quiet places also in the mind… but we build bandstands and factories
on them. Deliberately—to put a stop to the quietness… to pretend at any cost
that it isn't there. Ah, but it is; it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of
everything.”

—Aldous Huxley

“Thus, in lovely places with little trouble, let me dwell in solitude, quieting all
distractions. There, focusing on one intent, I’ll strive to settle and tame my mind
in absorbed concentration.”

—Shantideva

“We slip into Tientai caves

we visit people unseen
me and my friend Cold Mountain eat magic mushrooms under the pines
we talk about the past and present and sigh at the world gone mad
everyone going to Hell and going for a long long time”

—Han Shan

“I sit on top of a boulder

the stream is icy cold
quiet joys hold a special charm
bare cliffs in the fog enchant
this is such a restful place
the sun goes down and tree shadows sprawl
I watch the ground of my mind
and a lotus comes out of the mud”
—Han Shan

‘But he’s a bad father.’

Look, nature has endeared you to a father, not necessarily a good one.

‘My brother is unfair to me.’

Well then, keep up your side of the relationship; don’t concern yourself with his
behaviour, only with what you must do to keep your will in tune with nature.
Another person will not hurt you without your cooperation; you are hurt the
moment you believe yourself to be.

-Epictetus(?)

“When the emotions which disturb the soul are removed, those which produce
pleasure enter to take their place.”

—Diogenes of Oinoanda (Epicurean Wall Inscription)

“Just as poison spreads in the blood, faults spread in my mind if I allow them. So
I’ll be vigilant of disturbing thoughts, like a frightened man threatened with death
if he lets a single drop spill from a full jar. Each mistake I’ll own and think, “What
can I do so this never happens again?”

—Shantideva

“One must regard wealth beyond what is natural as of no more use than water to
a container that is full to overflowing.”

—Epicurus

“The true Epicurean cultivates the capacity to take pleasure in simple things,
while those around him chase pleasure in more things. As a personal ethic it
suggests a way, by limiting wants, to restructure the economy; and by cooling the
economy it offers some hope of cooling the Earth.”

-Luke Slattery

“If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a
self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize
it's all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream."

—Adyashanti

“Prudence and duty and self-regard, emotions of ambition and emotions of

anxiety, have, of course, a needful part to play in our lives. But confine them as
far as possible to the occasions when you are making your general resolutions and
deciding on your plans of campaign, and keep them out of the details. When once
a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all
responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual
and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be
twice as good. Who are the scholars who get rattled' in the recitation-room?
Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the
act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent.”

—William James

“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous

cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act
and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make
you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.

So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a
courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in order to feel kindly
toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less
deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say
genial things. One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer
communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the
mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our
attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if
from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an Arab, and
silently steals away...

From our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation
come, which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner states
shall be: that is a fundamental law of psychology which I will therefore proceed to
assume.”

—William James

“He dwells at ease within himself, with a peaceful mind; he purifies his mind from
restlessness and worry.”

— Gotama Siddhartha

"Slave, are you going to be at odds with the world because of one lame leg?"

—Epictetus

“As in the ocean’s midmost depth no wave is born, but all is still, so let the
practitioners be still, be motionless, and nowhere should they swell.

—Buddha, SUTTA NIPATA

“Imagine holding on to a hot burning coal. You would not fear letting go of it. In
fact, once you noticed that you were holding on, you would probably drop it
quickly. But we often do not recognize how we hold on to suffering. It seems to
hold on to us.

This is our practice: becoming aware of how suffering arises in our mind and of
how we become identified with it, and learning to let it go. We learn through
simple and direct observation, seeing the process over and over again until we
understand.”

—Joseph Goldstein

“All the emotions need schooling, to tame and discipline by training the part of
oneself that is irrational and defiant.”

—Plutarch

"Did I wake up this morning thinking I'd be throwing together a bird funeral? You
never can tell what your day here is gonna turn into."

—Pam, On Life's Unpredictability

“Deep thinking generates knowledge. Idleness and carelessness generate worry.

Cruelty and arrogance generate resentment. Worry and grief generate illness.
When illness reaches a distressing degree, you die. When you think about
something and don't let go of it internally you will be distressed, externally you
will be weak. Do not plan things out in advance or else your vitality will cede its
dwelling.
In eating, it is best not to fill up; In thinking, it is best not to overdo. Limit these to
the appropriate degree and you will naturally reach vitality.”

—Nei-Yeh, Inward Training

“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I
am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or
the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former
roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.
There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment
of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown
flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied,
and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he
does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless
of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot
be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects
brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the
present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.”

—Henry David Thoreau

“There is the case where a disciple of the noble ones recollects his own virtues.…
As he is recollecting virtue, his mind is cleansed, and joy arises; the defilements of
his mind are abandoned... He lives with virtue. It is owing to virtue that his mind is
brightened, that joy arises...This is how the mind is cleansed through the proper
technique”

—Buddha

“And so make it your primary endeavour not to be carried away by any

impression; for once you gain time, delay and distance you will more easily
become master of yourself.”

—Epictetus, Enchiridion 20

“(Cognitive) Distancing” refers to the ability to view one’s own thoughts (or
beliefs) as constructions of “reality” rather than as reality itself.”

“When thoughts distort our perception of events it’s like we’re wearing coloured
spectacles. When we gain cognitive distance from our own thoughts, it’s as
though we’re taking off the spectacles and looking *at* them, rather than looking
*through* them.”
—Alford & Beck

Zi Gong asked, “Is there a single saying that we can put into action throughout our
lives?"

Confucius said, “Perhaps putting oneself in the other’s place. What you don’t wish
for yourself, don’t do to others.”

—The Analects

“I have thus completed everything that I wished to demonstrate concerning the

mind’s power over the emotions and the mind’s freedom. From this it is apparent
how powerful the wise man is, and how greatly he surpasses the ignorant man,
who is driven only by his desires. For not only is the ignorant man distracted in
many ways by external causes and never able to enjoy true serenity of mind, but
he also lives as if he were unaware of himself or Nature or things; and as soon as
he ceases to be acted upon, he ceases to be.

The wise man, on the other hand, insofar as he is considered as such, is hardly
ever troubled in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of Nature, and of
things, by a certain eternal necessity, he never ceases to be, but always possesses
true serenity of mind.

If the way I have pointed out as leading to this result seems exceedingly hard, it
can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be hard, since it is found so seldom. For
if true freedom were readily available and could be found without great effort,
how is it possible that it should be neglected by almost everyone? But all things
excellent are as difficult as they are rare. “

—Baruch Spinoza

“This is called a mendicant who is a master of the ways of thought. They’ll think
what they want to think, and they won’t think what they don’t want to think.”

—Buddha
“Now, suppose that a mendicant has unskillful thoughts connected with desire,
hate, and other unwanted thoughts that keep coming up. They should try to
ignore and forget about them. As they do so, those bad thoughts are given up and
come to an end. Their mind becomes stilled internally; it settles, unifies, and
becomes immersed in concentration... It’s like an expert carpenter or their
apprentice who’d knock out or extract a large peg with a finer peg. Suppose there
was a person with good eyesight, and some undesirable sights came into their
range of vision. They’d just close their eyes or look away. In the same way, a
mendicant should try to ignore and forget about those thoughts...This is called a
mendicant who is a master of the ways of thought. They’ll think what they want
to think, and they won’t think what they don’t want to think.”

—Buddha, Middle Discourses 20

“One trains by being what one is to become. If the goal is to be peaceful, the way
there is to be peaceful”

—Gil Fronsdal

“Due to the sage’s proficiency in realizing peace, he or she is often referred to as

“a skilled person” or “expert”...The most common attribute associated with a
sage is peace. Such a person advocates peace, sees and knows peace, is at peace,
and is peaceful. The sage is also tranquil, still and unmoving, unshakable, and
equanimous”

— Gil Fronsdal, The Buddha before Buddhism

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do
not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer
itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

—Franz Kafka

"The sum of happiness consists in our disposition, of which we are master...All

men are able to save themselves to effect a complete dispersal of misfortunes
affecting the soul and to do away with disturbing emotions and fears."

—Epicurean Wall Inscription by Diogenes of Oenoanda, 120 CE

“It is not anger that is manly, but gentleness and delicacy. It is because they are
more human that they are more manly; they possess more strength, more nerve,
and more virility, and this is precisely what is lacking in the person who gets angry
and loses his temper."

—Marcus Aurelius

"There are five ways in which a husband should minister to his wife as the
western direction: by honoring her, by not disparaging her, by not being
unfaithful to her, by giving authority to her, by providing her with adornments.”

—Buddha, DN 31

“The predominant teaching regarding views is the importance of not clinging to

any opinions, philosophies, doctrines, or religious teachings. This includes views
about ultimate religious truth. The text teaches that to find peace, a follower
should shake off every view without embracing or rejecting anything—this
includes views about views. A number of verses are critical of any assertion that
one’s own religious beliefs are the truest or best, while others’ are inferior.
For many readers, this seeming no-view teaching is a radical message. It
undermines the importance of doctrines that underlie many religious traditions,
including some Buddhist ones. The teachings in the Book of Eights provide no
support for the idea that one should believe teachings just because they are
found in certain Buddhist texts”

- Gil Fronsdal , The Buddha before Buddhism

“Don’t chase the past or long for the future. The past is left behind; the future is
not yet reached. Have insight into whatever phenomenon are present, right
where it is; not faltering and not agitated, by knowing whatever is present one
develops the mind.

Ardently do what should be done today—who knows, death may come

tomorrow. There is no bargaining with mortality and his great army. Whoever
dwells thus ardent—active day and night—is, says the peaceful sage, one who has
a successful day.”

—Buddha, Bhaddekaratta Sutta

“Friends, I know nothing which brings suffering as does an untamed,

uncontrolled, unattended, and unrestrained heart. Such a heart brings suffering.
Friends, I know nothing which brings joy as does a tamed, controlled, attended,
and restrained heart. Such a heart brings joy.”

—from the ANGUTTARA NIKAYA, translated by Gil Fronsdal

“Nature acts without intent, so cannot be described as acting with benevolence,

nor malevolence to any thing.”

—Lao Tzu

“To straighten the crooked you must first do a harder thing—straighten yourself.
You are your only master. Who else? Subdue yourself, and discover your master.”

—Buddha

“If you know you’re a fool, you’re wise at least to that extent.”

—Buddha, Dhammapada

“Ten boundless years now separate the living and the dead, I have not often
thought of her, but neither can I forget. Her lonely grave is a thousand li distant, I
can't say where my wife lies cold. We could not recognise each other even if we
met again, my face is all but covered with dust, my temples glazed with frost. In
deepest night, a sudden dream returns me to my homeland, she sits before a little
window, and sorts her dress and make-up. We look at each other without a word,
a thousand tears now flow. I must accept that every year I'll think of that heart
breaking place, where the moon shines brightly in the night, and bare pines guard
the tomb.”

—Su Dongpo

“The sunset clouds are gathered far away, it's clear and cold, the Milky Way is
silent, I turn to the jade plate.
The goodness of this life and of this night will not last for long. Next year where
will I watch the bright moon?”

—Su Dongpo

”The east wind blows gently. The rising rays float on the thick perfumed mist. The
moon appears, right there, at the corner of the balcony. I only fear in the depth of
night the flowers will fall asleep. I hold up a gilded candle to shine on their scarlet
beauty.”

—Su Dongpo

”The few minutes of a spring night are worth ten thousand pieces of gold.
The perfume of the flowers is so pure.
The shadows of the moon are so black.
In the pavilion the voices and flutes are so high and light.
In the garden a hammock rocks in the night so deep, so profound.”

—Su Dongpo

”Greatness of soul is not so much mounting high and pressing forward, as

knowing how to put oneself in order and circumscribe oneself...There is nothing
so beautiful and just as to play the man well and fitly, nor any knowledge so
arduous as to know how to live this life well and naturally.”
—Michel de Montaigne

“When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a
beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been concerned with extraneous incidents
for some part of the time, for some other part I lead them back again to the walk,
to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to myself.

Nature has in motherly fashion observed this principle, that the actions she has
enjoined on us for our need should also give us pleasure; and she invites us to
them not only through reason, but also through appetite. It is wrong to infringe
her laws.”

—Michel de Montaigne

“As cool water allays feverish heat, so also Nirvana is cool and allays the fever of
all the passions... As medicine protects from the torments of poison, so Nirvana
from the torments of the poisonous passions. Moreover, as medicine puts an end
to sickness, so Nirvana to all sufferings.”

—from the MILINDAPANHA

“So a drunken man, falling

Out of a wagon,
Is bruised but not destroyed.
His bones are like the bones of other men,
But his fall is different.
His spirit is entire. He is not aware
Of getting into a wagon
Or falling out of one.
Life and death are nothing to him.
He knows no alarm, he meets obstacles
Without thought, without care,
Takes them without knowing they are there.
If there is such security in wine,
How much more in Tao.
The wise man is hidden in Tao.
Nothing can touch him.”

—Chuang Tzu

In this Sutta, the Buddha appears to be confirming that our senses our the only
reliable guide, that is the world that can be sensed is all there is and anyone
proposing an invisible, unseen world are speaking empty words. This makes sense
given his opposition to the metaphysics of the Brahmans who promulgated a soul,
afterlife and an ultimate god reality....

“MONKS, I will teach you the totality of life. Listen, attend carefully to it and I will
speak. What, monks, is totality? It is just the eye with the objects of sight, the ear
with the objects of hearing, the nose with the objects of smell, the body with the
objects of touch, and the mind with the objects of cognition. This, monks, is called
totality. Now, if anyone were to say: “Aside from this explanation of totality, I will
preach another totality,” that person would be speaking empty words, and being
questioned would not be able to answer. Why is this? Because that person is
talking about something outside of possible knowledge.

—from the SAMYUTTA NIKAYA, translated by Gil Fronsdal

“By attending to the details of this present moment, by choosing not to recollect
the past or plan for the future, you are engaged in a process of creating yourself
in a specific and deliberate way.”

—Stephen Batchelor

“Flowers, while loved, fall; and weeds, while hated, flourish.”

—Dogen

"The only worthy object of all our efforts is a flourishing life. True happiness is a
verb. It’s the ongoing dynamic performance of worthy deeds...Our life has
usefulness to ourselves and to the people we touch."
—Epictetus

"It is folly to ruminate on evils to come, or such as, perhaps, never may come:
every evil is disagreeable enough when it does come; but he who is constantly
considering that some evil may befall him is loading himself with a perpetual evil.”

—Cicero

“It is the position of our school that some goods are primary—for instance joy,
peace, the safety of one’s homeland—while others are secondary, manifested in
unfortunate material, such as endurance under torture or self-control during
serious illness. The former goods we choose for ourselves unconditionally, the
latter if it becomes necessary. And there are still the tertiary goods, such as a
modest walk, a calm and dignified facial expression, and gestures befitting an
intelligent person.“

—Seneca, Letter 66

Can somebody chime in here. The Buddha appears to be denying the reality of
reality by simply denying it. I’m not sure how pretending to think of death,
disease, decay, feelings, perceptions, etc as being unreal makes it so?

“They would appear to him empty, unreal and unsubstantial. In exactly the same
way does the monk behold all physical phenomena, feelings, perceptions, mental
formations, and states of consciousness—whether they be of the past, or the
present, or the future, far or near. And he observes them, and examines them
carefully; and, after carefully examining them, they appear to him empty, void,
and without a Self.”

-MAJJHIMA NIKAYA

“My mind is obedient, delivered from all worldly desire,” so said the Buddha. “It
has for a long time been highly cultivated and well-subdued, there is no longer
anything reprehensible in me: therefore, if thou like, rain, O sky!”
—Buddha

“WHEN body and mind dissolve, they do not exist anywhere, any more than
musical notes lay heaped up anywhere. When a lute is played upon, there is no
previous store of sound; and when the music ceases it does not go anywhere in
space. It came into existence on account of the structure and stem of the lute and
the exertions of the performer; and as it came into existence so it passes away. In
exactly the same way, all the elements of being, both corporeal and non-
corporeal, come into existence after having been non-existent; and having come
into existence pass away.”

—VISUDDHIMAGGA

“In general, nirvana, or liberation is a state or quality of mind. It is not an external

place or something reserved for a select few. Nirvana is attainable by each and
every sentient being.”

—Dalai Lama

“But just as we are thrilled by the expectation of good things, so too

we are pleased by the recollection of good things. But fools are tortured by the
recollection of bad things, while wise men enjoy past goods kept fresh by a
grateful recollection...When we contemplate past events with a keen and
attentive mind, then we feel distress if what we recall was bad, and joy if it was
good.”

—Torquatus (Epicurean) in Cicero’s, On Ends

"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
“My mind is like the autumn moon
clear and bright in a pool of jade
Nothing can compare
What more can I say ?”

—Han San

“Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For
just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body,
so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the
mind.”

—Epicurus

“It is not true religion to be seen turning with veiled head ever and on toward an
image of stone, or drawing nigh to every god’s altar, or prostrating oneself on the
ground with suppliant hands before the holy shrines; nor is it piety to wet the
altars with the abundant blood of beasts and to twine vow with vow. True religion
is rather the power to contemplate nature with a mind set at peace”

—Lucretius (Epicurean)

“Just as the river Ganges slants, slopes, and inclines towards the east, so too one
who develops and cultivates the four jhanas in concentrative meditation slants,
slopes, and inclines towards emotional liberation (Nibbana)”

—The Buddha, Jhanasarpmyutta (SN53.1)

“There is no greater joy than to reflect on ourselves and become sincere. There is
nothing closer to humanity than to vigorously practice consideration for others"

—Mencius

"If you undertake a role beyond your means, you will not only embarrass yourself
in that, you miss the chance of a role that you might have filled successfully."

—Epictetus, Enchiridion 37

STOIC THANKSGIVING...

"I wasn’t flustered by A or angered by B; I was patient, restrained and

cooperative. That way we will be able to thank God/Nature for things that we
truly should be grateful for."

—Epictetus

“On this area of similarity (between Stoicism and Buddhism), it would seem fitting
to end, as it is at the heart of the matter for both systems. So in the words first of
Seneca and then the Buddha:

‘No philosophy is kinder or more lenient, more philanthropic or attentive to the

common good…’

‘The Buddha was once asked by a leading disciple, “Would it be true to say that a
*PART* of our training is for the development of love and compassion?” The
Buddha replied, “no, it would not be true to say this. It would be true to say that
the *WHOLE* of our training is for the development of love and compassion.”

-Patrick Ussher(?)

“You see, I force my mind to pay attention to itself and not to be distracted by
anything external... For how does it help to have silence in the neighborhood,
when one’s emotions are in tumult?...Only as the mind develops into excellence
do we achieve any real tranquility.”

—Seneca, Letter 56

“Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can
forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk
with him?”

—Chuang Tzu

“There have been thousands upon thousands of people who have practiced
meditation and obtained its fruits. Don’t doubt its possibilities because of the
simplicity of its method. If you can’t find the truth right where you are, where else
do you think you will find it? Life is short, and no one knows what the next
moment will bring. Cultivate your mind while you still have the opportunity. You
will soon discover the treasure of wisdom, which in turn you can share
abundantly with others, bringing them happiness and peace.”

—Dogen

“To obtain the inestimable benefits of meditation, you should first make a firm
decision to practice every day...Before you begin meditation, take several slow,
deep breaths. Hold your body erect, allowing your breathing to become normal
again. Many thoughts will crowd into your mind. Don’t dwell on thoughts of good
or bad. Don’t desire to attain enlightenment. Let your thoughts come and go,
without getting involved in them or trying to suppress them. Think the
unthinkable. In other words, think no-thinking.

Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, nor is it a method of achieving anything

at all. It is peace and blessedness itself.”

—Dogen

“When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a candle
in a windless place.”

—Bhagavad Gita

“The mind of a Zen Master is perfectly straightforward. He has neither front nor
back and is without deceit or delusion. Every hour of the day, what he hears and
sees are ordinary sights and sounds, but nothing is distorted. He is perfectly
unattached to things, and thus doesn’t need to shut his eyes and ears. Because he
has eliminated delusion, perverted views, and bad thinking habits, he is as clear
and tranquil as an autumn stream. Someone who is like this is called a Master of
Zen, a man who has freed himself from all attachments.”

—Keui-Shan

“Good moral habits have non-remorse as their benefit and reward; non-remorse
has gladness as its benefit and reward; gladness has deep inner joy as its benefit
and reward; joy has tranquillity as its benefit and reward; tranquillity has
happiness as its benefit and reward; happiness has concentration of the mind as
its benefit and reward; concentration has realistic knowledge and vision as its
benefit and reward; realistic knowledge and vision has revulsion and dispassion as
its benefit and reward; revulsion and dispassion have the knowledge and vision of
deliverance as their benefit and reward. In this way, Aananda, good moral habits
lead step by step to the highest."

