MARCUS AURELIUS: MEDITATIONS

Marcus Aurelius  Meditations , Translated by Robin Hard, Oxford World's Classics 2011



There are worse ways of spending a few days than sitting on the back deck, enjoying the Autumn sunshine and reading Mencius and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.  Both books were new to me and were a wonderful surprise.  I enjoyed Mencius but towards the end I was feeling a bit bogged down by the structured formality of the rites and courtesies as well as by the plethora of Chinese names that looked very similar to my western eyes (Chou, T-chou, Tsou, Ch’i, Chi, Ch’iu, Ch’u, Chieh, Chiao etc).  When you add in nicknames and honorifics etc, it left me quite lost.

 I really enjoyed Marcus Aurelius.  First of all, the thought that these meditations were written by the emperor of the Roman Empire, while he was fighting in Northeastern Europe to fend off the German hordes, is awe-inspiring.  He wrote as thoughtfully as the scholar-writers I’ve been reading during the previous weeks (Lucretius, Mencius, Plato).  Incredible.  I found his words very accessible and much of it still valid today – in that if you tried to follow his advice, you would probably be considered a good person, a moral person.  It was also interesting as I read through the book to see how his attitude or mood would alter in various sections.  Some of it was quite full of hope, in other sections he seemed quite down-hearted and cast down.  His words created a picture of a man who had spent his lifetime thinking about the meaning of life, how to live a moral life – and reading various philosophers and the writings of other thinkers that came before him.  It was hard to think of him as a man of action, of warfare.

 Marcus Aurelius lived from AD 121 to 180.  He was adopted by his uncle (emperor in AD 138-161).  He himself became emperor in 161, co-emperor with another adopted son, Lucius Verus until Lucius died in 169.  Marcus Aurelius died in 180.  During his lifetime he was a follower of the Stoic teachings.  Stoicism was started by Zeno and greatly expanded by Epictetus who wrote the discourses.  It was very interesting reading about the Stoic view of the world a few days after reading Lucretius, the Roman scholar-poet from the 1^st century BCE who followed the Epicurean school of thought.

The Stoics practiced 'practical ethics'.  For Marcus Aurelius this involved stripping down things to their essential reality, deciding what was really necessary, avoiding rash judgements or reactive emotions.

There were 3 branches of the teachings:

• logic (dialectic)
• physics (the study of nature)
• ethics

Marcus Aurelius covered 5 Stoic themes in his writings:

1. Living a virtuous life led to a happy life (virtue was all that was needed to ensure happiness).
2. Emotions and desires depend directly on beliefs about what is valuable or desirable.  Stoics should avoid reactive beliefs and be wary of judgements (as these may be inappropriate or misguided).  Consider priorities.
3. Humans have an inbuilt natural instinct to benefit others and all humans are capable of progressing towards the ideal state (complete virtue and happiness).
4. The natural world or Nature, has an inbuilt purpose or plan (or meaning).
5. Philosophy is a unified and systematic body of knowledge about the universe.

In much of his writings you can see a man trying to remind himself to do the right thing, to live a good life and avoid descending into pettiness or misguided emotion.  In Book 1 he describes what he has learned from various people (men) in his life:

Some of them could be written by any teenager struggling with how to grow up and become a good person.  Book 1.5.

[...] to endure hardship, and have few needs; to do these things for myself and not meddle in the affairs of others; and to turn a deaf ear to slander.

Some of them are reminders that life steadily moves on.  Book 2.4
Remember how long you have been deferring these things, and how many times you have been granted further grace by the gods, and yet have failed to make use of it.  But it is now high time that you realized what kind of universe this is [...] and that your time here is strictly limited and, unless you makes use of it to clear the fog from your mind, the moment will be gone, as you are gone, and never be yours again.

He revisits this theme in Book 10.16
No more of this talk about what a good man should be, but simply be one!

