Philosophy

One day, as a small boy, the Buddha sat under a rose-apple tree and watched as the fields were plowed for the coming crop. As he looked on, he saw insects and their eggs destroyed during the plowing. This saddened him. As Karen Armstrong writes in Buddha, he “gazed at the carnage and felt a strange sorrow, as though it were his own relatives that had been killed.”

But then he felt something else: pure joy. The kind of joy that blooms in your chest when you’re absorbed in a moment, when you’ve forgotten yourself. The kind of joy that fades the second you become aware of it, when you attach an “I” to it.

“The child had been taken out of himself by a moment of spontaneous compassion, when he allowed the pain of creatures that had nothing to do with him personally to pierce him to the heart,” Armstrong writes. “This surge of selfless empathy had brought him a moment of spiritual release.”

His compassion for all living beings gave him his first taste of enlightenment. And this compassion came, in part, because he forgot about himself.

The Buddha said that the main reason we suffer is that we don’t see things clearly. And we don’t see things clearly because of our tendency to over-identify with our “self”, thoughts, and feelings.

But this doesn’t have to be the case. We too can decide to not take ownership of our thoughts and feelings.

The Buddha said our being (mind, body, soul) is in constant flux; we have no permanent “self”. Nowhere on your body can you point to and say “this is me”. We’re constantly changing from moment to moment.

Our thoughts, fears, cravings, and desires are always changing too. They’re so fleeting, so impermanent, so empty that the Buddha regarded them as “remote phenomena that had little to do with him”.

But how can we view thoughts—which are about as local as they come—as remote?

It may be best explained by the theory popular among Vipassana meditation teachers and evolutionary psychologists, called the modular model of the mind theory.

Basically, this theory says that our unconscious mind is a collection of interconnected and fluid, yet specialized, modules. As Robert Wright says in Why Buddhism Is True, these modules are activated by feelings and are responsible for sending thoughts to our conscious mind.

According to this theory, our conscious mind doesn’t create thoughts—it receives them. We choose whether to take ownership of them, or let them float by.

For instance, let’s say we’re watching Halloween. This might activate our “fear” module. This fear module might then send the thought—make sure the front door is locked—to our conscious mind. Or, let’s say you’re on the lookout for a romantic partner and you see an attractive man or woman. Your “find a suitable partner” module might activate, telling you to show off.

If we choose to take ownership of the thoughts we receive, it’s likely that we will also take ownership of the feelings—putting ourselves at their mercy. 

Similar to the Stoics, the Buddha taught that if something is outside of your control, and it’s causing you to suffer, stop identifying with it.

Easier said than done, I know. (Buddhist monks spend their entire lives practicing this type of detachment.) But it’s powerful enough that whether you practice it one time or millions of times, you can benefit from it.

Once a skeptic, Robert Wright now uses mindfulness to help relieve his pain. If he’s experiencing anxiety, he might ask himself, Where, exactly, is the source of this feeling? Maybe he discovers the feeling is in his chest. He will then direct his attention to his chest, studying this newfound feeling as an outside observer, mindful of its separateness. It may be anxiety, but it’s not his anxiety. By not identifying with it, it loses its power.

Thoughts bubble up. Feelings demand our attention. But the less we identify with them, the clearer we see. And the clearer we see, the more compassionate we are, and the less we suffer.

I filtered the notes I took while reading Discourses to share the two rules that Epictetus repeatedly gives for eliminating anxiety and fear:

1. Concern yourself only with what is in your control; remain indifferent to everything else.
2. Align your will with nature. Nothing can go contrary to your wishes if you wish for things to happen the way they happen.

Plenty of self-help books say that fear runs our lives, which I would agree with. 

They say things like, stay out of your comfort zone, or do one thing a day that scares you. 

This is great advice, but it presupposes a critical detail: that we are aware of our fears.

This is important, I’m realizing, because some of my fears are subliminal. And how can I face a fear I don’t know I have?

Luckily, Epictetus has an answer.

If we implement the two rules above, if we keep our labeling of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to our own choices, if we align our will with nature, wouldn’t it follow that we would have no anxiety or fear to face in the first place?

