Life in Small Bites

The following quotes are from Massimo Pigliucci’s book How to Be a Stoic

“The Stoics adopted Socrates’s classification of four aspects of virtue, which they thought of as four tightly interlinked character traits: (practical) Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, and Justice.

Practical Wisdom allows us to make decisions that improve our Eudaimonia, the (ethically) good life.

Courage can be physical, but more broadly refers to the moral aspect—for instance, the ability to act well under challenging circumstances…

Temperance makes it possible for us to control our desires and actions so that we don’t yield to excesses.

 Justice, for Socrates and the Stoics, refers not to an abstract theory of how society should be run, but rather to the practice of treating other human beings with dignity and fairness.”

Massimo thoughtfully walks us through the four cardinal Stoic virtues: Wisdom + Courage + Temperance + Justice.

“The Stoics derived their understanding of virtue from Socrates, who believed that all virtues are actually different aspects of the same underlying feature: Wisdom. The reason why Wisdom is the ‘chief good,’ according to Socrates, is rather simple: it is the only human ability that is good under every and all circumstance.”

Massimo continues: “Other cultures have developed, more or less independently, their own sets of virtues as socially important character traits, each arriving at its own classification of the relations among virtues. Interestingly, though, there is much more convergence than we would expect in these days when cultural relativism is so often portrayed as the norm. A study by Katherine Dahlsgaard, Christopher Peterson, and Martin Seligman looked at how virtue is articulated in Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, and what they call ‘Athenian philosophy’ (mostly Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle).

They found a rather surprising amount of congruence among all of these religious-philosophical traditions and identified a set of six ‘core’ virtues: Courage, Justice, Humanity, Temperance, Wisdom, and Transcendence.

Four of the six are indistinguishable from the Stoic virtues. Stoics also accepted the importance of ‘humanity’ and ‘transcendence,’ although they didn’t think of these as virtues, but rather as attitudes toward others (humanity) and toward the universe at large (transcendence).”

Remember ‘Intention’ is a KEY. ‘Action’ is the ANSWER.

The following is a brief story by the contemporary philosopher Brian Johnson relating wisdom by an obscure 20th century philosopher and spiritual teacher named Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov from his book, “Golden Rules for Everyday Living”.

Omraam wisely reminded us that: “The past is past but it has given birth to the present, and the present contains the roots of the future. This means that you must build your future in advance by improving the present.”

Aïvanhov was a Christian mystic. He was born in Bulgaria in 1900 and taught in France until his death in 1986. He reminds me of some other somewhat obscure spiritual teachers like Vernon Howard (see our Notes on The Power of Your Supermind) and Sri Swami Satchidananda (see Notes on The Golden Present). I also thought of Rumi as I read the book (see Notes on Rumi Daylight) along with some old school Stoic philosophers (see that collection!).

Today’s wisdom.

Aïvanhov tells us: “Never let your inner feelings of malaise reach such proportions that you can no longer put them right. Suppose you absentmindedly stepped in some wet concrete and are so lost in thought that you neglect to step out of it again; what will the result be? The concrete will harden; in fact, it will become so hard that someone will have to go and get some tools to break it before you can get your feet free, and you may well be hurt in the process. Well, this is what happens in the inner life: if you fail to put your mistakes or faults right very quickly, it will be too late. The remedy will be very costly and may well cause further damage.”

I absolutely LOVE that metaphor.

Imagine cruising down the street.

You’re so busy looking down at your smartphone (hah) that you don’t notice the new concrete that was just poured on the sidewalk. You step right in it.

Then…

You’re so lost in thought (and/or tapping away at the screen you’re staring at) that you don’t move and/or notice the concrete hardening around your feet until… OOPS! You’re stuck.

Moral of the metaphor: Ideally, avoid stepping in the concrete in the first place but… When you inevitably do, don’t let it harden!!

In other words: Notice and then FIX YOUR MISTAKES quickly while it’s still relatively easier.

Aïvanhov puts it another way: “When a disaster occurs in the ordinary way of life, we see how firemen or soldiers immediately come to the rescue to put out a fire, repair bridges, clear the roads, rescue the injured and so on. People find it perfectly natural to repair physical damage immediately, but when it comes to the inner world, they don’t know what to do; they look on without reacting as the destruction continues. No, you must look into yourself and see what needs to be repaired, five, ten, twenty times a day, and not leave it until later. Otherwise, when ‘later’ comes it will be too late. You will have already fallen to pieces and been annihilated.”

Step in any concrete lately?

btw: Any time I think of spiritual teachers and metaphorical concrete, I think of Pema Chödrön and her wisdom. In The Places That Scare You, she says: “This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armor our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have. Most of the time we don’t do this. Rather than appreciate where we are, we continually struggle to nurture our dissatisfaction. It’s like trying to get flowers to grow by pouring cement on the garden.”

btw2: Perhaps my favorite wisdom gem from Aïvanhov is this: “It is time you understand that true spirituality means that you yourself become the living expression of the divine teaching you follow.”

Jim Rohn says: “Ideas can change your life. And sometimes all you need is just one more good idea in a series of good ideas. It’s like dialing the numbers of a combination lock. After you’ve dialed five or six numbers, the lock may not come open. But you probably don’t need five or six more numbers. Maybe you need just one more number, one more idea. Maybe a seminar or a sermon can provide it. The lyrics from a song could do it. The dialogue from a movie could do it. Conversation with a friend might do it. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you’ll find that one last idea you need. Once you find that idea, the lock comes open, and there’s the door for you to walk through. Just one more idea, no matter where you get it, may be all you need to open that door of opportunity.”

“I wonder what is over there?”

Science is simple. Sure, some of it—particle accelerators, astrophysics, photon torpedoes—can be a little tricky. But the scientific method itself is straight forward:

1. OBSERVE what’s going on.
2. GUESS why things are happening the way they are.
3. EXPERIMENT to test your hypothesis.
4. MEASURE the results and decide whether you were right.

That’s pretty much it. The scientific know-how behind everything from WD-40 to the Hubble space telescope all came from following those four steps.”