Marcus Aurelius: Meditations: Book 7
My efforts to create a slightly more digestible version of Meditations (while absorbing the content) continue. Hope there’s a few nuggets here for others.
This is a big chapter in Meditations with 75 paragraphs (or whatever we should be calling them). Key themes are understanding the nature of evil, pain and change, and, yes, again, the transience of our existence, and our ability to control our reaction to others, what they do, and what happens to ourselves, by applying our ruling principles and thereby attaining peace and tranquility.
1. What is badness? It’s something you’ve seen often. With everything that happens, just remember, you’ve seen it often. You’ll find the same stuff everywhere, filling the past and present, filling cities and houses. There is nothing new: all is familiar and short-lived.
2. Our principles will only die if we stop thinking about them. It is in your power to keep fanning the flame of these thoughts. I can form the opinion that I should have about anything. Given this, why would I get upset? Anything external to my mind has no bearing on my mind. So set you own mind and stand erect. To recover control of your life is in your power. Re-examine everything again with your principles and recover control.
3. Entertainment and play is all alike. It is your duty to show good humor and not act superior amongst such things. Remember every man’s worth comes from what he does with his life.
4. When conversing, pay attention to every word to understand what is being signified. In every act, observe what is done, and you should see immediately what is intended.
5. Is my understanding enough or not? If it is, I use it with confidence for what I’m doing. If it isn’t, I pass the work to someone who can do it better, unless there is a reason not to. If I work with others, in accordance with my principles, we do it for the general good. In whatever I do, alone or with others, I focus my effort on following my principles and achieving the greater good.
6. So many celebrities have now passed away, and so many of their fans have long since passed as well.
7. Don’t be ashamed to be helped, like a soldier doing his duty and working with his platoon. If you are injured, and can’t do it alone, your team can’t succeed if you don’t ask for help.
8. Don’t worry about the future, it’ll happen soon enough, and you may be lucky enough to be part of it (as with the present).
9. Everything is intertwined, hardly anything is not connected, and that is part of the natural order. There is one universe, governed by one God, and a common reason in all intelligent animals.
10. Everything material soon disappears, every cause and memory is very soon absorbed by the universe and the flow of time.
11. To a rational animal an act should be both according to nature and according to reason.
12. Be upright or be made upright.
13. The same genius that applies to the way body parts work together applies to rational things that are meant to work together. If you see yourself as part of a rational system that’s meant to work together, the genius of the rational system will be more apparent.
If you don’t consider yourself part of a rational system, you don’t love your fellow man, and won’t be delighted by goodness, and you will act only out of a sense of duty and not do what is good for you.
14. Let whatever will fall, fall on whatever will feel the effects. Whomever feels the effects may choose to complain. Unless I think what has happened is evil, and I am not hurt by it, it is in my power to not think it was evil.
15. Whatever anyone else does, I must be good, just as if any color was always saying: whatever happens I must stay this color.
16. The brain doesn’t frighten itself or stir up its desires by its own assumptions. If anyone else can, let them try. The body can take care of itself to the extent it can, and can speak up if it suffers. The soul, which is subject to fear and pain, has the power to form judgements, but will not suffer, because it will never judge. Our guiding light wants nothing, unless it creates its own needs. So it’s free from disturbance and impedance it doesn’t create.
17. Happiness is good. What is imagination doing here? Go back from whence you came, I beseech you, I just don’t want you. Imagination has come (as it always does). I say to it: I’m not angry with you, I just want you to go away.
18. Is anyone afraid of change? What can happen without change? Given that, what is more pleasing or more natural? Can you take a hot bath if the wood for the fire doesn’t change into flame? Can you be nourished if the food doesn’t change into nourishment? Can anything useful be accomplished without change? Can’t you see that it’s the same for you? Change is equally necessary for us.
19. We are all carried on the river of life, united with, and cooperating with, the whole, like our body parts united with, and cooperating with, our bodies. How many famous characters has time already swallowed up? Think of this when you think of every man and thing.
20. Only one thing troubles me: that I do something our constitution doesn’t allow, or in a way it doesn’t allow, or allow now.
21. In a little while you will have forgotten everything, in a little while everything will have forgotten you.
22. It is a peculiarity of man to love even those who do us wrong. We can do this if we realize they are just fellow humans. To forgive, we must realize others are acting unintentionally and through ignorance, and that we will all soon die. Above all, you forgive by knowing the wrongdoer has done you no harm, because he can’t impact your guiding principles.
23. The universe, as if it were made of wax, molds a horse, then breaks it up, makes a tree, then a man, then something else. Everything the universe makes, exists for a very short time. This is no hardship, just as there was none in being created.
