Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Letting go of externals

One of my facebook friends noted this morning that today is the birthday of Marcus Aurelius, the great emperor-philosopher of Rome during the second century BCE. Here are a few quotations that are wonderfully consistent with meditative principles:

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
...
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your opinion of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
...
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
...
We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.
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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:22 PM

    I love the clarity and eloquence of his writing. So articulate. thank you ellie.
    annie c

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cathy4:21 PM

    All quotes very true. Except I am not so sure it is necessarily easy to revoke our opinions of the thing that causes us pain so easily as all that. But otherwise, no argument :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ellie Finlay5:26 PM

    True, it's not at all easy to revoke our opinions. That's where training comes into play. That's why meditation is a lifetime enterprise.

    ReplyDelete

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