—Buddha, AN 10.1

“I considered could jhana (concentrative meditation) be the path to

enlightenment? Then came the realization: That is the path to enlightenment.”

—Buddha, Mahasaccaka Sutta

“Some years ago I was invited to teach a retreat in the desert in Arizona.
Countless people had spoken to me about the beauty and magnificence of the
desert, and I was eager to experience it for myself.… As the sun rose, I looked
around and a single disappointed thought arose, ‘It’s brown.’”

“I discovered that the more I looked, listened, and felt, the more I saw. The desert
was teeming with life. The heat haze shimmered over the ground. … Each hour as
the sun moved, casting different shadows and light, the desert was changed. It
was a wondrous, alive, shifting, changing reality, different in each moment of the
day.”
“For anything in this world to be alive for us, we are asked to be alive to it.
Mindfulness awakens not only our way of seeing, but also everything that is seen”

—Christina Feldman

“And what advantage does a wrestler gain from his training partner? The
greatest. And that man, too, who insults me becomes my training partner; he
trains me in patience, in abstaining from anger, in remaining gentle."

—Epictetus

"The best course is to reject straightway the initial prickings of anger, to fight
against its first sparks, and to struggle not to succumb to it.

Once it has begun to carry us off course it’s difficult to sail back to safety, since
not a jot of reason remains once the passion has been let in and some sovereign
right has been granted to it by our own will: it will thereafter do not what you
allow but what it wants."

—Seneca, On Anger

“The heart of the wise man is tranquil. It is the mirror of heaven and earth the
glass of everything. Emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, silence, non-
action: this is the level of heaven and earth. This is perfect Tao. Wise men find
here their resting place. Resting, they are empty.”

—Chuang Tzu

“It is primarily the perception of an event that determines the emotional

response and hence the psychophysiological consequences…Anger is a cognitive
response that is associated with personal appraisal and interpretation”

—Ray Rosenman

“If you are distressed (angered) by anything external, the pain is not due to the
thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at
any moment.”

—Marcus Aurelius

“The man who is happy is not he who is believed to be so but he who believes he
is so: in that way alone does belief endow itself with true reality. Neither good nor
ill is done to us by Fortune: she merely offers us the matter and the seeds: our
soul, more powerful than she is, can mould it or sow them as she pleases, being
the only cause and mistress of our happy state or our unhappiness”

—Michel de Montaigne

“The face of the wise man is not somber or austere, contracted by anxiety and
sorrow, but precisely the opposite: radiant and serene, and filled with a vast
delight, which often makes him the most playful of men, acting with a sense of
humor that blends with his essential seriousness and dignity, just as in a well-
tuned lyre all the notes blend into one harmonious sound.”

—Philo

"Let the expression on our faces be relaxed, our voices gentler, our steps more
measured; little by little outer features mold inner ones."

—Seneca, On Anger

“The trouble is that, so long as the object of our desire is wanting, it seems more
important than anything else; but later, when it is ours, we covet some other
thing; and so an insatiable thirst for life keeps us always openmouthed.”

—Lucretius (Epicurean)

“We are born only once and cannot be born twice, and must forever live no more.
You don't control tomorrow, yet you postpone joy. Life is ruined by putting things
off, and each of us dies without truly living.”
—Epicurus, VS 14

“Fire is hot, water cold, refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning; by whom came
this variety? They were born of their own nature.

This also has been said by Brhaspati: There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor
any soul in another world, nor do the actions of the four castes, orders, or
priesthoods produce any real effect.

If a beast slain as an offering to the dead will itself go to heaven,

why does the sacrificer not straightway offer his father?

If offerings to the dead produce gratification to those who have reached the land
of the dead,
why the need to set out provisions
for travelers starting on this journey? If our offering sacrifices here gratify beings
in heaven,
why not make food offerings down below to gratify those standing on housetops?

While life remains, let a man live happily,let him feed on butter though he runs in
debt; when once the body becomes ashes, how can it ever return again?

If he who departs from the body goes to another world, why does he not come
back again, restless for love of his kinfolk? It is only as a means of livelihood that
brahmins have established here abundant ceremonies for the dead—
there is no other fruit anywhere.

Hence for kindness to the mass of living beings we must fly for refuge in the
doctrine of Carvaka.”

—Carvakas, (Indian Materialists & Skeptics) 600 BCE

“When human life lay prostrate on the ground before our eyes, oppressed by
burdensome religion, which showed its face from the regions of heaven, standing
over mortals with horrible countenance, a Greek man (Epicurus) first dared to
raise his mortal eyes against it and to resist it. Stories about the gods,
thunderbolts, and heaven with threatening noise did not scare him, but spurred
on the eager virtue of his mind even more, so that he wished to be the first to
break the tight bolts of the gates of nature.

Therefore, the lively force of his mind prevailed, and he progressed far beyond
the flaming walls of the world, and in mind and spirit he wandered the
immeasurable universe...Therefore religion is in turn thrown under our feet and
trampled down, and his victory has made us equal to heaven.”

—Lucretius

“It is proper to doubt. Do not be led by holy scriptures...or by appearances, or by

the authority of religious teachers. But when you realize that something is
unwholesome and bad for you, give it up. And when you realize that something is
wholesome and good for you, do it.”

—Gautama Siddhartha

“The true men of old slept without dreams, woke without worries. Their food was
plain. They breathed deep. True men breathe from their heels. Others breathe
with their gullets, half-strangled. Their entrance was without gladness, their exit,
yonder, without resistance. Easy come, easy go. They took life as it came, gladly;
took death as it came, without care; and went away, yonder, yonder! Minds free,
thoughts gone. Brows clear, faces serene. Were they cool? Only cool as autumn.
Were they hot? No hotter than spring. All that came out of them came quiet, like
the four seasons.”

—Chuang Tzu

“I found a small red boy inside my tummy with 3 dollars in change and a Milky
Way Lite. In my occasional pursuit to find something more meaningful than yet
another word that rhymes with die I cut him out and put him on my table. His
shallow breathing chest would fall and rise. His 'South of Heaven' shirt was way
too big for him. His horns were long and sharp and then he opened up those eyes
that said,

"I am, I am, I am, I am the truth"

I showered him with love and adulation. One day he was just as tall as me. I
showed him all the books that I was raised on. Your Madeleine L'Engles and
D'Aulaires' Mythologies. And in a montage that could warm the heart of Hitler I
raised him up so proud and motherly. I swore that I was glancing in a mirror when
in the language that I taught him, oh god, he began to speak He said

"I am, I am, I am, I am the truth"

"I am, I am, I am, I am the truth"

And his eyes became a beacon, an LCD projector broadcasting all my memories in
a clear and vivid picture. His tongue became a staircase, his uvula—the knocker of
an ornate wooden door that lead me straight into my future. His throat became a
hallway with a thousand baby pictures and I became forgiveness, I transformed
into the closure that I lost when I learned about the tragedy of all of us. I lost it
when I learned about the tragedy of all of us. Incorrigible illness in the loved ones
hidden out of us. I lost it when I learned about the tragedy of all of us. I walked
through the hallway to a room of only mirrors reflecting me in bondage so I
watched myself get freer. I let my horns grow longer, I observed my skin get
redder. My soul became a hammer. I started to feel better. My hatred turned to
pity. My resentment blossomed flowers. My bitter tasted candy, my misery was
power. The truth in me grew brighter, my nature and my nurture.
No more shame, no more fear, no more dread.

“I am, I am, I am, I am the truth”

—AJJ, Small Red Boy

“Development of the mind means the development of serenity and insight. When
serenity is developed, it leads to concentration and the liberation of the mind
from such emotional defilements as lust and ill will. When insight is developed, it
leads to the higher wisdom of insight into the true nature of phenomena and
permanently liberates the mind from ignorance. Thus the two things most needed
to master the mind are serenity and insight...The cultivation of serenity requires
skill in steadying, composing, unifying, and concentrating the mind. The
cultivation of insight requires skill in observing, investigating, and discerning.”

-Buddha

“Our intuitive conception of the “self” is misleading at best. We tend to

uncritically embrace all kinds of thoughts and feelings as “ours,” as part of us,
when in fact that identification is optional. Recognizing that the identification is
optional and learning, through meditation, how to make the identification less
reflexive can reduce suffering. An understanding of why natural selection
engineered various feelings into the human mind can help validate the idea that
we shouldn’t uncritically accept the guidance of our feelings and can help us
choose which feelings to accept guidance from.”

—Robert Wright

“No one acquires an excellent mind without first having a bad one. All of us have
been taken over already, and to learn virtue is to unlearn one’s faults. Yet we may
be of good cheer as we tackle the job of self-correction; for once we do come into
possession of the good, it is ours forever. One does not unlearn virtue.”

—Seneca, Letter 50

“There is no meditation in one who is without wisdom, no wisdom in one who

does not meditate. In whom there are both meditation and wisdom: he is, indeed,
close to nirvana (that is, cooling his passions)”

—Buddha, Dhammapadda, 371-74

“Four times and five times I left the place where I was staying; I could not find
peace of mind and had no control over the mind. I approached a nun whom I
could trust. She taught me the dhamma...I listened to the dhamma from her while
she instructed me. For seven days I sat in one cross-legged position, possessed by
joy and happiness. On the eighth day I stretched my legs, having destroyed the
great mass of darkness.”

—Uttama, Thig 3.2

“The wise person, a giver of happiness —attains happiness himself.”

—Bhojana Sutta, AN 5.37

“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a
line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty
cleans the mind.”

—Matt Haig, Reasons To Stay Alive via Philo Thoughts

“No oil to read by

I am off to bed
but ah! . . .
My moonlit pillow”

—Basho

"I am myself of the opinion—though my fellow Stoics would be unwilling to say

what I say—that Epicurus’ teachings are sacred and right and, if you approach
more closely, sobering. The fact is that his pleasure is restrained to a small and
meager amount, and he imposes the same law on pleasure as we do on virtue."

—Seneca, On The Happy Life

“To enter the stream of the eightfold path means to go against the stream of
one’s reactivity, be that of one’s instinctive drives, social conditioning, or
psychological inclination. By choosing to think, speak, and act otherwise than as
prompted by these habits requires considerable resolve and commitment.”

—Stephen Batchelor

”Would you like to know what philosophy has to offer the human race? Advice!

Why are you making up little games? You have no time for joking around; you
have been summoned to assist those in need. You have promised to aid the
shipwrecked, the captive, the sick, the impoverished, and those who must stretch
out their neck for the axe. Where are you wandering off to? What are you doing?
This person you are playing with is frightened: help him.”

—Seneca, Letter 48

“Like an archer an arrow, the wise man steadies his trembling mind, a fickle and
restless weapon.”

—Buddha

"Mind is the root of descendants to come. There have never been flourishing
branches and luxuriant foliage whose roots were not well planted."

—Hong Zicheng

"And, delighting in and approving of Ven. Kamabhu's answer, Citta asked him a
further question: "How many mental qualities are of great help in the attainment
of the cessation of perception & feeling?"

"Actually, householder, you have asked last what should have been asked first.
Nevertheless, I will answer you. Two qualities are of great help in the attainment
of the cessation of perception & feeling: tranquillity & insight/serenity and
discernment.”

—SN 41.1
"When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need
to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the
inner peace that I already have?"

—D.T. Suzuki

“At the heart of meditative teaching, later formulated within the principles of the
Middle Way, lies an almost commonsensical assumption: that it is the mind that is
at ease and at peace with itself that comes more easily to understanding than the
one that is
strained. Indeed the way a small or mundane event is observed with
a leisured attentiveness that allows a space for things to be seen afresh reminds
one of other modern myths of great discovery: Archimedes desperately trying to
understand something and then allowing his attention to rest when taking a bath,
Newton idly following the trajectory of an apple, or even the way a child picks up
and plays with a new toy.”

-Sarah Shaw

Main psychotherapeutic goals according to Albert Ellis:

1. Self-interest.

The emotionally healthy individual should primarily be true to himself and not
masochistically sacrifice himself for others. His kindness and consideration for
others should
be derived from the idea that he himself wants to enjoy freedom from
unnecessary pain and
restriction, and that he is only likely to do so by helping create a world in which
the rights of others, as well as his own, are not needlessly curtailed.

2. Self-direction.

He should assume responsibility for his own life, be able independently to work
out most of his problems, and while at times wanting or preferring the
cooperation and
help of others, not need their support for his effectiveness and well-being.

3. Tolerance.

He should fully give other human

beings the right to be wrongj and while disliking or abhoring some of their
behavior, still not blame them, as persons, for performing this
dislikable behavior. He should accept the fact that all humans are remarkably
fallible, never
unrealistically expect them to be perfect, and refrain from despising or punishing
them when they make inevitable mistakes and errors.

4. Acceptance of uncertainty.

The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the

fact that we all live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor
probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should
realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed-such a probabilistic, uncertain world.

5. Flexibility.

He should remain intellectually

flexible, be open to change at all times, and unbigotedly view the infinitely varied
people, ideas, and things in the world around him.

6. Scientific thinking.

He should be objective, rational and scientific; and be able to apply the

laws of logic and of scientific method not only to external people and events, but
to himself and
his interpersonal relationships.

7. Commitment.
He should be vitally absorbed
in something outside of himself, whether it be people, things, or ideas; and should
preferably
have at least one major creative interest, as well as some outstanding human
involvement, which is highly important to him, and around which he
structures a good part of his life.

8. Risk-taking.

The emotionally sound person

should be able to take risks, to ask himself what he would really like to do in life,
and then to try to do this, even though he has to risk defeat or
failure. He should be adventurous (though not necessarily fool-hardy); be willing
to try almost
anything once, just to see how he likes it an look forward to some breaks in his
usual life routines.

9. Self-acceptance.

He should normally be glad

to be alive, and to like himself just because he is alive, because he exists, and
because he (as a
living being) invariably has some power to enjoy himself, to create happiness and
joy. He should
not equate his worth or value to himself on his extrinsic achievements, or on what
others think of him, but on his personal existence; on his ability to think, feel, and
act, and thereby to make some kind of an interesting, absorbed life for himself.

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."

—William James

"There is no restful calm but that which is settled by reason.

Night doesn’t take away our cares; rather, it exposes them to view, exchanging
one anxiety for another. For even when we are asleep, our dreams may be as
tumultuous as waking life.

Only as the mind develops into excellence do we achieve any real tranquility."

—Seneca, Letter 56

"I felt in need of a great pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days."

—Kabir

“The perfume of sandalwood, rosebay or jasmine cannot travel against the wind.
But the fragrance of virtue travels even against the wind, as far as the ends of the
world. Like garlands woven from a heap of flowers, fashion from your life as many
good deeds.”

—Buddha

“We are what we think.”

—Buddha

“Philodemus counsels against being a tyrant or despot and ruling through fear,
saying that love and respect are much more effective means of governing. He
recommends the avoidance of coarse behavior and jokes, licentiousness,
drunkenness, overindulgence of food, boastfulness, unnecessary anger, severity,
harshness, and bitterness in favor of the recitation of tasteful poetry, self-
restraint in the consumption of food and drink, a stable disposition, control over
excessive emotions, mildness, fairness, and gentleness.”

“But the man of sense, when he has come to understand that he can attain that
which is self-sufficient to a happy life, from that point on walks about as one
already laid out for burial in his shroud and enjoys every single day as if it were a
lifetime.”
—Philodemus (Epicurean)

“Now, by Zeus, it is natural actually to criticise and consider miserable, those who
for love of money spend their whole life on the seas, and for its sake are at last
sunk into the abyss, but really it’s their life that’s pitiable—not their death, when
they are no longer even there.”

—Philodemus (Epicurean)

“But much of the current interest in Epicurus has nothing to do with history. His
philosophy offers a straightforward and courageous way of dealing with the
imponderable, sometimes unbearable issues of life and death. Put simply,
Epicurus taught that we can depend only on ourselves and on our friends. It is a
simplicity of profundity, teaching that even if life at the end is like water draining
into the ground from a broken pot, we do not have to grieve. We can take
pleasure and pride in the fact that we lived life the best we could for as long as we
could. That is an imperishable value even though we perish.”

—Dane Gordan

“Now, leaving behind parents or children or a spouse or others who are close to
us, who will be in straits because of our death or even deprived of life’s
necessities, I admit brings with it a truly natural pang and can rouse a flow of
tears especially and like nothing else from a man of understanding mind.”

—Philodemus (Epicurean)

“Can you love people and lead them without forcing your will on them?”

—Tao Te Ching

“Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is
not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past,
might happen in the future, or will never happen at all. Indeed, “stimulus-
independent thought” or “mind wandering” appears to be the brain’s default
modeof operation. Although this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement
that allow people to learn, reason, and plan, it may have an emotional cost. Many
philosophical and religioustraditions teach that happiness is to be found by living
in the moment, and practitioners are trainedto resist mind wandering and “to be
here now.” These traditions suggest that a wandering mind isan unhappy mind.”

—Daniel Gilbert

"Monks, I know not of any single thing that brings such woe as the mind that is
untamed, uncontrolled, unguarded and unrestrained. Such a mind indeed brings
great woe. I know not of any other single thing that brings such bliss as the mind
that is tamed, controlled, guarded and restrained. Such a mind indeed brings
great bliss."

—Buddha, AN, 1.31-40

"And it is the mind free of negative emotions (anger, anxiety, envy, desire, etc)
that makes a person completely and absolutely happy, while the mind agitated by
negative emotions and cut off from solid and secure reasoning loses not only its
consistency but even its health."

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Book 4

"Let silence be your goal for the most part; say only what is necessary, and be
brief about it."

—Epictetus

“It is as if, your majesty, in a pond of blue, red, or white lotuses, there were some
lotuses that had come into bud and grown in the water, never rising out of the
water, but flourishing beneath its surface. Those lotuses would be suffused, filled,
soaked, and drenched from root to tip with cool water, so that no part of those
blue, red, or white lotuses would be untouched by the cool water. In exactly the
same way the monk suffuses, fills, soaks and drenches this very body with a
happiness distinct from joy, so that there is no part of his body that is untouched
by that happiness.”

—Buddha

“Whereas some ascetics and brahmans consume the food offered by the faithful
while still addicted to quarrelsome talk—“You don’t understand this teaching and
discipline, I do.” “How could you understand this teaching and discipline ?” “Your
practice is quite wrong—mine is right!” “What I say can be backed up, what you
say can’t.” “You are stating last what ought to be said first, and first what ought to
be said last.” “What you have thought out, has been over-turned.” “Your point
has been bettered—you’re refuted.” “Go and work out how to save your
argument, or disentangle yourself if you can.”—he refrains from such
quarrelsome talk. This is a further aspect of his moral behaviour.”

—Buddha

“As the heavy is the foundation of the light, so the quiet is master of the
passionate. Therefore, the perfect Sage in all the experiences of the day does not
lose his serenity.“

—Lao Tzu

“During the daytime, our senses are kept busy in activities, but if we keep our
minds concentrated, we will better preserve their potentialities. If, in our practice
of concentration, we preserve humility and tenderness and retain our natural
breathing, we will become like a little child. If, in our practice of concentration,
our minds retain their purity, we will be kept free from faults.”

—Lao Tzu

“Meditation in Jainism aims at realizing the self, attain salvation, take the soul to
complete freedom. It aims to reach and to remain in the pure state of soul which
is believed to be pure conscious, beyond any craving, aversion and/or
attachment.
Jain meditation is also referred as Sāmāyika. The word Sāmāyika means being in
the moment of continuous real-time. This act of being conscious of the continual
renewal of the universe in general and one's own renewal of the individual living
being (Jiva) in particular is the critical first step in the journey towards
identification with one's true nature, called the Atman. It is also a method by
which one can develop an attitude of harmony and respect towards other
humans, animals and Nature.”

“Life's fortune and misfortune are caused entirely by the mind...Hence a slight
change of the mind can suddenly make a different situation.”

—Hong Zicheng

“The sage is satisfied with a sufficiency; he is not jealous, and so is free of envy.
He does not seek fame and titles, but maintains his energy and keeps himself
supple. He minimizes his desires, and does not train himself in dishonesty. He
thus remains pure at heart. By acting in an uncontrived manner, the harmony of
the inner world of his thoughts and the external world of his environment is
maintained. He remains at peace with himself.”

