When Plato wrote about tyrants in his famous book the Republic, he did not just criticize them - he pitied them. Often when we talk about powerful or corrupt people today it is to condemn or judge them.

We wonder how the warlord, or corrupt politician, or selfish business leader could do the things they do. But Plato pitied them, because he saw them as a soul corrupted. Their soul had been weakened by its desire for money and possessions. Being a tyrant was not a good way to live. It is not a good life. It is not one we would choose, if given the opportunity.

So why then, are we so sad when we lose our own fame and fortune?

Boethius was a christian philosopher who lived in the 6th century Europe. In his work, The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius wrote:

My view is that nothing is good that is harmful to him who owns it…But riches have very often harmed those who possess them…So there you are, with your stuff, and you find yourself fearful about being waylaid or even murdered for your possessions.

Boethius’ lesson is this. We seek money and possessions because we think it will make us secure and happy. But often it has the opposite effect. The more we have, the more we are afraid of losing it. This was as true 1500 years ago in Boethius’ time as it is today. The wealthy are still worried about losing their money. The famous influencer will still spiral if a new post gets fewer likes than the last one.

We have today a core belief that our happiness comes from our wealth. But philosophy can teach us that even though we grieve the loss of all of our external things, they are not responsible for our happiness - often they make our lives worse.

Boethius raises the same point around our fancy job or title. He wrote:

If those offices and their powers had anything inherently good in them, they would never be possessed by wicked men, for in nature opposites do not attract one another. And since there can be no doubt that offices are often held by evil men, then it follows that they are not in themselves good.

In other words, your job, title and office do not make yourself or your life good, because there are unhappy or evil people that have the same title as you.

It is a very Stoic argument. Your wealth and titles are external to you. They don’t make you happy - often they contribute to your stress, anxiety, or unhappiness. We become rich only to become anxious about losing it all. We become powerful but have to give up our honor and honesty along the way.

We pity the tyrant because they are controlled by their desire for wealth and status, but we desire these things ourselves. In life stay focused on what is up to you - your character and choices.

Caleb shares a quick solo take. A look at the movie through a Stoic lens.

There are “spoilers” – don’t listen yet if you don’t want to hear about Nolan’s approach.

(00:00) Introduction: A Stoic Take on Nolan’s Odyssey

(03:50) Gods as Nature, Not Beings

(07:40) Responsibility and Hard Choices

(10:10) Perseverance: Seneca on Odysseus

(11:10) The Sirens and the Drive to Know

(12:30) The Suitors: Justified Revenge?

(16:20) Exile and the Problem with Xenia

(19:40) Calypso, the Lotus, and Therapy Culture

(22:40) Final Verdict

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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

When it comes to understanding what sets apart exceptional people from average or good, Dr. Chambliss thinks that talent is overrated. It is not that talent, an innate ability or propensity to be good at something, doesn’t exist, but that it is a poor mechanism for explaining differences in ability.

In 1989 Dr. Chambliss published the sociology paper “The Mundanity of Excellence”. In it, he tried to understand what set world class swimmers apart from average one, and talent was a much smaller factor than he expected.

One reason talent is overrated is that there are other more measurable factors which better correlate to success. If we had to pick some way to predict who, out of ten thousand kids, would grow up to be the best swimmers, we have tangible things we can measure. Being from a certain part of the country, like Southern California where it is warm all-year round, which allows for constant outdoor swim practice; or being from a family with a high household income. So why point to talent? If we want a way to explain excellence that is outside of people’s control, we have a better way of doing that.

Next, Dr. Chambliss argues that talent is indistinguishable from its effects. The argument here is that talent is a lagging indicator. We call successful people talent to explain their success. And when someone we previously ignored wins, we say we must not have noticed their talent.

In other words, if we have no concrete way of distinguishing between exceptional people that are talented and those that are not, then talent is just the title we apply to people who are good at something. And in that case, it is not what sets great people apart from those that are average, it is just a word to describe greatness.

Finally, Dr. Chambliss acknowledges that some innate ability is required for world class success. But talent is better thought of as a floor rather than a ceiling. And that floor is actually quite low. He knew this from observing 100s of swimmers. No one could tell, when they walk in, who will be great, who will be average, and who will quit.

