About Chris

Navigating through life by learning. Sharing my thoughts and experiences, hoping that it might help as many as possible live the good life.

Living in Moderation (LIM) Part 4 – The 3 “Knows”

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Chris

So, to have tranquility, I need to be aware of three things about the “indifferents” of my life:

Know what they are
Know that they are impermanent
Know that pursuit of them will not bring me happiness

So, let’s figure out #1. OK, so what are the “indifferents?” For me, here are some easy ones:

Wealth
Status/Reputation
Health
Survival or mere life
Physical Appearance
Popularity
Talent/Ability

Joe Theismann: had lots of talent…then he suffered a career ending injury.
CLICK PHOTO to see the top 25 Career Ending Injuries

I’m sure there are many more I can add to this list. All of these things listed are nice to have. However, every single one of them is largely out of my control and have no guarantee of being around tomorrow. I can appreciate them when I have them, and certainly can maintain them as best I can, but I shouldn’t obsess over them.

Right?

Living in Moderation Part 3 (Enter Zeno)

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Chris

To truly experience something, is to know whether it is right or not. Many a soldier has gone into a war waving their flag for king and country. Then, they experience the brutality, the insanity of killing, maiming, and butchering others…all for the sake of some far off ideology they only marginally understand. All warfighters come back different. They don’t all come back peace-niks (like me), but they all come back different.

And so it goes with living a purposefully deprived life, like a Cynic would. Theoretically, asceticism (see Part 1) sounds like a good idea. Isolate yourself completely from worldly temptations and pleasures, and you can focus on living a virtuous life. However, to experience asceticism is another thing altogether. Thus, it must have happened to Zeno of Citium, the original Stoic.

Zeno! (Actually it’s only a model)

Right around 300 BC, as the story goes, Zeno ended up in Athens as a result of a shipwreck. Zeno had previous knowledge of philosophy because of books that he had read, so when he ended up by this precarious accident to be in Athens…Home of Philosophy!…he asked around to find where great philosophers like Socrates could be found. As luck would have it, Crates (a Cynic, remember from Part 2?), found him instead and took him on as a pupil. Crates passed on to Zeno that the goal of a good life was to live with virtue and excellence.

But somewhere along the line, Zeno was unconvinced that a life of deprivation was necessary for virtue. He considered the pleasures of life that the Cynics rejected as “indifferents.” In other words, while these things were not beneficial in living a good life, they were not necessarily bad either. Incidentally, this consideration of “indifferents” became a cornerstone of Stoic ethics.

In other words, a person could enjoy the “indifferents” as long as she does so in moderation, and that she is aware, that indeed these things are indifferent…that worldly pleasures of wealth, power, prestige, and indulgence are not helpful to you in attaining virtue and excellence. This awareness, I think is what gives the Stoics their modern image as being emotionless and indifferent to the world around them, I suppose.

In a sense, this indifferent Stoic image is true, but not in the simple way that is commonly thought of.

(Zeno photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Living in Moderation Part 2 (The Cynics) or Alternately: Doctor No

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Chris

Speaking of Self-Deprivation, the Cynics were masters at such a practice. The Cynics were a philosophy school beginning around 450 BC in ancient Greece. Most famous were Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, and Crates.

The Cynics thought that:

The goal of life is happiness which is to live in agreement with Nature.
Happiness depends on being self-sufficient, and a master of mental attitude.
Self-sufficiency is achieved by living a life of virtue and reaching your highest potential.
The road to living an excellent life is to free oneself from any influence such as wealth, fame, or power, which have no value in Nature.
Suffering is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a vicious character.

What they meant by a life according to nature is to live with the absolute bare necessities. In other words, they lived an ascetic life (a life of self-deprivation). By depriving themselves of worldly desires completely, they draw nearer to to a life of virtue and excellence.

As I said in Part 1, I can see their good intentions, but I think that, in short, they throw the baby out with the bath water by trying to eliminate judgment from the equation. Would you like some food? No. Would you like some shelter? No. Would you like air conditioning? No. Would you like to travel to Hawaii on a vacation? No.

In short, I think that ascetics have the right idea: that material things and excesses do not bring happiness. They certainly lay the foundation for finding happiness. But aren’t they only half-right?

DON’T FORGET TO READ PART 3

Living in Moderation

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Chris

I may one day have to live with nothing…or at least almost nothing. I may want for food someday, I may miss my loved ones someday, because of separation or death. I often imagine my life without some of the good things that I enjoy now. I even make an effort to deprive myself of things “on purpose” (most notably food, sweets) to more fully appreciate them.