Though the Stoics are considered to be somewhat austere and not pleasure-loving (as compared to the Epicureans), Marcus Aurelius shows a slightly rosier view of life's possibilities.  In Book 5.5 he lists qualities he admires:

• disdain for sensual pleasures
• sincerity
• dignity
• endurance
• kindness
• freedom
• frugality

It's a somewhat austere list but in Book 3.2 he describes many simple daily aspects of life and the pleasure they can provide.  It reminds me of Lorna Crozier's new book "The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things" which celebrates the ordinary everyday things in our lives.  Marcus Aurelius notes many banal things and their beauty (such as the crack that develops on the crust of a loaf of bread during baking) and says:
[...] So if a person is endowed with sensibility and has a deep enough insight into the workings of the universe, he will find scarcely anything which fails to please him in some way by its presence [...]

Like the Epicureans, the Stoics felt that we should not worry about or fear death.  Similarly lusting after fame is useless as eventually no one will remember.  Aurelius spends many pages writing about death, fame, the expanse of time in which the universe exists etc.  I can't help but remember that he is writing these words towards the end of his life, and as he is facing battle and warfare daily.  He is constantly warning himself about how fleeting our time on earth is.  Aurelius counsels [himself?]  to remember (Book 4.3):
[...] that things of themselves have no hold on the mind, but stand motionless outside it, and all disturbances arise solely from the opinions within us; and secondly, that all that you presently behold will change in no time whatever and cease to exist [...]
'The universe is change, and life mere opinion.'  - Democritus No. 85

Book 4.35
All is ephemeral, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

For Marcus Aurelius, intelligence and a sense of law were 2 qualities characteristic and universal to mankind.  Like Lucretius he feels that nothing proceeds from nothing, though where the Epicureans feel that the universe is random, the Stoics believe in Fate, in Nature's plan.
"Providence or atoms" (Book 4.3).  Marcus Aurelius frequently wrote about the fact that we don't know what Nature's plan is, what the big picture is - but Nature isn't wrong and so nothing that happens is wrong, it's all part of Nature's master plan.

LIke Mencius, Marcus Aurelius warned about being narrow-minded or having tunnel vision. 
Book 4.12
[...] be prepared to change your mind if someone is at hand to put you right and to guide you away from some ill-grounded opinion.  But this change of view must always be based on a conviction that it serves justice or the common benefit; and this or something like it should be the sole reason for your choice, rather than the impression that it would be pleasant or popular.

Book 6.21
If anyone can give me good reason to think that I am going astray in my thoughts or in my actions, I will gladly change my ways.  For I seek the truth, which has never caused harm to anyone; no, the person who is harmed is one who persists in his self-deception and ignorance.

Marcus Aurelius writes about Reason.  Book 6.23
[...] Towards irrational creatures and material things in general, act in a generous and liberal manner, because you have reason and they have none [...]

He also rejects imagination - because it leads to desire.  Book 7.17
[...] my imagination.  Go away in the name of the gods [...] for I have no need of you [...]

Book 9.7
Blot out imagination; put a curb on impulse; quench desire; ensure that your ruling centre remains under its own control.

In this he is much like Krishna in the Gita, recommending to let go of desire and of wanting. 
In Book 9.40 Marcus Aurelius gives advice on how to turn your prayers around. Don't pray for your desires to be fulfilled, pray to not have those desires, to release them, pray to not be afraid of losing things (even a child).  Pray to be released from these emotions and needs.  Importantly the Stoics advised to avoid over-valuation of non-important things (they call them 'indifferents').

He has a couple of great lines that would be wonderful to pull out in an argument:
"an abscess on the body of the universe" and a line from Epitectus "You are a little soul carrying a corpse around".  But I digress.

Reassuringly Marcus Aurelius feels that we all contain the possibility of these virtues and strengths.  Like Mencius he feels that we need to look within ourselves for the answers and solutions.
Book 10.33
[...] But mind and reason can find their way through every obstacle as their nature and will dictate.[...]

In Book 12.1 Marcus Aurelius says not to be afraid of dying but to be afraid of not living your life.  This book is full of bits wise advice and insight.  It is hard not to feel jaded about it and cynical.  The last few decades have been so full of self-help books that it is hard to read advice such as this without feeling a bit sceptical or even disparaging.  It helps to remember that this was written by a man who was leader of the Roman Empire and who had spent decades fighting battles for the survival of his empire.  This isn't Dr. Phil.