So if talent is such an ineffective concept, why do we refer to it so much? Why does it have such prevalence? Why do we talk about the musical savant, the gifted-athlete, or the genius with a kind of other-worldly reverence?

Dr. Chambliss argues that we want to believe in talent to protect our ego. It is emotionally convenient for us to believe that our being average, in a sport, in our careers, in an academic subject, is the cause of not having talent. It hurts less if, when we see the high-performance of others, we can wave it away.

Existentialism as a philosophy argues that we have total freedom to do, or be, whatever we want. We create our own essence with each decision we make. But that freedom is terrifying, because it comes with the responsibility for constructing our own lives. So lock ourselves in boxes. We tell ourselves stories “I could never be an olympic athlete, I don’t have the talent; I was never good at math; I can’t learn other languages.”

But these stories are not true. They are mechanisms of self-defense. They are ways of removing responsibility and accountability from being average. In most, if not all domains, we choose to be average. We are not locked out of excelling at them by something outside our control.

So be careful about how you think about talent. It is not that helpful for identifying who will succeed, and it can often be used as an excuse to fail.

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C.S. Lewis thought this question mattered more than it looks. In the first chapter of The Abolition of Man, he argues that modern education smuggles in a dangerous idea: that value judgments are just reports of emotion. Nothing to debate. Nothing to get right or wrong.

Caleb and Michael work through Lewis’s argument in this first episode of a series on the book. They cover his case for objective value, what he calls the Tao, and his warning about producing “men without chests” — people with sharp intellects, strong appetites, and nothing in between.

(00:00) Introduction: C.S. Lewis and The Abolition of Man

(06:30) The Green Book and the Waterfall

(10:10) Emotivism, Expressivism, and Subjectivism

(13:40) The Fact vs Opinion Distinction

(19:00) Education as Cultivating the Right Feelings

(25:40) The Way, the Tao

(28:50) The Head, the Belly, and the Chest

(34:50) Dulce et Decorum Est

(43:20) Are Aesthetic Judgments Objective?

(47:50) Men Without Chests

(52:00) Takeaways

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The Stoics and skeptics argued for decades over whether truth leaves a mark you can trust. What happens when you admit you might be wrong?

Read How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic.

Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason

By Massimo Pigliucci, a scientist, philosopher, and Professor at the City College of New York. Understanding how the world works, thinking more clearly, living more meaningfully.

By Massimo Pigliucci

(03:00) Pyrrhonism: suspend judgment, find peace

(06:50) The Academics go back to Socrates

(08:40) Fallibilism: senses and reason both fail

(10:20) Carneades and the degrees of probability

(18:00) Skeptics versus Stoics: the cataleptic impression

(22:20) Certainty, polarization, and the case for doubt

(25:30) Cicero, friend and critic of the Stoics

(27:00) On Divination: the first book against pseudoscience

(31:40) On Ends and the gift of aporia

(37:00) Virtue, friendship, and the good life

(41:50) Seneca and skeptical Stoicism

(44:50) Cicero’s life and death

(55:40) Being useful to others

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What happens when we die? Do we receive punishment or rewards for how we’ve lived? Do we get to see the ones we’ve lost? Or is it just a void, oblivion, nothingness?

Death is terrifying. It is a great unknown, and the end of life. For Epicureanism, it is one of the foundational fears that causes distress and disturbance in our life. And the fear of death permeates many parts of our lives. It is not just the dread we feel at a funeral, or the pit in our stomachs when we go to the doctor.

It is also the fact that we can’t enjoy getting older - knowing that it represents getting closer to the end of our lives. Or that we feel an anxious energy to move, get busy, do something - as if our accomplishments or legacy could overpower death and the end it promises.

We don’t just fear death, we crave immortality. Which is a desire that cannot be satisfied.

The solution to this fear, Epicurus argued, is to realize that death cannot even happen to us. He said:

“Death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist.”- Letter to Menoeceus, 125

Epicurus’ point is that death is scary because we cease to exist. But if we do not exist, then we cannot be harmed. This is a simple argument, but hard to digest fully.

Fortunately, Epicurus’ life shows us what this looks like to put into practice.

One of the few remaining biographical sources we have from Epicurus is a letter from his death bed. In it, he describes being happy. He is in extreme physical pain from the illness about to take his life, but that pain is outweighed by the joy of his memories, and the calmness of his mind.

