East and West: Zen and Stoicism

 

Two-thousand-year-old advice offered by Western Stoic philosophers Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca is very much in keeping with Zen Buddhist practice of the East.

1. What We Control: One of the main Stoic principles is to focus on what you can control, and let go of what you can’t. And most of life is what we can’t control: other people’s opinions and actions, the weather, world events for the most part, accidents, loss. Too often we let those things affect our happiness, even if we can’t do anything about them.

Think about how often you get frustrated or stressed by something you can’t control. What if you declared that that was none of your business — your business instead is focusing on doing your best in the present moment.

Zen also focuses on doing your best in the present moment, from a place of compassion. I find this focus to be simple, powerful, and liberating.

2. Reminder of Death: The Stoics would remind themselves that they were going to die, on a regular basis. Buddhists do this too — one branch of Buddhists will meditate in a graveyard for this purpose, something that I do as well.

Life is short and precious, and we take it for granted. We need to remind ourselves of this often, so that we can make the most of each day, and each moment.

3. Loving What Is: The Stoics didn’t use the term “amor fati” (that was Nietzsche) but Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus definitely espoused the idea that we should embrace what is actually happening rather than what we wish things would be.

Epictetus: “Don’t seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”

This is a Zen idea as well, to embrace reality as it is, and the ways we suffer are based on wanting things to be different.

What if you could learn to love each moment, exactly as it is? To do this, you have to find the beauty in life as it happens. Start with the easy moments (a quiet morning, a nice cup of tea, seeing the face of someone you love) and then slowly work towards more difficult ones (someone is being negative, you have a difficult task before you). Leave the hardest things as an advanced challenge for later (death, illness, war).

4. Contemplate Misfortune: Seneca had a practice called “premeditatio malorum,” or contemplating adversity in advance, where you would visualize all the bad things that would happen to you, as a rehearsal.

For example, if you’re about to take a trip, you might imagine all the things that could go wrong — you forgot your passport, you lost your luggage, you got robbed, you got lost, you got sick. Actually visualize all of these things happening. And imagine that they aren’t traumatic, but neutral — there’s no problem. Maybe you actually loved the experience!

Then, if any of them actually did happen … then you’re prepared. Nothing can happen to you that’s worse than what you’ve already experienced in the contemplation! You’ve already gone through it all.

In this way, we have prepared ourselves, like putting ourselves into ice cold water to prepare for swimming in the Atlantic.

The Zen tradition is more about present-moment meditation … but in a way, when we meditate, we are facing everything that comes up for us in the present moment (boredom, distraction, discomfort, frustration, etc.) and so when the same things (inevitably) come up for us later, we’ve already faced them.

5. A Higher Perspective: There’s a way I like to visualize taking a “God’s-eye view” of humanity — looking down on all of humankind, like we’re the size of ants.

This kind of bigger perspective reminds me that:

1. My problems are actually small, even if they seem big; and

2. We are all interconnected, even if it feels we’re alone.

This makes my life easier.

The Stoics called this the “higher view.” In Zen, we practice reminding ourselves of our interconnectedness. It’s the “truth” of reality (as opposed to having a separate self) that helps us to feel connected and compassionate.

by Leo Babauta at zenhabits.net