How to Train Your Desires - Like Epictetus
Saturday Review | Notes, Takeaways, and Reflection (18-24 Sep)
Welcome to Perennial Meditations (Saturday Review) — A weekly recap and reflection of ancient lessons for modern life. Below you’ll find links, notable quotes, transcript summaries, and a Saturday Meditation.
1. How to Share Knowledge — Like Seneca (Listen here)
In a letter known today as On Sharing Knowledge, Seneca wrote,
“I feel, my dear Lucilius, that I am being not only reformed, but transformed. I do not yet, however, assure myself, or indulge the hope, that there are no elements left in me which need to be changed. Of course there are many that should be made more compact, or made thinner, or be brought into greater prominence. And indeed this very fact is proof that my spirit is altered into something better—that it can see its own faults, of which it was previously ignorant. In certain cases sick men are congratulated because they themselves have perceived that they are sick. […]
2. No One Is an Island — According to Merton (Read here)
In our Monday Meditation (The PATH), we searched for ancient lessons on the notion of No One Is an Island (Connection, Despair, and Being).
Connection — The American philosopher William James observed, “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.” Despite philosophical and spiritual traditions pointing to our deep interconnection, research reveals that rates of loneliness and social isolation are higher than ever.
Despair — Despair and anxiety are part of leading a life. As the nineteenth-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it, “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self.”
Being (Who You Are) — For Kierkegaard, “The greatest hazard of all, losing oneself, can occur very quietly in the world as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly […]
3. The Fundamental Rule of Life (Listen here)
In this episode, I share a short clip from a recent conversation with Massimo Pigliucci, the author of the new book The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Can Teach Us about Our Search for Good Leaders. The full conversation will release next week on In Search of Wisdom.
As a final question, I ask Massimo — What philosophical exercise has been most important or impactful in his own quest for character? […]
4. Learning to Sit Still — Like a Saint (Read here)
Is there anything easier (and more difficult) than sitting still? The seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal insisted that the chief symptom of our unhappiness is simply our inability to sit still.
In his Pensées (or Thoughts), Pascal wrote,
We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight… Let each of us examine their thoughts; they will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future.
Therefore, most people never actually live; they only hope to live. “And since we are always planning how to be happy,” observed Pascal, “it is inevitable that we should never be so.” Human beings are torn between the desire for happiness and an innate confusion about where to find it. […]
5. The Art of Wisdom (Listen here)
In this episode (#100), my guest is Kevin Griffin, the author of Living Kindness: Metta Practice for the Whole of Our Lives. Kevin is a longtime Buddhist practitioner, author, teacher, and leader in the mindful recovery movement.
In the conversation, Kevin and I discuss:
The Four Noble Truths
How to think about suffering
The wisdom of listening
The art of contemplation
Integrating wisdom into daily life and much more
6. How to Say Yes to Life — Like Nietzsche (Listen here)
What does it mean to learn how to live? Where does one even begin? The existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Everything in the world has been figured out, except how to live.”
In the classic Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche wrote,
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all… I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
In my conversation with Nate Anderson (author of In Emergency, Break Glass), he explained that for Nietzsche, the point of life is not to get through content; it is not to master knowledge. “It is to learn how to live. And then to actually live.” […]
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