—Lao Tzu

“And we consider many pains to be better than pleasures, if we experience a

greater pleasure for a long time from having endured those pains.”

—Epicurus

“A wise person reflects, 'Even though this course of action is unpleasant to do,
still when it is done it leads to what is profitable.' So he does it, and thus the doing
of that course of action leads to what is profitable for him.”

—Buddha
"But then there is the case where a woman or man when visiting a contemplative,
asks:

'What is skillful, venerable sir? What is unskillful? What is blameworthy? What is

blameless? What should be cultivated? What should not be cultivated? What,
having been done by me, will be for my long-term harm & suffering? Or what,
having been done by me, will be for my long-term welfare & happiness?

...This is the way leading to discernment.”

—Buddha, MN 135

“As for the qualities of my teachings, the Dhamma, they are dispassion, cessation,
calm, direct knowledge, self-awakening and liberation.”

—Buddha, AN 7.79

“So much of our lives takes place in our heads—in memory or imagination, in
speculation or interpretation—that sometimes I feel that I can best change my life
by changing the way I look at it.

As America’s wisest psychologist, William James, reminded us, “The greatest

weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another”

—Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness

“Practical wisdom is the foundation of all things and is the greatest good. Thus
practical wisdom is more valuable than theoretical philosophy and is the source of
every other excellence, teaching us that it is not possible to live joyously without
also living wisely and beautifully and rightly, nor to live wisely and beautifully and
rightly without living joyously. For the virtues grow up together with the pleasant
life, and the pleasant life is inseparable from them.”

—Epicurus
Roman Proverbs On Virtue:

—"For who would embrace virtue itself if you took away its reward?"

—"Only one path in this life leads to tranquility: the path of virtue."

—"In the ascent to virtue, there are many steps."

—"No one can be happy without virtue."

—"Virtue is its own reward"

—"We measure great men by their virtue, not their fortune."

“Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.”

—Matsuo Basho

“Ah—speechless before these budding green spring leaves in blazing sunlight.”

—Basho

“A contented ass enjoys a long life.”

—Portuguese proverb

PROP. III. An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we

form a clear and distinct idea thereof.

Proof.--An emotion, which is a passion, is a confused idea (by the general Def. of
the Emotions). If, therefore, we form a clear and distinct idea of a given emotion,
that idea will only be distinguished from the emotion, in so far as it is referred to
the mind only, by reason (II. xxi., and note); therefore (III. iii.), the emotion will
cease to be a passion. Q.E.D.
Corollary--An emotion therefore becomes more under our control, and the mind
is less passive in respect to it, in proportion as it is more known to us.

—Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“The two schools are not actually so different as they might seem. As Hadot has
noted, both Epicureanism and Stoicism highlight the crucial importance of living
life in the moment and shaping your thoughts and actions in accordance with that
moment’s exigencies.”

Thanks to Doug Bates for the choice find!

“The water of the valley stream

Never shouts at the tainted world: “Purify yourself!”
But naturally, as it is,
Shows how it is done.”

—Ryōkan

“The Buddha was very pragmatic. He didn't philosophize about "the nature of
reality"; he gave us simple, basic guidelines about how we can manage the
challenges and difficulties of life. The Buddha started with the basic human
condition: we often suffer. Suffering can take many forms: anxiety, tension,
stress, grief, fear, or dissatisfaction, to name a few. He emphasized that suffering
is workable, that we can engage with our suffering in such a way as to be freed
from it. He described five faculties that we need to develop to do so: confidence
(faith), effort, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment (wisdom). These five
qualities are present in varying degrees in almost every activity. They are useful in
developing any skill, be it playing a musical instrument, training in a sport, or
cultivating a meditative mind. The Buddha recognized these universal human
capacities and taught us how to use them to develop the craft of meditation.”

—Gil Fronsdal

“I wouldn’t want to travel so far down the path toward nirvana that I was drained
of fighting spirit. If full-on enlightenment means you quit making value judgments
of any kind and quit pushing for change, then count me out”

—Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True

TAOIST MEDITATION:

“Another attribute is this idea of breathing from their heels. Of course Chuang Tzu
is not telling us that they use their feet to breathe! But their breathing was very
deep, much like chi gong masters still breathe. It is when we breathe from down
deep in our diaphragm that we get the most benefit.

Most people breathe in a very shallow way, never really filling and emptying their
lungs, never mind exercising their diaphragm. When we breathe in this deep way
we allow our lungs to fully fill with good oxygen-rich air, but we also allow them
to completely empty of carbon dioxide. By breathing with our diaphragm, we
massage our lower organs as well. When we are frightened or shocked, our
breath catches in our throat or stops altogether. Many people breathe in this
fight-or-flight mode most of the time. Consequently, their whole chi and nervous
system is always tuned to a very stressful, tight pitch. By practicing deep
diaphragmatic breathing we can calm our whole system down. This is usually
achieved by breathing through the nose, slowly and deeply. As we inhale, our
abdomen expands and as we exhale, it contracts. This is the basic qigong breath
and is also used in many Taoist meditation practices.”

-Solala Towler

“Part of the interest of Taoism is that it demonstrates the possibility of deriving a

whole philosophy of life from a single imperative to deal with things as they
objectively are, not as one would like them to be.”

—AC Graham

"The Stoic philosophical life consists essentially in mastering one's inner

discourse. Everything in an individuals life depends on how he/she represents
things to himself- in other words, how he tells them to himself in inner dialogue.
"It is not things that trouble us but our judgements about things"(Epictetus )i.e.
Our inner discourse about things".

—Pierre Hadot, Inner Citadel

“Another way you could put it is that I am pursuing enlightenment—it’s just that,
rather than think of enlightenment as a state, I think of it as a process. And I think
of liberation—liberation from dukkha (suffering)—in the same way. The object of
the game isn’t to reach Liberation and Enlightenment—with a capital L and E—on
some distant day, but rather to become a bit more liberated and a bit more
enlightened on a not-so-distant day. Like today! Or, failing that, tomorrow. Or the
next day. Or whenever. The main thing is to make net progress over time,
inevitable backsliding notwithstanding”

—Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True

“All of this raises a question: Why do I still meditate? Why do I devote somewhere
between thirty and fifty minutes of each day to a practice that will not,
apparently, get me very close to enlightenment anytime soon? There are several
reasons. I’ll start with the little ones.

Imagine a refrigerator making that humming noise that refrigerators make.

Sounds monotonous, right? Actually, it’s not. When I’m meditating in the
morning, if the tabletop refrigerator in my office starts humming, and I’ve cleared
my mind enough to actually pay attention to it, I see that the hum consists of at
least three different sounds, each of which varies in intensity and texture over
time.

This is a truth about the world that is ordinarily hidden from me but is revealed
through an elementary exercise of mindfulness. And it is an objective truth. You
could no doubt set up sound-sensing equipment that would depict these three
sounds as distinct lines on a graph. This may seem like a trivial truth. In fact, it is a
trivial truth. And I have to admit that, strictly speaking, it’s not just the truth in
this experience that helps keep me coming back to the cushion each day. There’s
also the pleasantness of the experience. If my mind is clear enough to sense the
nuances of the refrigerator’s hum, then it is free enough of everyday concerns to
see this little three-instrument symphony, this infinitely rich unfolding of pattern,
as beautiful. And to feel it as beautiful—sometimes really intensely beautiful.”

—Robert Wright

"When the occasion arises, walk barefoot in the fragrant grass and keep company
with birds freely flying about.

When the mind becomes one with the scene, put on a cape and sit amid fallen
petals. The silent clouds will tarry and keep you company."

—Hong Zicheng

What the role of philosophy/reason is to the Stoics/Epicureans is

insight/awareness to Buddhists. The overlap is cultivating wisdom. Both consider
this the means to freedom, virtue, and tranquility.

-Eric Sherman

“Underlying this whole endeavor is a highly mechanistic conception of how the

mind works. The idea is to finely sense the workings of the machine and use that
understanding to rewire it, to subvert its programming, to radically alter its
response to the causes, the conditions, impinging on it. Doing this doesn’t let you
enter “the unconditioned” in the strict sense; it doesn’t let you literally escape the
realm of cause and effect. Then again, airplanes don’t literally defy the law of
gravity. But they still fly”

—Robert Wright

“Making real progress in mindfulness meditation almost inevitably means

becoming more aware of the mechanics by which your feelings, if left to their
own devices, shape your perceptions, thoughts, and behavior—and becoming
more aware of the things in your environment that activate those feelings in the
first place. You could say that enlightenment in the Buddhist sense has something
in common with enlightenment in the Western scientific sense: it involves
becoming more aware of what causes what”

—Robert Wright

STOP UR “BAD WILL HUNTING:”

“Why do you scrutinize too keenly your own trouble, my good sir, and continue to
make it ever vivid and fresh in your mind, but do not direct your thoughts to
those good things which you have? "Hunting bad when good was at hand."

Most persons, in fact, do pass by the excellent and palatable conditions of their
lot and hasten to those that are unpleasant and disagreeable... For it is the act of
a madman to be distressed at what is lost and not rejoice at what is saved, but
like little children, who, if someone takes away one of their many toys, will throw
away all the rest as well and cry and howl; in the same way, if we are troubled by
Fortune in one matter, we make everything else also unprofitable by lamenting
and taking it hard.”

—Plutarch

TAKE ER’ EASY FOR ALL US SINNERS THIS WEEKEND:

“We know how to act but not how to rest. We know how to talk but not how to
keep still. We know how to remember but not how to forget. Everything we do
leads to the land of death. The Sage dwells where there is neither life nor death.”

—Su Ch’e

“People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are
attached to them.”

—George Bernard Shaw

“Monks, luminous is the mind. And it is defiled by incoming defilements
(impressions). The uninstructed doesn't discern that as it actually is present,
which is why I tell you that — for the uninstructed — there is no development of
the mind.”

"Monks, luminous, is the mind. And it is freed from incoming defilements

(temptations). The well-instructed discerns that as it actually is present, which is
why I tell you that — for the well-instructed disciple — there is development of
the mind.”
-Buddha

The 4th jhana of meditative concentration describes this luminosity:

“He enters and remains in the fourth jhana: purity of equanimity and mindfulness,
neither-pleasure-nor-pain. He sits, permeating the body with a pure, bright
awareness, so that there is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by pure, bright
awareness.

Just as if a man were sitting wrapped from head to foot with a white cloth so that
there would be no part of his body to which the white cloth did not extend; even
so, the monk sits, permeating his body with a pure, bright awareness. There is
nothing of his entire body unpervaded by pure, bright awareness."

“You know the old saying about Zen meditation, Tibetan meditation, and
Vipassana meditation? Well, no, you probably don’t. It’s a saying that’s meant to
capture the difference between these three Buddhist contemplative traditions—
Vipassana, with its emphasis on mindfulness; Tibetan, which often steers the
mind toward visual imagery; and Zen, which sometimes involves pondering those
cryptic lines known as koans. Here’s the saying: Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for
artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists.”

—Robert Wright

“Ch'ui the draftsman could draw more perfect circles freehand than with a
compass. His fingers brought forth spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
was meanwhile free and without concern with what he was doing. No application
was needed his mind was perfectly simple and knew no obstacle. So, when the
shoe fits the foot is forgotten, when the belt fits the belly is forgotten, when the
heart is right “for" and "against" are forgotten. No drives, no compulsions, no
needs, no attractions: Then your affairs are under control. You are a free man.”

—Chuang Tzu

“This is the very thing I am discussing with myself, how nothing is serious if one
takes it lightly, nothing needs to be annoying, provided that one doesn’t add
one’s own annoyance to it.”

—Seneca, Letter 123

“All the emotions need schooling, to tame and discipline by training the part of
oneself that is irrational and defiant.”

—Plutarch

"Anger beyond bounds begets insanity."

—Epicurus

"Anger is like fire: what matters is not the size of the flame but what is in its path.
Where the material is solid, even the biggest blaze does not ignite it; dry and
combustible stuff, though, catches even a spark and makes of it an inferno.

That’s how it is, dear Lucilius: the outcome of great anger is madness."

—Seneca, Letter 18

“The best fighter is never angry”

—Lao Tzu
“In this very city there are people who have never seen either a sunrise or a
sunset. Do you suppose they know how to live? They don’t even know when to
live! Do they too fear death, now that they have buried themselves alive? They
are not partying but celebrating their own funerals.”

—Seneca

“I recommend constant activity in the study of nature; and with this sort of
activity more than any other I bring calm to my life...Do not believe that there is
any other goal to be achieved by the knowledge of Nature than freedom from
disturbance and peace of mind”

—Epicurus

“The way to develop the habit of savoring is to pause when something is beautiful
and good and catches our attention – the sound of rain, the look of the night
sky—the glow in a child’s eyes, or when we witness some kindness. Pause…then
totally immerse in the experience of savoring it.”

—Tara Brach

“The life free of care, without any assaults of fortune is “a dead sea.” To lie in
undisturbed calm, with nothing to rouse yourself toward, nothing to strive after,
nothing to denounce or contend against, testing the firmness of your mind: that is
not tranquility; it is enfeeblement and debilitation.”

—Seneca, Letter 67

"Ask, and she will tell you, that a happy life is like neither to a roaring torrent, nor
a stagnant pool, but to a placid and crystal stream, that flows gently and silently
along."

—Frances Wright (Epicurean)

"When you do something, you should be completely involved in it. You should
devote yourself to it completely. When your mind is wandering about elsewhere
you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you
can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature,
which is the universal Buddha-nature. This is our way."

—Shunryu Suzuki

“The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses
nothing. It receives but does not keep. It reflects everything.”

—Chuang Tzu

“He who in this very life realizes for himself the end of suffering, who has laid
aside the shackles and become free — him do I call a Sage.”

—Buddha, Dhammapada

“Who am I to wish that it should be this way or that? For that choice hasn’t been
granted to me, has it?

I’m satisfied with those things that are under my own authority. I must make the
best use of them that I can, and as for other things, let them be as their master
pleases.”

—Epictetus

“But there is, however, a bhikkhuni named Khema, a disciple of the Blessed One,
worthy and rightly self-awakened. And of this lady, this admirable report has
spread about:

**”She is wise, competent, intelligent, learned, a fluent speaker, admirable in her

ingenuity.**

Let your majesty visit her...

Then King Pasenadi Kosala went to Khema and, on arrival, having bowed down to
her, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to her, "Now then, lady, does
the Buddha exist before or after death?"

"That, great king, has not been declared by the Buddha.

“Now, what is the cause, what is the reason, why that has not been declared by
the Blessed One?"

"Very well, then, great king, I will question you in return about this very same
matter. Answer as you see fit. What do you think great king: Do you have an
accountant or actuary or mathematician who can count the grains of sand in the
river Ganges as 'so many grains of sand' or 'so many hundreds of grains of sand'
or 'so many thousands of grains of sand' or 'so many hundreds of thousands of
grains of sand'?

“No, Lady.”

“Then do you have an accountant or calculator or mathematician who can count

the water in the great ocean...”

"No, lady. Why is that? The great ocean is deep, boundless, hard to fathom."

—Khema Sutta

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry
and listen to some music at least once every week.”

—Charles Darwin

“If men can endure many wounds rising to the challenge for the sake of
meaningless battle, then needless to say that I, regardless of the hardship, will
work to overcome the source of all my pain...This will be my sole obsession, and I
will use even the mental afflictions themselves to destroy this enemy! Better to
die than to ever bow down to these afflictions.”

—Shantideva

“I would rather die in this conflict than be alive but defeated.”

—Buddha, Suttanipata

“Malunkyaputta, if anyone were to say, 'I won't live the holy life under the
Blessed One as long as he does not declare to me that "The cosmos is eternal,"...
or that "After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,"' the man
would die and those things would still remain undeclared by the Tathagata.

"It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison.
His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon,
and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether
the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a brahman, a merchant, or a
worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given
name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was
tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or
golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know
whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until
I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo
threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was
wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft
with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or
another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was
bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would
say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I
was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-
toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still
remain unknown to him.”

—Buddha, Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta

“With the abandoning of pleasure & pain—as with the earlier disappearance of
bliss & distress—he enters & remains in the fourth jhāna (meditative
concentration): purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain.
This is called the training in heightened mind.

“And what is the training in heightened discernment (wisdom & insight)? There is
the case where a monk discerns as it has come to be that ‘This is stress… This is
the cause of stress… This is the remedy for stress… This is the path of practice
leading to the cessation of stress.’

This is called the training in heightened wisdom, insight and discernment. These
are the three trainings.”

—Buddha, Sikkha Sutta, AN 3:90

“The point of the teachings is to control your own mind. Keep your mind from
greed, and you will keep your behaviour right, your mind pure and your words
faithful. By always thinking about the transiency of your life, you will be able to
resist greed and anger, and will be able to avoid all evils.

“If you find your mind tempted and so entangled in greed, you must suppress and
control the temptation; be the master of your own mind.”

—Buddha

“We ought to notice that even the the little things produced by nature contain
something pleasing and beautiful. For example, when bread is baked, some of the
surface splits. This has little to do with what the baker is trying to produce, but
those cracks are beautiful and induce us to eat the bread. Or look at figs—when
they are very ripe, they split open; or consider olives—overripens adds a peculiar
beauty to the fruit. Or look at ripe grains bending down, or the eyebrows of a lion,
or the foam in a wild boar’s mouth, and all sorts of other things—small things that
often go unnoticed—still, because they are formed by nature, they are beautiful
and please the mind.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Stop sniveling, you idiot! Away with your whinings! You had full use of all the
precious things of life before you reached this senile and cantankerous state. But
because you continually crave what is not present and bitch about what is, your
life has slipped away from you incomplete and unenjoyed, until suddenly you
have found death standing at your head before you are able to depart from the
feast of life filled to satisfaction. Quick then, seize the day and with equanimity
yield to your years happily; for yield you must.”

—Lucretius

“Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity...It is so

easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to
serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I
need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily
undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently
taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest
part of them regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention
difficult.”

—Immanuel Kant

The Sabbasava Sutta mentions 16 questions which are seen as "unwise reflection"
and lead to attachment to views relating to a self...

What am I?
How am I?
Am I?
Am I not?
Did I exist in the past?
Did I not exist in the past?
What was I in the past?
How was I in the past?
Having been what, did I become what in the past?
Shall I exist in future?
Shall I not exist in future?
What shall I be in future?
How shall I be in future?
Having been what, shall I become what in future?
Whence came this person?
Whither will he go?

The Buddhist Ten Perfections:

Dāna pāramī : generosity, giving of oneself

Sīla pāramī : virtue, morality, proper conduct
Nekkhamma pāramī : suppression of desire
Paññā pāramī : wisdom, insight
Viriya pāramī : energy, diligence, vigor, effort
Khanti pāramī : patience, tolerance, forbearance, acceptance, endurance
Sacca pāramī : truthfulness, honesty
Adhiṭṭhāna pāramī : determination, resolution
Mettā pāramī : goodwill, friendliness, loving-kindness
Upekkhā pāramī : equanimity, serenity

“For if men believe, as I do, that this present earth is the only heaven, they will
strive all the more to make heaven of it.”

—Sir Arthur Keith

“Gilgamesh, whither are you roaming? Immortal life which you look for, you shall
never find. For when the gods created man, they set death as share for man, and
life snatched away in their own hands.

So you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly, day and night make merry, daily hold a festival,
dance and make music day and night. And wear fresh clothes, and wash your
head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, and let your wife
delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of man.”

—Epic Of Gilgamesh (2100 BCE)

Nirvana (Buddhist)—the extinguishing of the fires of negative passions that cause

suffering.

Apatheia (Stoic)—being without suffering caused by negative passions.

“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind become still. The ten thousand things
rise and fall while the self watches their return. They grow and flourish and then
return to the source. Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of
nature.”

—Lao Tzu

“Of these [top fields of study] the principal and most urgent is that which reaches
the passions; for passion is only produced by a disappointment of one’s desires
and an incurring of one’s aversions. It is this which introduces perturbations,
tumults, misfortunes, and calamities; this is the spring of sorrow, lamentation,
and envy; this renders us envious and jealous, and incapable of hearing reason.”

—Epictetus, Book III, Ch. 2

“Vipassana is the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices. The method comes

directly from the Sitipatthana Sutta, a discourse attributed to Buddha himself.
Vipassana is a direct and gradual cultivation of mindfulness or awareness. It
proceeds piece by piece over a period of years. The student's attention is carefully
directed to an intense examination of certain aspects of his own existence. The
meditator is trained to notice more and more of his own flowing life experience.
Vipassana is a gentle technique. But it also is very , very thorough. It is an ancient
and codified system of sensitivity training, a set of exercises dedicated to
becoming more and more receptive to your own life experience. It is attentive
listening, total seeing and careful testing. We learn to smell acutely, to touch fully
and really pay attention to what we feel. We learn to listen to our own thoughts
without being caught up in them.”

