PNTV: Musonius Rufus, Lectures and Sayings (#403​)

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great little book on Musonius Rufus, his lectures and sayings. Musonius Rufus, he's one of the four great Roman Stoics. But we really only pay attention to the great three these days, which we'll talk about in our first idea here, the history lesson. But one of the most profound Stoic thinkers in history. We have William B. Irvine, who wrote the Stoic Challenge, which we recently featured, to thank for this. He edited it with a new translation by Cynthia King and. And when I heard that Musonius, best first name ever, right behind Epictetus, had a book of his own, I knew about Musonius. I'd seen some little sayings and stuff, but I didn't know he had his own collection of lectures and sayings until William B. Irvine referenced it in the Stoic Challenge. So, of course, being the good philosopher that I am, I'm here for you. I went, found it, got it, read it, love it. Highly recommended. If you want to get a full view on Stoicism, check it out again. William B. Irvine's the Stoic Challenge is fantastic. Ryan Holiday's the Daily Stoic is another great book. And we're going to do a bunch of other ancient wisdom, Stoic Wisdom TV episodes coming soon. I kind of went on a binge where I did one Stoic book, then a positive psychology book, then a Stoic book, then a positive psychology book for quite a while, for a number of weeks and even months in a row. So anyway, Musonius Rufus, we got to start with a history lesson. So there are four great Roman stoics in Stoicism 101, which you can check out at Optimize Me Stoicism, along with notes on dozens of the best books on Stoicism, I talk about the big three. So the big three Stoics we usually hear about, start with Seneca, who was born in the year zero, right around the time Jesus was born, right? 0ad common era, whatever, right. 30 years later, you have Musonius Rufus who comes on the scene, right? Then 25 years after that, he lived from years 80, 30 to A.D. 100, right? And then in A.D. 55, Epictetus was born. Now Epictetus studied with Musonius Rufus. Interesting. And they both share a very similar, in your face, intense style, which I both love and strive to emulate. They're just great. If you read the discourses and the Enchiridion by Epictetus, you'll see that although Epictetus didn't write anything, his student Arrian wrote his stuff. Musonius, same thing. He didn't write anything, his student Lucius wrote his stuff. So Seneca 0, Musonius 30, Epictetus 55. Then Epictetus taught the tutors to Marcus Aurelius, which is interesting, says Aurelius wasn't born until 121 AD and of course, he became the great Roman emperor philosopher. We covered him and how to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson. Now, that's why Aurelius, who was taught by men who studied with Epictetus, Aurelius references Epictetus the most in his Meditations, which is kind of cool. You got a Roman emperor who leans most heavily on the wisdom of a former slave. That's Stoicism for you. That's a quick history lesson. That's our first big idea. With that, we're ready to move on from theory and history to practice. So all the way to mastery, if we do our job. So Lucian, who's taking notes on Musonius lectures, says that Musonius Rufus was once asked, what's more important, is it theory or is it practice? Now, of course, theory often precedes logically should proceed logically. Practice. You want to know the theory of why you're doing something. But Musonius says unequivocally, practice is more important. Doesn't matter if you can recite all of the different sayings, but you can't actually put them into practice. What's the point? And he says, which would you rather have? A doctor who can tell you every single thing about healing, but has never worked with sick people, or someone who may not be as sharp on the theory, but. But is really, really good at healing people? You want the practitioner. Well, so it is with our lives. And by the way, if you're a student of medicine or law, you got to study that to practice it well. But you really need to practice your philosophy, which is way more important than any other art. Musonius tells us as well. Couple other thoughts here. We talk a lot about moving from theory to practice to mastery. And of course, it's not either or. You want to have both. But Michael Beckwith, the great spiritual teacher, tells us that theory is rudimentary. Most people just like to talk about new ideas and, oh, I read this new book, and this is really cool. Or, yeah, this guy says that, but they don't do anything about it. It's A lot harder to do the hard work. So Beckwith says theory, rudimentary, the advanced work, the graduate level study stuff is the practice. Are you actually living these ideas day in and day out? Vernon Howard, 20th century mystic sage, echoes Musonius wisdom when he says, look, you can memorize the directions on a first aid kit, but that's very, very, very different than knowing how to apply first aid. So again, we got to move from theory to practice. And finally, Ernest Holmes, another great 20th century spiritual leader who created the science of mind, churches, et cetera, he says, I would rather have someone, rather than be able to recite every single piece of wisdom, I would rather have them just be a radiant demonstration since the world needs less teaching and more demonstration of these ideas. So again, theory to practice and ultimately to mastery, which is what our optimized coach program is all about. I talk about it a lot, but we call it the Mastery series because that's what it's all about. 