He describes reminiscing about time spent with friends and loved ones, and how the pleasure of those memories is stronger than any physical pain.

Many die in total fear and anxiety, afraid of what is next - or losing what they have now. But in his final moments Epicurus showed how pleasurable dying can be if we can defeat these fears.

Someone dying without the fear of death is just experiencing physical pain - and with a calm mind that is manageable. As Epicurus wrote on his deathbed, his cheerful mind counterbalanced all his physical afflictions.

The Stoics took this exercise seriously as well. Memento Mori was a significant exercise for them - remember that you will die so that you can grow accustomed to this fact.

The goal is to be like Epicurus. We will die, but we do not have to die mournful or anxious. We will age, but aging doesn’t have to be unpleasant. It doesn’t have to be this thing we fight against, just because it reminds us of our own mortality. We do not have to let these facts influence our lives negatively.

In Rome, there was a famous Epicurean epitaph, the phrase written on tombstones. It goes “I was not. I was. I am not. I do not care.”

This is the key point for having fun: When you are not, you will not care. So enjoy what you have and don’t worry about what happens when you are gone.

We don’t know the details of the lives of Plato, Socrates, Pericles. What we are given comes hundreds of years later. Their home is in ruins.

So we sketch in the details.

Romans and Greeks alike get the same treatment. Tom Holland’s Dynasty draws heavily on the ancient historian Suetonius – who was happy to include lurid details about the lives of the Roman emperors. Modern classicists, like Emily Wilson, accused Tom Holland of the same indulgence. Historians then and now fill gaps with drama.

But where the Roman emperors are tabloid protagonists, the Athenians are the ideal.

Bring to mind the thinkers, artists, politicians, and others who have yearned to emulate the Athenians for hundreds of years. Our image of them is of individuals in the best sense: philosophers, artists, citizens.

They are imaginary in an aspirational way. We want to imitate the world of Zeno of Citium’s Athens. There Athenians would discuss Stoic ethics, logic, and physics and delight in the intellectual agon of the time.

The Athenians embodied aspiration themselves. You can, of course, see it in Plato’s philosophy, but think also of the architecture and sculpture and the obsession with form.

Athens is to the polis what the sage is to the individual. The force of the Greeks is unavoidable.

Michael and Caleb run a Buddhism 101 for Stoics. They start with the Buddha: a prince who had everything, saw old age, sickness, and death for the first time, and walked away from the palace to figure out why we suffer. From there it’s the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the Middle Way.

(00:00) Introduction

(06:28) The Buddha’s Founding Parable

(14:24) The Four Noble Truths

(19:59) The Middle Way and the Eightfold Path

(31:30) The Evolutionary Case for Buddhism

(40:09) Where Stoicism and Buddhism Overlap

(48:02) Where They Split Apart

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tno

Nothing lasts. Everything is ephemeral.

Part of internalizing this message requires pruning everything that doesn’t matter. Remove the trivial from your life. You do not have time for it.

The other aspect of this involves seizing what matters.

You can think of this as having two parts: recognition and action. recognize what matters. Don’t let it pass you by. Then act. See the good, then be it.

These are intertwined. Today, let’s focus on the first part: simply feeling gratitude for what we have.

One way to practice this is to bring to mind what we’re grateful for. The people in our life. Our health, such as it is. Our standard of living. Our ability to engage with human art and the beauty of nature.

Just bring these to mind – and then imagine your life as if they were gone. A life without the people we love, in poor health, without shelter or art could still be a good one. But it would be a difficult one. And there would be a real tragedy in losing all the people we love.

Take solace in the fact that this world is a fiction. But in another way, it is not. It’s a simple fact of life that everything is temporary.

So, while you can, recognize what you have. Do not take it for granted.

Do not become the person who realizes how good they had it – when they are about to lose everything. Instead, take joy in what you have now. And take as much advantage of it as you can.

Be present in your relationships. Treat your body well. Consume great art and appreciate nature. Do this before loved ones leave and your body begins to break down.

Let’s end with a line from Marcus Aurelius:

The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as if it were the last.