Mediations is a book I want to reread slowly and think about.

LUCRETIUS "The Nature of Things"

LUCRETIUS  The Nature of Things  Transl. A.E. Stallings; Penguin Classics, 2007

I had no idea that before 60 BC, Greek and Roman intellectuals had figured out that everything was made out of small, indivisible particles (atomos); that “many things have common elements, as words share letters” (Book I, 197-8).  I had never heard of Epicurus, on whose philosophy Lucretius based his 7000 line poem.  Epicurus lived in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries B.C.E. but his theories came after earlier philosophers, most notably Democritus in the 5^th century B.C.E.  I find it amazing that 2500 years ago, philosophers had already come up with the concept of infinitesimally small indivisible particles, of matter and void, making up everything we see around us.

Lucretius wrote his work as a poem.  He writes in Book I 931ff 
“[…] I teach great truths, and set out to unknot the mind from tight strictures of religion, and since I write of so darkling a subject in a poetry so bright […] I want to coat this physic in rich song, to kiss it, as it were, with the sweet honey of the Muse. […]”. 
I’m impressed by his scholarship but I’m also very impressed by the translator, A.E. Stallings who translated the Latin into English rhyme, heptameter to be exact.  She calls them “fourteeners” saying that their “old-fashioned rhythm and ring will get across something of the archaic flavor of Lucretius’ Latin”.  There are a few times that she has used anachronistic modern phrases but overall being able to read it as poetry seems to preserve some of the original feel of the words.

There are some beautiful turns of phrases (Book I, 143-144)

As I seek the right words and the right poetry to light

Brilliant lanterns for your mind […]

Lucretius’ first principle is that “nothing can be made from nothing”, certainly not by any supernatural power.  Next he says that “Nature does not render anything to naught” meaning that everything eventually breaks back down to its basic elements, things don’t disappear.  Everything is made of atoms “those seeds that abide forever”, the “elemental particles”.  He theorizes that “elements are of eternal stuff linked with bonds of different strengths” – pretty amazing stuff for the pre-electron microscope age.  He explains how  we know there are these particles even though we can’t see them.  These early thinkers also surmised that “there’s also emptiness in things”, that even in hard things like iron or stone, there are empty spaces, that these things are not “one solid mass”.  The universe consists of only 2 things: matter and void. Lucretius argues for the indivisibility of atoms by saying (Book I, 616-620)

[…] since after all

Half of a half of anything can still again be cut

In two, and on and on ad infinitum.  And then what

Will be the difference between the tiniest speck of matter

And all the universe? […]

In Book II (The Dance of Atoms), he writes that “all bodies of matter are in motion" and compares this to dust motes dancing in a slant of sunlight: the random ceaseless motion as well as how this usually occurs below the abilities of our senses to detect.  He also brings in the concept of the “swerve”, the slight variability that allows collisions to occur between atoms and therefore introduces some randomness into the universe that “shatters the laws of fate” (Book II, 254). 

In support of reason, in Book III (Mortality and the Soul), Lucretius writes that he doesn’t think there is any flaw in each human that reason can’t correct (319-322)

But one thing I am certain of, so weak is any trace

Of inborn nature past the power of reason to erase,

That there is nothing fundamentally at odds

With living out our lives so they are worthy of the gods.

 A hopeful and reassuring viewpoint.

I am also impressed by the powers of observation and deduction evident in this work.  Lucretius subscribed to the belief that the way to understand the universe is to observe the natural world around us and then use logic to draw deductions from these observations.  This poem contains many descriptions of natural phenomena with expositions of what we can and can’t deduce from these observations.  Lucretius’ Epicurean viewpoint on religion and the gods seems very brave and revolutionary for the time (or even within the last 200 years).  Early on, in Book I (Matter and Void), he writes (83-84):

[…] on the contrary, it is Religion breeds

Wickedness and that has given rise to wrongful deeds

He then describes Agaememnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, to persuade the gods to send

[…] fair and favourable winds to sail the fleet along! –

So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong

An observation that holds true today where mobs of people are rioting and killing in Libya and the Middle East in the name of the prophet because they feel his name was slighted by some amateur American film-makers.  Where is the logic or justice in this but it is all done in the name of Religion.

