Dear Perennial Meditations Reader,
I hope this finds you well! Here is your Perennial Meditations (Saturday Review) — A weekly recap and reflection of ancient lessons for modern life. Below are links, notable quotes, and a Saturday Meditation (short reflection).
***Feel free to comment, ask questions, or suggest future topics!
The Basic Rules of Life
This week's Saturday meditation comes from my favorite daily reader, Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom. It’s a collection of wise sayings and passages collected over fifteen years that Tolstoy believed was his most important work. Today’s passage comes from the writing of the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophon:
Socrates told his students that in good systems of education, there is a certain limit you should not go beyond. In geometry, he said, it is enough to know how to measure the land when you want to sell or buy it, share an inheritance, or divide work among workers. Socrates did not like too many sophisticated sciences, though he knew all of them. He said that sophisticated knowledge requires an extra effort that takes the student’s time from the most basic and most important human pursuit: moral perfection.
— Xenophon
Tolstoy writes, “The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop you from understanding the basic rules of life.”
Reflection Questions (Pick one or create your own):
Are there any pursuits taking you away from developing your character?
How can you better focus your efforts on the basic rules of life?
This Week’s Articles and Podcasts…
1. Seneca | On the God Within Us (Listen here)
In a letter known today as On the God Within Us, Seneca wrote,
You are doing an excellent thing, one which will be wholesome for you, if, as you write me, you are persisting in your effort to attain sound understanding; it is foolish to pray for this when you can acquire it from yourself. We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol’s ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. […]
2. Goals and Perennial Habits (Read here)
This week’s The PATH (Monday Meditation) searches for ancient lessons on thinking about traditional goals and perennial habits.
If you decide to make new goals, perennial habits, or continue existing ones. Integrating kindness for yourself into the process could be more helpful than you realize. For example, how will you handle instances when you veer off the path? What if unforeseen events hinder the process you put in place?
The role of kindness is critical in any relationship, especially the one with yourself. My interview with Dr. Ron Siegel (author of The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary) revealed how we are hardwired to focus on self-evaluation.
Dr. Siegel explained,
“Nearly everyone is preoccupied with self-evaluation and rides this sort of roller coaster. Why? Because, I’m sorry to say, we humans did not evolve to be happy. The propensity to evaluate ourselves and compare ourselves to others, once useful for survival, is actually hardwired into the human brain.”
This hardwiring traps almost all of us in unnecessary self-focused suffering while cutting us off from the pursuits that could actually make us happier and healthier. This year, incorporating kindness for yourself could be the most crucial step, regardless of your goals or habits. […]
3. The Hardest Thing (Read here)
How do you define forgiveness?
Do you find the practice of forgiveness challenging? Why or why not?
A few months ago, I came across this quote from Ram Dass,
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree, and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
4. The Paradox of Change (Read here)
One of my favorite spiritual writers is the psychologist and theologian Anthony de Mello (1931-1987). I’m not sure how I initially discovered his work; it may have been from de Mello being quoted by other authors or possibly from the podcaster Tim Ferris saying he reads Awareness every year. But regardless of how I came across de Mello’s work, I was delighted to see the new book A Year with Anthony de Mello recently come out (a great gift idea for any readers!).
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.”
—Carl Rogers
In one of the passages from A Year with Anthony de Mello (which includes the quote above), he writes,
“People often ask me, What do I need to do to change myself? If you are one of those people, I’ve got a big surprise for you! You don’t have to do anything. In fact, the more you do, the worse it gets. […]
5. Reading & the Good Life (Read here)
For the month of December, we’ve been exploring selected passages from No Mud, No Lotus by the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Selected passages for this week:
“The unwelcome things that sometimes happen in life—being rejected, losing a valuable object, failing a test, getting injured in an accident—are analogous to the first arrow. They cause some pain. The second arrow, fired by our own selves, is our reaction, our storyline, and our anxiety. All these things magnify the suffering. Many times, the ultimate disaster we’re ruminating upon hasn’t even happened.” — Thich Nhat Hanh (Ch. 4, No Mud, No Lotus) […]
6. How to Find Tranquility (Read here)
Do we make life more complicated than it needs to be?
As the ancient philosopher, Epicurus (341–270 BC) advised, should we focus on pleasure? How does pleasure connect with wisdom (or does it)?
In the new book Living for Pleasure, philosophy Prof. Emily Austin (a recent podcast guest) writes, “Epicurus puts it in his notoriously wooden prose, ‘pleasure is the starting point and the goal of living blessedly.’” […]
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful for daily life this week.
Until next time, be wise and be well,