Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:20 – Everything in any way lovely is lovely of itself and terminates in itself, holding praise to be no part of itself. At all events, in no way does what is praised become better or worse. I say this also of what is commonly called lovely, for instance materials and works of art; and indeed what is there lacking at all to that which is truly lovely? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or reverence of self. Whic...
Dec 09, 2020•11 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:19 - The man in a flutter for after-fame fails to picture to himself that each of those who remember him will himself also very shortly die, then again the man who succeeded him, until the whole remembrance is extinguished as it runs along a line of men who are kindled and then put out. And if you should assume that those who remember are immortal, and that remembrance is therefore immortal, what is that to you? And I do not say that i...
Dec 08, 2020•9 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! How great a rest from labor he gains who does not look to what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he himself is doing, in order that exactly this may be just and pure, or in accord with a good man's conduct. 'Do not look round at the depraved morals of others,' but run straight along the line without deviating from it. ---------- Meditations 2:8 Men are not easily seen as to be brought into evil case by failure to cons...
Dec 07, 2020•9 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Don't live as though you were going to live ten thousand years. Fate is hanging over your head; while you have life, while you may, become good. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Talmud Bavli – Shabbos 153a Rabbi Eliezer says: Do teshuvah one day before your death. Rabbi Eliezer’s students asked him: But does a person know the day he will die? He said to them: All the more so, one should do teshu...
Dec 04, 2020•10 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:16 – Within ten days you will appear a god even to those to whom today you seem a beast or a baboon, if you return to your principles and your reverence of reason. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Farquharson - Commentary on Meditations 4:16 This is the only passage in the Meditations where the writer speaks as if a man might become a god, a mode of speech often employed both by Stoics and Epi...
Dec 03, 2020•8 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:14 – You came into the world as a part. You will vanish into that which gave you birth, or rather you will be taken up into its generative reason by the process of change. 4:15 – Many grains of incense upon the same altar; one falls first, another later, but difference there is none. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rambam – Moreh ha’Nevuchim 3:12 We have already shown that, in accordance with...
Dec 02, 2020•9 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:13 - “You have reason?” “Yes, I have!” “Then why don’t you use it? If this is doing its part, what else do you want?” --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Link to "Stop it!" Mad TV Sketch --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Link to my shiur, Chazal's Method of Vanquishing the Yetzer ha'Ra Talmud Bavli - Berachos 5a R' Levi bar Chama said in the name of R' Sh...
Dec 01, 2020•6 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:12 – In these two ways you must always be prepared: the one, to do only whatever the reason of the ruling and legislating faculty may suggest for the benefit of mankind; the second, to change your opinion if someone is there to correct and to guide you away from some opinion of yours. But this change of opinion must proceed only from a certain persuasion, as of what is just or of common advantage and the like – not because it appears p...
Nov 30, 2020•6 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Avos 4:1 Ben Zoma says: Which person is wise? One who learns from every person, as it is stated: “From all my teachers I became intelligent, for Your testimonies were a conversation to me” (Tehilim 119:99). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eichah Rabbah 2:9 her kings and her officers are among the nations, there is no Torah – if a person says to you, “there is wisdom in the nations” believe him,...
Nov 27, 2020•11 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Epictetus – Enchiridion 1 On the one hand, there are things that are in our power, whereas other things are not in our power. In our power are opinion, impulse, desire, aversion and, in a word, whatever is our own doing. Things not in our power include our body, our possessions, our reputations, our status, and, in a word, whatever is not our own doing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran - Dra...
Nov 26, 2020•11 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Rough sketch of the meme (which, btw, is "expanding brain" not "exploding mind"): https://imgflip.com/i/4nsl8w Links to other episodes relevant to this one: Aurelius - Meditations 4:7: The Secret to Not Getting Hurt Aurelius - Meditations 4:8: The Stoic Definition of Harm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have questions, comments, or feedback, I would love to hear! Please feel free to cont...
Nov 25, 2020•10 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:9 – It was a law of necessity that what is naturally beneficial should bring this about. 4:10 – “All that comes to pass comes to pass with justice.” You will find this to be so if you watch carefully. I do not mean only in accordance with the ordered series of events, but in accordance with justice and as it were by someone who assigns what has respect to worth. Watch, therefore, as you have begun, and whatever you do, do it with this,...
Nov 24, 2020•10 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Epictetus – Enchiridion 25 Has someone been honored above you at a banquet, or in a greeting, or in being called in to give advice? If these things are good, you should be pleased for the person who has received them. If, on the other hand, they are bad, do not be upset that you did not receive them yourself. Remember, with respect to acquiring things that are not in our power, you cannot expect an equal share if you do not behave in the...
Nov 23, 2020•8 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! What does not make a man worse than he was, neither makes his life worse than it was, nor hurts him without or within. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aurelius - Meditations 2:1 I cannot be harmed by any of them, for no man can involve me in any wrong … --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Epictetus – Enchiridion 1 On the one hand, there are things that ar...