The evocations of various phenomena of the time were likewise fascinating:

• garments dyed glowing purple from the murex of the Thessalian tide;
• spikenard bloom;
• Hyrcanian hounds;
• Molossian mastiffs;
• Traitor’s [Tarpeian]Rock;
• overpowering lad’s love [southernwood];
• an ancient Roman physician coating the lip of a goblet with honey to disguise the bitter taste of the wormwood medicine from his patient;
• mountains being “two thousand arrow-shots away” or “five hundred javelin-casts”;
• nymphs and goat-footed satyrs;
• a snake that, touched with human spit, will die;
• hellebore a poison for humans but “which makes goats and quail grow fat and sleek”;
• the “snow-white goose, Protector of the Roman Citadel”;
• a belief that the sight of a rooster was painful to a lion’s eyes;
• Babylonian coverlets; Babylonian perfumes; shoes from Sicyon; Alindan silks;
• the currents of the Black Sea uniformly gliding in one direction;  
• 'snake-handed elephants […] trained by Carthaginians to bear the wounds of wars’;
• Etesian squalls. 

The descriptions of phenomenae that I enjoyed the most were the Avernian lakes, where Lucretius  describes all the places where bizzare things have happened: birds falling dead out of the sky, “wing-footed stags enticing […] serpents from their holes” with their breath; trees whose shade kills people; wells of sweet water in the middle of the ocean etc.

There are references to the Great Flood (the notes refer the reader to Ovid’s Metamorphoses” and Deucalion- the Greek Noah - and his wife Pyrrha), an interesting similarity with Genesis.
So many of these concepts broached in the centuries B.C.E. were on the right track.  In Book V, Lucretius talks about a legend that once “Water lorded it over land”, about genes (Lucretius writes of generative seeds and like breeding like).  When trying to explain the movement of the stars he doesn’t have one single proveable theory and therefore suggests a few, one of which is that the heavens are a great sphere with a flow of air spinning  “the sphere in the direction that the stars are moving in”.  Right idea, wrong sphere.  His writing describes the principle that the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound; noting that you see a distant woodsman strike a massive tree with a double-bladed axe before you hear the sound of the axe hitting the tree.  He is off-base however on how lightening is formed, with his theory that clouds contain “a multitude of seeds of fire”.

He is wrong on several theories or conclusions.  He mentions in Book I (1052-1082) the concept that the Sun might be the centre of the universe with people on the other side of the earth who

when they behold the sun, we see the stars of night.  And that the seasons of the heavens come to us by turns, And when it’s night for one, then for the other daylight burns. […] How can there be a centre to to what’s infinitely vast? And even if there were, then why should anything stand fast? Why shouldn’t it be driven far away instead. […]

Nor is there any spot where bodies lose the force of weight

So they can stand still in the void.

However he concludes that the sun and moon are exactly the same size they appear because their outline is “sharp and clear”.  His description of the “dawn of the world” in Book V (Cosmos and Civilization) reminds me of the Garden of Eden in Genesis: greenery, the creation of all the animals and birds, the Earth giving sustenance and warmth, “but the dawn-time of the world did not bring forth harsh cold and snow, nor too much heat nor mighty winds that violently blow”.  There was the same idea of an easier time, with less suffering that we saw in Genesis.  For Lucretius this dawn-time changed when Mother Earth grew tired “like a woman wasted with long years”.  He talks about the Earth bearing food “more generously” in her prime.  In Book I he writes (1150) “Even now the world is past its prime”.  I wonder what Lucretius would think about the world today.

While Lucretius describes everything as being made of atoms in different configurations he didn’t understand (how could he!) what binds atoms together.  The Democritus/Epicurus atomic theory involved hooks and barbs rather than electronic bonds between positively and negatively charged ions.  The ancients wrote of smooth and rough atoms to explain the different properties: sound vs light, iron vs wood, heat vs water etc.  Still, I find it awe-inspiring that they believed that air, water, iron, flesh, plants etc were all made of the same basic components, just assembled in different configurations with different amounts of void between the atoms and some finite variety of atoms.