Meditations 7:69

Here are some amusing posts on the theme:

These claims are overblown. Not all journaling is narcissistic neuroticism. Anyway, the optimal amount of neuroticism, understood as a personality characteristic, is not zero.

Nonetheless diary writing can be unhealthy. Like so many other things. Some use it as a tool for rumination. Others as a ledger for fake work – writing about self improvement that never happens. Still others for self-absorbed commentary.

Against this, Marcus Aurelius provides a good model. Marcus Aurelius does many things in his Meditations. He pushes himself to be better and rehearses his principles. It serves as memoranda, a way for him to remember his philosophy of life. He often quotes Epictetus, but we also see Plato and several of the ancient poets.

The Stoic emperor does not ruminate over mistakes, but moves his attention to who he aspires to be, the principles he wants to embody, and motivates himself to see things as they are and be better. And I think that’s an excellent model for thought, let alone journaling.

Your present opinion founded on understanding, and your present conduct directed to social good, and your present disposition of contentment with everything which happens- that is enough.

9.6

The answer is not what most people expect. It is not extreme effort. It is not raw talent. Excellence turns out to be mundane. It is how you do the boring things, every day, for a long time. And when the pressure is on, excellence is just doing those boring things well one more time.

(00:00) Introduction: What makes someone excellent?

(02:50) Lesson One: Excellence requires qualitative differentiation

(06:40) Separate worlds: how levels differ in kind, not amount

(07:40) Lesson Two: Talent does not lead to excellence

(09:40) Talent is indistinguishable from its effects

(11:00) Talent as a floor, not a ceiling

(14:20) Lesson Three: Excellence is mundane

(14:30) Mary Meagher: show up on time, nail the turns

(17:40) Long-term motivation is boring

(18:30) Excellence is doing the boring stuff under pressure

(20:40) How refusing the mundane caps your ceiling

(23:10) Summary of the three lessons

(25:50) Takeaways for Stoic practice: making good use of impressions

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The other nearby metaphor is of getting on the right path, sticking to it. Taking one step after another.

These are useful and enlightening frames on our life, but another useful one is via negativa. Becoming who you’re meant to be through subtraction. Removing bad habits: the things that waste your time, the unnecessary cruft of ordinary life.

A beautiful line from the philosopher Plotinus:

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.

In other words, virtue is already there. We just need to find it. One of my favorite lines from Confucius on this:

Is goodness really so far away? If I simply desire goodness, I will find that it is already here.

The Stoics believe that we are all rational and, as such, have within us already the tools for living a good life. Which, for them, meant thinking well, desiring what is up to us, and embracing what is not.

So play with both of these frames and perhaps take on the frame of via negativa – transformation through subtraction. Look at all the superfluous parts of your life and see if you can remove them. That’s a good way to start.

The teaching, perhaps, is even deeper than that. Think of the case of marble and the sculptor. Uncover the intelligence you already have. You’ve done it before. All the Stoics ask is that you do it again and again. Cut away everything else.

Seneca saw emperors come and go. At one point, he was rumored to be the richest man in all of Rome. Despite a life of political intrigue, risk, and bustle, he wrote plays and philosophical works fated to outlive him.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say he was a combination of Shakespeare, Socrates, and Thomas Jefferson. This is a combination so rare that, for most of history, scholars believed Seneca the playwright and Seneca the philosopher were two different people.

His writings and life contain deep lessons about how to live well. Seneca is worth emulating, and yet he also made decisions that are lessons in how to avoid ruin.

Born around 4 BC in modern-day Spain, he moved to Rome, where he eventually served as a senator. He was renowned for his rhetorical skill. Indeed, he may have been too good. He was exiled from Rome on grounds of being involved in an affair with an emperor’s sister. This charge was likely fabricated by his political enemies.

Almost 10 years later, Seneca was called out of exile by the ambitious and strategic Agrippina, the mother of the Roman emperor Nero, to serve as Nero’s tutor.

This role placed him in the powerful and precarious position of advising Rome’s most powerful man. Unfortunately, despite Seneca’s lessons, Nero was neither the most sane nor the most virtuous emperor.

Nero’s early years were prosperous. It’s surmised that, at this point, Seneca, Agrippina, and another one of Nero’s tutors, Burrus, essentially ran the Roman Empire.