Nov 20, 2020•7 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Get rid of the judgment, and you are rid of the “I am hurt.” Get rid of the “I am hurt” and you are rid of the hurt itself. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Epictetus – Enchiridion 5 It is not circumstances themselves that trouble people, but their judgments about those circumstances ... Therefore, whenever we are hindered or troubled or distressed, let us never blame others, but ourselves, that...
Nov 19, 2020•7 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! These are natural and necessary results from creatures of this kind, and one who wants this to be otherwise wants the fig-tree not to yield its acrid juice. And in general remember this, that within a very little while both he and you will be dead, and a little after not even your name nor his will be left. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have questions, comments, or feedback, I would lo...
Nov 18, 2020•8 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Death is like birth, a mystery of nature, a composition out of identical elements and a decomposition into the same. Looked at generally this is not a thing of which man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to the nature of a rational animal nor to the principle of his constitution. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Epictetus - Enchiridion 5 It is not circumst...
Nov 17, 2020•7 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! If mind is common to us all, then also the reason, whereby we are rational beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do. If this be so, there is a common law also; if this be so, we are fellow citizens; if this be so, we are members of one political community; if this be so, the world is a kind of commonwealth. For in what other common government can we say that the whole human r...
Nov 16, 2020•9 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Finally, therefore, remember your retreat into this little domain which is yourself, and above all do not distract or strain yourself, but be free and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a creature that must die. And among what is most ready at hand into which you will look have these two: the one, that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable, and that disturbances come only from t...
Nov 13, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Well, then, shall mere glory distract you? Look at the swiftness of the oblivion of all men; the gulf of endless time, behind and before; the hollowness of applause, the fickleness and folly of those who seem to speak well of you, and the narrow room in which it is confined. This should make you pause. For the entire earth is a point in space, and how small a corner thereof is this your dwelling place, and how few and how paltry those wh...
Nov 12, 2020•9 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! For what is it that shall move your repugnance? The wickedness of men? Recall the judgement that reasonable creatures have come into the world for the sake of one another; that patience is a part of justice; that men do wrong involuntarily; and how many at last, after enmity, suspicion, hatred, warfare, have been laid out on their death-beds and come to dust. This should make you pause. But shall what is assigned from Universal Nature be...
Nov 11, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:3 – Men look for retreats for themselves, the country, the sea-shore, the hills; and you yourself, too, are peculiarly accustomed to feel the same want. Yet all this is very unlike a philosopher, when you may at any hour you please retreat into yourself. For nowhere does a man retreat into more quiet or more privacy than into his own mind, especially one who has within such things that he has only to look into, and become at once in pe...
Nov 10, 2020•5 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 2:1 – Begin the morning by saying to yourself: “Today I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful, the envious, and the unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and bad. But I, who have seen the nature of the good that it is right, and of the bad that it is wrong, and that the nature of the man who does wrong is akin to my own – not of the same blood and seed,...
Nov 09, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:2 – Nothing that is undertaken is to be undertaken without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to a principle which makes the art of living perfect. [1] [1] Long: “nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have questions, comments, or feedback, I would love to hear! Please feel free to contact me ...
Nov 06, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:1 – The ruling power within, when it is in accordance with nature, so confronts what comes to pass as always to adapt itself readily to that which is and that which is presented to it. This is because it requires no definite material; rather it moves towards its purpose with a reservation, and then makes the opposition which encounters it into material for itself. It is like a fire, when it masters what falls into it: whereby a little ...
Nov 05, 2020•4 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 3:16 – Body, vital spirit, mind: to the body belong sense perceptions; to the vital spirit, impulses; to the mind, principles. To be impressed by images belongs also to the beasts of the field; to be pulled by the strings of desire belongs to wild beasts, and to men who sin against nature, to a Phalaris or a Nero. To have the mind as guide to what appear to be duties belongs also to men who do not believe in God, who betray their own cou...
Nov 04, 2020•4 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 3:15 – They have not learned to know how many things are signified by the words theft, sowing, buying, keeping quiet, seeing what ought to be done. This depends not on the bodily eye but on another kind of vision. [1] [1] Farquharson Commentary: One of those intrusive fragments, disturbing the natural sequence. The meaning is enigmatic, though the general purport is that the foolish neither understand the world they live in, nor the real...
Nov 03, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 3:14 – Do not wander from your path any longer, for you are not likely to read your note-books or your deeds of ancient Rome and Greece or your extracts from their writings, which you laid up against old age. Hasten then to the goal, lay idle hopes aside, and come to your own help, if you care at all for yourself, while still you may. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...
Nov 02, 2020•6 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 3:12 – If you complete the present work, following the rule of reason, earnestly, with all your might, with kindness, and allow nothing to distract you, but preserve your own divine element pure and upright, as if you have this moment to restore it; if you make this secure, expecting nothing and avoiding nothing, but content with present action in accord with Nature and with heroic truth in what you mean and say, you will live the blesse...
Oct 30, 2020•5 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 3:13 – As doctors have their instruments and scalpels always at hand to meet sudden demands for treatment, so do you have your principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the very smallest, with mindfulness of the bond which unites the divine and human; for you will not do any act well which concerns man without referring it to the divine; and the same is true of your conduct to God. ...
Oct 29, 2020•4 min•Season 1Ep. 31