Here’s a good recent example of how my fear went undetected:

I’ve been working with a writer/research assistant for about a year now. He’s a really cool guy who works with big-name authors, and I believe in his work and message. All of our correspondence has been through email, but I’ve been wanting to meet face to face to introduce myself and speak with him less formally. He lives in another state, so to meet him I would have to take time off work and travel. After some preliminary planning, I decided next year would be better. Next year I wouldn’t be as busy.

But after reading Discourses, and mulling over the above two rules, I had an enlightening revelation: I can just ask him to hop on a Zoom call with me.

I realized that my fear—fear of rejection, fear of annoying him, fear of saying something wrong, fear of being vulnerable—had kept me from seeing the obvious. At the time, however, I didn’t think that pushing a meeting to next year had anything to do with fear. My mind rationalized that next year would simply be a better time. (Like Steven Pressfield said, “We don’t tell ourselves, ‘I’m never going to write my symphony.’ Instead we say, ‘I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.'”)

And here’s the thing: I wouldn’t have had this fear in the first place if Epictetus’s two rules for eliminating anxiety and fear were more thoroughly embedded into my way of thinking. It’s probable I would have seen the obvious from the start. (It makes me wonder what other undetected fears are holding me back.)

My revelation came when I:

1. Limited my thinking to what I could control (ask him for 15 minutes of his time)
2. Shrugged off the “what-if” scenarios (he can say no and that’s perfectly fine because that is not in my control, and therefore, not my concern)
   
   

Here’s how I imagine a conversation with Epictetus about my concerns would go:

What if I ask him to meet on Zoom and he says no?

What concern is that of yours?

Yeah, true. Well what if he agrees to meet but he’s secretly annoyed with me?

Let me ask you, do you control how he feels?

No.

And if he declines your request or becomes annoyed, tell me, in what way does that harm you?

It doesn’t.

Correct. If another person’s actions or thoughts had the ability to harm you, you would be right to be fearful. But, as you know, harm is only found in your own actions and thoughts. Another person’s actions or thoughts cannot harm you. Even if they throw you in prison, even if they bind you in chains, they cannot touch the divinity that exists in you: your soul, your will. Your willingness to accept fate cannot be broken, only relinquished.

But what if I say something stupid?

If by ‘say something stupid’ you mean ‘make a mistake,’ I will ask, you are human, correct?

I am.

So it follows that you are liable to make mistakes?

It does.

You see, only plants and animals mindlessly obey. The gift that separates us humans is our ability to reflect and reason. Therefore, it’s our duty to use this gift by exerting ourselves and making mistakes. Otherwise, we’d be content grazing grass all day…

But what if it doesn’t go as planned?

Haven’t you reminded yourself to align your will with nature? If you wish for things to occur how they actually occur, in what way could they not go according to your plan? Besides, what is fated to happen has already been written in the stars the moment you were born. Everything has been decided. You do, however, have free will. You are free to will yourself to accept and make proper use of fate, of what’s already been decided. That is free will. Like a dog tied to a cart: we can be dragged by fate, or we can run along with it. We can graciously stay the course—or grudgingly be kept on it.

There’s nothing to fear, nothing to calculate, and no one who can cause me harm or anxiety as long as I remember the two rules: focus on my own actions, and willingly accept everything else.

The Stoics believed that cheerfulness was surface level. Real joy, they said, is deep and unseen. It’s a joy that, as Seneca put it, “Will never run dry once you’ve laid claim to its source.”

“So when people say that the Stoics are dour or depressive, they’re really missing the point,” says Ryan Holiday. “Who cares if someone is bubbly when times are good? What kind of accomplishment is that?”

And it’s not just the ancient Stoics who believed this. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Happiness does not come from the seeking, it is never ours by right.” Both Aristotle and Viktor Frankl said happiness is not pursued, it ensues. It’s in the effort we give and the principles we live by.

“Most people think peace and joy are the goals of the spiritual life,” says yogi and spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. “This is a fallacy. Peace and joy are the basic requirements for a life of well-being.” Once you stop making joy the destination, he says, you can start living as “an expression of your joyfulness”.

So, if joy is not the end goal, but instead a constant outlook and a prerequisite to living the good life, how can we cultivate it right now? Is that possible? Even during the stress and busyness of everyday life?

The Stoics would say not only is it possible to have joy right now, but it’s only possible to have joy right now. It’s impossible to have joy any other time.