Lucretius also speaks of there being many “freaks” in the early years including “Hermaphrodites partaking of both sexes” which reminded me of Aristophanes story in Plato’s “Symposium”  where he explains love as being connected to proto-mankind being 3 types of people: man-man, woman-woman and man-woman, and each type was split in half by the gods with love being their eternal search for their missing half.

Lucretius describes some of the advances mankind had achieved, moving from a hunter-gatherer society with people wearing animal skins to a pastoral society wearing woven cloth, living indoors safe from savage beasts; but instead of being at risk from accidental poisonings due to lack of knowledge, and dying of infection due to lack of medical knowledge, the more civilized man now dies of deliberate poisonings or wounds suffered due to more sophisticated warfare and weapons.  He speaks of men dying from over-indulgence rather than starvation.  He describes the development of societal contracts (Book V, 1018-1023):

Then neighbours began to form the bonds of friendship,

With a will

Neither to be harmed themselves, nor to do another ill,

The safety of the babes and womenfolk in one another’s trust,

And indicated by gesturing and grunting it was just

For everyone to have mercy on the weak.

In Book III (Mortality and the Soul), Lucretius writes (54-55)

 […] To truly take the measure of a man,

You must observe him in the midst of trial and tribulation

He speaks about Avarice, blind Ambition, envy and greed and how mankind’s fear of death creates a lot of suffering.  He didn’t think that people should fear death as once we are gone, that’s it, we cease to exist (though our elemental particles remain in the universe) and so there is nothing to worry about as we won’t be there TO worry.

Book III, 1018-1023

[…] the Conscience fears for its misdeeds, and IT applies

Goads and floggings to ITSELF, neither does it surmise,
Meanwhile, that there can be, to all its sufferings, an end,

Nor, at length, a final limit to its punishment,

So it dreads these same oppressions will grow weightier with death,

Until, at last, the life of fools becomes a Hell on Earth.

Lucretius has good advice on how to be happy (Book V, 1117-1119):

But if you’d steer your life by a philosophy that’s true,

The way to be the wealthiest of men is to eschew

High living, and be contented in the mind […]

(Book V, 1131-1136)

Let others wear themselves out all for nothing, sweating blood,

Battling their way along ambition’s narrow road

Because their wisdom smacks of others’ lips, and they pursue

Things that they only know second-hand, rather than through

Their own senses […]

And writes about always wanting more (Book V, 1412-1415)

For whatever is at hand, if we have never known before

Anything finer, it gives us chief delight and reigns supreme.

That is, till something better comes along in our esteem

And ruins the earlier thing that’s now old-fashioned to our mind.

(Book V, 1430-1435)

Therefore the human race is ever laboring in vain,

And fretting the years away in bootless worries. For it’s plain

Man doesn’t realize that even having has its measure;

There’s a point beyond which nothing can increase our real pleasure.

And this is what has by degrees dragged Life so far from shore,

And stirred up from the very depths the tidal waves of War.

His recipe for happiness is simple, Book II 18-22

[…]All your nature yelps for is a body free from pain,

And, to enjoy pleasure, a mind removed from fear and care[…]

And so we see the body’s needs are altogether spare –

Only the bare minimum to keep suffering at bay

Yet which can furnish pleasures for us in a wide array.

He also debunks religion's role in all of this (Book V, 1184-1187)

Moreover, men observed the orderly movements of the heavens,

And beheld the cycling of the year with its returning seasons,

But could not fathom how these came about, and lacking reasons,

Found an escape by handing these things over to the gods

[…]

Lucretius does not have a very high opinion of women.  When he is writing about the development of looms, weaving and spinning he writes (Book V, 1353-1355)

[…] Naturally, at the start

Men, not women, spun the wool – for men in every art

Excel the weaker sex in cleverness by far […]

He seems to have a higher opinion of dogs (Book VI, 1221-1222)

 […] But the clan

Of Dogs was hardest hit, the true and steadfast friend of Man

Given my science background and over 30 years of thinking scientifically, I was very drawn to Lucretius' reasoning.  It seemed a big jump in logic from the writings we've read so far (Genesis, Bhagavad Gita, Plato's Phaedrus, Plato's Symposium) that try to explain the world around us and our purpose but as Lucretius himself said (Book I, 1117):
“One truth illuminate another, as light kindles light”

It's all a progression from there to here.