- Mindfulness in Plain English

“And what is the faculty of mindfulness? There is the case where a monk, a
disciple of the noble ones, is mindful, is endowed with excellent proficiency in
mindfulness, remembering & able to call to mind even things that were done &
said long ago. He remains focused on the body in & of itself—ardent, alert, &
mindful—subduing greed & distress with reference to the world. He remains
focused on feelings in & of themselves… the mind in & of itself… mental qualities
in & of themselves—ardent, alert, & mindful—subduing greed & distress with
reference to the world. This is called the faculty of mindfulness.”

— Buddha, SN 48:10

“This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness, and who knows
the path of peace:

Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech, humble and
not conceited, contented and easily satisfied...peaceful and calm and wise and
skillful...

Wishing: In gladness and in safety, may all beings be at ease. Whatever living
beings there may be...May all beings be at ease!

Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a
boundless heart should one cherish all living beings; radiating kindness over the
entire world: Spreading upwards to the skies, and downwards to the depths;
outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill-will. Whether standing or
walking, seated or lying down free from drowsiness, one should sustain this
recollection.”

—Buddha, Sutta Nipata

“One less than a hero will not be victorious over them (negative passions) and
attain happiness...I would rather die in this conflict than be alive but defeated.”

—Buddha, Suttanipata

“I have lived with several Zen masters—all of them cats.”

—Eckhart Tolle

“With becoming present, one lives.

When grasped with the highest meaning, the world is dead when the mind stops.
There's no hoarding what has vanished, no piling up for the future; those who
have been born are standing like a seed upon a needle...

From the unseen, states come and go, glimpsed only as they're passing by; like
lightning flashing in the sky—they arise and then pass away.”

—Buddha

“The image of a tiny seed balancing on the point of a needle is striking — it so

poignantly describes the exquisite precision of the human condition. With the
past long gone and the future unmanifest, all we have access to is the present
moment, and this is only as accessible as we are attentive to it. How much of our
legacy we neglect when we fail to attend!

Meditation can train the mind to be as sharp as a needle point, to notice

phenomena as fleeting as a flash of lightning. So whether we live 84,000 years or
only a few dozen, each life can be as infinitely deep as our mindfulness can
penetrate.”

—Andrew Olendzki

"Tetsugen, a devotee of Zen in Japan, decided to publish the sutras, which at that
time were available only in Chinese. The books were to be printed with wood
blocks in an edition of seven thousand copies, a tremendous undertaking.
Tetsugen began by traveling and collecting donations for this purpose. A few
sympathizers would give him a hundred pieces of gold, but most of the time he
received only small coins. He thanked each donor with equal gratitude. After ten
years Tetsugen had enough money to begin his task.

It happened that at that time the Uji Rive overflowed. Famine followed. Tetsugen
took the funds he had collected for the books and spent them to save others from
starvation. Then he began again his work of collecting.

Several years afterwards an epidemic spread over the country. Tetsugen again
gave away what he had collected, to help his people. For a third time he started
his work, and after twenty years his wish was fulfilled. The printing blocks which
produced the first edition of sutras can be seen today in the Obaku monastery in
Kyoto.

The Japanese tell their children that Tetsugen made three sets of sutras, and that
the first two invisible sets surpass even the last."

"For every ailment under the sun

There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it."

- Mother Goose Rhyme, 1695

“What strikes me is the fact that, in our society, art has become something which
is related only to objects and not to individuals or to life. But couldn’t everyone’s
life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object but
not our life?”

—Michel Foucault
These are characteristics of the people Marcus Aurelius most admired. I selected
the ones I admire most from Book One:

-To put up with discomfort and not make demands.

-To hear unwelcome truths.

-The recognition that I needed to train and discipline my character.

-And to behave in a conciliatory way when people who have angered or annoyed
us want to make up.

-And to be the same in all circumstances—intense pain, the loss of a child, chronic
illness.

-To show intuitive sympathy for friends, tolerance to amateurs and sloppy
thinkers.

-To investigate and analyze, with understanding and logic, the principles we ought
to live by.

-Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love.

-To love my family, truth and justice.

-not to be a pessimist,

-Optimism in adversity—especially illness.

-Doing your job without whining.

-A sense of humor.

-Compassion
-Unwavering adherence to decisions, once he’d reached them.

-A sense of when to push and when to back off.

-His willingness to take responsibility—and blame—for both.

-His ability to feel at ease with people—and put them at their ease, without being
pushy.

-He never exhibited rudeness, lost control of himself, or turned violent.

Zen and Taoism value a time in which mankind was more like animals in their
direct apprehension of the world rather than the human tendency to
conceptualize everything abstractly and linguistically. That it’s a tree or bird and
that birds fly south for the winter or that your gardener should really trim the
branches are all fine as a function of thinking. Zennists are more concerned with
the bare experience of the bird or tree than all its analytical facts. Thinking is a
function of the brain but is not necessarily synonymous with direct experience.

A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.

One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there
was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him.

"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not
return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift." The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and ran away. The Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused, " I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."
“When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation
between a butcher and his customer.

"Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer.

"Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You cannot find here
any piece of meat that is not the best."

At these words Banzan became enlightened.”

“Wild beasts, believe me, present a less ghastly sight than a man on fire with
anger.”

—Seneca, On Anger

"Suffering" is relative. One can suffer physically but still have peace of mind. One
can be confined to a dirty barn, but “Should that lowly barn be entered by the
virtues, it will straightway become more beautiful than any temple, because
within it will be seen justice, self-restraint, prudence, love, a right division of all
duties, a knowledge of all things on earth and in heaven. No place can be narrow,
if it contains such a company of the greatest virtues;"

—Seneca, Of Consolation: to Helvia, IX.

“There is a story that one of the Seven Sages, a man named Liu Ling habitually
received guests while completely naked. His response to adverse comment was to
declare: “I take the whole universe as my house and my own room as my clothing.
Why then, do you enter here into my trousers.”

“With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from
defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and
inclines it to knowledge and vision.”

—Buddha
“It is hard to convince men that virtue is desirable in itself. But that pleasure and
tranquillity come through virtue, justice and goodness and is both true and
capable of proof. For Epicurus himself says that one cannot live pleasurably
without living virtuously and justly. Thus Pansa, who pursues pleasure, keeps to
virtue, and the folk you call “pleasure lovers” are in fact lovers of virtue and
justice and practice all the virtues at once and keep to them firmly.”

—Cassius’ Letter to Cicero

"When someone says to you that you know nothing, and you are not offended,
then know that you have begun your work"

—Epictetus

"The mind is the master over every kind of fortune: itself acts in both ways, being
the cause of its own happiness and misery."

—Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Happiness and suffering are dependent upon your mind, upon your
interpretation. They do not come from outside, from others. All of your happiness
and all of your suffering are created by you, by your own mind."

—Lama Zopa Rinpoche

"It's like we're stabbing ourselves every day and we keep blaming the knife."

—Robina Courtin

"Regard others with cool eyes; listen to words with cool ears, confront feelings
with cool emotions; reflect on principles with a cool mind."

—Hong Zicheng
“At least we can say that liberation, according to the Buddha, was not simply a
meditative experience but an insight into meditative experience. The Buddha
taught that meditation must be accompanied by a careful attention to the basis of
one’s experience—the sensations caused by internal and external objects—and
eventually an insight into the nature of this meditative experience.

The idea that liberation requires a cognitive act of insight went against the grain
of Brahminic
meditation, where it was thought that the yogin must be without any mental
activity at all, ‘like a log of wood’. The idea of liberation in life is just as strange for
the Brahminic yogin, for whom liberation was thought to be the realization at
death of the nondual meditative state anticipated in life. Indeed, old Brahminic
metaphors for the liberation at death of the yogic adept (‘becoming cool’ and
‘going out’) were reinvested with a new meaning by the Buddha; their point of
reference became the sage who is liberated in life.”

-Alexander Wynne, The Origin of Buddhist Meditation

“I, Udaya, have come with the desire to ask a question to the seated meditator
who is without passion (attained Nirvana), who has done what has to be done, is
without taint and has gone to the far shore of all suffering. Proclaim the release
through understanding, the destruction of ignorance.”

“The abandoning of both desire and depression, O Udaya, said the Buddha, the
dispelling of sloth and the warding away of anxieties. Purified by equanimity and
mindfulness preceded by the investigation of mental constructs, I say, is the
release through understanding, the destruction of ignorance.”

—Sutta Nipāta 5.14

“Here, Ananda, a bhikkhu may be conscious of the following:

‘This is calm, this is supreme; namely, the calming of all mental constructions, the
relinquishing of all attachment, the destruction of thirst; dispassion, cessation,
nirvana.”
-Buddha

“Keep in mind that some desires are natural whereas others are groundless; that
among the natural desires some are natural and necessary whereas others are
merely natural; and that among the necessary desires some are necessary for
happiness, some for physical health, and some for life itself.

The steady contemplation of these facts enables you to understand everything

that you accept or reject in terms of the health of the body and the serenity of the
soul — since that is the goal of a completely happy life.”

—Epicurus

THE BUDDHA’S 4 CULTIVATED STATES OF MIND:

“first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed
thought & evaluation.”

“second jhana: rapture & pleasure born of composure, unification of awareness

free from directed thought & evaluation — internal assurance.”

“the fading of rapture, he remains equanimous, mindful, & alert, and senses
pleasure with the body. He enters & remains in the third jhana, of which the
Noble Ones declare, 'Equanimous & mindful, he has a pleasant abiding.'

“with the abandoning of pleasure & stress — as with the earlier disappearance of
elation & distress — enters & remains in the fourth jhana: purity of equanimity &
mindfulness, neither-pleasure-nor-pain”

—Buddha, Bahuvedaniya Sutta

“The Buddha saw that normal experience is vitiated by the transience of all
worldly phenomena, a transience which must sooner or later render them
unsatisfying. Our experience of their transience can only successfully be handled,
he argued, by coming to terms with it: we should not want permanence, for
ourselves or our loved ones, because we are not going to get it. We need, of
course, to understand this fundamental fact if we are going to stop our vain
desires. So we have both to control our emotions and to train our intellect; and
Buddhist meditation is designed to achieve both goals. We have to adapt our
entire mentality to reality, the reality of what life is like, including the fact that we
ourselves and our loved ones all must die.”

-Richard Gombrich, What the Buddha Thought

“The Buddha's great insight was that everything that matters happens in the
mind.”

-Richard Gombrich

"I thus perceived that I was in a state of great peril, and I compelled myself to
seek with all my strength for a remedy or therapy, however uncertain it might be;
as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely
be upon him is compelled to seek such a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch
as his whole hope lies therein."

—Baruch Spinoza

“For it is never too early or too late for the health of the soul.”

—Epicurus

“Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.”

—Dogen

“Meditation is the temporary stoppage of the waves of the mind.”

—Patanjali
“Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a
destiny.”

—Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction

“Overfilling a vessel is not as good as stopping before it is filled. Oversharpen a

blade and it will lose its edge. Pile up gold and jade and it will be impossible to
guard it. In going after rank and titles in an arrogant and haughty way you will
bring about your own downfall. Withdraw when the work is done. This is the way
of Tao.”

—Lao Tzu

“The few minutes of the Spring night are worth ten thousand pieces of gold. The
perfume of the flowers are so pure. The shadows of the moon are so black. In the
pavilion the voices and flutes are so high and light. In the garden a
hammock rocks in the night so deep, so profound.”

—Su Dongpo

"Put the question voluntarily to yourself:

Am I tormented without sufficient reason, am I morose, and do I convert what is

not an evil into what is an evil?"

—Seneca

“How, then, can one preserve firmness and calmness of mind, and at the same
time the attentiveness that saves us from careless and thoughtless action?

By following the example of those who play at dice. The counters are indifferent,
the dice are indifferent. How can I know in what way the throw will fall? But to be
attentive and skilful in making use of whatever does fall, that is now my task.”

—Epictetus
“Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future. The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come. Looking deeply at life as it is in the very here and
now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait till tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain
with it?
The sage calls a person who dwells in mindfulness night and day “the one who
knows the better way to live alone.”

—Buddha, BHADDEKARATTA SUTTA

"Like a warrior, I’ll always be on guard against delusions and vigorously counter-
attack them. And if I drop the sword of mindfulness, I will quickly pick it up."

—Shantideva

BUDDHIST MYTHOLOGY: WHAT’S ON THE BUDDHA’S HEAD?

“One day, the Buddha was on a walk and began thinking very deeply. He came to
a tree and sat down in its shade to continue his meditation.

Hours passed, and the Buddha became so immersed in thought that he didn’t
notice the sun moving across the sky. The sun beat down on his bare head, and
still he sat thinking.

A snail was making its way along the ground, and he noticed the Buddha sitting
there, thinking important thoughts. Snails are tough creatures, but they are made
of moisture, and have to be very careful of drying out, so the snail saw right away
that the Buddha’s head was soon going to become a painful distraction to his
great thoughts.
As fast as it could, the snail made its way up the Buddha’s robe to his head, and
sat there, with his mucous-y body cooling the Buddha’s smooth, bare skin. Other
snails noticed and followed the first one, covering Buddha’s head in a neat cap of
spiral shells and cool, damp bodies.

Hours passed, and the snails became parched and dry. When evening fell and
Buddha stood, noticing his surroundings once more, he found he was wearing 108
snails, all of whom had given their lives to further Buddha’s path to
enlightenment.

These snails are now honored as martyrs and are shown on many statues of the
Buddha to remind us of their sacrifice.”

“If you don’t allow the birth of a single thought, you can sit in complete peace,
watching and traveling with the clouds, feeling purified by the passing rain,
finding pleasant awareness on hearing the birds, and understanding yourself with
the falling petals. Where will you not find truth? Where will it not function?”

—Hong Zicheng

“We know that when an animal is wounded, it looks for a quietplace to lie down.
Wisdom is present in the animal’s body. It knows that rest is the best way to heal.
It doesn’t do anything, not even eat or hunt; it just lies down. Some days later, it
can get up. It is healed. Human beings have lost confidence in their bodies. We
don’t know how to rest. Mindful breathing helps us to relearn the art of resting.
Mindful breathing is like a loving mother holding her sick baby in her arms saying,
“Don’t worry, I’ll
take good care of you, just rest.”

—Thich Hahn

“Breathing in, I am aware of my mind. Breathing out, I am aware of my mind.

Breathing in, I make my mind happy. Breathing out, I make my mind happy.
Breathing in, I concentrate my mind. Breathing out, I concentrate my mind.
Breathing in, I liberate my mind. Breathing out, I liberate my mind.”
—Buddha

“In one who is gladdened, rapture is born. Enraptured at heart, his body grows
calm. His body calm, he is sensitive to pleasure. Feeling pleasure, his mind
becomes concentrated.”

—Buddha

“By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul
(ataraxia/tranquility)...it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every
choice and avoidance (mindfulness), and banishing those beliefs through which
the greatest tumults take possession of the soul."

—Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

“Consummate in his virtue, he guards the doors of his senses, is possessed of

mindfulness and alertness, and is content.

And how is a monk consummate in virtue? Abandoning the taking of life, he

abstains from the taking of life. He dwells with his rod laid down, his knife laid
down, scrupulous, merciful, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings.
This is part of his virtue.”

—Buddha, Sāmaññaphala Sutta

“So that you may know that those thoughts are not false from which serenity
comes to us and freedom from passion, take my books and you will know that
they are true and in harmony with nature, the thoughts that render me free from
passion.”

—Chrysippus

“Pīti (Rapture) is a sense of joy or uplift that occurs during the course of
meditation. It is best understood as an emotional response to the pleasure
experienced in meditation. It may have physical manifestations, such as
goosebumps or hair-raising, but is primarily a psychological quality.“

“Freedom from illness: the foremost good fortune. Contentment: the foremost
wealth. Trust: the foremost kinship.”

—Buddha

“Our every action is done so that we will not be in pain or anxiety. As soon as we
achieve this, the soul is released from every storm.”

—Epicurus

One day, the emperor Liang Wu Ti invited master Fu Ta Shih to expound the
Diamond Sutra*. As soon as he had ascended to his seat, the master rapped the
table once with his staff and descended from his seat. As the emperor was
startled, the master asked him:

'Does Your Majesty understand?'

'I do not,' replied the emperor.

The saintly master said: ‘Fu Ta Shih has finished expounding the sutra.'

*The Diamond Sutra is about “the emancipation from the fundamental ignorance
of not knowing how to experience reality as it is.” In this case, the rap on the table
forces the “here and now” upon the Emperor and the wordless sermon points to
emptiness, stillness, and experiencing what is happening with bare attention, that
is “experiencing reality as it is.”

“When I see someone in a state of anxiety, I say, ‘What is it that he wants?’ For
unless he wanted something that was not within his power, how could he still be
anxious? That is why a lyre-player feels no anxiety when singing on his own, but
becomes anxious when he enters the theatre, even if he has a fine voice and plays
his instrument well. For he wants not only to sing well, but also to win the
approval of his audience, and that is something that lies beyond his control.”

—Epictetus

"When my wife died, I shed bitter tears.'" They retorted by asking what the use
was of being enlightened, to which Suzuki replied: "'My tears had no roots."

“The perceptive man, profoundly curious about the workings of nature, will take a
peculiar pleasure in everything...The world is full of wonders that will appeal only
to those who study nature closely and develop a real affinity for her works.”

—Marcus Aurelius

"Anyone who is intelligent is also self-controlled. But anyone who is self-

controlled is also steady. Anyone who is steady is also untroubled. Anyone who is
untroubled is without sadness. Anyone who is without sadness is happy.
Therefore the intelligent person is happy, and intelligence is sufficient for
happiness....

Furthermore, if reason is of any use, then the emotions will not even begin: if they
begin without the acquiescence of reason, they will continue without it. It is
easier to forestall their beginnings than to govern the impulse."

—Seneca, Letter 85

"It is the one who has seen his own blood—who has heard his teeth crunch under
the fist—who has lost his footing and found himself spread-eagled beneath his
opponent—the one who, though forced to yield, has never yielded in spirit, who
after falling rises fiercer every time: that is the one who goes to the contest with
vigorous hope."

—Seneca

“That great and forceful spirit, not vanquished by adversity nor again by the
blandishments of prosperity, that does not yield itself up to either but rises above
all contingency, all accident—that most beautiful spirit, well marshaled in grace
and likewise in strength, sound and sober, tranquil and undismayed—that spirit
that no power can subdue, no chance event can either elevate or depress—that
sort of spirit is what virtue is."

—Seneca, Letter 66

“Whenever our love becomes too attached to one thing, one faith, one virtue
then I become suspicious...
A long time I castigated myself before gods and laws which were only idols for
me. That was what I did wrong, my anguish, my complicity in the world’s pain. I
increased the world’s guilt and anguish by doing violence to myself, by not daring
to walk toward my own salvation.

The way to salvation leads neither to the left or to the right: it leads into your own
heart and there alone is God and there alone is a peace.”

—Hermann Hesse

“I am not used to this upheaval:

Being at home in my own soul, never to be led elsewhere. I want nothing, I long
for nothing, I hum gently the sounds of childhood, and I reach home astounded in
the warm beauty of dreams. Heart, how torn you are, how blessed to plow down
blindly, to think nothing, to know nothing, only to breathe, only to feel.”

—Hermann Hesse

"Nature intended that no great equipment should be necessary for happiness;

each of us is in a position to make himself happy.

Externals have little weight and exert only slight pressure in one direction or the
other. The sage is neither elated by prosperity nor depressed by adversity. His
endeavor always is to rely mainly on himself and to seek his whole satisfaction
from within himself."
—Seneca

According to Dogen, Master Changcong was once asked by a monk, “Do

inanimate objects preach the Law?”, to which he replied, “Continuously.”

Su Dongpo spent an entire night wrestling with this koan and at dawn wrote this
poem:

The murmuring brook is the Buddha’s long, broad tongue. And is not the shapely
mountain the body of purity? Through the night I listen to eighty thousand songs,
When dawn breaks, how will I explain it to others?”

-Su Dongpo

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you
have learned how to live.”

—Lin Yutang

“When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety.
If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain.”

—Rumi

Standing to one side, a devatā addressed the Blessed One with a verse:

“Living in the wilderness, staying peaceful, remaining chaste, eating just one meal
a day: why are their faces so bright & serene?”