300 day program, seven modules, 25 lessons, moving from theory to practice to mastery, which you can't do. You can't even do that in 300 days, but you certainly can't do that in a three day weekend workshop or a 30 day program. It takes diligent, patient, persistent work over an extended period of time of practice to truly master ourselves. There you go. Then we have vice versus exile. This is a fun one. So Musonius was an exile, he was exiled from Rome. He said, do you think I care about that? Not really, I'm exiled. But I'll tell you what, the thing that I will not do, you can't take from me. He said, in exile you can't take what matters most to me. What matters most to me is living with virtue. Now if you told me on the other hand, that I could not be exiled but I would live with vice, I wouldn't take that trade because I know I'm going to be unhappy. I know I'm not going to be living with Eudaimonia, in integrity, with my highest self, and I'm going to be miserable. But you can exile me, you can do whatever you want to me, because the thing you can't do is take away my freedom to choose how I'm going to live in my commitment to virtue. Which is interesting because what would it be about 2,000 1900 plus years later, Viktor Frankl came along and said, and Viktor Frankl, of course, the great logotherapist, psychotherapist, who created logotherapy, who went through the Holocaust in World War II. Now, you may or may not know, but Viktor Frankl attributes his philosophy, the root of it, to Stoicism. So what he said was the last freedom. And this is a man not only exiled, but lost his family. His wife was pregnant when she was taken and separated from him during the Holocaust, During World War II and the Holocaust, lost her, lost his family. But he refused to give up his last freedom, which was his freedom to choose how he was going to respond to that situation, which is stoicism 101. Whatever happens to you. And the way that Frankl so powerfully said it was that in any situation, there's a stimulus, something happens to you, but then there's a gap between that stimulus and your response. And he says in that gap is where your freedom exists. That's what Musonius Rufus is talking about, and that Viktor Frankl channeled in his own remarkably exemplary way. Now, another way to think about this idea of the rule number one of Stoicism is the Serenity Prayer. So they tell us that some things are within our control and some things aren't. Then they say the only things that are within our control are our thoughts and responses to life and our behaviors that follow those thoughts and responses. We can't control the externals, but we can control those things. So the Serenity Prayer is another thing inspired by ancient Stoicism. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Again, that's Stoicism in a nutshell right there. Give me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, which is everything outside of my thoughts and behaviors and whatever's happening in reality. I got to accept that 100%. Then give me the courage to change what I can, which is my behavior, my response, my mindset toward life's challenges, whatever they are. It's the one freedom I'm not going to give up. And then the wisdom to know the difference. Now, I start every single morning with what I call the Virtue Prayer. So I go through our compass that we keep on coming back to with wisdom at the top. Wisdom, self mastery, courage, love, hope, gratitude, curiosity, and zest. And I literally say in my. I do two sets of 11 minutes of meditation every single morning. I've missed one day in the last 12 years. I do a breathing exercise. We talk about again, a lot in the Mastery series, and I think we talk about it in breathing 101, which you can check out at Optimize Me Breathing. But I train my breathing and then I do this prayer. It's kind of an adaptation of the virtues and the serenity prayer. But I basically say, God, please grant me the wisdom to know the game that I'm playing and how to play it well, which of course would be to live with virtue. Then I say, that's one breath in and out. Then I say, God, grant me the self mastery to play the game well today, theory to practice. God, please grant me the courage to be willing to act in the presence of fear, which is what we talked about in the science of the courage quotient. God, please grant me the love to be connected and engaged and present and joyful today. Then I continue. God, please grant me hope. So I know that my future is going to be even better than my present because I'm going to do whatever it takes to make it so. God, please grant me gratitude to see the blessings and gifts of everything in my life. God, please grant me the curiosity to be open to my life's experiences, to see what's working, to see what needs work. And then, God, please grant me the zest, the energy to give myself most fully to my work and to my love. Literally, I do that every single morning. And I always do it with a smile. Kind of end it with a let's do this. Yeah, it's the virtue meditation with the virtue compass. I got to write a plus one on that, too. There we go. Fourth idea is food equals medicine. So 2,000 years ago, we have a Stoic philosopher who literally is telling us food is medicine. All the people of his era did the exact same thing that everyone's doing today, only now it's ultra processed and 10 times 100 times worse. But they all were going for sensual pleasure in their food. Epictetus said, no, no, no. The game that we're playing is to express the best version of ourselves. Food is fuel. Keep it simple, don't indulge. Use your nutrition, your appetite, your food consumption as an opportunity to practice your philosophy of self mastery and wisdom. What works for you. Do more of that, do less of