ARKCODEX
Meditations
1Everything you pray to reach someday, you can have right now. If you stop denying yourself. Here is what that means. Let go of the past entirely. Trust the future to providence. Direct the present moment toward reverence and justice alone. Reverence means loving what is given to you. Nature brought it to you. And brought you to it. Justice means speaking truth freely and without evasion. It means acting according to law and worth. Let nothing block you. Not the faults of others. Not their opinions. Not their words. Not even the sensations of the flesh wrapped around you. The body that suffers can deal with its own suffering. When you come at last to your departure, leave everything else behind. Honor only your ruling mind and the divine within you. Do not fear that life will end. Fear that you will never begin to live according to nature. Then you will be worthy of the universe that made you. You will stop being a stranger in your own homeland. You will stop being startled by each day's events as if they were unexpected. You will stop hanging on this thing and that.
2God sees all ruling minds stripped bare of their material vessels and husks and impurities. Through his own intelligence alone, he touches only what has flowed and channeled from himself into them. If you train yourself to do the same, you will cast off much of what distracts you. The one who looks past the surrounding flesh will surely not be occupied with clothing and houses and reputation and all such costumes and stagecraft.
3You are made of three things: a small body, a breath of life, and a mind. The first two are yours only in the sense that you must care for them. The third alone is truly your own. Separate from yourself—that is, from your thinking mind—what others do or say. Separate what you yourself have done or said. Separate what troubles you about the future. Separate what belongs to your body or your breath that lies outside your will. Separate what the outer whirlwind of circumstance spins around you. Then the power of your mind will live free. Released from the grip of fate. Pure. Acting justly. Accepting what happens. Speaking the truth. Detach from your ruling self all that clings to it through passion. Detach all that lies beyond the present moment or behind it. Make yourself like the sphere of Empedocles: rounded, whole, rejoicing in its stillness. Practice living only what you are living. That is: the present. Then you will be able to pass the time remaining until death without turmoil. Kindly. At peace with the spirit within you.
4I have often wondered at this: everyone loves himself more than anyone else, yet values his own opinion of himself less than the opinions of others. If a god or wise teacher appeared and commanded someone to think nothing privately that he would not speak aloud, no one could endure it for even a single day. We respect what others might think of us more than we respect ourselves.
5How could the gods, who arranged everything so well and with such love for humanity, have overlooked this one thing? That certain people—those who are truly good, who have made countless sacred contracts with the divine, who have become intimate with the gods through holy works and sacred rites—once they die, never come back into being but are extinguished forever? If this is indeed how things are, know this with certainty. If it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have made it so. For if it were just, it would also be possible. And if it were according to nature, nature would have brought it about. From the fact that it is not so—if indeed it is not so—let this convince you. It did not need to be otherwise. For you see that by pursuing this question, you are bringing a case against god. But we would not argue this way with the gods unless they were supremely good and just. And if they are, they would not have left anything in their ordering of the world unjustly or irrationally neglected.
6Train yourself in the very things you've given up on. Consider the left hand. It is weak for most tasks because it lacks practice. Yet it grips the reins more firmly than the right. Why? Because that is what it has trained to do.
7Consider the state in which death should find you. Both body and soul. The shortness of life. The endless void of time stretching behind you and before you. The frailty of all matter.
8Strip away the bark and see the causes bare. Ask what each action really aims at. What is pain? What is pleasure? What is death? What is reputation? Who is responsible for your own busyness? How can no one else truly block your path? Remember: everything is judgment.
9In applying your principles, be like a wrestler, not a swordsman. The swordsman sets down his blade and picks it up again. But the wrestler always has his hands. He needs only to make them into fists.
10See things this way. Break them into three parts: matter, cause, and purpose.
11Consider what power a person has when they do only what God will approve. And when they accept everything God assigns to them. This is living in harmony with nature.
12Do not blame the gods. They do no wrong, whether by choice or by chance. Do not blame other people. They do no wrong except by chance. Therefore blame no one.
13How ridiculous and out of touch is the person who marvels at anything that happens in life.
14Either there is a fixed necessity that cannot be escaped. Or there is a providence that can be appeased. Or there is a chaos of chance with no one in control. If necessity is unbreakable, why do you resist? If providence accepts our prayers, make yourself worthy of divine help. If chaos rules without guidance, take heart. In such a storm, you still possess within yourself a mind that governs. Let the storm carry off your flesh if it will. Let it take your breath and all the rest. Your mind it cannot touch.
15A lamp's light shines and holds its brightness until it is snuffed out. Will the truth and justice and self-control within you fade before then?
16When someone appears to have wronged you, ask yourself: how do I know this is truly a wrong? And even if they did wrong, remember that they have already condemned themselves. This is like clawing at one's own face. To wish that a bad person would not do wrong is like wishing the fig tree would not produce bitter sap in its figs. Like wishing infants would not cry. Like wishing horses would not whinny. These things are inevitable. What else can you expect from someone with such a character? If you are capable, heal that character.
17If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.
18Let your impulse always be to see the whole of any matter. Look at the thing itself that creates the impression in your mind. Unfold it by separating it into its cause. Its material. Its purpose. The span of time within which it must end.
19Recognize that you have within you something stronger and more divine than the forces that stir up your emotions. Something greater than what pulls your strings like a puppet. Ask yourself: what is my mind right now? Is it fear? Is it suspicion? Is it desire? Is it something else of that kind?
20First, do nothing at random or without purpose. Second, direct every action toward the common good and nothing else.
