💀 Dying Every Day
Dying Every Day (Stoicism in a Year) is a podcast by the Perennial Leader Project. Each episode turns a selected passage from Stoic philosophy into a guided meditation designed to help you (and me) learn how to live.
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Marcus Aurelius on training the mind
Welcome to another episode of Dying Every Day (Stoicism in a Year). We’ve reached Day 100, and we’re exploring what it means to train the mind.
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In his Meditations, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself,
The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by the agitations of the flesh—both gentle and violent. Rather than mingling with them, it should fence itself off and keep those feelings in their place. When they infiltrate 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 begin to make judgments, labeling it as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’
+Adapted from Meditations, 5.25
The mind is meant to guide the soul, staying steady even amidst bodily passions. As physical beings, it’s natural for us to experience bodily sensations, both pleasant and unpleasant.
While we may not have control over when these feelings come up, we certainly have the power to choose how we respond to them, as Marcus wisely points out. For the Stoics, there is no need to push away or dismiss these physical sensations; instead, the key is to embrace them as a part of life, allowing them to occur without letting them take over.
As Marcus highlights, it’s important to withhold judgment; sensations are not intrinsically “good” or “bad.” Our minds tend to evaluate these sensations, assigning labels, which often leads to unnecessary suffering. By fostering inner detachment and refraining from moral judgments, we can cultivate clarity and tranquility.
The French philosopher Pierre Hadot, in his insightful work The Inner Citadel, stated, “To live according to reason is to live according to nature; that is, to accept all events, even the most painful ones, as natural and necessary.” Hadot suggests that these Stoic ideas extend beyond mere abstract thought; they serve as spiritual exercises designed to enrich our inner lives.
The Stoic mind is like a fortress—not disconnected from reality but strengthened through insight and self-control.
Today’s meditation offers more than just ethical guidance; it provides a perspective on inner freedom. It reminds us that genuine strength lies in our ability to guard against being taken over by transient emotions that tend to control our thoughts and disrupt our lives.
Reflection Prompt
Consider reflecting (or journaling) on the concept of training the mind. You might ask yourself,
(1) “When faced with physical or emotional discomfort, how frequently do you attach judgments to those sensations? How could your experience differ if you merely observed them without categorizing them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
(2) “How can you develop your own ‘inner citadel,’ a zone of mental clarity and stability, particularly during times when your emotions threaten to overwhelm your reasoning?”
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Thank you for listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. I greatly appreciate your time, attention, and support!
Forming an opinion seems to instantly follow from having made an instant judgement on a feeling one gets. So for me, I am trying to practice that when I say "my opinion is...", I know I need to stop, back up and think about the situation rationally and from a Stoic or virtuous perspective.