what doesn't work. Literally, he says, food is medicine. And we'll talk about that in our PNTV on Food Fix, Mark Hyman's new book, where literally he tells us about research where you can write a prescription for food, where people go to the doctor and they get a prescription for healthy food. Studies have done this where they actually pay people to eat healthy food. Right, rather than pay them to take medicine. Now, insurance doesn't cover it. Yet. Right. But the studies have backers who are covering it, and what they find is it's way cheaper to do that than to give them medicine, because food heals. Food is medicine. And the underlying cost associated with treating the sicknesses is way less, even when you include the cost of food. It's astonishing. Which is why we have a prescription pad for our optimized coaches. Literally optimized fundamentals. Prescription pad, just like a doctor. Only we tell our coaches, you give it to your client and you have them write the prescription. They're not a patient. A patient means to submit. A doctor writes a note for their patient who's submitting. Literally, patient means to submit etymologically. Now, the opposite of that is to conquer one who seeks successfully. So we say to our coaches, work with your clients who are conquerors, and have them write their prescription. You know right now what the one thing is you could do nutritionally? What is it? What's the one thing you know you could be doing nutritionally? Movement wise, exercise wise, philosophically, that would most improve your life? Write yourself a prescription. Be a conqueror. Go quest. Conquest is basically what it means to go on a quest successfully. Go crush it. And then a longer chat that we get into in the eating session of our mastery series for our coaches, which is one of my favorite things that we've done. I talk about three food rules outside of the scope of this chat, but very briefly. Three food rules plus one. The first food rule is quit drinking your sugar. Mark Hyman inspired idea, drinking sugar. Sugar is toxic in your bloodstream, which is why your insulin has to shuttle it out into your fat cells and then you gain fat. Right. And why your waist to height ratio is the number one predictor of your morbidity. If you have a greater than five ratio between your waist and your height. I'm 6 foot 72 inches. I can have a waist that's as big as 36 inches. Mine's 30, 31. Right. Well below the 0.5. If yours is over 5, you are at a much greater risk of dying of all the things you don't want to die with. So our coaches, again, we challenge them to get to the point five mark. And you do that in many ways. But number one, you get your insulin rebalanced. You get your metabolic system dialed in. And the number one food rule is quit drinking your sugar. So if you're drinking sodas or even fruit juice, stop doing that. It is not a health food. Parents for your kids. That's food rule number one. Food rule Number two, briefly, is eat real food kind of playing on Michael Pollan's food rules. But we say throw out the factory food. If you just went back pre industrial revolution, everything was different. The flour wasn't milled the same. You didn't have vegetable oils. Literally. Vegetable oils didn't exist before the industrial revolution. Hammering olive oil. It's been around for 5,000 years. But he wasn't doing safflower oil and soybean oil and corn oil and all of that stuff that's literally brand new, 100 years old. Longer chat. We'll leave it at that factory. Farmed animals you want to get rid of. Ultra processed food from factories you want to get rid of. That's food rule number two, eat real food. Throw out the factory ultra processed food, then food rule number three is eating sunsets. We've talked about this a little bit. We'll come back to it a lot more. And we talk about this a lot in our number ones. The number ones I'm doing every morning, you need to give yourself a break. You can't eat all day every day, at least 14 hours. Research shows between your last meal and your first meal, where you're going to increase your risk of cancer, etc. You need to have time for your body to do its cleanup process that it can't do if you're eating all day, every day. Again, longer chat, but give yourself the night off. And if you can't do that and go 14 hours, it means that you're probably having too much sugar and ultra processed food, your metabolism is out of whack. Deal with those other rules and the third will be easier. And then I say plus one. And I playfully say that nutrition philosophy can be summarized, and a lot of people do, by saying, just eat like your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents ate before the Industrial revolution. But I take it one step further, and I'd say eat like your favorite philosopher ate, who's at least 300 years old. And I don't care if that's Moses or Jesus or Mohammed. Who's your favorite hero, philosophically, the exemplar you most admire. For me, it's Epictetus, right? So I want to eat like Musonius and Epictetus. Guess what? They followed the three food rules. They couldn't drink their sugar because it didn't exist. They couldn't eat factory food because it didn't exist. And they didn't have a fridge, so they weren't eating all day every day. Some of their Colleagues and compatriots may have indulged a little bit more, but it was a lot easier to follow that rule. So who's your favorite philosopher? Channel it, eat like them, and remember, food is wisdom. There you go, talking about nutrition. And a note on Stoicism. That's how we roll. One of the reasons why I love Musonius so much, he intensely goes off on this. Here's a thought that I wanted to share at the beginning, I'll share now. This