Here are 7 places to find immediate joy, according to the Stoics:



In This Very Moment

“No one confines his unhappiness to the present.” –Seneca

“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, ‘Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?’ You’ll be embarrassed to answer.” –Marcus Aurelius

The ancient Stoics were heavily involved in public life. They were rulers, politicians, teachers, slaves, spouses, parents, speakers, and writers. Marcus Aurelius, as ruler of Rome, had enormous responsibilities and pressures. He had decisions to make, administrative tasks to complete, strategies to devise, and people to manage. It never ended. How did he manage it all and still find time for philosophy?

Well…he didn’t. At least, not exactly. Philosophy wasn’t something he made time for—it was something he lived at all times. It wasn’t a hobby or passionate interest to study in his spare time, it was a way of life. He succeeded not in spite of his philosophical life, but because of it. “No role is so well-suited for philosophy than the one you’re in right now,” he told himself.

Marcus would remind himself dozens of times throughout Meditations to not worry about the future or bemoan the past. He was present. He approached each problem calmly and thoroughly, content to build his life, “action by action … and be satisfied if each one achieves its goal, as far as it can.”

He knew that at each moment, he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

The same is true for us. Be here, he repeats again and again. Be here, and be at peace.

In Practicing Proper Judgment

“Where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine.” –Marcus Aurelius

“People try to get away from it all — to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like.

By going within.

Nowhere you can go is more peaceful — more free of interruptions — than your own soul.” –Marcus Aurelius

Life is a balancing act. It can be hard not to think that we need to “get away from it all” to have peace and joy. But the Stoics said this is nonsense. We don’t need a vacation or day of leisure to experience joy. We can feel it right now. In fact, there is no other time we can feel it.

But how is that possible? The world is noisy and, like us, imperfect. People are rude, we’re juggling a million things, the traffic won’t budge. How do we feel joy during all of this?

The short answer, according to the Stoics, is this: we can use our reasoning ability to put order to the chaos. No matter where we are or what’s going on around us, we can practice proper judgment.

How great is that?

We can use our reasoning ability to put order to the chaos.

Marcus Aurelius wrote about this often. He said, “Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions,” that “life is opinion,” and that “the happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts”.

Epictetus said that our ability to reason separates us from men, and allows us to emulate the divine. “It’s not things that upset us, but our opinions about those things.” It takes one careless thought, one quick lapse in reason to make a bad decision or feel despair, he said.

So we must be mindful, every minute, of our perceptions. Because the way we choose to see things is the way they are. Proper use of this ability is the difference between despair and joy.

In What You Control

“Let a person shift their opinions only to what belongs in the field of their own choice, and I guarantee that person will have peace of mind, whatever is happening around them.” –Epictetus

This is the core of Stoicism: some things are in your control, some things are out of your control. Focus your efforts on the former, align your will with the latter.

Sadhguru Jaggie Vasudev is the founder of Isha, an organization dedicated to spiritual activities and boasts millions of volunteers. How does he handle the stress of leading all of those volunteers, many who are untrained, and all who are, by definition of a volunteer, unfireable? With a Stoic approach. “You won’t ever see me distressed,” he says, “because my way of being is not in any way enslaved to what’s happening outside. This is not an otherworldly achievement. It is possible for everyone to live this way.” In other words, he concerns himself only with his own thoughts and actions.

Good and evil exist only in our own thoughts and actions. Marcus Aurelius said that God (or a higher power) would never have made it so we could be harmed outside of our own reasoned choices. What incredible power! Yet we throw this power away when we let things outside of our control affect us.

“Choose not to be harmed,” Marcus reminded himself, “and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.”

In Your Own Good Character 

“The fight for virtue is no small matter, since what is at stake is nothing less than happiness.” -Epictetus

The Stoics said your own good character is the only way to guarantee lasting joy.

You can look high and low, Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, but nowhere on earth will you find anything better than courage, self-control, justice, and wisdom.

And the best part is that no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you can always practice one of these virtues. And because you can always practice one of these virtues, nothing can prevent you from living a good life. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you can practice moderating your anger. If your plans go awry, you can practice accepting what’s outside of your control. In every situation, there is an opportunity to practice a virtue, an opportunity to live a good life.