The Buddha:

“They don’t sorrow over the past,

don’t long for the future. They survive on the present. That’s why their faces are
bright & serene. From longing for the future, from sorrowing over the past, fools
wither away like a green reed cut down.”

—Buddha, SN 1:10

“Whoever, whether standing or walking, sitting or lying down,calms his mind and
strives for that inner stillness in which
there is no thought, he has the prerequisite to realize supreme
illumination.”

—The Buddha, Itivuttaka 4.11

“The third meditative concentration (jhana) is characterized by happiness...It

possesses a sublime quality of happiness that is associated with mindfulness and
equanimity. It is a calm and deep sense of contentment and peace likened to the
half-smile that artists render on Buddha images.

A half-smile implies full acceptance and deep happiness, regardless of

conditions. This meditative absorption provides a smooth resting place for the
heart. One feels joy in a mindful connection to things, a contact that does not
seek pleasure through the experience. In the state of concentration sensory
experiences are not the focus; the mental factor of mindfulness is highlighted.
This brings a quality of joy to the third jhana : happiness due to mindfulness and
equanimity.”

—SHAILA CATHERINE

Show me someone who is ill and yet happy, in danger and yet happy, dying and
yet happy, exiled and yet happy. Show me such a person; by the gods, how
greatly I long to see a Stoic! But you can’t show me anyone who has been
fashioned in such a way. Show me, at least, one who is in the process of
formation, one who is tending in that direction. Do me that favour. Don’t grudge
an old man the opportunity to see a sight that he’s never yet seen...It is a human
soul that one of you should show me, the soul of a man who wants to be of one
mind with God (Fate), and never find fault with God (Fate) or man again, and to
fail in none of his desires, to fall into nothing that he wants to avoid, never to be
angry, never to be envious, never to be jealous, and who wishes to become a god
instead of a human being, and though enclosed in this poor body, this corpse,
aspires to achieve communion with Zeus (Nature) Show me such a person.”

—Epictetus

“Then, with the stilling of discursive thoughts & evaluations, he enters and
remains in mental one-pointedness: rapture & pleasure born of concentration,
unification of awareness free from discursive thought & evaluation—internal
assurance. He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the
rapture & pleasure born of concentration.

Just like a lake with spring-water welling up from within, having no inflow from
the east, west, north, or south, and with the skies supplying abundant showers
time and again, so that the cool fount of water welling up from within the lake
would permeate and pervade, suffuse and fill it with cool waters, there being no
part of the lake unpervaded by the cool waters; even so, the monk permeates…
this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of concentration. There is nothing
of his entire body unpervaded by rapture & pleasure born of concentration. This,
too, is a fruit of the contemplative life, visible here & now, more excellent than
the previous ones and more sublime.”

—Buddha

“For it is growth in the training of the noble one to recognize a mistake for what it
is, deal with it properly, and commit to restraint in the future.”

—Buddha

“Do not give up or be disgusted and impatient with yourself if you do not act from
right principles in every situation; but, having been driven off course, return again
and rejoice if most of your actions are worthy of a human being, and love that to
which you are returning. Do not come back to philosophy as a child returns to a
harsh schoolmaster but rather as sore-eyed people turn to sponges and egg
whites, as one sick man turns to plaster, and another to healing ointments. For to
obey the order of the universe is no heroic deed or struggle. But in so doing you
will find tranquility.”

—Marcus Aurelius 5.9

"Monks, I know not of any other single thing that brings such woe as the mind
that is untamed, uncontrolled, unguarded and unrestrained. Such a mind indeed
brings great woe.

"Monks, I know not of any other single thing that brings such bliss as the mind
that is tamed, controlled, guarded and restrained. Such a mind indeed brings
great bliss."

—Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya

“But the source of all the negative emotions, the Stoics say, is “loss of control,”
which is a rebellion in the mind as a whole against right reason. This rebellion has
turned away from what reason dictates to such an extent that there is no way the
mind’s impulses can be directed or restrained.

Self-control soothes the impulses and makes them obey right reason, considering
and maintaining the judgments of the mind; but loss of control is just the
opposite: reason’s enemy, it lays flame to every state of the mind, throwing it into
disturbance and riot. Thus it is that all forms of distress, fear, and other emotions
arise from loss of control.”

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

“We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”

—Anaïs Nin

“Having abandoned harsh speech, he abstains from harsh speech. He speaks only
such words as are gentle, pleasing to the ear, endearing, going to the heart,
polite, amiable and agreeable to the manyfolk. This too pertains to his moral
discipline.”

“They give up harsh speech. They speak in a way that’s mellow, pleasing to the
ear, lovely, going to the heart, polite, likable and agreeable to the people. This
pertains to their ethics.”

—Buddha

“Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting

go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. Letting
go of that, it grabs another one. In the same way, ‘thoughts,’ and ‘desires’ by day
and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another.”

—Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya 12.61

"We do not meet death all at once; we move toward it bit by bit. We die every
day, for every day some part of life is taken from us...so our last hour of existence
is not the only time we die but just the only time we finish dying."

—Seneca

"To appreciate one does not need to look afar; to be inspired one does not need
to have much. In a little jagged stone or small basin, a man may visualize the
grandeur of mountains or rivers ten thousand miles long; in a word or sentence of
the ancient sages or worthies, he may read their minds. If so, he has the vision of
the noble and the mind of the wise."

—Hong Zicheng

“I play with stones and sit beside the stream, I search for flowers and walk around
the temple. Sometimes I listen to the songs of birds; the sounds of spring are
everywhere.”

—Bai Juyi
“In West Africa, Orunmila – a sage born c. 500 BCE and considered to be the most
important figure in the Ifa philosophical tradition – taught that Iwa (living a
virtuous life) is the most important ideal worth living for. “What matters most is
good character,” rings one characteristic teaching of Orunmila. “You may be
wealthy, have many children and build several houses; all come to naught if you
lack good character. A life without moral rectitude is nothing but vanity.”

“Stop sniveling, you idiot! Away with your whinings! You had full use of all the
precious things of life before you reached this senile and cantankerous state. But
because you continually crave what is not present and bitch about what is, your
life has slipped away from you incomplete and unenjoyed, until suddenly you
have found death standing at your head before you are able to depart from the
feast of life filled to satisfaction. Quick then, seize the day and with equanimity
yield to your years happily; for yield you must.”

—Lucretius

“A telling analogy for life and death:

Compare the two of them to water and ice. Water draws together to become ice,
and ice disperses again to become water. Whatever has died is sure to be born
again; whatever is born comes around again to dying. As ice and water do one
another no harm, so life and death the two of them, are fine.”

—Hanshan

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you
could miss it."

—Ferris Bueller

“Deep in meditation, how can I part from Truth?

I cherish the Way and never will swerve from it.
My heart is one with the trees of late autumn, my eyes delight in the buds of early
spring.
I dwell with my constant companions and wait for my end, content to find peace
through accepting the flux of things.
I only regret that there is no kindred soul, to climb with me this ladder to the
clouds in the blue.”

—XIE LINGYUN

“He who knows how to suffer suffers less. He accepts the trouble such as it is,
without adding to it the terrors that preoccupation and apprehension produce.
Like the animal, he reduces suffering to its simplest expression; he even goes
further; he lessens the trouble by the thought, he succeeds in forgetting, in no
longer feeling it.”

—Dubois

“One exaggerates, imagines, anticipates affliction,” wrote Seneca. For a long time,
I have told my discouraged patients and have repeated to myself, “Do not let us
build a second story to our sorrow by being sorry for our sorrow.”

—Dubois

“He who knows how to suffer suffers less. He accepts the trouble such as it is,
without adding to it the terrors that preoccupation and apprehension produce.
Like the animal, he reduces suffering to its simplest expression; he even goes
further; he lessens the trouble by the thought, he succeeds in forgetting, in no
longer feeling it.”

-Dubois

“In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is
our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of
choice.”
—Buddha

“When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has
something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not
difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is
within you, or home is nowhere at all.”

—Herman Hesse

“To learn to see—to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow
things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of
approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first
preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a
stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

ANCIENT VERSION OF “WHO’S ON FIRST?”

"I am going to pose a question, can you answer?" King Milinda said to Venerable
Nagasena.

Nagasena said, "Please ask ..."

The king said, "I have already asked."
Nagasena said, "I have already answered."
The king said, "What did you answer?"
Nagasena said, "What did you ask?"
The king said, "I asked nothing."
Nagasena said, "I answered nothing..."

"I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret
attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to you or to any other
circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on
those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious
triumph-song that we have lived well!”

—Epicurus, VS 47

“Give me one student with that ambition when he presents himself at school, one
committed to that kind of training, one who says,

‘To me those external things are worthless; it’s enough if one day I can live
without sorrow and frustration, if I can lift up my head like a free person in the
face of circumstance and look to heaven as a friend of God/Fortune/Nature,
without fear of anything that might happen.’

Show me such a person, so I can say, ‘Come, child, take what you deserve. You
were born to honour philosophy with your patronage –these halls, these books,
these lectures, they all belong to you.’

Then, after he’s tackled and mastered this field of study, I will wait until he
returns and says, ‘I want to be free from fear and negative emotion, but at the
same time I want to be a concerned citizen and philosopher”

—Epictetus

“The heart of the wise man is tranquil. It is the mirror of heaven and earth the
glass of everything. Emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness, silence, non-
action: this is the level of heaven and earth. This is perfect Tao. Wise men find
here their resting place. Resting, they are empty.”

—Chuang Tzu

"Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating
and thinking...
“He thinks like the showers coming down from the sky, he thinks like the waves
rolling on the ocean, he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens, he
thinks like the green foliage shooting forth in the relaxing spring breeze.

Indeed, he is the showers, the ocean, the stars, the foliage. When a man reaches
this stage of “spiritual” development, he is a Zen artist for life.”

-DT Suzuki

‘Ah, when shall I see Athens and the Acropolis once again?’

Poor thing, you’re not satisfied with what you see every day? Can you see
anything better or greater than the sun, the moon, the stars, the entire earth, the
sea?”

—Epictetus

"Behold the birth of tragedy: When idiots come face to face with the vicissitudes
of life."

—Epictetus

“Hedonism thus entails a perpetual calculus that considers the pleasures one can
expect from a given situation, as well as the possible pains. We make a list of
what delightful things could happen, what distresses could occur, what will be
pleasant or disagreeable, and then we judge, doubt, and calculate before acting.

Epicurus gave us a mathematical maxim: do not accept a pleasure here and now if
it must be paid back later with a pain. Let it go. Better, choose a pain in the here
and now if it leads toward the creation of a pleasure later. Therefore, avoid total
jubilation in the present. Joy without conscience will only ruin the soul…

We should always have more pleasure than pain. In all hedonist ethics,
suffering—the suffering that we undergo and that is inflicted on us—is the
absolute evil. Consequently, absolute good corresponds to pleasure, defined as
the absence of troubles, a serenity that’s acquired, conquered, and maintained, a
tranquility of the soul and spirit. But this conceptual game can be complex”

—Michel Onfray, The Power to Exist

“I often put forward the following maxim because it serves as a hedonist

categorical imperative:

“Enjoy and have others enjoy, without doing harm to yourself or anyone else; that
is all there is to morality...To enjoy when others are not enjoying is actually the
basest negation of all philosophy”

—Michel Onfray, The Power to Exist

“What can a philosopher show for himself? His life. If someone writes a book, but
it is not accompanied by a philosophical life, it is not worth our time. Wisdom is
measured in details: It is found in what one says and doesn’t say, what one does
and doesn’t do, what one thinks and doesn’t think”

—Michel Onfray, The Power to Exist

“What is the common point between that whole constellation of thinkers and
their uncompromising attitudes?

For one, they share a formidable concern with deconstructing myths and fables,
rendering this world inhabitable and desirable. They want to rid us of gods and
superstitions, fear and existential anxiety about material causality. They want to
ease the fear of death with therapy here and now rather than invite death for a
graceful exit. They come up with solutions relying on the actual world and actual
people. They prefer viable, modest philosophical propositions to sublime but
uninhabitable conceptual edifices. They refuse to turn pain and suffering into
paths to knowledge and personal redemption. They propose pleasure, enjoyment,
the common good, and gladly accepted contracts. They take control of their
bodies and don’t hate them. They master their passions and impulses, desires and
emotions, instead of brutally extirpating them.
What is the aspiration of the Epicurean project? The pure pleasure of existing: a
project that is always welcome.”

—Michel Onfray, The Power to Exist

“To such evil deeds does religion persuade.”

—Lucretius

“We are born only once and cannot be born twice, and must forever live no more.
You don't control tomorrow, yet you postpone joy. Life is ruined by putting things
off, and each of us dies without truly living.”

—Epicurus, VS 14

“Follow the grain”

—Chuang Tzu

"When we speak in Taoism of following the course of nature, or following the

way, what we mean is doing things in accord with the grain. This does not mean
we do not cut wood, but that when we cut wood we cut along the grain, where
the wood cuts most easily.

In relationships with other people, we try to interact along the lines that are the
most genial. This is the great, fundamental principal called wu wei, or “not
forcing.” Wu wei is often translated as “not doing,” “not acting,” or “not
interfering,” but “not forcing” seems to me to hit the nail on the head. Never
force a lock because you will bend the key or break the lock. Instead jiggle the key
until it turns. Wu wei means always acting in accord with the pattern of things as
they are."
-Alan Watts

“And who is the person who is free from all restrictions? He who desires nothing
that is not his own. And what are the things that are not our own? Those that are
not within our power, either to have or not to have, or to have with certain
qualities, or under certain conditions...

This is the road that leads to freedom, this is the only deliverance from slavery, to
be able to say one day with your whole heart,

“Guide me, Zeus, and thou, O Destiny , To wheresoever you have assigned me.”

-Cleanthes

“What are the two most common goals for people who live in the world? Wealth
and fame. To gain these goals people are willing to lose everything, including the
health of their body, mind and spirit. Not a very good exchange, is it?

Worldly wealth and fame fade so quickly that we wonder which will last longer,
the money, the fame or the man. But consider the goal of enlightenment, of
attaining the wealth of the Dharma. Those who reach this goal are vigorous in
body, keen in mind, and serene in spirit…right into eternity.”

—Han Shan

“Remember that what will be is not completely within our control nor completely
outside our control, so that we will not completely expect it to happen nor be
completely disappointed if it does not happen.

Fate, which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he scorns, affirming
rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through
our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that
chance is inconstant; whereas our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them
that praise and blame naturally attach.”
—Epicurus

“In light of all we’ve looked at in this chapter, I believe that the Stoic ideal needs
to be adjusted, resized a bit.

Reason, emotion and the body are more intricately connected than the Stoics
could have known. We are increasingly understanding how our emotional system
evolved as a guide to what we should seek or avoid in order to survive and
reproduce. Emotions are extremely valuable, in fact essential, to navigate our
transit through the world. Of course, sometimes we can be too afraid, say, or
afraid of the wrong thing, but in general fear is a very effective way of alerting us
to danger. Without fear, we’d be much more likely to expose ourselves to harm
and catastrophe.

True, emotions are not always reliable guides, and we shouldn’t always believe
them. We’re no longer hunter-gatherers and have moved on from the time when
our sometimes crude emotional imperatives evolved. Moreover, things can go
wrong. Emotions are liable to become detached from environmental stimuli and
take on a life of their own, as in depression or anxiety. Nevertheless, it is
reasonable to believe that, although we should be wary of being misled by our
emotions, much of the time they are decent guides in life, which we ignore at our
peril.

Even if reason is not the sole good, however, the Stoics rightly draw our attention
to how important it is for flourishing. We should exercise our ability to improve
ourselves by managing, rather than eradicating, our emotions. While we can
accept some worldly things as good or bad, it would seem wise to take up the
suggestion to revise our value system and attribute less importance to superficial
things like wealth, success and status. At the same time, we need to accept and
find ways of dealing with the vulnerability and impermanence of the things we
cherish the most”

-Antonio Macaro, More Than Happiness

STOIC MINDFULNESS:
“But when it comes to matters of the will and the use of impressions, then you’ll
see how many eyes (The Stoic) has: enough to make Argus (a mythical creature
with hundreds of eyes) seem blind by comparison. With him there is no
premature assent, mistaken impulse, frustrated desire, misdirected aversion or
unrealized purpose; hence no blame, envy or humiliation... It is to these matters
that he devotes all his attention and energy”

—Epictetus

“Not a mother, nor a father, nor any other relative can do more for the well-being
of one than a rightly-directed mind can.”

—Buddha

“As the scholar Pierre Hadot elaborates, “… the fundamental attitude that the
Stoic must maintain at each instant of his life is one of attention… concentrated
upon each and every moment, in order not to miss anything which is contrary to
reason.”

In Stoicism, attention to the moment is precisely what allows us to practice virtue.

In both philosophies, developing ‘mindfulness’ is therefore seen as an essential
part of realizing the path, that is living in accordance with nature as in the case of
Stoicism or pursuing the cessation of suffering as in the case of Buddhism.”

-Patrick Ussher

“I advise the monks I meet

focus on the deeper teachings
concentrate on getting free
don't be destroyed by greed
there are laymen by the score
who know love of gold is wrong
know then what a wise man seeks
just let go and take what comes”
—Han Shan

One way Epicurus encouraged us to combat anxiety (and thereby panic attacks) is
by placing less emphasis on imaginings and more on actual sense-experience.
This should sound rather obvious. What you “think/imagine” should have less
power than what’s actually in front of you known through your 5 senses. The
more you can note what these senses are informing you of the more in touch you
are with objective reality and less in contact with fear/terror/panic.

Seneca makes this very point about worry/anxiety/panic:

“Here is your measuring stick...Concerning things present it is easy to make a

judgment: if your body is at liberty, and healthy, if you are not in pain from any
injury, then we can wait and see what is to come; today is not an issue.”

Your senses (the measuring stick for anxiety/worry) are informing you now there
is no danger.

But you may insist, “Still, it is to come.”

Seneca says,

“First, find out whether there is firm evidence that trouble is on the way. For all
too often we worry about what we merely suspect. Rumor plays tricks on us—
rumor, that “brings down the battle,” but brings down the individual even more.

Why does this happen to us? Because...

We do not demand evidence of the things that frighten us, or check them out
carefully; we quail, and take to our heels, like the army that breaks camp because
of a dust cloud kicked up by a herd of cattle”

“The most important requirement for survival and the improvement of the quality
of life, therefore, is the ability to turn a misfortune into a pleasant experience.
Life is full of examples of people who sought happiness in wealth, strength,
reputation and beauty, only to find out in the end that the quality of life depends
on how you feel rather than on what you hold.

How shall we utilize the power to control our consciousness in the search for
happiness? The first step is to have a clear image of ourself, i.e. our weaknesses
and strengths. We must understand our desires and our avoidances, know what
actually is or is not valuable to us. The next step is to discover those personal
objectives of ours that are in harmony with our physical traits, thoughts, and
desires.”

-Haris Dimitriadis, Epicurus and the Pleasant Life

“A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His
bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets his accident in a different
way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart;
neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear and the like
cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with
objective existence. If such security is to be got from wine, how much more is to
be got from following Nature?

—Chuang Tzu

“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they
required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still,
and I threw them out the window in disgust.

How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for
no dust gathers on the grass”

-Henry David Thoreau

“Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course?”
—Tao Te Ching

“Choice and decision are the most frequent activities of daily life. The potential
pleasures are numerous; the cost of many of these is prohibitive, and the
problems that some of them induce are often superior to the benefits. Therefore,
we must evaluate them by comparing one to the other, and by carefully
examining what is worth pursuing and what is not. The doctrine below
summarizes this in the most apt manner possible:

“We do not indiscriminately choose any form of enjoyment, but sometimes we

happen to turn our back to different forms of pleasure, when the problems that
they might cause outweigh the benefits.”

—Epicurus

"When you do something, you should be completely involved in it. You should
devote yourself to it completely. When your mind is wandering about elsewhere
you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you
can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature,
which is the universal Buddha-nature. This is our way."

—Shunryu Suzuki

“The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses
nothing. It receives but does not keep. It reflects everything.”

—Chuang Tzu

“We slip into Tientai caves

we visit people unseen
me and my friend Cold Mountain eat magic mushrooms under the pines
we talk about the past and present and sigh at the world gone mad
everyone going to Hell and going for a long long time”

—Han Shan
“Although Hadot’s expertise and focus are centred on ancient Greek philosophy,
the strong relevance of his work to the study of Indian philosophy, and to world
philosophies in general, is readily evident to those of us who find ourselves
frustrated by the ongoing insularity of academic departments of philosophy.
Despite considerable strides in the direction of making philosophy in universities
more multicultural, one still finds resistance to the idea that non-Western
philosophy is really proper philosophy.”