24. A scowl is totally unnatural. Scowling often causes all beauty to fade, eventually extinguishing it so it will never return. Scowling is contrary to reason, as the perception of being done wrong will depart, and why lose one’s own beauty over it?
25. Nature governs all and will soon change all you see, then make other things, then other things, so the world may be new forever.
26. When a man does you wrong, immediately consider with what opinion of good or evil he has done you wrong. When you have seen why others have done you wrong, you will pity them, understand them, and not be angry. By thinking why others have acted you will find you share the same view of what is good and forgive them, or you differ and pity their error.
27. Think not so much what you lack, but what you have. Of the things you have, think of the best and how eagerly you would have sought them if you didn’t have them. Be careful to not become so pleased with what you have that you overvalue those things and are disturbed should you ever lose them.
28. Retire into yourself. It is typical of the ruling faculty to be pleased with its righteous acts and the peace that brings.
29. Wipe out the imagination. Stop it from pulling the strings. Confine yourself to the present. Understand what happens to you or anyone else: separate the causal and the material. Think of your final hour. Let the wrong done by a man stay where the wrong was done.
30. Focus on what was said. Let your understanding be into the things that are done and the things doing them.
31. Adorn yourself with simplicity, modesty, and indifference to things that lie between virtue and vice.
32. About death: regardless whether it is dispersion, resolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is extinction or change.
33. About pain: only intolerable pain carries us off. Pain which lasts a long time is tolerable. The mind maintains its own tranquility by looking inward, and the ruling faculty is not made worse. If they can, let the parts that are harmed by pain give their opinion about it.
34. About fame: look at the minds of those who seek fame, observe them, what they avoid, and what they pursue. Consider fame as heaps of sand piled on one another that hide former sands. In life, the events that go before are soon covered by those that come after.
35. From Plato: Can a man with an elevated mind who takes a view of all time and substance think human life is anything great? It’s not possible for man who realizes the relative inconsequence of human life to think death is evil.
36: From Antisthenes: “It is royal to do good, and to be abused.”
37. It is a basic thing for the countenance to be obedient, and to regulate and compose itself, as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.
38. It is not right to vex ourselves about things as they don’t care.
39. Give joy to the immortal gods and us.
40. Life must be reaped like the ripe ears of corn: one man is born, another dies.
41. If the gods care not for me and my children, there is a reason for it.
42. For the good is with me, and the just.
43. Don’t join others in their wailing or their violent emotion.
44. From Plato: It is a mistake to think a man who is good for anything ought to consider the risks of life or death. A man should only consider if his every act is just or not, and if it is that of a good or a bad man.
45. Wherever a man has put himself, thinking it is the best place, or has been placed by a commander, he ought to stay. A man should abide the hazards of his location, not consider the risks of death or anything else, and not desert his post.
46. What is noble and good is not different from saving and being saved, a real man living a noble and good life should consider things this way. There must be no love of life, a man must trust the gods, and believe what women say: that no man can escape his destiny.
46. Trusting destiny, the next inquiry should be how may I best live the time I have to live?
47. Look at the movement of the stars, as if you were moving with them, and constantly consider the changing of the elements. By thinking of these we can purge away the filth of our earthly life.
48. Plato said: someone who talks about men should look also at earthly things as if viewed from a higher place and that by observing all activities from up high we can see the mix of all things and order in the combination of opposites.
49. Consider the past: such big changes in who has ruled countries. You can foresee also the things that will be. The future will be similar to the past, and will not deviate from the order of things that happen now. To contemplate human life for 40 years is the same as to contemplate it for 10,000 years. What more will you see?
50. All that has grown from the earth returns to the earth. That which is sprung from heavenly seed, returns to the heavens. From the earth to the earth, from the heavens to the heavens: closely linked atoms dissolve and non-sentient elements disperse.
51. With food and drinks and cunning magic, turning the channel’s course to escape from death. The breeze that heaven has sent, we must endure and toil without complaining.
52. One may be more expert in casting an opponent, yet not be more social, more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all events, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors.
53. Where any work conforms to reason that is common to gods and men, we have nothing to fear. When we are able to profit from a successful activity and follow our principles, no harm should be suspected.
54. Everywhere and at all times it’s in your power to accept your present condition, to behave justly to others, to exert your skill upon your present thoughts, so nothing creeps in there without being well examined.
55. Don’t look around you to discover other’s ruling principles. Instead look at what nature leads you to through what happens, and your own nature through the acts you must do. Every being should do what is aligned with its constitution, all else has been constituted for the sake of rational beings. Among irrational things, the inferior is constituted for the sake of the superior, the rational for the sake of one another.