Yet Nero’s later reign was disastrous. Though some historians have argued that he’s painted in too negative a light, Nero was greedy, impulsive, and unstable. Senators were pressured to play the sycophant to his childish behavior. Not all did. Those who didn’t faced exile or death.

In time, Nero’s rage turned to Seneca. The emperor ordered Seneca to commit suicide in 65 AD.

And so ended the life of a Stoic philosopher, advisor, and playwright. Seneca lived a complex life.

One lesson that shines through is his dedication to language.

When we remember Seneca, we should remember someone who saw speech as a craft. Today, many of us treat our conversations with ourselves and others in an informal and trivial manner. However, language is a weighty thing.

What do you say to comfort someone grieving? This is a situation Seneca was placed in again and again. One of his most famous letters, the Consolation to Marcia, was written to a mother who had lost her son three years earlier and was still in deep mourning. Someone who treats language seriously is prepared to know what to say and think in life’s high-stakes situations. Anyone who treats words in a flippant way is not.

A focus on language may seem odd, but it is through words that we communicate with others and think. By devoting himself to the word, Seneca’s ideas outlived him hundredfold.

In a life of politics and action, Seneca practiced his craft in philosophy, speeches, and plays. Many politicians write or ghostwrite books today. Yet how many of them are truly great works?

Seneca’s work is sublime. His plays heavily influenced Renaissance playwrights. His philosophy has stood the test of time. This is only so because Seneca took his ideas, and the vehicle by which he expressed them, seriously.

We should picture Seneca perfecting his thought through language in private, not merely in public. He reflected often. In On Anger, he writes:

When the light has been taken away and my wife has fallen silent, aware as she is of my habit, I examine my entire day, going through what I have done and said. I conceal nothing from myself, I pass nothing by. I have nothing to fear from my errors when I can say: ‘See that you do not do this anymore. For the moment, I excuse you.’

Each day, he asks what he did well and where he could improve. His Moral Letters to Lucilius show the fruits of this practice. In those letters, he passes on his hard-won wisdom on life to his peer and friend, Lucilius.

He was able to do this because of how devoted he was to his craft and to philosophical reflection.

Seneca’s life was far from perfect. He is the first to admit it. Nonetheless, behind all of his practical advice and wisdom is something we must not miss: the love of language.

Caleb shares his life philosophy in this companion to Michael’s earlier episode. He builds the case for Stoicism from the ground up, then turns it on itself. If happiness has to be up to us, what does that say about the rest of life? And what do you do with the parts of human experience that don’t fit neatly into propositions?

The thread running through it all is humility. Stoicism gives you a strong frame. It also asks you to admit what you don’t know.

(00:00) Introduction

(03:30) The Core Argument: Happiness Must Be Up to Us

(13:30) Character and How We Think

(15:30) Human Nature: Rationality and Sociability

(25:30) Objection One: Life Is Tragic

(31:30) Objection Two: Reason Doesn’t Capture Everything

(41:00) Objection Three: Non-Cognitive Knowledge

(48:50) Summing Up

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To feel shame is to approach courage.

Shame for the Stoics involves failing to live up to our ideal. When we feel it, we notice the difference between who we are and who we could be.

Seneca approvingly quotes Epicurus who said:

Awareness of wrongdoing is the starting point for healing.

Moral Letters, 28

I’m not talking about being shamed by others – but the internal recognition that we’ve missed the mark.

The question is what happens next.

Will it be a moment for courage – will you take the risk to close the gap? Or continue in your ways?

The emotion isn’t just an opportunity for bravery, there’s also the risk of cowardice.

You could wallow in shame. Or simply make the rift between your real and ideal self wider.

Another way to put this is: will you transform the emotion into self-pity or self-respect?

To feel shame is to face a choice.

The Stoic style of exhortation is useful because it is always meant to serve as motivation between the ideal and the actual – to do your best.

Give me courage to meet hardships; make me calm in the face of the unavoidable.

Seneca, Moral Letters 49

Always forward looking – and courageous. Another translation of the Epicurus line:

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation.

Neither too serious nor too frivolous.

This is well put by Musashi:

The mindset in the Way of combat must be no different from one’s normal state of mind. In the course of your daily life, and when engaged in strategy, there should be no change whatsoever in your outlook. Your mind should be expansive and direct, devoid of tension, but not at all casual. Keep your mind centered, not leaning too much to one side, swaying serenely and freely so that it does not come to a standstill in moments of change. Consider this carefully.