21Soon you will be nowhere and nothing. The same is true of everything you now see. The same is true of everyone now alive. All things are made to change and turn and pass away. So that other things may rise in their place.
22Everything depends on how you perceive it. And that perception is up to you. So remove the judgment whenever you choose. Then, like a ship rounding the headland into calm waters, you will find stillness. All things steady. A harbor without waves.
23Any activity that stops at its proper time suffers no harm by stopping. Nor does the one who performed that action suffer any harm simply because it has ended. In the same way, life itself—the whole sum of all our actions—suffers no harm if it stops at its proper time. Nor is the one who brings this sequence to its close at the right moment left worse off. Nature assigns both the time and the limit. Sometimes it is our own nature, as in old age. But always it is universal nature. As her parts change and transform, the whole cosmos stays forever fresh and in its prime. Whatever serves the whole is always beautiful and ripe. So the ending of each person's life is not an evil. It brings no shame. It lies beyond our choice. It serves the common good. It is a good, since it comes at the right time for the whole. It benefits the whole. It moves in harmony with the whole. The one who is carried along the same path as god, whose purpose moves toward the same end—that one is carried by god.
24Keep three things ready at hand. First: In your actions, ask whether you act with purpose and as Justice herself would act. Second: What happens from outside comes either by chance or by providence. Do not blame chance. Do not accuse providence. Third: Consider what each thing is from seed to soul and from soul to surrender. Consider what combines to form it. Consider what it dissolves into. Fourth: If you were suddenly lifted high and looked down on human affairs in all their variety, you would feel contempt. You would see at once how vast is the realm of beings in the air and sky around us. And however many times you were lifted up, you would see the same things. The same patterns. The same brief lives. So much for pride.
25Throw out the assumption. You are saved. Who then prevents you from throwing it out?
26When something troubles you, you have forgotten certain things. You have forgotten that everything happens according to the nature of the whole. You have forgotten that another's wrongdoing belongs to them alone. Beyond this, you have forgotten that whatever happens now has always happened this way and always will. It happens everywhere even now. You have forgotten how deep the kinship runs between one person and all humankind. This bond is not of blood or seed. It is a sharing of mind. You have forgotten too that each person's mind is a god. It has flowed down from that source. You have forgotten that nothing truly belongs to anyone. Your child, your body, your very breath—all have come from there. You have forgotten that everything depends on how you see it. You have forgotten that each of us lives only in this present moment. And this is all we lose.
27Keep recalling those who burned with outrage over some matter. Those who reached the heights of fame or disaster or hatred or any kind of fortune. Then stop and ask: where is all of that now? Smoke and ash and legend. Or not even legend. Let examples like these come to mind as well: Fabius Catullinus in his country estate. Lusius Lupus in his gardens. Stertinius at Baiae. Tiberius on Capri. Velius Rufus. And in general, the obsession with standing apart in anything. How cheap is everything we strain after. How much wiser to simply show yourself just and temperate on whatever material you are given. Following the gods without pretense. For the pride that hides under humility is the hardest pride of all.
28To those who ask: "Where have you seen the gods? How do you know they exist? Why do you worship them?" First, they are visible even to the eye. Second, I have never seen my own soul. Yet I honor it. So it is with the gods. From the power they reveal at every turn, I know that they exist. And I revere them.
29The salvation of life lies in seeing each thing whole for what it truly is. What is its matter? What is its cause? Do what is just with your whole soul. Speak what is true. What remains but to enjoy living? Link one good thing to another. Leave not the smallest gap between them.
30There is one light of the sun. Yet walls divide it. Mountains divide it. Countless other things divide it. There is one common substance. Yet it is divided into countless bodies with their own qualities. There is one soul. Yet it is divided into countless natures and individual boundaries. There is one rational soul. Yet it seems to be separated. Now the other parts I have mentioned—breath and matter—have no awareness of each other. No kinship binds them. Yet even these are held together by the unifying force. By the pull toward their own kind. But the thinking mind reaches toward what shares its nature in a special way. It joins with it. The bond of fellowship cannot be broken.
31What are you really seeking? To keep breathing? To feel sensations? To pursue desires? To grow? To decline again? To speak? To think? Which of these seems worth longing for? If each one is trivial, then move on to the final thing. Follow reason and God. But honoring these lesser things fights against that. So does resenting that death will take them from you.
32What fraction of boundless and fathomless eternity has been allotted to each of us? It vanishes in an instant into the everlasting. What fraction of all substance? What fraction of the universal soul? On what tiny clod of the whole earth do you crawl? Consider all this. And imagine nothing to be great except this: to act as your own nature guides you. To accept what the common nature brings.
33How does your ruling mind use itself? Everything depends on this. All else lies either within your choice or beyond it. Dead things and smoke.
34Here is what most powerfully stirs contempt for death: even those who judged pleasure to be good and pain to be evil still despised it.
35For the one to whom only the right moment matters, for whom performing more actions guided by right reason is equal to performing fewer, for whom contemplating the universe for a longer or shorter time makes no difference—for this one, death holds no terror.
36You have lived as a citizen in this great city. What does it matter to you whether for five years or three? What accords with the law is equal for everyone. What is so terrible, then, if you are sent away from the city not by a tyrant or an unjust judge, but by the very nature that brought you in? It is like a director dismissing an actor from the stage. "But I have not spoken five acts. Only three." True enough. Yet in life, three acts make the whole play. The one who determines completeness is the same one who caused your composition then and your dissolution now. You are responsible for neither. Depart then in peace. The one who releases you is at peace.