In What You Already Have

“Any man who does not think that what he has is more than ample, is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world.” –Seneca

Who is more joyful and imperturbable: the person who desperately wants power or a new car or a bigger house, or the person who’s indifferent toward those things?

There’s a reason the Stoics spoke so much about limiting desire. They knew that desiring external things paled in comparison to not desiring them. 

This idea is echoed in both eastern and western philosophy. In Awareness, Anthony De Mello says, “There is only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have … right now, you have everything you need to be in bliss.”

Voltaire compared a new desire to a new sadness. James Clear says happiness is “the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state.” Or, as Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck said, “What makes it unbearable is your mistaken belief it can be cured.”

The Stoics said a fool desires what she does not have. A wise person desires what she already has.

“Not ‘Some way to sleep with her’—but a way to stop wanting to. Not ‘some way to save my child’—but a way to lose your fear. Redirect your prayers like that,” Marcus Aurelius said, “and watch what happens.”

In Helping Others

“You must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.” –Seneca

Marcus Aurelius wrote extensively about acting for the common good. Joy is found in helping others, he said. And not just when we’re asked, but proactively and without expectations. We must be like “a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return,” and not “make a fuss about it, [but look] forward to bearing fruit again in season.”

Eleanor Roosevelt had been dealt tragic blows in her life: the loss of her father, an unfaithful husband and rocky marriage, a troubled childhood, and much else. How was she able to not only overcome these obstacles, but also find happiness? By helping people. By doing good for others and being of service to them. This, she said, is the surest way to happiness.

“Most religions tell us to be good because God said so,” says Ryan Holiday. “Or they tell us not to be bad because God will punish us. Stoicism is different. While not incompatible with religion, it makes a different case for virtue: A person who lives selfishly will not go to hell. They will live in hell.” 

Leo Tolstoy said if you accept your role as a servant to others, “all of your bad feelings, your anxiety, alarm, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction will be changed into calmness and peace. You will be filled inside with a clear vision of your purpose, and with a great joy.”

When we help others find happiness, we find it for ourselves.

In the Next Action You Take

“Joy for human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, disdain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it.” –Marcus Aurelius

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl—whose philosophy was similar to Stoicism—says we are unhappy when we don’t have a cause to fight for, a virtue to develop, or a purpose that transcends our problems. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances,” he says, “only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

The Stoics found joy in sober, attentive work. They found satisfaction in the effort, not the result. “If you do the job in a principled way,” Marcus Aurelius told himself, “with diligence, energy, and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions … if you can embrace this without fear or expectation—can find fulfillment in what you’re doing now, as Nature intended—then your life will be happy. No one can prevent that.”

Don’t take the long road, Marcus Aurelius said. Everything you’re seeking is at hand, you just have to grab it.

Freedom, satisfaction, joy. All are found in the next action you take.

This week I’ve been reading Epictetus’s Discourses again. According to the notes I made on the inside cover, I haven’t read it since August 2017—half a decade ago. That’s way too long between reads for one of the best Stoic doctrines there is.

Anyway, I’m getting so much out of re-reading it. It feels like I’m reading it for the first time. Epictetus’s teachings are central to Stoicism, but more importantly, they’re central to living the good life. Which is why I want to share…

A few core teachings of Epictetus

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where, then, do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.” –Epictetus

The core of Stoicism is this: some things are in our control, some things are not in our control.

The things that are in our control: our thoughts and actions.

The things that are not in our control: everything else.

What other people say or do is none of our business. It’s only what we say or do that has any consequence. 

“You have to work either on your commanding-faculty or on external things,” Epictetus said. “Either the inner or the outer should be the focus of your efforts, which means adopting the role either of a philosopher or of an ordinary person.”

Below are the 3 things that, if we constantly keep in mind, will allow us to live productive, joyful lives:

1. Focusing on what is in our control (perfecting our character, doing our duty)

2. Being indifferent to things that are not in our control (fame, money, power)

3. Loving everything that happens (Not complaining when you’re sick, but loving it, because it was fated to happen. And anything fated to happen is necessary and good.)

In his fabulous book, How to Be Perfect, Michael Schur says moral philosophy can be summed up in these four questions:

What am I doing? 