Book of Five Rings

At times, playful. At others, intense. The Stoic is calm, but not merely. Their mind is adaptable and can take on the shape of whatever the situation requires.

Is it a time for levity? Then the soul is light. A time for gravity? Then it is appropriately somber.

The Stoics meant this literally. The soul expands and contracts with emotions:

Distress is a contraction of psyche which is disobedient to reason, and its cause is a fresh believing that some evil is present toward which it is appropriate to <be contracted. Delight is an elevation of psyche which is disobedient to reason, and its cause is a fresh believing that some good is present toward which it is appropriate to> be elevated.

Stobaeus

Cited in the excellent Margaret Graver Stoicism and Emotion.

Negative emotions, passions, disorder the soul. This is a physical, not just a cognitive, happening.

Good emotions order the soul: wish, caution. And what is ordered is harmonious – ready to meet the moment.

But for each person, when they approach their life from the right distance, neither too close nor too far away, their mind is consistent. The way of combat is no different from the way of love.

(00:00) Visiting the Stoa Poikile and the Athenian Agora

(05:00) The Acropolis, the Lyceum, and Plato’s Academy

(06:30) Edward Lear and Athens as an imaginary city

(08:40) Athens as a platonic form

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If you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we’ll set you up with a free account.

Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

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What if there is something that connects all great people? Something that they all have in common about how they approach life, from great entrepreneurs and artists to community leaders and philosophers. Yes they are all good at different things, but what if we could narrow in on what all great people have in common, and focus on developing that in particular?

Zen has an answer to that question. What connects all great people is an understanding of the Way - a direct indescribable knowledge of the nature of the current moment and how to navigate it successfully.

Now, you can’t use words to describe something that is indescribable. Even if I understood it myself, I couldn’t tell you what the Way is, any more than I could give you a set of words that instantly make you a great artist, parent, or entrepreneur.

You have to understand it yourself through study and practice. However, 400 years ago a Japanese samurai, undefeated in over 60 duels, retired to a cave to write down his understanding of the Way. He knew his book couldn’t give people the answer, but it might help them get there quicker.

I’m talking about Miyamoto Musashi’s famous Book of Five Rings.

Zen is a type of Buddhism that emphasizes practice, particularly meditation and contemplation, over the study of theory or scripture. But it is also heavily influenced by the Taoist traditions, with a focus on finding ‘the way’ through life, the thing that connects all exceptional people, and runs through each domain of life.

To understand “the way” of anything, is to understand how to live well. However, Zen also argues that this way is indescribable. We can’t just talk about it and write it down, we have to come to understand it through practice.

The zen warrior is someone who pursues ‘the way’ through the art of combat or battle. This is their practice or craft, along with meditation, that enables them to understand how to live.

So, someone practicing Zen aims to live well, but is skeptical of how far theory can take them, so they begin a practice. The Zen warrior involves combat, conflict, and battle as a key part of that practice.

Some reading this may be professional soldiers, or combat athletes, but not many. So why should you care about Warrior Zen if you do not think of yourself as a warrior?

Warrior Zen is a life philosophy that focuses on using high-stress or challenging conflicts in our life and turning them into a way to live better. It is about mastering strategy, learning how to succeed in difficult situations, and then applying that strategy back to other parts of your own life.

Miyamoto Musashi is an excellent teacher of Warrior Zen. Musashi was a Japanese swordsman who lived in the 17th century. Known as perhaps the greatest sword fighter of all time, he was undefeated in over 60 duels, many of which were to the death.

He was also renowned for his innovative style of fighting, which often broke convention, and his use of two swords, instead of the more common single sword style. If all Musashi had done was fight with a sword, he would still be well known today. But he was also a philosopher.

Months before his death, at nearly 60 years old, he isolated himself in a cave and wrote down his philosophy of swordsmanship and life in the Book of Five Rings.

There are many lessons in this book, about how to fight and how to live.

It also has many parallels to Stoicism. Remember that the Stoics also compared living well to a kind of combat.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that:

The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

Meditations, 7.61

Zen does not always use the same language as western philosophy. It does not talk about pursuing virtue, or eudaimonia. Instead, it focuses on achieving what is called “The Way”. Zen philosophers aspire to life in accordance with the Way - even if it is not easily describable.