The prime principle in man’s constitution is the social. Second is not to yield to temptations of the body. Rational and intelligent minds can resist the senses and appetites, as these are animal instincts inferior to intelligence. Intelligence was created by nature to use all of the senses and appetites. Rational constitution is free from error and deception. As the ruling principle has both rationality and intelligence, let it be the guide to your actions.
56. Consider yourself dead and to have completed your life up to now. Live the remaining time you are given according to nature.
57. Love only what happens to you and is spun with the thread of your destiny. For what is more suitable?
58. With everything that happens, remember that the same thing has happened to others, and how they were troubled, finding them strange or at fault. Where are they now? Nowhere.
Why do you choose to act the same as others if they are nowhere now? Forget these fears, which are foreign to nature. Leave the fears to those who cause them, and those who are moved by them.
Focus on the right way of using what happens to you, for then you will use it well and it’ll be material for you to work on. Only attend to yourself, and resolve to be good in every act you do: and remember…
59. Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will forever bubble up, if you will forever dig.
60. The body ought to be compact, and to show no irregularity in motion or attitude. What the mind shows in the face by maintaining an expression of intelligence and propriety, ought to be required in the body. But all of these things should be observed without affectation.
61. Life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in that we should stand ready to meet sudden and unexpected onsets.
62. Constantly observe whose praise you wish for and what ruling principles they possess. You will neither blame those who offend accidentally, not want their praise if you look to the source of opinions and tastes.
63. Every soul, is involuntarily deprived of truth, justice, moderation and benevolence and the like. It’s essential to constantly remember everyone is not trying to be bad, as this will help you to be more gentle toward others.
64. In every pain, be aware there is no dishonor in it, nor does it make the governing intelligence worse. Pain does not damage intelligence, so far as intelligence is rational or social. Pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting if you remember it has its limits, and if you don’t imagine it to be worse.
Remember, we do not perceive that many things that are disagreeable to us, like fatigue or heat exposure, are the same as pain. When you are discontent about disagreeable things, remind yourself that you are unnecessarily yielding to pain.
65. Take care not to feel toward the inhuman as they feel toward men.
66. How do we know if one was superior to another in character? For example, Socrates died a noble death and disputed skillfully, he survived cold nights with more endurance, refused to arrest another, and walked (apparently) with swagger. We should ask what kind of soul did Socrates have, and was he content with being just towards men, and pious towards the gods? Was Socrates neither vexed by man’s evil deeds, nor a slave to other’s ignorance, nor receiving as strange what fate gave him? Did he regard events as intolerable, or allow his understanding to sympathize with the effects of our miserable bodies?
67. Nature has not so mingled intelligence with the body as to prevent you from objectively observing your entire self. It is very possible to be a divine man and to not be recognized as such by anyone. Always remember that very little is necessary for living a happy life. If you have given up on being skilled in the sciences and language, don’t give up on being free, modest, social and spiritual
68. It is in your power to live free from compulsion with great tranquility of mind even if all the world cries out against you. Even if wild beasts tear your body apart, you have the power to keep a peaceful mind. What prevents the mind from maintaining tranquility and being in just judgement of all surrounding things and how to use them?
When judging something be able to say: in reality you are this, even if in men’s opinion you appear to be something else. Say this to whatever comes your way: you are what I was seeking: you have both rational and political virtue.
What comes your way is for the exercise of art, which belongs to man or God. Everything that happens has a relationship either to God or man, and is neither new, nor difficult to handle, and is usual and apt matter to work on.
69. The perfection of moral character is this: in passing every day, act as if it were your last, be neither violently excited nor torpid, nor playing a hypocrite.
70. The immortal gods are not upset because they must continually tolerate men as they are, and so many bad men. Despite our failings, the gods take care of us in all ways. You, whose life is destined to end so soon, are you tired of enduring the bad people do, especially as you are human too?
71. It is ridiculous for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is possible, but to fly from others, which is impossible.
72. Whatever the rational and political mind finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it rightly judges as inferior to itself.
73. When you have done a good act, and another has received it, why do you look for a third thing beyond this? Only fools seek the reputation of having done good, or receiving good in return for a good act.
74. No man is tired or receiving what is useful. But it is useful to act according to nature. Don’t be tired of receiving what is useful by doing what is useful for others
75. The nature of the All moved to make the universe. But now everything that happens comes by way of consequence or continuity. Even the main things over which the universe directs its power are governed by no rational principle. If you remember the absence of rationality in the control of the universe, it will make you more tranquil in many things.
