The way of wisdom

As many of you know, I moved recently. And I'm still in the process of unpacking and organizing my books. Today I came across a little volume that has traveled with me for years all over the world. It combines the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and the Enchiridion of Epictetus - two of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome. Theirs was a philosophy of complete acceptance. Stoicism has much in common with the meditative principles of accepting without judgment and seeing suffering as coming from attachment.

So I offer you two quotes from Epictetus:

Remember that it is not the one who reviles you or strikes you who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting. When then a person irritates you, you must know that it is your own opinion which has irritated you.

If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in life.

Powerful words. Inspiring words to confront our "people pleasing" tendencies and our attachment to being respected and admired.

I have always experienced consolation from the prayer at the very end of the Enchiridion:

Lead me, O Zeus, and thou O Destiny,
The way that I am bid by you to go:
To follow I am ready. If choose not,
I make myself a wretch, and still must follow.
But those who nobly yield unto necessity,
We hold them wise, and skilled in things divine.