One key theme of Musashi’s writing is that we can learn about ‘The Way’ through whatever craft we pursue excellence in, although as a zen warrior his craft is battle.

So there is a ‘Way’ in swordfighting, and by understanding that, Musashi gets closer to understanding how to follow ‘The Way’ in life.

This is similar to the Stoic’s craft analogy. Living well is a skill to be learnt like any other, so our other skills teach us about living.

Keep this in mind when studying Musashi.

You may not be a fighter, but you do have other skills. They are all connected. Learning about ‘The Way’ of swordfighting will teach you about how to draw, run a business, or be a better friend.

Epictetus reminded us that even though you may train to be an Olympic champion for years, after all that work, you might still fail.

Success is not up to you. Even if you do everything in your power. Even if you are realistic, consistent, inspired, resilient and focused - you can still fail any external goal.

If you are a runner, unless you are world champion, you only won your race because someone better than you did not register. And you only came in last because no one worse than you was there.

The Stoic is not discouraged by failure, or made cocky by success. Instead, they use success or failure as feedback. It becomes information, an input into the process.

Marcus wrote in his meditations:

That which rules within, when it is according to nature, is so affected with respect to the events which happen, that it always easily adapts itself to that which is and is presented to it. For it requires no definite material, but it moves towards its purpose, under certain conditions however; and it makes a material for itself out of that which opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls into it, by which a small light would have been extinguished: but when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material.

To paraphrase Marcus in more plain language, the philosopher pursues a goal or purpose and turns whatever failures or hardship it encounters into material that benefits that goal.

Their character is like a fire that has achieved enough size and power to consume whatever is thrown into it, instead of being snuffed out.

Inspired by the Stoics, the contemporary author Nassim Taleb described this ability as antifragility. The antifragile person is made stronger by disruption, failure, and challenge - they are the opposite of the fragile person, who is ruined by chaos.

High-performers are antifragile. They incorporate failure into the process. They learn from their mistakes. Being antifragile, like all things, required effort and focus. You must practice finding the lesson in each failure.

But it also requires a flexibility of purpose. If your goal is to make the 2032 Olympics, or get accepted into a specific medical school, or have a specific amount of money by a certain age - you can’t be antifragile about these goals. They are binary. You either reach them or you fail. They have no flexibility.

The Stoic’s ultimate goal is to make the right choice in every moment with what they have available to them - so their purpose is maximally flexible.

But - that goal is a bit abstract. Specific goals can be framed more flexibly too. Instead of making the olympics, aspire to achieve your potential as an athlete. Instead of being accepted at medical school, aspire to become someone that helps people with their health. Instead of a certain net worth, aspire to be financially responsible.

Antifragility comes from practice and focus, and reframing your goals as a purpose rather than a specific achievement.

Today, consider how you can make your goal a purpose - so that you can be antifragile to anything outside your control.

As always, if you cannot afford the Stoa app but want to use it nonetheless, send an email to stoa@stoameditation.com and we will set you up with a free account.

Caleb and Michael continue their series on Musashi’s Book of Five Rings with the second book: Water. Where Book One laid out general strategy, this one gets into the craft itself: swordsmanship as a lens for how to carry yourself, think clearly, and stay locked onto what actually matters.

(00:00) Introduction to the Water Book

(03:40) Mindset: Quietly Vibrating, Not Leaning

(07:50) Don’t Let Your Body Control Your Mind

(10:50) Spirit vs. Body Size

(13:00) Posture as Evidence of a Strong Mind

(18:00) Make Your Everyday Stance Your Strategic Stance

(21:50) Purpose Over Technique: Cut the Opponent Down

(25:10) Bruce Lee, the UFC, and Rejecting Styles

(28:00) Telos: The Ancient Word for “Keep Your Eye on the Ball”

(31:30) Positions That Exist and Don’t Exist

(35:00) Precepts as Boats: When to Let Go of Rules

(38:30) Rhythm in Fighting, Conversation, and Life

(42:00) Offensive and Defensive Lessons on Disruption

(44:50) Forge Yourself with a Thousand Days of Training

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Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/