PNTV: The Enchiridion by Epictetus (#71)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, the Art of Living or the Enchiridion by Epictetus. Old school classic. One of three Stoic philosophers we profile. The others are Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. As you know, if you've watched those episodes or read the notes, Old school classics. We've got 10 of them. The Bhagavad, Gita, Dhammapada, Emerson, Nietzsche. These guys, Confucius. I love this stuff. So the Intridian Epictetus wrote this? Actually, he didn't write it. One of his students wrote it back in around 100 AD. Right. So he lived from 55 to 135 AD. Epictetus was a former slave who was freed, became or was a philosopher and taught this Stoic philosophy. The fundamental tenet of Stoicism is nothing that happens outside of us determines how we feel. It's our opinion about what happens to us that dictates whether we're happy or whether we're sad. Huge idea. As you know, if you've watched many of these, we talk about this all the time. It's principle number one of my philosophy, optimism. We've got to be able to step in between the stimulus and our response. In the note, I talk about this. I talk about Buddhism, as we often do when we talk about this theme. The idea of emptiness. Everything is empty. Nothing has any inherent meaning other than that which we choose or habitually give to it. Traffic has no inherent meaning. It can make me really excited because I get to spend more time practicing my breathing or listening to different things or whatever it is. Or it can make me irate because I think I should be able to get from here to there in whatever time frame I should be able to get there in. But it's neutral, it's empty. Our response is going to dictate how we feel. Jack Canfield talks about it. He says, e plus R equals O, event plus response equals outcome. Too many people think the equation is E equals O, event equals outcome. No, event plus response equals outcome. There's always, as Osho says, who we cover here and who we talk about in this note, we have a responsibility. We have the responsibility to choose our response. Break down the word responsibility, the ability to choose a response. It's a huge idea. Stephen Covey's Habit number one. Again, we talk about this all the time. That is the fundamental tenet of Stoicism. It's what Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus talk about. It's one of the reasons why I love them so much. It's one of my favorite philosophies. Easily so. Plus, I just love the whole idea of Roman antiquity and Greco Roman culture. A whole other conversation. So another big idea here is Epictetus says you want to get in the flow of life. If you want to be tranquil and peaceful and happy, get in the flow of life. And he says, wish that the things that are happening are what you want. So don't wish that what you want happens. Wish that whatever is happening is what you want. Tolle says it in a different way. Tolle says in his Power of Now, which we're going to do soon, he says, whatever is happening to you in your life, particularly the most stressful stuff, accept it completely and act as if you wanted it to come into your life. Act as if you asked for it, you requested it. For whatever reason, getting laid off, you wanted that to happen for whatever reason. It wasn't quite the job that was really fulfilling your soul. It was going to give you a time to check in and really see just how strong you are and to get challenged by the universe and to step up and honor Nietzsche's idea that what doesn't destroy me makes me stronger. Right? But the idea of consciously choosing the most empowering response is a big one, because we always have the choice. And why not choose the most empowering response possible? Much better than choosing the disempowered, helpless victim response, which is going to lead to all the things we don't want. Depression, anxiety, Our health is going to fall apart. That's not a surprise. Those are tied together. The healthiest people, the most vibrantly alive people, are the ones who feel most empowered, who know that they always have a choice in how they respond to the situation. Byron. Katie talks about this as well in her book Loving what Is. We talk about that in the notes as well. You can check out the note for more. But she says the healthy mind, if your mind is pure, if your mind is healthy mind, what is, is what you want. And to argue with that is insanity. To argue with what is, she says, and I mentioned this a few times in these episodes, arguing with what is is like trying to teach a cat to bark. It doesn't make any sense, but you can YouTube barking cat and see a cat actually almost barking. Pretty funny. Okay, the next big idea. He's got this story of whose cup broke. So imagine that your neighbor's cup broke, or your neighbor's car got stolen, or your neighbor's bike broke down, or Your neighbor's wife got sick, right? Imagine these things happening to someone else. You know, they happen. And you very philosophically and stoically say, well, those things happen. You know, cars break down and bikes are stolen, or vice versa. People get sick and eventually die. And these things just happen. You have a very stoic attitude about it. Epictetus talks about this in some old school language that we have in the note. Now imagine that those things happen to you. Your car gets stolen or breaks down, your bike is stolen or breaks down. Your wife or partner or spouse or husband or whoever, your child gets sick. All of a sudden, all that stoicism, all of that philosophical equanimity goes out the window when it's your stuff. And he says, wait, wait, wait, pay attention. Because the truth was those things happen. We need to honor the fact that that's just life being life and happening. We want to be able to take a perspective where we can see those things happen and literally be able to respond to it with a level of equanimity. Of course we have compassion and passion, hopefully in all scenarios, but we don't get caught up in the emotional turmoil and get into the victimhood of it. Things happen in our lives, but again, we always have the choice. And it's often helpful to imagine that story. I talk about the fact that at my Vipassana meditation retreat, Sn Gwenka tells basically the same story that I just shared about someone's watch being broken and something their wife cheating on them or whatever. It's amazing what happened. The difference between that happened to someone else and that happened to us. Pretty funny stuff. Okay, so then the next big idea I love, he says, whenever someone criticizes you, right, don't get defensive. So someone criticizes, whether it's your hair or your driving or your clothes you're wearing, or says you're not too intelligent or you made this mistake or that mistake or whatever the array of possible criticisms are, rather than defending yourself to them, say, oh, but if you only knew all my other faults, right? So someone's criticizing you. The natural tendency is, oh, yeah, well, you know, screw you too, or whatever the attitude is. We get defensive and we tend to want to lash back. He says, no, wow, yeah, you know, yeah, you're probably right about that. And gosh, if you only knew my other faults. I just think that's the funniest thing in the world. If you only knew my other faults. And I like to joke about that, we could talk about all my other faults for weeks, right? So let's not get into discussion about just that one. You know, we've got all these other things we can talk about. Just take it light heartedly. Quit trying to be perfect. No one's perfect. Rumi tells us there's no worse pretense than this pretense of perfection. Abraham Maslow says there are no perfect human beings. There are never going to be any perfect human beings. Tall Ben Shahar, the Pursuit of Perfect One of my favorite books we cover here. Don't worry about perfectionism. Become an optimalist. Seek to optimalize your life. Optimize your life. Our ideals are guiding stars. They're not a distant shore. We're ever going to get to one of my favorite visions. Don't think we're ever going to get there. We're simply being guided by our ideals. And moment to moment, we can strive to live in more integrity with them. Good stuff. So lastly, Epictetus talks about the fact that we shouldn't call ourselves a philosopher. We shouldn't, when we're at dinner, tell people how to eat. Rather, we should be what we want to be and silently go through our days being the change we want to see in the world. That's what the world needs more of. Now I call myself a philosopher, and I talk about this in the note because I think we've lost the meaning of it. In his era, a philosopher was known to be a lover of wisdom. Philo Sophia, that's love of wisdom. Now, a lover of wisdom is a pretty darn cool thing in my mind. I think we should bring the brand back. If you're watching this and you've watched more than one of this, if you've gotten this far in it, this episode, you're a philosopher, you're a lover of wisdom. And I think we need to own it. We need to go out and rock it. But we don't do it by telling people what to do. We live our lives and our example is an inspiration. As I say, often the world needs demonstration more than it needs instruction. Let's be the chains which show our radiance and live these ideals and have another great day. All right, that's enough time. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. See you.