Is this enough?

However, I see no reason why I should live a deprived life, and I see no reason why it would make me more enlightened. I strive a to live a simple life, but I do enjoy some things that aren’t simple. Further, I see no reason to live the life of a monk or an ascetic. An ascetic deprives himself of things like food, water, clothes, etc., thinking that by not having worldly wants, then he will be closer to enlightenment, God, the oneness of the universe, etc.

Is this aescetic taking the easy way out?

Beyond a certain level, it seems that having more stuff doesn’t seem to make anyone more or less happy. OK, the studies are conflicting: click here.

In any case, it is the desire for stuff, I think, that gets us into happiness deficit. If my life revolves around getting more stuff, then I think that is when I would be disappointed, regardless of how much stuff I have. The trick is, how much is too much? I think ascetics try to make it black and white: All stuff leads to unhappiness! I think this is a cop out. Real life requires judgment of what is and is not moderation.

DON’T FORGET TO READ PART 2

Zen and Stoicism…Two Sides of the Same Coin

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Chris

For 15 years, I have been studying and practicing, as best I can, some of the teachings of Buddhism (mixed with a little Eastern thought in general). The school of Buddhism called Zen concentrates on direct insight into “how things are” through meditation and by calming, then tripping up the mind (unlike some schools which emphasize knowledge of doctrine and the writings of Buddhist teachers). One of the ways Zen masters trip up the minds of their students is through the use of koans (a kind of unsolvable riddle) One of the most well-known of these koans is as follows:

“Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?”

A koan is designed to break your mind free of previous paradigms. It rattles your perception free of its previous conclusions. This continues as you meditate upon the question or puzzle of the koan. The very pursuit of an answer is intended to break your mind free of previous illusion/delusion. In everyday life, we make conclusions based on a few inputs, then we move on. We accept our conclusion as true, and often we never return to reexamine. Thus, we build our own truth based on previous assumptions. A koan helps your mind enter a state where previous assumptions are questioned. For you Zen gurus out there, I know, koans are supposed to lead you to enlightenment…but I left that pursuit, and tend to be a bit more practical with my koans. I guess it’s a result of my Stoic side.

Breaking through illusion

Here is an example of a possible truth you may have built. What if your parents wanted you to go to college? When you were young, they told you that college is good and will ensure you get a good job, which implies you can earn more money, which will allow you to buy things you like. Presumably, this would lead to greater happiness. They didn’t specifically say the thing about happiness, but some of what they said, as well as societal influence certainly led you to believe that this was true. So, college = good…you built a truth, and then moved on. But what if that conclusion was wrong? What about other jobs that might have made you happy without a college degree? Do you really need a lot of money to be happy? Do you need any money to be happy? If you are that smart (smart enough to get into college), couldn’t you have spent those 4 years building your own business, teaching yourself how to run it? What if the $60,000+ spent on a college degree, and the $100,000+ loss of four years of wages weren’t worth it? These are questions that we may all answer a little differently, but my point is that if we’ve moved on without questioning, then we’ve assumed “college = good” is true. I lived for over 30 years with this “truth,” without ever reexamining. I am questioning it now. In a way, I’ve presented a koan to myself to break my paradigm. A practical one: “What is the worth of not going to college?” I have teenagers of college age, and this question is an important one for me to answer. Practicing with koans gets me in the habit of viewing something from a different perspective.

So, viewing things from a different perspective is an important tool we can take from Zen. The Stoic does this as well, by examining whether his actions and reactions to the events of his day are correct.

Another of the most important facets of Zen is to be aware. Awareness of the present moment allows us to observe our situation clearly. The mere effort of being aware allows me to examine my motives clearly. It is in this pursuit of awareness that I think a second very strong connection between Zen and Stoicism occurs.

So Zen and Stoicism are similar in these two ways:

We try to gain a new perspective.
We try to become more aware of the present moment and how we fit in it.

The Stoic makes every effort to be aware of his place in life. What is in his control, what is not. If my goal is to be aware at all times of what is in my control and what is not, then I must practice and cultivate this awareness. The beginnings of this type of awareness are found in meditation. Zen meditation focuses on making the mind still, focusing on the present moment, maybe even working through a koan. Stoic meditation is similar, but it is more reflective, more examining. “What things did I react badly to today? How could I have utilized the things I can control, my thoughts, reactions, emotions, to be a better man?” Either way (Stoic or Zen), meditation gets us into the habit of awareness, increases our perspective, and into the habit of asking these questions.

(Feature photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski)