Meditations A New Translation (Modern Library)

It's been around years when you look at like, um, you know Marcus Aurelius meditations or stoic philosophy and they're talking about...

You could read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and literally learn how to live a better life.

Well, I brought you a good edition of Marcus Aurelius... This is my favorite translation... Here you have the private thoughts of the most powerful person in the world... It doesn't read like a typical book, it's really like journal or diary entries.

I finally picked it up off the shelf. I'm like, what the heck? Meditations from Marcus Aurelius. It's about understanding what you can influence and taking accountability for what happens.

I finally picked it up off the shelf. I'm like, what the heck? Meditations from Marcus Aurelius. It's more about understanding what you can influence and taking accountability.

It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth.

For then you won't tire and give up if you aren't busying yourself with lesser things beyond what should be allowed.

So Massimo, it has to be tempting to carry around a copy of meditations to talk the Marcus Aurelius talk, but not walk the Marcus Aurelius walk?

The book was The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which is a Stoic book. ... when I opened it up at random, one of the first few sentences that I found ... you don't like the cucumber because it's bitter. Well, don't eat it. Why do you have to go on and complain about the fact that there are bitter cucumbers in the world?

I don't need the additional step of complaining and wallowing in this fact that the world is so unfair because there's bitter cucumbers.

I read the Stoics. I read Marcus Aurelius. I read a lot of kinds--because there were a lot of smart people back then. And I think a lot of it resonates now. It's timeless.

The past is history. The future, a mystery. But today is a gift.

Maybe it's the prophet by Cleal Juberan maybe it's the giving tree by shell Silverstein maybe it's meditations of Marcus or Ilias one of my favorite books of all time you know but I think just being a minimalist is is so powerful build your life around a few things even in work I mentioned it rather than pushing at a thousand pieces of mediocrity do one thing incredibly well you know even if it takes five years ten years there's a chapter called make your project X in the wealth money camp by and the example is the Duomo in Milan you know how long they spent on it in this world where we want to do something in an hour and they get the rewards or maybe a week maybe a month it took 600 years to create the Duomo that these are values of a unspoken age 600 years of calibrating refining optimizing to create the Duomo and so that's what a project X is rather than doing lots of things you do one thing maybe it's one work of art Michelangelo took four years of working on the chapel of the Sistine ceiling but he got the job done so minimalism is very powerful.

My favorite passage is in Meditations, Marcus Ruiz is like a better wrestler, but not a better forgiver of faults, a better friend in tight places.

There's passages in meditations where Marx realizes going, you're an old man and you're still losing your temper. You're still worried about what other people think. He's like, you're still afraid of death and it's almost here.

Marcus Aurelius, the story is Marcus Aurelius would walk through I guess the town and just have someone saying you're just a man when everyone was praising his name and kind of bowing to him and saying you're like this god right and it's having that accountability that you talked about.

When you wake in the morning, tell yourself the people I will deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.

And he says they are like this because they can't tell good from evil.

But they can't implicate me in ugliness, nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet and hands and eyes to feel anger at someone to turn your back on him. These are obstructions.

And it's also in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. And it said that when Marcus Aurelius would walk around the Roman Square, he'd be followed by a whisperer almost or an assistant.

It's also in Marcus Aurelius' meditations. It said that when Marcus Aurelius would walk around the Roman square he'd be followed by a whisperer almost or an assistant.

Oh, this is meditations by Marcus Aurelius. You see, this is letters to Seneca.

This book helped me to understand Stoicism and how to deal with challenges with more equanimity.

One of his favorite quotes is from Marcus Aurelius that is the something along the lines of um throughout your day assume that the people that you meet will be miserable wicked selfish etc and do right anyway something to that regard.

If I have one book, if it's meditations or if it's some ancient Chinese text, you think, well, that one thing answers everything, I don't need to look elsewhere.

If you study meditations.

remember, tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Mark Surrealist talks about the common good, maybe 40, 50 times in meditations. Um, you know, he says like, we're, we're put here for other people.

We know Marcus Aurelius' sort of last words, his last words in meditations are about sort of, hey man, this is the play. It only got three acts. The curtain's coming down. Did you do a good job?

one of my favorite book

it's an amazing book that he didn't even write for popular consumption yet it's lived on to today

In one passage in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius is like, when you're struggling to get out of bed in the morning, and you go, but it's so much warmer here under the covers. He goes, but is this what you were put here to do? To stay under the covers and be warm?

And part of it, the core thing is don't make problems where they don't exist. You go to therapists about that being neurotic. And if it is a problem you can't solve, don't worry about it.

If you cannot worry, if you can go through life at peace and not worrying about things you can't control, that's a good thing.

But that's all that's the limit of my knowledge Whitney.

I just as a general rule I tend to not take advice from a thousand year ago Romans.

Okay. I would say probably meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It's my favorite book. I've read it probably seven times. I have it all highlighted.

I'm reading meditation. Marcus Aurelius of meditations right now.

I'm reading meditation, Marcus Aurelius of meditations right now.

I read, I'm reading the Bible. I'm doing those meditations. I'm doing the Marcus's meditation right now.

Okay. I would say probably Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It's my favorite book. I've read it probably seven times. I have it all highlighted.

There's something about meditations that I think is so fascinating because if you were to describe a work of ancient literature you probably would struggle to come up with something that on its face could be more inaccessible right.

The idea that this would be of use to anyone is absurd on its face. And yet when I sort of crack open this book in my college apartment in Riverside California it just immediately speaks to me and it's been speaking to people for centuries because the incredible specificness of it somehow creates a kind of universality and relatability about fundamentally what it means to be a human being in a world that you don't control and to try to make sense of other people try to make sense of your own desires and aversions and urges try to wrestle with one's mortality with one's ambitions with one's self doubt. That's what he's doing in meditations and I think that's what spoke to me there and why I saw it as medicine.

Marcus Aurelius compares it to this treatment for some eye illness. He says it should be a soothing ointment that should relieve the pain or the distress that you feel.

There's a lot here and my favorite philosopher Cheryl Crow said it's not getting what you want but wanting what you got.

Read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

I'm reading his uh Meditations, I just got a I ordered a leather bound copy of that and I think they had to actually Make it in india because it took me like two months to get from amazon

You know, was this your purpose to sit warm under the blanket at home never experiencing things?

To never feel the discomfort of actually doing things, to deny your subjectivity so that you don't have to feel that ambiguity of existence

You know, they'll say things like, this translation of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is the best one and all the other ones? Complete waste of your time.

dwell on the beauty of life, watch the stars and see yourself running with them

Begin each day by telling yourself, today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill will, and selfishness, all of them due to the offender's ignorance of what is good or evil.

If you work at that which is before you, following right reason, seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately, if you hold to this, expecting nothing, but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word that you utter, you will live happy, and there is no man able to prevent this.

get rid of the judgment, get rid of the I am hurt, and you are rid of the hurt itself.

Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying or thinking or scheming. If something distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you, it means a loss of opportunity for some other task. See then that the flow of your thoughts is kept free from idle or random fancies, particularly those of an inquisitive or uncharitable nature. A man should habituate himself to such a way of thinking that if suddenly asked what is on your mind at this minute, he could respond frankly and without hesitation, thus proving that all his thoughts were simple and kindly, as becomes a social being with no taste for the pleasures of sensual imaginings, jealousies, envies, suspicions, or any other sentiments that he would blush to acknowledge in himself. Such a man, determined here and now to aspire to the heights, is indeed a priest and minister of the gods. For he is making full use of that indwelling power which can keep a man unsullied by pleasures, proof against pain, untouched by insult, and impervious to evil. He is a competitor in the greatest of all contests. The struggle against passion's mastery. He is imbued through and through with uprightness, welcoming wholeheartedly whatever falls to his lot, and rarely asking himself what others may be saying or doing or thinking except when the public interest requires it. He confines his operations to his own concerns, having his attention fixed on his own particular thread of the universal web, seeing to it that his actions are honorable, and convinced that what befalls him must be for the best, for his own directing fate is itself under a higher direction. He does not forget the brotherhood of all rational beings, nor that a concern for every man is proper to humanity, and he knows that it's not the world's opinions he should follow, but only those of men whose lives confessedly accord with nature. As for others whose lives are not so ordered, he reminds himself constantly of the characters they exhibit daily and nightly, at home and abroad, and of the sort of society they frequent, and the approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.

That's like Marcus Aurelius, like meditations, the book, he just gave the whole book right there.