“Easy is right. Begin right, and you will be easy. Continue easy and you are right.”

—Chuang Tzu

“Be wise, strain the wine; and since life is brief, prune back far-reaching hopes!
Even while we speak, envious time has passed: pluck the day (carpe diem),
putting as little trust as possible in tomorrow!”

—Horace (Epicurean)

"It is rather as if we had to set off on a sea-voyage. What lies within my power? To
choose the helmsman, the sailors, the day, the moment. Then a storm descends
on us. Now why should that be of any concern to me? For my role has been
completed. This is now somebody else’s business, that of the helmsman. But now
the ship begins to sink. So what can I do? What I can and that alone, namely, to
drown without fear, without crying out, without hurling accusations against
Fortune/Nature/God, as one who well knows that what is born is also fated to
perish."

—Epictetus

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects
brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the
present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.”

—Henry David Thoreau

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard
names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The
fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may
perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The
setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the
rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not
see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering
thoughts, as in a palace.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Govinda had listened in silence.

“Why did you tell me about the stone?” he asked hesitatingly after a pause.

“I did so unintentionally. But perhaps it illustrates that I just love the stone and
the river and all these things that we see and from which we can learn. I can love
a stone, Govinda, and a tree or a piece of bark. These are things and one can love
things. But one cannot love words. Therefore teachings are of no use to me; they
have no hardness, no softness, nor colors, no corners, no smell, no taste—they
have nothing but words. Perhaps that is what prevents you from finding peace,
perhaps there are too many words, for even salvation and virtue.”

-Herman Hesse

“Water that is not agitated is naturally still. A mirror that is not filmed over is
naturally clear. In the same way the mind need not be purified. When you take
away what disturbs it, then its inherent purity is manifest. Happiness is not
something to be sought. When you take away worries, then naturally you know
happiness.”

—Hong Zicheng

“When thoughts form an endless procession I vow to notice the spaces between
them and give the songbirds a chance to be heard.”

—Robert Aiken

“But just as we are thrilled by the expectation of good things, so too

we are pleased by the recollection of good things. But fools are tortured by the
recollection of bad things, while wise men enjoy past goods kept fresh by a
grateful recollection...When we contemplate past events with a keen and
attentive mind, then we feel distress if what we recall was bad, and joy if it was
good.”

—Torquatus in Cicero, On Ends

“And whatever the hour heaven has blessed you with accept it gratefully, don’t
put off what’s sweet to some other year: then wherever you’ve lived, you can say
you were happy. It’s wisdom, it’s reason, not some place overlooking a breadth of
water, that drives out care: Those who rush to sea gain a change of sky not
themselves. Restless idleness occupies us in yachts and chariots. We seek the
good life.”

—Horace (Epicurean)

“All of you are priceless gems aboard a rotting ship at sea

in front the mast is gone
in back there is no rudder
heading wherever the wind may blow moving with the waves
how will you reach shore
don't just sit there stiff”

—Han Shan

“Mindfulness in brief is this: repeatedly checking the state of body and mind. I
must put all this into practice, for what benefit is there in merely reading the
doctor’s prescription?”
—Shantideva

“Can you control your breath gently like a baby?”

—Tao Te Ching

“The ancient sages slept without dreaming and awoke without anxiety. Their food
was not fancy and their breathing was deep. The breath of a sage rises from the
heels, while the breath of the common person comes only from the throat...

The ancient sages were not attached to life nor did they fear death. To them,
being born was nothing special, nor was death. Carefree they came into this world
and carefree they went out of it. They did not worry too much about where they
came from, nor did they worry about where they were going. They accepted
whatever they were given with joy and gratitude but often gave it away in turn.”

-Solala Towler

The Buddha replied,

“Acceptance is the seed, practice the rain, and wisdom is my yoke and plow.
Temperance the pole, mind the strap, meditation and mindfulness my plowshare
and zeal. Body and speech are guarded well, and food and drink have been
restrained. Truthfulness I use for weeding, and gentleness urges me on. Self-
discipline and effort are my oxen, pulling me onward to safety.

This is how I plow—The crop it yields is deathlessness! And when one has plowed
this plowing, one is released from all emotional and mental suffering.”

“If you want to make Pythocles wealthy, don't increase his riches but reduce his
desires.”

—Epicurus

“Please tell me, wise one, how to rule all under heaven.”
The sage shouted at him, “Go away, you idiot. What kind of foolish question is
that? I am wandering with ease among the ten thousand beings. When I tire of
that I will mount the great bird of ease and emptiness and ride out beyond the six
directions. I will wander in the land of nowhere and dwell in the land of
nothingness. Why do you bother me with stupid questions about ruling all under
heaven?”

—Chuang Tzu

“As a general rule, no matter how much physical strength and beauty people
possess, they follow in the train of the rich. And yet if human beings would guide
their lives by true principles, great wealth consists in living on a little with a
contented mind; for of a little there is never a lack.”

-Lucretius

“Most folk spend virtually all of their lives in their thoughts, in the past and future.
You are almost never in the mystery and wonder of what is really unfolding just as
it is, NOW.

When you are eating, you are thinking about work. When you are at work, you
are dreaming of seeing your friends at a party. When you are at the party with
your friends, you are thinking about talking to someone else, what you’re going to
say next, what you just said that was wrong or brilliant, or being at a better party.

Recognizing that you live a second-hand life can be an important realization.

Seeing that thoughts rob you of your life, of your inherent happiness and
awareness can open the way to letting go of them. Can you see that this
fascination and fixation with your thoughts means that you are always
somewhere else in some other time? Why are you afraid to be here, in this
present, right NOW? Don’t let your life be like the John Lennon quote, “what
happens to you while you’re making other plans.”

—Gary Weber
“Just as a farmer irrigates a field, an arrowsmith fashions an arrow, and a
carpenter shapes a piece of wood, so the sage tames his self.”

Gotama compares each of us to a barren field that needs watering, the parts of an
arrow that need to be assembled, and a rough block of wood that needs to be
worked. He conceives of a person as an unfinished project, a work in progress.
Were such a project to be realized, your life would come to fruition just as a field
bears a harvest. Such a life would be as focused on its goals as a well-aimed arrow
and as valuable to yourself and others as a finely shaped beam or bowl.”

-Stephen Batchelor

"Think your way through difficulties: harsh conditions can be softened, restricted
ones can be widened, and heavy ones can weigh less on those who know how to
bear them."

—Seneca

“I sit on top of a boulder

the stream is icy cold
quiet joys hold a special charm
bare cliffs in the fog enchant
this is such a restful place
the sun goes down and tree shadows sprawl
I watch the ground of my mind
and a lotus comes out of the mud”

—Han Shan

“Indeed, I think that the right management of wealth lies in this: in not feeling
distressed about what one loses and in not trapping oneself on treadmills because
of an obsessive zeal concerning the more and the less.”

—Philodemus of Gadara (Epicurean)

“Let us now investigate how life is to be made pleasant for us both in states and in
actions.

Let us first discuss states, keeping an eye on the point that, when the emotions
which disturb the soul are removed, those which produce pleasure enter into it to
take their place.

Well, what are the disturbing emotions? They are fears -- of the gods, of death,
and of pains -- and, besides these, desires that outrun the limits fixed by
nature. These are the roots of all evils, and, unless we cut them off, a multitude
of evils will grow upon us.”

—Diogenes of Oenoanda

“For, while the various segments of the earth give different people a different
country, the whole compass of this world gives all people a single country, the
entire earth, and a single home, the world.”

—Diogenes of Oenoanda (Epicurean)

"Perfect pleasure, which is happiness, you will have attained when you have
brought your bodies and souls into a state of satisfied tranquility....Ask, and she
will tell you, that a happy life is like neither to a roaring torrent, nor a stagnant
pool, but to a placid and crystal stream, that flows gently and silently along."

—Frances Wright, A Few Days In Athens

“We are led by the work of others into the presence of the most beautiful
treasures, which have been pulled from darkness and brought to light. From no
age are we debarred, we have access to all; and if we want to transcend the
narrow limitations of human weakness by our expansiveness of mind, there is a
great span of time for us to range over. We can debate with Socrates, entertain
doubt with Carneades, be at peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with
the Stoics, and go beyond it with the Cynics.
Since nature allows us shared possession of any age, why not turn from this short
and fleeting passage of time and give ourselves over completely to the past,
which is measureless and eternal and shared with our betters?”

-Seneca

“You look on sleep as an image of death, and you take that on you daily; and have
you, then, any doubt that there is no sensation in death, when you see there is
none in sleep, which is its near resemblance?”

—Cicero

“If a man does what is good, he should do it again and again; he should take
delight in it; the accumulation of merit leads to happiness.”

—Buddha

“The role of the Stoic teacher was to encourage his students to live the
philosophic life, whose end was eudaimonia ('happiness' or 'flourishing'), to be
secured by living the life of reason, which – for Stoics – meant living virtuously
and living 'according to nature'. The eudaimonia ('happiness') of those who attain
this ideal consists of ataraxia (imperturbability), apatheia (freedom from passion),
eupatheiai ('good feelings'), and an awareness of, and capacity to attain, what
counts as living as a rational being should. “

"Indeed, freedom from anxiety and the absence of pain are **katastematic
pleasures**, while joy and delight are regarded as pleasures in motion and in
action."

—Epicurus

**Katastematic pleasure accompanies well-being as such. It is the pleasurable

awareness of the absence of physical pain and lack of disturbance of mind.
Pleasure is a state of mind: serenity, contentment & satisfaction

ataraxia & aponia are two of the katastematic pleasures often seen as the focal
ones to Epicurus.

“If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the
spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your
head about it.”

—Michel de Montaigne

"One day the world looks so beautiful; the next day it looks terrible. How can you
say that? Scientifically, it's impossible that the world can change so
radically...Other people and your environment don't change radically; it's your
mind."

—Lama Thubten Yeshe

“Living in the present moment.” This is a short working definition of meditation. A

longer one is also useful: “a family of techniques which have in common a
conscious attempt to focus attention in a non-analytical way, and an attempt not
to dwell on discursive, ruminating thought.”

—James H. Austin, M.D.

“Like an archer an arrow, the wise man steadies his trembling mind, a fickle and
restless weapon.”

—Buddha

“The senses declare an outrageous world—sounds and scents, ravishing colors

and shapes, ever-changing skies, iridescent reflections—all these beautiful
surfaces decorating vibrant emptiness. The god of love is courting you, light as a
feather. Every perception is an invitation into revelation. Hearing, seeing,
smelling, tasting, touching—ways of knowing creation, transmissions of electric
realization. The deepest reality is always right here. Encircled by splendor, in the
center of the sphere, meditate where the body thrills to currents of intimate
communion. Follow your senses to the end and beyond Into the heart of space.”

—Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (The Radiance Sutras)

“Because of our lack of practice, we’re always piling up difficulties for ourselves
and imagining them to be greater than they really are.

So, when I sail out to sea, and I peer down into the depths, or look at the waters
all around and see no sign of land, I immediately lose my composure, and imagine
that I’ll have to swallow all that sea-water if the ship goes down; it never occurs to
me that three pints would be enough!”

—Epictetus

"The best course is to reject straightway the initial prickings of anger, to fight
against its first sparks, and to struggle not to succumb to it.

Once it has begun to carry us off course it’s difficult to sail back to safety, since
not a jot of reason remains once the passion has been let in and some sovereign
right has been granted to it by our own will: it will thereafter do not what you
allow but what it wants."

—Seneca, On Anger

“Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look out
at the stars. This practice should answer the question. The superior person settles
her mind as the universe settles the stars in the sky. By connecting her mind with
the subtle origin, she calms it. Once calmed, it naturally expands, and ultimately
her mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky.”

—Brian Walker
“For my part, I will observe my usual custom: I will not be tied to the tenets of any
single school as something I must obey in my philosophy, but will continue always
to ask what is the most plausible answer to each question.”

—Cicero

“Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by
accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.”

—Chuang Tzu

“Meditation is a relaxed attentive state, a passive activity. Both aspects are

important. So when Zen talks about “no mind,” it does not mean complete
mental blankness, as though one were asleep. It implies freedom from thought
pollution. When the incessant chatter drops out, what remains are those few
mental processes essential to the present moment.”

—James Austin

“Epicurus, the soul-soother of later antiquity, had that wonderful insight, which is
still today so rarely to be discovered, that to quieten the heart it is absolutely not
necessary to have solved the ultimate and outmost theoretical questions.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

“Someone will say,

“What use is philosophy to me if there is fate? What use is it if God is in charge?

What use, if chance has the mastery? For what is certain cannot be changed, and
against what is uncertain there is no way to prepare oneself. Either God has
preempted my planning and decreed what I should do, or fortune has left nothing
for my planning to achieve.”

No matter which is true, Lucilius, or even if they all are, we must still practice
philosophy. Perhaps the inexorable law of fate constrains us; perhaps God, the
universal arbiter, governs all events; perhaps it is chance that drives human
affairs, and disrupts them: all the same, it is philosophy that must preserve us.
Philosophy will urge us to give willing obedience to Fate or God, and but a
grudging obedience to fortune. It will teach you to follow Fate or God; to cope
with chance.”

—Seneca

"When you throw a stone into the water, it falls quickly by the fastest route to the
bottom of the pond. This is the way it is when Siddhartha has an aim, an
intension. Siddhartha does nothing – he waits, he thinks, he fasts – but he passes
through the things of the world like the stone through the water, without
bestirring himself. He is drawn forward and he lets himself fall. His goal draws
himself to it, for he lets nothing enter his mind that interferes with the goal."

—Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff, even
though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a
man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he
will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is
somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and
not angry. If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, no one
will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you.”

—Chuang Tzu

“Socrates once brought Euthydemus home from the wrestling-school, and

Xanthippe laid into them angrily, hurled insults at them and eventually
overturned the table. Euthydemus was very upset, and got up to go, but Socrates
said, ‘When we were at your house the other day, a hen flew in and did exactly
the same, but we didn’t get cross, did we?’

—Plutarch
“The surest sign of the higher life is serenity. Moral progress results in freedom
from inner turmoil. You can stop fretting about this and that...

Say to yourself, “Coping calmly with this inconvenience is the price I pay for my
inner serenity, for freedom from perturbation; you don’t get something for
nothing.”

—Epictetus

“On his behalf, Epicurus clears up any false belief once again:

To be happy and to achieve the goal of ethics is an easy task because it is not
opposed to nature itself, which, on the contrary, favors us by making available
everything we need for happiness.

This ethical goal is achieved every time a wise man is able to reach the condition
of ‘ataraxia’ (tranquility) or ‘aponia’ (without emotional/physical pain), leading an
undisturbed happy existence with one’s friends and one’s dear ones, without
allowing political issues and ‘unstable & illicit pleasures’ to affect him, not even
marginally. Epicurus promoted an ‘easy ethics’, then, and moreover, an ethics
addressing everyone, regardless of the differences in gender, age and social
class.”

-Diego Fusaro

“I have spent my whole life scared, frightened of things that could happen, might
happen, might not happen, 50-years I spent like that. Finding myself awake at
three in the morning. But you know what? Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just
fine. What I came to realize is that fear, that’s the worst of it. That’s the real
enemy. So, get up, get out in the real world and you kick that bastard as hard you
can right in the teeth.”

–Walter White

"Do away with the judgement, and the notion ‘I have been harmed’ is done away
with; do away with that notion, and the harm itself is gone."

"Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and
you haven’t been."

—Marcus Aurelius

"Go up to a stone and subject it to abuse; what effect will you produce? Well
then, if you listen like a stone, what will anyone who abuses you be able to
achieve?"

—Epictetus

“Let no one put off the love and practice of wisdom when young, nor grow tired
of it when old. For it is never too early or too late for the health of the soul.

Young or old, it is necessary to love and practice wisdom...Reflect on what brings

happiness, because if you have that you have everything, but if not you will do
everything to attain it.”

—Epicurus

“But the source of all the (negative) emotions (anger, anxiety, depression, etc),
the Stoics say, is “loss of control,” which is a rebellion in the mind as a whole
against right reason. This rebellion has turned away from what reason dictates to
such an extent that there is no way the mind’s impulses can be directed or
restrained.

Self-control soothes the (emotional) impulses and makes them obey right reason,
considering and maintaining (right) judgments of the mind; but loss of control is
just the opposite: reason’s enemy, it lays flame to every state of the mind,
throwing it into disturbance and riot. Thus it is that all forms of distress, fear, and
other emotions arise from loss of (rational) control.”

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

“For there is no happiness without tranquility: a life amid anxieties is a life of
misery.”

—Seneca

"Moderation increases enjoyment, and makes pleasure even greater."

—Democritus

“Although it is better to endure a given pain in order to experience a greater

pleasure, it can also be better to abstain from a given pleasure in order to avoid
an even greater pain.”

—Epicurus

“How do we work with the storytelling mind? The poet Muriel Rukeyser writes,
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Buddhist psychology emphasizes
that we must understand the power of the stories we tell, and differentiate them
from the direct experience of life. In this way we can use thoughts without being
trapped by them. As one of my teachers put it, “Thoughts make a good servant,
but a poor master.”

—Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart

“I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my
lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived –and dying I will tend to later.”

—Epictetus

“It can be easily showed, then, that death does not represent a painful event.
Epicurus notices that it is possible to have sensations as long as the body
continues to exist as atomic compound; however, the dying body ceases to exist
and thus also *the possibility of sensing fails*.
‘Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements
experiences *no sensations*, and that which has no sensations is nothing to us.’

Those who are afraid of facing death, can be safely reassured because,
paradoxically, it is *impossible to encounter* it in person. Indeed, each of us
experiences one’s death always and only as *possibility* and *not as fact*”

-Diego Fusaro

"He has spent his life in idleness," we say; "I have done nothing today."

What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most
illustrious of your occupations.

"If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown
what I could do."

Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the
greatest task of all...To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books,
and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct.
Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately."

—Michel de Montaigne

“To enter the stream of the eightfold path means to go against the stream of
one’s reactivity, be that of one’s instinctive drives, social conditioning, or
psychological inclination. By choosing to think, speak, and act otherwise than as
prompted by these habits requires considerable resolve and commitment.”

—Stephen Batchelor

“Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a little boy. His teacher had a
precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly
perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup
behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: “Why do people have to
die?”

“This is natural,” explained the older man. “Everything has to die and has just so
long to live.”

Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: “It was time for your cup to die.”

“Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.”

—Ikkyu

“Questions beyond our comprehension we should ignore, since the human mind
may be unable to grasp them...What’s to be gained by understanding them in any
case? It must be said, I think, that those who make such matters an essential part
of a philosopher’s knowledge are creating unwanted anxieties.”

—Epictetus, Fragments

“Fears can only be dismantled, one after another, armed with the picklock of
reason.”

—Diego Fusaro

“Since the goal is the achievement of the ‘health of the soul’ —the medical
analogy comes back again — philosophy has to be practised by man, regardless of
their genre, their age, and their social condition.

Epicurus’s reasoning is very clear and it has a coherence that we are tempted to
call ‘syllogistic’: All men aspire to happiness, and happiness is obtained through
philosophical practice; therefore, all men have to study philosophy.”

-Diego Fusaro
“My home is below green cliffs
I don't cut weeds anymore
new vines spiral down
ancient rocks stand straight
monkeys pick the wild fruit
egrets spear the fish
one or two books by immortals
I chant beneath the trees.”

—Han Shan

“Thus, it is possible to explain the primacy that all the Hellenistic philosophers
granted to ethics, despite the miscellaneous plurality of the solutions put forward.

In front of the chaos of a world obsessed with fears and restlessness of every
kind, everybody pursues the achievement of an inner balance coinciding with
‘self-sufficiency’ (autarcheia) and with an unshakeable spiritual serenity.
Sometimes the latter is presented as ‘imperturbability’ (the Epicurean ataraxia),
other times as ‘impassivity’ (the apatheia of the Stoics), some other times as
‘indifference’ towards the events (the adiaforia thematised by Pyrrho of Elis): all
these variations will merge into the Latin ‘tranquillitas animi' thematised by
Seneca.”

—Diego Fusaro

“Epicurus levers this point right up. What upsets us more than anything else,
preventing us from being happy, is the turmoil coming from our ignorance: we are
scared of pain, frightened by death, terrified by what appears to be the
inscrutable will of the gods and the unpredictable direction that destiny seems to
take. All this makes us unhappy.

