Meditation - A New Translation

• Things I need in life:
  • Practice the virtues you can show:
  • Honesty
  • Gravity
  • Endurance
  • Austerity
  • Resignation
  • Abstinence
  • Patience
  • Sincerity
  • Moderation
  • Seriousness
  • High-mindedness
• Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control.
• Not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just do what you can and should. And if <…> suffer in inessentials, not to treat that as a defeat. (Bad habit.)
• Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
• Ignoring what goes on in other people’s souls—no one ever came to grief that way. But if you won’t keep track of what your own soul’s doing, how can you not be unhappy?
• In comparing sins (the way people do) Theophrastus says that the ones committed out of desire are worse than the ones committed out of anger.
  • The angry man is more like a victim of wrongdoing, provoked by pain to anger.
  • The other man rushes into wrongdoing on his own, moved to action by desire.
• Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.
• People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains.
  • You always wish that you could too.
  • Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within.
  • Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.
• It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out
• Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed.
  • Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.!
• A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.
• It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it.
• People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.
• If an action or utterance is appropriate, then it’s appropriate for you.
  • Don’t be put off by other people’s comments and criticism. If it’s right to say or do it, then it’s the right thing for you to do or say.
  • The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature—along the road they share.
• Some people, when they do someone a favor, are always looking for a chance to call it in. And some aren’t, but they’re still aware of it—still regard it as a debt. But others don’t even do that.
  • They’re like a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return.
  • A horse at the end of the race …
  • A dog when the hunt is over …
  • A bee with its honey stored …
  • And a human being after helping others.
  • They don’t make a fuss about it. They just go on to something else, as the vine looks forward to bearing fruit again in season.
• Remember:
  • Matter. - How tiny your share of it.
  • Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it.
  • Fate. How small a role you play in it.
• So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature, what I do by my own.
• The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh—gentle and violent ones alike. Not mingling with them, but fencing itself off and keeping those feelings in their place. When they make their way into your thoughts, through the sympathetic link between mind and body, don’t try to resist the sensation. The sensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in with judgments, calling it “good” or “bad.”
• How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?
• Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.
• If the crew talked back to the captain, or patients to their doctor, then whose authority would they accept? How could the passengers be kept safe or the patient healthy?