Why am I doing it? 

Is there something I could do that’s better? 

Why is it better?

It’s important to note that these are questions, not statements. To live philosophically is to live reflectively. 

Maybe you think you don’t need to reflect. You’re a good person, you always try to do what’s right. Maybe you don’t even give much thought to doing what’s right—you just do it. It’s automatic.

It’s here where Aristotle, or Marcus Aurelius, or Emmanuel Kant might have reminded you that you’re not perfect. None of us are. We can always improve. And since we can always improve, we must always make an effort to improve. And we can’t make a genuine effort if we’re not mindful and aware of our everyday thoughts and actions.

I’ve found journaling to be the most useful way to reflect. I have a morning routine that I’ve used for years. It consists of a little reading and a lot of writing. (Trust me, it’s not nearly as daunting as it sounds.) I read a page from The Daily Stoic and A Calendar of Wisdom. I use a prompt from one of these books to write an intention for the day in a notebook. Then, in a separate notebook, I write my morning pages (you can read about my experience with them here). Coined by Julia Cameron, morning pages are 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. The whole routine takes about 25 minutes, and it’s the most important part of my day.

The ancient Stoics knew the importance of journaling, of being reflective and mindful. Marcus Aurelius journaled in the morning to prepare himself for the day. Seneca journaled in the evening, appraising his actions, “concealing nothing” from himself. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” he said. Epictetus reminded his students to keep their philosophy lessons at hand day and night, write about them, and talk about them with others. The Stoics knew that philosophy involved daily mindfulness and work.

Perhaps they, like the Buddha and other philosophical and religious leaders, intuited what we now know to be scientifically true: left to their own devices, our minds pretty much run themselves. We have almost no control over the thoughts that pop into our conscious minds throughout the day. And this is why…

Reflective Thoughts are Truer Than Everyday Thoughts

Here’s a thought experiment, cited by Mark Manson in Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope, that nineteenth-century sociology founder, Emile Durkheim posed: What would life be like if there was no crime? If everyone was polite and respectful to others? If no one was violent or harmed anyone? What would happen? Would we all hold hands and sing songs?

According to Durkheim, no. The opposite would happen. We wouldn’t feel happier about not killing each other—we would just become equally upset over trivial things. As Mark summarizes, “Our minds simply amplify (or minimize) our problems to fit the degree of stress we expect to feel.”

I’m using this experiment to illustrate a common theme I’ve found: our brains have their own agendas. Evolutionary psychology confirms this. In Why Buddhism Is True (a remarkable book that shows how psychology intersects philosophy), Princeton University professor, Robert Wright, explains how our evolutionary wiring distorts our view of reality. Natural selection, he says, has one goal: to get genes into the next generation. That’s it. 

The problem with natural selection’s hardwiring is that it hasn’t caught up to the modern world. The sweet tooth that compelled hunter-gatherers to eat fruit (so they would survive and get their genes into the next generation) is the same sweet tooth we have today—only now we have processed sugar at our disposal. So, if this hardwiring produces thinking that’s not aligned with reality, if it creates feelings that are disproportionate to the situation, so be it. It has its own agenda.

The times during the day when we’re doing nothing in particular—not working, not watching a movie, not playing a sport—are when this agenda becomes most pronounced. Our brains enter into what scientists call the “default mode network.” In this mode, thoughts pop into our conscious minds seemingly out of nowhere. (And because thoughts cause feelings and feelings dictate behavior, it’s easy to see why an understanding of this is important.) Scientists can only speculate as to why, exactly, one thought and not another enters into our conscious mind. But one thing is clear: thoughts think themselves.

If you’re confused, we’re in the same boat. But the gist is this: we have a lot less agency over our thoughts and feelings than we typically think.

This is why, Robert argues, mindful meditation (or, in my experience, mindfulness and journaling) can be life-altering. Being mindful of our thoughts means being observant of them, instead of being controlled by them. When we observe anything—a plant, a table, a thought, a feeling—we create distance from it. This distance allows us to not become carried away by our initial impressions. It allows us to say to it what Epictetus advised: “Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent.”

By being reflective, we become better observers of our minds. We’re quicker to notice and discard untrue and harmful thoughts. We’re able to see—even if only slightly—a more accurate view of reality.