THE BHAGAVAD GITA
(Transl. Laurie L. Patton, Penguin Classics, 2008)

Plato's Phaedrus (which we read and discussed in July) proposed that wisdom was gained through discussion with others, not in isolation in nature nor via meditation.  Socrates felt that ideas and theories were honed through discussion, by being challenged.  He argues that the quest for Beauty is the quest for the perfect form, for wisdom.  The Bhagavad Gita sets out a different slightly quest.  Wisdom is still honoured but the goal in the Gita is enlightenment.

The Gita describes 3 gitas, or paths towards enlightenment:

Karmamarga - the path of action
Jnanamarga - the path of knowledge
Bhaktimarga - the path of devotion

Jnanamarga would be the path that Plato/Socrates would have followed, trying to understand all the categories of the ancient world, and enumerating everything, in order to then understand the universe (samkhya - the yoga of knowledge).

In the Gita's philosophy, the self (atman) moves from life to life in a cycle of birth and death but ideally always progressing upwards, closer and closer to the Divine.

Krishna (Vishnu), one of 2 main characters in the Gita, does not recommend one particular path over another but stresses that above all one must act without clinging to the consequences (the 'fruits') of the action.

I found much of what was discussed in the Gita to be of current interest, in its discussions of living a thoughtful life, knowing oneself and being true to oneself.

3.35  
Better one's own dharma, 
even if ineffective, 
than the dharma 
of another, practised well!
Better death
in one's own dharma!



Like Plato, Krishna values wisdom

4.38
In this world,
there is no purifier
like wisdom;
in time, one who is oneself perfected
by yoga
finds that wisdom
in the self.

This focus on looking within, of not clinging to 'wordly' things, is repeated over and over in the Gita.  Krishna discusses the 3-fold gates of hell which destroys the self: 
greed, anger and desire.  Whereas

5.24
The one who practises yoga,
who has joy within,
delight within,
and then radiance within,
thus reaches cessation 
in Brahman,
of one being 
with Brahman.

The Gita talks about giving up anger and desire, of giving up purposeful intent.
This is at odds with western civilization and especially North American culture.  Would insulin have been discovered, the automobile invented, would Neil Armstrong (who died this week) have been the 1st man to walk on the moon?  Krishna would argue that all of these are worthless, that a person's life (though he would have said a 'man's life' as women didn't figure much in Krishna's directions about how to live one's life), that a man's life was all about living according to one's dharma, following one of the disciplines (gitas or paths) to eventually achieve release from the cycle of transmigration (moksha).  It wasn't about achieving anything, about improving "man's" life on earth, about searching for happiness.  It was about freeing oneself from the earthly trappings that prevent transcendence into the divine.

We are at an interesting time in the history of mankind where we have knowledge that gives us the power to catastrophically affect the world we live in, yet as a species we have not achieved a broad enough communal wisdom to be able to wield this power (or NOT wield it) for the greater good of the species much less for the environment (meaning the other forms of life on earth but also the universe around us).  I don't know that I can fully subscribe to an ideology that not only does not value expanding our knowledge in order to improve our lot, but one which only values life on earth as something to be shed in such a way as to end up somewhere else.

I do find value in the ideal of not clinging to things, of not giving in to anger, desire, jealousy and all the other base emotions but I also value intelligence, compassion, altruism, honesty, creativity and imagination, I value human energy, and I value those people who don't feel bound by the norms (Plato's 4th kind of madness).  I think the discovery of insulin and penicillin, of robotics, of the magnifying properties of glass, of so many of mankind's achievements are worthy and good.  If these discoveries and the world they have brought us to (2012) had been tempered by some of the values promulgated in the Gita, we might not have the wars, the pollution and destruction, the loss of species, some of the disease, that we have today.
All pieces of the puzzle.