The best way to chase these fears away is to show their groundlessness through
rational investigation. This is the task philosophy has to take charge of; and, with
Epicurus, philosophy takes on the pre-Enlightenment function of destroying
prejudice, superstition, and the mythical residues blocking the path leading to the
truth and, with it, to happiness.”

-Diego Fusaro

EPICURUS’ TETRAPHARMAKON:

1. The dread and fear of the gods and the afterlife are of no use;

2. The fear of death is absurd because death is nothing;

3. Pleasure, if correctly meant, is available to everyone;

4. Either pain is for a short time, or it is easily bearable.

“The fundamental attitude that the Stoic must maintain at each instant of his life
is one of attention… concentrated upon each and every moment, in order not to
miss anything which is contrary to reason.”

—Pierre Hadot

“In Stoicism, attention to the moment is precisely what allows us to practice

virtue. In both philosophies (Stoicism & Buddhism), developing ‘mindfulness’ is
therefore seen as an essential part of realizing the path, that is living in
accordance with nature as in the case of Stoicism or pursuing the cessation of
suffering as in the case of Buddhism.”

—Patrick Ussher

"When the occasion arises, walk barefoot in the fragrant grass and keep company
with birds freely flying about.

When the mind becomes one with the scene, put on a cape and sit amid fallen
petals. The silent clouds will tarry and keep you company."

—Hong Zicheng

"Great is the struggle, and divine the enterprise, to win a kingdom, to win
freedom, to win happiness, to win peace of mind."

—Epictetus

"There is no restful calm but that which is settled by reason.

Night doesn’t take away our cares; rather, it exposes them to view, exchanging
one anxiety for another. For even when we are asleep, our dreams may be as
tumultuous as waking life.

Only as the mind develops into excellence do we achieve any real tranquility."

-Seneca, Letter 56

"I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can
perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength,
desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself."

—Hermann Hesse

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the

direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he
will meet with a success unexpected.”

-Henry David Thoreau

"My third maxim was always to try to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to
change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to accustom
myself to believing that there is nothing that is completely within our power
except our thoughts, so that, after we have done our best regarding things
external to us, everything that is lacking for us to succeed is, from our point of
view, absolutely impossible."

—Rene Descartes

"It follows, then, that a happy life is commendable ; but nothing is commendable
without virtue: a happy life, then, is the consequence of virtue."

—Cicero

"Now, if virtue promises to enable us to achieve happiness, freedom from

passion, and serenity, then progress towards virtue is surely also progress
towards each of these states."

—Epictetus

“Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy ; from it spring
all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living
wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living
pleasantly. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a
pleasant life is inseparable from them.”

—Epicurus

“Who takes the Cold Mountain Road takes a road that never ends
the rivers are long and piled with rocks
the streams are wide and choked with grass
it's not the rain that makes the moss slick and it's not the wind that makes the
pines moan
who can get past the tangles of the world and sit with me in the clouds”

—Han Shan
"When you throw a stone into the water, it falls quickly by the fastest route to the
bottom of the pond. This is the way it is when Siddhartha has an aim, an
intension. Siddhartha does nothing – he waits, he thinks, he fasts – but he passes
through the things of the world like the stone through the water, without
bestirring himself. He is drawn forward and he lets himself fall. His goal draws
himself to it, for he lets nothing enter his mind that interferes with the goal."

-Herman Hesse

“Inside Jade Hall is a curtain of pearls behind it lives a graceful girl

her beauty transcends the immortals
her skin is like that of a peach
spring mists rise in the east
autumn winds stir in the west
thirty years from now
she'll look like chewed sugarcane.”

—Han Shan

“My mind is like the autumn moon

clear and bright in a pool of jade
Nothing can compare
What more can I say ?”

—Han San

“Why am I always so depressed? Man's life is like the morning mushroom.

Who can bear, in a few dozen years, to see new friends and old all gone away?
Thinking of this, I am filled with sadness, a sadness I can hardly endure. What shall
I do? Say, what shall I do?

Take this old body home and hide it in the mountains.”

—Han Shan
“Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts?”

—Han Shan

“Listening to the evening rain in my hermitage. The Great Way? I braid spring
flowers into a ball. The future? If a visitor brings these questions I have only the
tranquility of the hermitage to offer”

—Ryokan

"It is as if someone standing by a fountain of pure and sweet water were to yell
curses at it, yet the fountain never stops bubbling with fresh water. Even if you
should hurl mud or even throw shit into it, the water will quickly disperse it and
wash it away and in no way be defiled.

How, then can you have such a fountain within yourself ?"

—Marcus Aurelius

“If you've ever wondered how much virtual reality your mind pumps out
constantly, just take five seconds, just that long and be still, be silent. You can
allow the mind to be still for just that long. Now everything that disappeared
during those five seconds. That's what's not real! If you really get this, if you really
see this it will astound you!”

—Adyashanti

“If you can harmonize and delight in changes, master them and never be at a loss
for joy, if you can do this day and night without break and make it be spring with
everything, mingling with all and creating the moment within your own mind -
this is what I call being whole in power.”

—Chuang Tzu
"I thus perceived that I was in a state of great peril, and I compelled myself to
seek with all my strength for a remedy or therapy, however uncertain it might be;
as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely
be upon him is compelled to seek such a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch
as his whole hope lies therein."

—Baruch Spinoza

“Why do you scrutinize too keenly your own trouble, my good sir, and continue to
make it ever vivid and fresh in your mind, but do not direct your thoughts to
those good things which you have? "Hunting bad when good was at hand."

Most persons, in fact, do pass by the excellent and palatable conditions of their
lot and hasten to those that are unpleasant and disagreeable... For it is the act of
a madman to be distressed at what is lost and not rejoice at what is saved, but
like little children, who, if someone takes away one of their many toys, will throw
away all the rest as well and cry and howl; in the same way, if we are troubled by
Fortune in one matter, we make everything else also unprofitable by lamenting
and taking it hard.”

—Plutarch

"Enemies are too numerous to destroy, but abandoning anger achieves the same
purpose. I cannot cover the planet with leather, but I can cover my feet.
Likewise, I am unable to control external events, but if I tame my mind, what else
needs to be controlled?"

—Shantideva

"Zen enlightenment is supposed to confer on us an unnatural ability to spend

moments in moments.

For most people, now represents an infinitesimal slice in the infinity of time. To an
enlightened person, now—the current moment—is all we can know or
experience. We are stuck in the present moment, in an eternal now. The past and
future are known only by inference. Because the enlightened person has the
ability to stay in the moment, he can experience beauty and wonder during even
the most commonplace moments. The unenlightened person cannot.

—William Irvine, On Desire

"Think your way through difficulties: harsh conditions can be softened, restricted
ones can be widened, and heavy ones can weigh less on those who know how to
bear them."

-Seneca, On Tranquility Of Mind

“Those who lack within themselves the means for living a blessed and happy life
will find any age painful. But for those who seek good things within themselves,
nothing imposed on them by nature will seem troublesome.”

—Cicero

“Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street. I took it as a sign to
start singing, falling up into the bowl of sky. The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling
everywhere. Nothing else to do.”

—Rumi

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do
not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer
itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

—Frank Kafka

“Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find a thousand regions in your mind yet
undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography...Be a Columbus
to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of
trade, but of thought”
—Thoreau, Walden

“A philosopher's words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind.
For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so
philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul.”

—Epicurus

“The experience of well-being is meditation's goal, whatever its means, along with
entering into that quiet transcending of the ordinary self's anxiety (its apathies,
fears, angers) such that though nothing 'memorable' be accomplished, it leads to
an ineffable felicity prized over all else.”

—Willard Johnson, A History Of Meditation

“The trouble is that, so long as the object of our desire is wanting, it seems more
important than anything else; but later, when it is ours, we covet some other
thing; and so an insatiable thirst for life keeps us always openmouthed.”

—Lucretius

"Be like the jutting rock against which waves are constantly crashing, and all
around it the frothing foam of the waters then settles back down. “Oh, I am so
unfortunate that this has happened to me.” Not at all, but rather “How fortunate I
am that, even though this has happened to me, I continue uninjured, neither
terrified by the present, nor in fear of the future.”

—Marcus Aurelius

“I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the
pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the
birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in
at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in
the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been.
They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my
usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the
forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went...Instead
of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.”

—Henry David Thoreau

“This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes
delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part
of herself.”

—Henry David Thoreau

“Meditation is the temporary stoppage of the waves of the mind.”

—Patanjali

“Meditation preserves him who meditates, it gives him long life, and endows him
with power, it cleanses him from faults, it removes from him any bad reputation
giving him a good name, it destroys discontent in him filling him with content, it
releases him from all fear endowing him with confidence, it removes sloth far
from him filling him with zeal, it takes away lust and ill-will and dullness, it puts an
end to pride, it breaks down all doubt, it makes his heart to be at peace, it softens
his mind, it makes him glad, it makes him grave, it gains him much advantage, it
makes him worthy of reverence, it fills him with joy, it fills him with delight, it
shows him the transitory nature of all compounded things, it puts an end to
rebirth, it obtains for him all the benefits of renunciation.”

—The Questions of King Milinda

“But the person who goes through the world with sensory-motor responses under
self-control, and free from desire and aversion that person achieves inner
tranquility. In that tranquility, the person transcends all dis-ease [duhkha].”

—Bhagavad Gita 2.64, 65

“The instrument of destruction may be a sword, or a wheel, or the sea, or a roof
tile, or a tyrant. What does it matter by which road we have to make the descent
to Hades?“

—Epictetus

"Seeds of the virtues are inborn in our characters, and if they were allowed to
mature, nature itself would lead us to perfect happiness."

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

"Put the question voluntarily to yourself:

Am I tormented without sufficient reason, am I morose, and do I convert what is

not an evil into what is an evil?"

—Seneca

“What does it matter to me, says Epictetus, whether everything is made up of

atoms, or of indivisible parts, or of fire and earth? Isn’t it enough to know the true
nature of good and bad, and the proper bounds of our desires and aversions, and
also of our motives to act or not to act, and to make use of these as rules to order
the conduct of our life, and renounce those things that are beyond us? It may well
be that the latter are incomprehensible to the human mind, but even if one
should assume that they’re fully comprehensible, what advantage would it bring
to understand them? Shouldn’t we say that those who assign that as being
necessary to the philosopher’s enquiry are giving themselves pointless trouble?”

—Epictetus, Fragments

“What ordinary people do and what they find happiness in—I don’t know
whether or not such happiness is, in the end, really happiness. I look at what
ordinary people find happiness in, what they all make a mad dash for, racing
around as though they couldn’t stop—they all say they’re happy with it. I’m not
happy with it, and I’m not unhappy with it.”

—Chuang Tzu

"Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my

loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me."

—Siddhartha

“Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.”

—Matsuo Basho

“For just as wood is the material of the carpenter, and bronze that of the sculptor,
the art of living has each individual’s own life as its material.”

—Epictetus

“Ah—speechless before these budding green spring leaves in blazing sunlight.”

—Basho

"If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and
the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says,

“a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness,”

and concentrate on living what can be lived, which means the present, then you
can spend the time you have left in tranquility. And in kindness. And at peace with
the spirit within you."

—Marcus Aurelius

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same
weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
—Marcus Aurelius

“Imagine a student of classical swordsmanship who’s just arrived at an isolated

school, somewhere in the mountains of Japan, ready to spend several years
studying and training. Imagine that this student is given only menial tasks to do,
like washing the dishes and chopping the vegetables for dinner. He goes about his
business, doing his best to complete his chores—but knowing all the while that, at
any moment, his teacher could leap out of the bushes and hit him with a practice
sword.

The great philosopher and student of Eastern traditions Alan Watts used this
example in a lecture. He explained that pretty soon the fencing student is jumping
at shadows, always braced forattack. The teacher is never where the student
expects, attacking him at will. Finally the student gives up. There’s no way to
predict where this crazy teacher of his is going to pop up next. He relaxes.

At that moment, Watts says, “He’s ready to begin training.” When you’re braced
for attack, you’re concentrating your energy in a particular direction. You think
danger is lurking in that dark corner over there, so that’s where you’re
concentrating all your senses. When the attack actually comes from the opposite
direction, you’re not ready, and that slows you down. It’s only when you move
into a state of no expectation, “no-mind,” thatyou are ready to respond—in the
moment—to the attack. It’s only
when you stop thinking about whether or not you’re going to use the hand
grenade properly that you can actually throw the damn thing away and save your
own life.”

—The Mushin Way

“The way to develop the habit of savoring is to pause when something is beautiful
and good and catches our attention – the sound of rain, the look of the night
sky—the glow in a child’s eyes, or when we witness some kindness. Pause…then
totally immerse in the experience of savoring it.”
—Tara Brach

“Since antiquity, Epicurus’ thought has been compared to a powerful drug able to
cure the pains of the soul that have always tormented man preventing him from
living a peaceful existence: but we know that the Greek term pharmakon can be
interpreted in its two opposite meanings of medicine and poison; and indeed, the
same duplicity animates Epicurus’ philosophy which, by acting as a medicine for
the human soul, also has the effect of a poison, destroying from within,
philosophy traditionally conceived as a disinterested contemplation of truth. The
philosophical revolution undertaken by Epicurus as a fracture with respect to all
the previous tradition, from Thales to Aristotle, coincides with an inversion of the
traditional relation between man and cosmos, between theory and practice: the
classic question “what is reality made of?” is replaced by the Epicurean question
that is at the basis of his philosophical anthropocentrism: “how must reality be
made and how should one understand it in order to be happy?”. Each specific
articulation of Epicurean philosophy is subordinate to the task of achieving a
happy existence that is in no way inferior to any of the divine realities’.

-Diego Fusura, Epicurus's Pharmacy

“Any skilled carpenter will tell you, “Let the saw do the work, let the teeth do the
cutting.” And you find that by going at it quite easily, and just allowing the blade
to glide back and forth, the wood is easily cut.”

—Alan Watts, What Is Tao?

"WHEN the wind blows through the scattered bamboos, they do not hold its
sound after it has gone. When the wild geese fly over a cold lake, it does not
retain their shadows after they have passed. So the mind of the superior man
begins to work only when an event occurs; and it becomes a void again when the
matter ends."

-Hong Zicheng
"You say you lack books? How, or to what end? Books are, no doubt, a
preparation for life, but life itself is made up of things different from books. To ask
for books is as though an athlete should complain, as he enters the arena, that he
is not training outside. Life is what you were training for all along, this is what the
leaping-weights, and the sawdust, and the young men you wrestled with were
leading up to."

—Epictetus

“There are many ways to calm a negative energy without suppressing or fighting
it. You recognize it, you smile to it, and you invite something nicer to come up and
replace it; you read some inspiring words, you listen to a piece of beautiful music,
you go somewhere in nature, or you do some walking meditation.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Stop sniveling, you dolt! Away with your whinings! You had full use of all the
precious things of life before you reached this senile state. But because you
continually crave what is not present and scorn what is, your life has slipped away
from you incomplete and unenjoyed, until suddenly you have found death
standing at your head before you are able to depart from the feast of life filled to
repletion. Quick then, discard all behavior unsuited to your age and with
equanimity yield to your years; for yield you must.”

—Lucretius (Epicurean Poet)

“All the emotions need schooling, to tame and discipline by training the part of
oneself that is irrational and defiant.”

—Plutarch

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. "

—Cicero
"Thus disasters, losses, and unfair treatment have no more power against virtue
than a cloud can exert against the sun."

—Seneca

“When the five sense knowledges become calmed, along with the surface mind
and the deep mind wavers not, that, say the wise, is the deepest state of
consciousness.

That state they claim is realized through meditation, being the steady-holding of
the powers of sense and action; then one becomes undistracted:

Indeed, meditation is the beginning and the end!”

—Katha Upanisad 6.10-11

“The wise man, then, when he must act, knows how to do nothing. Letting things
alone, he rests in his original nature...Let him sit like a corpse, with the dragon
power alive all around him. In complete silence, his voice will be like thunder. His
movements will be invisible, like those of a spirit, but the powers of heaven will
go with them. Unconcerned, doing nothing, he will see all things grow ripe around
him.”

—Chuang Tzu

“Learn to wait and assess instead of always reacting from untrained instinct.”

—Epictetus

“I recommend constant activity in the study of nature; and with this sort of
activity more than any other I bring calm to my life...Do not believe that there is
any other goal to be achieved by the knowledge of Nature than freedom from
disturbance and peace of mind”

—Epicurus
“Man is born gentle and supple. At death, his body is brittle and hard. Living
plants are tender, and filled with life-giving sap, but at their death they are
withered and dry. The stiff, the hard, and brittle are harbingers of death, and
gentleness and yielding are the signs of that which lives. The warrior who is
inflexible condemns himself to death, and the tree is easily broken, which ever
refuses to yield. Thus the hard and brittle will surely fall, and the soft and supple
will overcome.“

—Lao Tzu

“Better to lie serene upon a bed of grass than to be full of troubles on a golden
chair at an overflowing table.”

—Epicurus

"Govinda had listened in silence.

“Why did you tell me about the stone?” he asked hesitatingly after a pause.

“I did so unintentionally. But perhaps it illustrates that I just love the stone and
the river and all these things that we see and from which we can learn. I can love
a stone, Govinda, and a tree or a piece of bark. These are things and one can love
things. But one cannot love words. Therefore teachings are of no use to me; they
have no hardness, no softness, nor colors, no corners, no smell, no taste—they
have nothing but words. Perhaps that is what prevents you from finding peace,
perhaps there are too many words, for even salvation and virtue."

-Herman Hesse

“Death is meaningless to the living because they are living, and meaningless to
the dead because they are dead.”

—Epicurus
“Look into that closed room, the empty chamber where brightness is born!
Fortune and blessing gather where there is stillness. But if you do not keep still -
this is what is called sitting but racing around.”

—Chuang Tzu

“Let us beware of placing all our happiness on cards liable to be shuffled at any
moment by others’ hands or blown away by the least wind”

—Paul Dubois

“Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days' worth of
rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and
enlightenment. Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both
legs stretched out.”

―Ryōkan

"And it is the mind free of negative emotions (anger, anxiety, envy, desire) that
makes a person completely and absolutely happy, while the mind agitated by
negative emotions and cut off from solid and secure reasoning loses not only its
consistency but even its health."

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Book 4

“And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!”

—Marcus Aurelius

“No lure is greater than to possess what others want.

No disaster greater than not to be content with what one has.

No presage of evil greater than that men should be wanting to get more.
Truly: “He who has once known the contentment that comes simply through
being content, will never again be otherwise than contented.”

—Lao Tzu

“Having no destination, I am never lost.”

—Ikkyu

"A man cannot free himself from the habit of anger as soon as he resolves to do
so, but he can keep in check the unseemly manifestations of his passion. If he will
do this frequently, he will then discover that he is less prone to anger than he
formerly was.

Things which are unimportant or less important will not rouse his wrath; and even
if he does become angry over matters which are of great importance his anger
will be slight. And he will achieve this result, namely, that at some later date he
will become only a little angry over serious matters..."

—Galen, On The Passions

"The breath of a sage rises from the heels, while the breath of the common
person comes only from the throat."

—Chuang Tzu

“Dreams have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power; instead they come
from the impact of images.”

—Epicurus

"There is, I assure you, a medical art for the soul. It is philosophy...We must
endeavor with all our resources and all our strength to become capable of
doctoring ourselves."
—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

"Let the expression on our faces be relaxed, our voices gentler, our steps more
measured; little by little outer features mold inner ones."

—Seneca, On Anger

"Regard others with cool eyes; listen to words with cool ears, confront feelings
with cool emotions; reflect on principles with a cool mind."

—Hong Zicheng

“The body cries out to not be hungry, not be thirsty, not be cold. Anyone who has
these things, and who is confident of continuing to have them, can rival the gods
for happiness.”

—Epicurus

"The true Buddha is in the home. The true Dao is in everyday functions. If you
maintain an honest heart, a harmonious manner, a pleasant countenance and
graceful words with your father, mother, brothers, and sisters, and flow with
them, each in turn, in wholehearted accord of body and spirit, then isn't this ten
thousand times better than breath control and introspection."

—Hong Zicheng

"Thus, the Stoics do not only say "I don't know whether my action will succeed."
Rather, they also say: "Since I don't know in advance what the results of my
actions will be, and what Destiny has in store for me, I have to make such-and-
such a decision in accordance with probability and a rational estimate, without
any absolute certainty that I am making the right choice or doing the right thing."

—Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel

“Therefore, 'yoga', the oldest word still in use for meditation, means a skill in
which one trains oneself, harnessing some previously uncontrolled forces, in
order for their powers to enhance the success of some undertaking or adventure.