is Musonius Rufus. Just as there is no use in medical study unless it leads to the health of the human body, so there is no use to a philosophical doctrine unless it leads to the virtue of the human soul. And that leads us to the final idea here, which is Stoic love advice. Now, again, we think of Stoics as like, oh, Stoic, they have no emotion. That's not the case. These Stoics were joyful. They had no problem whatsoever. They had a eudaimonic joy, right? They were flourishing and felt good about life, they were cheerful, etc. What they had an issue with was negative emotion. They didn't see any place for it. Number one rule again of Stoicism is to play the meta rule. Live according to nature, which is reason, which is live with wisdom. And if you actually do that, there's no need a room for anger and hostility and resentment and depression and anxiety. All these negative emotions, that's a function of a dysfunctional mind. Yet they had no problem with positive emotions. In fact, they cultivated them. So this is the answer that Musonius Rufus gave to what is the chief end of marriage? He was asked in his lectures, hey, Professor Rufus, what's the chief end of marriage? And this is what he says 2000 years ago, stoic philosopher, he says, in marriage there must be above all. And I would offer this is perhaps the best relationship advice I've ever heard. In marriage, there must be above all companionship and care of husband and wife for each other, both in sickness and in health. And on every occasion, each party entering into a marriage desires this after all, just as they desire children. When this mutual care is complete, and those who live together provide it to each other completely. And this is the part I love. Each competes. Each competes to surpass the other in giving such care. Such a marriage is admirable and deserves emulation. Such a partnership is beautiful. Imagine that. Imagine competing with your partner to give them more care. That's Stoic love advice. That's some pretty solid love advice, isn't it? And by the way, when we come back to our virtue compass, we've got wisdom here, we've got self mastery here, we've got courage there, and we've got love there. Now I base that as we discuss on the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism, which are wisdom. Instead of self mastery, they say temperance or self control. I've upped that a level and said self mastery. That's what we're talking about. Courage is what they say courage, but then they usually say justice. That's how we translate their idea for affinity and just treating people well, et cetera. Justice. Right, but you almost think like legalistically when I think of justice. But these individuals talked like this. Here's Abraham, not Abraham Maslow, but Marcus Aurelius. He says, let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind. That's love, that's not justice, that's love, of which justice is a component. So at the end of the day, that's the ultimate virtue. We have wisdom, knowing the game we want to play and how to play it well, and the self mastery to play it well and the courage to do it whether we feel fear or not. Why? So we can be of service. So we can shine brightly in service with love to the world. And ultimately that's what we talk about with optimize equals optimist. Best equals eudaimon. A good soul equals hero. A hero is a protector. Ancient Greek etymology, a protector. A hero has strength for two. Their secret weapon is love. And they are willing to do the hard work to cultivate that strength. That's what Stoicism is all about at the end of the day, as I apply it in the 21st century through our optimized lens. Stoic love advice. See if you can go compete with your spouse and with your children. And again, going back to gratitude, don't take any of it for granted. Take it as granted by some bigger force and then go serve as profoundly as you can. Those in your life, note to self, do the same that you're asking others to do. Food equals medicine. We've got our food rules. Don't drink sugar. You remember them. Don't drink sugar. Eat real food. Throw out the factory food, eating sunsets. Give yourself the night off and eat like your favorite philosopher who's at least 300 years old. You'll be 80, 20 there. It doesn't matter whether you're vegan or paleo or whatever is going on these days. Follow those food rules. And you're going to get really, really far in doing well. Vice versus exile. Give me exile. But I'm going to take virtue over vice again. Viktor Frankl. Your freedom, your last freedom, exists in the gap between stimulus and response. Practice, practice, practice. Moving from theory to practice. Then we had our history lesson, walking through the big four. Musonius, what do we have? Seneca, Musonius, Epictetus, Aurelius. There you go. Thank you again, William B. Irvine and Cynthia King for translating this great little simple book. And of course, as always, we've got the six page philosopher's note. Check it out. Optimize me. We have 600 notes. We have over 50 optimal living 101 classes, plus ones every day, ton of other stuff, free two week trial, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the Optimize Coach program. At Optimize Me Coach again, William B. Irvine is one of our distinguished luminaries who's joined us as kind of our visiting faculty. He shares some really practical tools on how to bring stoicism to life. And then coaches our coaches one on one, which is pretty cool. There you go. What was the idea that jumped out and landed? How can you move from theory to practice? Get on that today. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow. See you.

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