Showing posts with label Stoic philosophy Saturday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stoic philosophy Saturday. Show all posts

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Live in the now by looking for a perfect moment.

Stoic Saturdays is a regular feature on UU A Way Of Life with quotes of stoic philosophers show- cased in the feature.

From On The Shortness of Life by Seneca

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. 

They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. 

The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. 

What are you looking at? 

To what goal are you straining? 

The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

Seneca. On the Shortness of Life (Penguin Great Ideas) (p. 13). Penguin Publishing Group.

Comment:

In A Course In Miracles a perfect moment is what the Course calls a "Holy Instant." A Holy Instant is when time stands still, a person has merged with the flow, with the Tao, and become one with the web of existence of which they are a part rather than a separate ego.

Every day we should look for a perfect moment. Some days we may experience more than one even several. A day with several perfect moments is what we can call a "perfect day."

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Stoic Philosophy - How do you spend your time?

Stoic philosophy is a regular feature on UU A Way Of Life which appears on Saturdays.



From Lucius Seneca's On The Shortness Of Life:

Believe me, it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to be frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself.

Seneca. On the Shortness of Life (Penguin Great Ideas) (p. 10).

Comment:

Time is an illusion. In eternity it doesn't exist. Eternity is timeless and sometimes in this incarnation we experience this phenomenon and say things like, "Where did the time go?" and "It seems like time stood still."

Unitarian Universalists know that time is ephemeral and has no meaning in the context of their faith in the Unconditional Love of God of which we all are a part as we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

A great person, according to Seneca, is a person who does not allow time to be frittered away but lives for the moment in the eternal now. As the Buddhists say with a laugh, "Be here now!"

Of course the past is gone, the future is yet to come, and so awareness of the now is a great gift which is why it is called a present.

Saturday, June 22, 2019

Stoic philoshophy Saturday - The life well spent.

Articles on Stoic philosophy appear on UU A Way Of Life ministries blog on Saturdays.

From "On The Shortness of Life" by Lucius Seneca




Comment:

These are the first two sentences of Seneca's little book entitled, "On The Shortness Of Life."

Seneca raises right at the outset the question of what is a life well spent?

If a person spends their live well any time span is enough. If a person wastes their time no life span is long enough.

With all the crap, kids are taught in high school, has any teacher helped them consider what a well spent life might look like? Has any teacher helped them investigate the answer to the question, "What will make me happy?"

Why isn't philosophy taught in high school?

For the investigation of the answer to this question of what will make me happy one turns to marketing in our society, and religion.

Unitarian Universalism offers some answers to this question of "What will make me happy," and "what is a life that is well spent" but I have rarely heard these questions directly tackled.

Perhaps it is about time.

The third principle of Unitarian Universalism is the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The first question of the student might be, where do I search? The UU answer is "everywhere and anywhere" and, of course, this answer is so broad, vague, and ambiuous it is useless and more than useless, defeating.

Stoic philosophy is not the only place to look for the answer to the question of what will make me happy, but it is a start. And Seneca tells us that it is a well lived life and of course the next question is what is that?

Seneca, like a Universalist, tells us that "Nature has been good to us." "Nature" meaning for some of us "God."

A Course in Miracles tells us that love is our natural inheritance if we want it. Most of us prefer our own willfulness rather than love. A Course In Miracles asks us, I imagine, giggling, "Would you rather be right or be happy?"
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