This contrasts strongly with the widely held notion of meditation as some kind of
a withdrawal into an inner fastness, from which one undertakes no outward,
worldly action, but loses oneself in another state of being totally divorced from
the concerns of daily life and this world. In fact, meditation, like the earliest yoga
of these highly skilled charioteers, more than an end in itself is a means to
whatever end one chooses. When thinking of meditation, recall this archaic image
of the first yogins (practitioners of yoga), who had to harness powerful horses
with inadequate equipment, thus eliciting from themselves the best of their own
skill, for the goal of preparing to set off for a journey of conquest in the world.”

-Willard Johnson, Riding the Ox Home

"By a bamboo fence, I hear dogs bark and chickens cluck, and I seem to enter the
realm of immortals. By my study window, I hear cicadas whirr and ravens call, and
I realize the true world of tranquility."

-Hong Zicheng

“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous

cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act
and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make
you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.

So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a
courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in order to feel kindly
toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less
deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say
genial things. One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer
communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the
mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our
attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if
from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an Arab, and
silently steals away...

From our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation
come, which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner states
shall be: that is a fundamental law of psychology which I will therefore proceed to
assume.”

—William James

“Don’t demand or expect that events happen as you would wish them to. Accept
events as they actually happen. That way peace is possible.”

—Epictetus

“There is an ancient Zen book that gives a criterion whereby you can know if you
are enlightened or not. The criterion goes like this: if you visit a temple, and the
stone Buddha on the altar dances for you, then you are enlightened.

Now is this just some sort of zany Zen metaphor, intentionally designed to blow
your mind? Not at all. They mean it quite literally. The question is: How can a
stone Buddha dance?

Let’s say that you are in a Chinese temple, looking at a giant stone Buddha. You
look to the right, look to the left, then you look at his belly, look at his leg, then
look over the entire sculpture at once. Your vision flows over the stone Buddha,
and each time there is an eye shift, a completely new visual impression of the
stone Buddha arises”

—Shinzen Young

“Praise be to blessed Nature: she has made what is necessary easy to get, and
what is not easy to get unnecessary.”

—Epicurus
“After Chuang Tzu’s wife has died, he is visited by Hui Tzu. When entering the
house he finds Chuang Tzu sitting on the floor, banging on an old pot and singing
at the top of his voice. Horrified, Hui Tzu asks him why he is mourning his wife in
this strange way.

Chuang Tzu answers him, saying, “At first, after my wife died, I could not help but
be affected by it. But later, after reflecting on it, I realized that before she came
into this world she was unborn and had no form. Not only that, but she had no
breath. Now things have changed again and she is without form or breath. She
has become one with the great cycle of the seasons, from spring to summer. Now
she is suspended between heaven and earth. So why should I weep and moan
over her? If I did this I would be showing that I did not understand the process of
life. So I stopped and decided to celebrate!”

—Chuang Tzu

“Judaism is the only culture in the world in which the name of the Greek
philosopher Epicurus (third century BCE) has been a part of everyday language
since antiquity; in Hebrew and other Jewish national languages (languages and
dialects spoken only by Jews), e.g. apikorsim (heretics) or apikorsut (heresy) in
Hebrew, and apikoires in Yiddish. The term apikoros was used in ancient Judaism
to designate a Jew who believed that the universe was subject to natural laws –
“those who say the world is automatos (self-moving)” –rather than the will of a
creator or master. These Jews also believed in man’s free will, sovereignty over
his own life, and freedom from obligation to observe the halakhic precepts.”

-Yaakov Malkin, Epicurus & Apikorsim

“Epicureanism, the philosophy developed by Epicurus, is actually quite the

opposite. It tells us that we should not continuously look for sensual pleasures,
but that we should look for ways to avoid unpleasurable things such as pain and
fear. Epicurus believed that by limiting anguish in our lives we could better
appreciate the smaller pleasures like friendship and family. By avoiding pain and
striving for tranquility, we can be fulfilled in our lives.“
“One will not banish emotional disturbance or arrive at significant joy through
great wealth, fame, celebrity, or anything else which is a result of vague and
indefinite causes.”

—Epicurus, Vatican Saying 81

“Let us be bold enough not only to prune away the branches of unhappiness, but
to yank out its very roots, down to the last fiber.

Of this one thing you must be assured: unless the mind is healed—which cannot
happen without philosophy—there will be no end to our unhappiness. Therefore,
since we have made a beginning with philosophy, let us entrust ourselves to her
care. We will be healed, if we are willing to be.”

—Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

"Of all things one enjoys leisure most, not because one does nothing. Leisure
confers upon one the freedom to read, to travel, to make friends, to drink, and to
write. Where is there a greater pleasure than this?
Hui'an: The proverb says, 'Steal leisure from business.' It can be stolen
methodically.
Ruojin: Those five things make leisure really worth while."

—Zhang Chao

“It is not possible to live joyously without also living wisely and beautifully and
rightly, nor to live wisely and beautifully and rightly without living joyously. For
the excellences grow up together with the pleasant life, and the pleasant life is
inseparable from them.”

—Epicurus, Letter to Menoikos

“I find that those people who agree with me in believing in lying in bed as one of
the greatest pleasures of life are the honest men, while those who do not believe
in lying in bed are liars and actually lie a lot in the daytime, morally and
physically...

I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with
big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms
placed behind the back of one’s head. In this posture any poet can write immortal
poetry, any philosopher can revolutionize human thought, and any scientist can
make epoch-making discoveries.”

—Lin Yutang

“Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a
project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the Master takes action

by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has
nothing to lose. What he desires is non-desire; what he learns is to unlearn.“

—Tao Te Ching

“Gilgamesh, whither are you roaming? Immortal life which you look for, you shall
never find. For when the gods created man, they set death as share for man, and
life snatched away in their own hands.

So you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly, day and night make merry, daily hold a festival,
dance and make music day and night. And wear fresh clothes, and wash your
head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, and let your wife
delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of man.”

—Epic Of Gilgamesh

“Now, leaving behind parents or children or a spouse or others who are close to
us, who will be in straits because of our death or even deprived of life’s
necessities, I admit brings with it a truly natural pang and can rouse a flow of
tears especially and like nothing else from a man of understanding mind.”

—Philodemus

“There is nothing terrifying in life to someone who truly understands that there is
nothing terrifying in the absence of life.”

—Epicurus

“It is not impious to deny the gods that most people believe in, but to attribute to
gods what most people believe. The things that most people say about the gods
are based on false assumptions.”

—Epicurus

"Like a warrior, I’ll always be on guard against delusions and vigorously counter-
attack them. And if I drop the sword of mindfulness, I will quickly pick it up."

—Shantideva

STOIC SELF-COMPASSION:

“Do not give up or be disgusted and impatient with yourself if you do not act from
right principles in every situation; but, having been driven off course, return again
and rejoice if most of your actions are worthy of a human being, and love that to
which you are returning. Do not come back to philosophy as a child returns to a
harsh schoolmaster but rather as sore-eyed people turn to sponges and egg
whites, as one sick man turns to plaster, and another to healing ointments. For to
obey the order of the universe is no heroic deed or struggle. But in so doing you
will find tranquility.”

—Marcus Aurelius 5.9

“We ought to notice that even the little things produced by nature contain
something pleasing and beautiful. For example, when bread is baked, some of the
surface splits. This has little to do with what the baker is trying to produce, but
those cracks are beautiful and induce us to eat the bread. Or look at figs—when
they are very ripe, they split open; or consider olives—overripeness adds a
peculiar beauty to the fruit. Or look at ripe grains bending down, or the eyebrows
of a lion, or the foam in a wild boar’s mouth, and all sorts of other things—small
things that often go unnoticed—still, because they are formed by nature, they are
beautiful and please the mind.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Nothing, therefore, returns to nothing, but everything dissolves and returns to

the elements of matter.”

—Lucretius

"The Stoic remains completely indifferent to what other people think or say of
them. As practitioners of the Stoic art of living, it makes no difference to us and
our capacity for acting well that other people may be thinking badly of us or
spreading malicious gossip. We must remind ourselves often that when the bad
person supposes that ‘their criticisms harm or their praises bring benefit’ they are
simply mistaken. And we must not make the same mistake ourselves by believing
that their criticisms or praises mean anything to us.

If we are confident that we are acting as we should, there is no need for us to

think even for a moment of amending our actions in the hope that others who
have criticised us will come to approve of us. Not that criticism should always be
dismissed out of hand, for we should remain alert to the possibility that we have
made a mistake and need to do something differently. But when we do adjust our
course, this is done not to appease criticisms (though such appeasement may in
fact occur), but in order that we should do the right thing."

-Keith Seddon, Stoic Serenity

“It is not true religion to be seen turning with veiled head ever and on toward an
image of stone, or drawing nigh to every god’s altar, or prostrating oneself on the
ground with suppliant hands before the holy shrines; nor is it piety to wet the
altars with the abundant blood of beasts and to twine vow with vow. True religion
is rather the power to contemplate nature with a mind set at peace”

—Lucretius

“From constancy, there develops harmony, and from harmony, enlightenment. It

is unwise to rush from here to there. To hold one's breath causes the body strain;
exhaustion follows when too much energy is used, for this is not the natural way.
He who is in opposition to the Tao (tranquility, calm, emptiness) does not live his
natural years.”

—Lao Tzu

HAPPINESS GLOSSARY:

Apatheia—without pathos and suffering, without negative emotions.

Eupatheia—good feelings, healthy passions.

Ataraxia—not perturbed", generally translated as "imperturbability",

"equanimity", or "tranquillity"

Arete-moral excellence.

Eudaimonia—a state of having a good indwelling spirit or being in a contented

state of being healthy, happy and prosperous.

Autarkeia—self satisfaction, self-sufficiency, contentment

Wabi Sabi—the mental outlook of accepting transience, impermanence and

imperfection. Finding beauty in everything.

Mushin—when a person's mind is free from thoughts of anger, fear, or ego during
combat or everyday life.
Wuwei-letting things take their course, not forcing matters, flowing with
whatever may happen.

Mushotoku—acting without wanting to achieve a result, and giving without

wanting something in return

Metta—a sincere wish for the welfare and genuine happiness of all beings,
without exception.

“Epicurus’ notion of happiness has a decidedly Buddhist quality. Happiness is

tranquility, and tranquility comes principally from putting aside worldly
“hankerings”—ambitions for power, status, involvement in government, the
pursuit of voluptuous sensory experiences, and the accumulation of material
goods.

Remarkably, Epicurus’s ideas about ataraxia—the freedom from mental anguish

and disturbance that is required for true happiness—were more directly
influenced by Buddhist thought than a twenty-first-century reader might imagine
for a Greek philosopher of that epoch. Two of Epicurus’s early influences,
Democritus and Pyrrho, had actually journeyed all the way to what is now India,
where they had encountered Buddhism in the schools of the gymnosophists
(naked teachers).”

-Epicurus, The Art of Happiness

“Friendship dances round the world, summoning every one of us to awaken to

the gospel of the happy life.”

—Epicurus

"To APPRECIATE one does not need to look afar; to be inspired one does not need
to have much.

In a little jagged stone or small basin, a man may visualize the grandeur of
mountains or rivers ten thousand miles long; in a word or sentence of the ancient
sages or worthies, he may read their minds. If so, he has the vision of the noble
and the mind of the wise."

—Hong Zicheng

“And so it is conducive to tranquility of mind, in the midst of happenings which

are contrary to our wishes, not to overlook whatever we have that is pleasant and
attractive, but, mingling good with bad, cause the better to outshine the worse.”

—Plutarch

“He who is free from disturbance and calm within himself also causes no trouble
or disturbance for others.”

—Epicurus, VS 79

“O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye refuges to yourselves...Look not

for refuge to any one beside yourselves.”

—Buddha

CREATING HEALTHY, RATIONAL BOUNDARIES:

“For if your parents are justifiably angered at you, it is surely pointless to resist
and not ask to be forgiven; but if their anger is not justifiable but somewhat
irrational, it is ridiculous for them with irrationality in their heart to appeal to
someone like you set against such emotional, irrational appeals.”

—Epicurus

“The practice of paying attention is the rarest of gifts because it depends upon
the harshest of disciplines. So uncommon is it for us to grasp the beauty and
mystery of ordinary things that, when we finally do so, it often brings us to the
verge of tears. Appalled by our own poverty, we awake in wonder to a splendor of
which we had never dreamed.”

—Belden C. Lane

“Joy for humans lies in human actions. Human actions: kindness to others...the
interrogation of thoughts, observation of nature and of events in nature.”

—Marcus Aurelius 8.26

“Envy no one. For good people do not deserve envy (because you too can be
good), and the more that wicked people succeed the more they ruin things for
themselves.”

—Epicurus, VS 53

“Who am I?
As a bird I fly about,
I sing of flowers;
I compose songs,
butterflies of song.
Let them burst forth from my soul!
Let my heart be delighted with them!”

—Cantares Mexicanos (Aztec)

“How about it, then? Will I not walk in the footsteps of my predecessors? I will
indeed use the ancient road—but if I find another route that is more direct and
has fewer ups and downs, I will stake out that one. Those who advanced these
doctrines before us are not our masters but our guides. The truth lies open to all;
it has not yet been taken over. Much is left also for those yet to come."
—Seneca

“While you are on the road of life, try to make the later part better than the
earlier part; and be equally happy when you reach the end.”

—Epicurus, VS 48

“For most people, to be quiet is to be numb and to be active is to be frenzied.”

—Epicurus, VS 11

"Ask, and she will tell you, that happiness is not found in tumult, but tranquility;
and that, not the tranquility of indolence and inaction, but of a healthy
contentment of soul and body. Ask, and she will tell you, that a happy life is like
neither to a roaring torrent, nor a stagnant pool, but to a placid and crystal
stream, that flows gently and silently along."

—Frances Wright, A Few Days In Athens

“So much of our lives takes place in our heads—in memory or imagination, in
speculation or interpretation—that sometimes I feel that I can best change my life
by changing the way I look at it.

As America’s wisest psychologist, William James, reminded us, “The greatest

weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another”

—Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness

“Like an archer an arrow, the wise man steadies his trembling mind, a fickle and
restless weapon.”

—Buddha

“Get used to believing that death is nothing to us. For all good and bad consists in
sense-experience, and death is the privation of sense-experience. Hence, a
correct knowledge of the fact that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of
life a matter for contentment.”

—Epicurus

“Misfortunes must be cured by a sense of gratitude for what has been and the
knowledge that what is past cannot be undone.”

—Epicurus, VS 55

“When you’re about to embark on any action, remind yourself what kind of action
it is. If you’re going out to take a bath, set before your mind the things that
happen at the baths, that people splash you, that people knock up against you,
that people steal from you. And you’ll thus undertake the action in a surer
manner if you say to yourself at the outset,

‘I want to take a bath and ensure at the same time that my choice remains in
harmony with nature.’

And follow the same course in every action that you embark on. So if anything
gets in your way while you’re taking your bath, you’ll be ready to tell yourself,

‘Well, this wasn’t the only thing that I wanted to do, but I also wanted to keep my
choice in harmony with nature; and I won’t keep it so if I get annoyed at what is
happening.’

It isn’t the things themselves that disturb people, but the judgements that they
form about them.”

—Epictetus

“Watch the stars in their courses as one who runs alongside them, and frequently
contemplate the reciprocal transformations of elements, for thoughts such as
these cleanse away the dross of earthbound life.”
—Marcus Aurelius

“When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in
a windless place. In the still mind, in the depths of meditation, the self reveals
itself. An aspirant knows the joy and peace of complete fulfillment. Having
attained that abiding joy beyond the senses, revealed in the stilled mind, he never
swerves from the eternal truth. He desires nothing else, and cannot be shaken by
the heaviest burden of sorrow.”

—Bhagavad Gita

“For where there are disturbances, and sorrows, and fears, and unsatisfied
desires, and aversions and envies and jealousies, how can happiness find its way
in among all of that?”

—Epictetus

“Meditate and give to others the fruits of your meditation.”

—Dominican Order Saying

“In the beginning, meditation is something that happens within your day.
Eventually, the day becomes something that happens within your meditation...

At first, meditation requires a lot of effort. You have to think about what you’re
doing, and you can only get in a meditative state while sitting still, perhaps with
your eyes closed. But at some point, the skill becomes second nature. You can
attend to the business of life and still be in a meditative state just like you can
listen to the radio while driving on a freeway at rush hour”

—Shinzen Young

“Epicurus said that,” you say. "What business have you with another’s property?”

Whatever is true is my own. I shall persist in showering you with Epicurus, for the
benefit of those people who repeat their oaths verbatim and regard not what is
being said but who says it. By this they may know that the best sayings are held in
common."

-Seneca, Letter 12

“The essential Stoic idea is not about suppressing feelings that you have, but
about learning to care more about the things that are worth caring about.
Strength of reason gets the priorities right, and therefore gets the emotions
right.”

—Margaret Graver

“I do not deny that the wise person feels these (distressing emotions), for we do
not endow him with the hardness of stone or of iron.

To endure without feeling what you endure is not virtue at all.”

—Seneca

"No one is happy who does not believe himself to be. If you *think* your
circumstances are bad, then does it matter what they are *really* like?

It is not what he *says* that counts, but what he *thinks*—and not what he
thinks on any one day, either, but what he *thinks over time*."

-Seneca, Letter 9, 21-22

“As the Epicureans say, remembering previous goods is the most important factor
contributing to a pleasant life.”

—Plutarch

“It is hard to convince men that virtue is desirable in itself. But that pleasure and
tranquillity come through virtue, justice and goodness and is both true and
capable of proof. For Epicurus himself says that one cannot live pleasurably
without living virtuously and justly. Thus Pansa, who pursues pleasure, keeps to
virtue, and the folk you call pleasure lovers are in fact lovers of virtue and justice
and practice all the virtues at once and keep to them firmly.”

—Cassius’ Letter to Cicero

“I don’t know anything about consciousness. I just try to teach my students how
to hear the birds sing.”

—Shunryu Suzuki

“Because Shingon is Vajrayana, the main meditation practice involves working

with visualizations, mantras, and mudra gestures. You replace your self-image
with that of an archetype, you replace your usual mental talk with the mantra of
that archetype, and you take on the physical and emotional body experience of
that archetype through making mudras—ritual hand gestures. If your
concentration is good enough, your identity briefly shifts. You become that
archetype. This gives you insight into the arbitrary nature of self-identity.”

—Shinzen Young

“Philosophy doesn’t promise to secure any external good for man, since it would
then be embarking on something that lies outside its proper subject matter. For
just as wood is the material of the carpenter, and bronze that of the sculptor, the
art of living has each individual’s own life as its material.”

—Epictetus, Discourses

“Is meditation really that valuable? Yes it is, because a person’s base level of
concentration is, in a sense, the most valuable thing that they have. Anything a
person may want will be more easily attained if they are functioning from a high
level of effortless focus. The entire range of human endeavors relies on
concentration, and if your base level of concentration is elevated through
practice, it means that you can function from a continuous state of extraordinary
focus every day.”

—Shinzen Young

“As a general principle, any positive state that you experience within the context
of silent sitting practice, you must try to attain in the midst of ordinary life”

—Okamura Keishin

“My interest is in the arguments for and against divine creation and the appeals
that were made to its explanatory power. In classical antiquity, these were
formulated and deployed by a series of leading philosophers, nearly all of whom
agreed, at least tacitly, that settling the issue is fundamental to establishing a
proper relationship with the divine, and hence to the quest for human happiness.

What is the value of conducting such a historical exercise? For my money, it lies
precisely in treating both sides of the ancient debate with equal sympathy. The
object is not to determine who was right, but to understand each position’s
rationale from the inside. The potential rewards include new historical
perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of western
philosophy and science, perspectives which are likely to enhance our
understanding of their ethics, their physics, and even in some cases their logic.”

-David Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity

“If you learn these things well and hold on to them, nature appears liberated at
once and freed from haughty masters, to do everything herself by herself on her
own without the gods.”

—Lucretius

"What does virtue achieve for us?

Serenity."
—Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.5

“Don't fear the gods.

Don't worry about death.
What is good is easy to get;
What is terrible is easy to endure.”

—Philodemus, Herculaneum Papyri

"Mind is the root of descendants to come. There have never been flourishing
branches and luxuriant foliage whose roots were not well planted."

-Hong Zicheng

“To a wise man the whole earth is accessible and the country of a good soul is the
whole world.”

—DEMOCRITUS

"Whatever happens, let my joy be undisturbed, for dissatisfaction is fruitless and

destroys my virtue."

—Shantideva