201223 What I learned in my studies this morning

 Today's Tao:

This one is going to take some pondering....

From Seneca the Younger, part 1:

Seneca was born about the same time as Jesus, circa 3 B.C, near the end of Augustus' reign.  He was the first major Stoic figure never to have known Rome as a Republic, instead spending his whole life maneuvering through the whims of emperors.

His teacher, Attalus, taught him to always strive to improve. Be better today than you were yesterday.  Make practical improvements to your life and abilities. Chronicle your life to record this improvement and, if you make a mistake, forgive yourself and do better next time.

After several dramatic life events in short order — the death of his father, getting married, his firstborn son dying — he was banished from Rome by Claudius.

Despite being in need of consolation himself, he spent the first part of his time in Corsica writing Consolation to Polybius, Consolation to Helvia (his mother), and On Anger. 

(Lives of the Stoics, pp. 185-191)

From The Daily Stoic: 

You are afraid of dying. Why? What are you doing with your life that is worth saving? 

Make the answer to these questions real and important.

From Eric Hoffer, Part III, Factors Promoting Self-Sacrifice, Make-Believe:

Deprecation of the Present, cont. 

People frustrated with their inadequacy and ineffectual life find not only solace but joy in the denigration of the present. 

It is easier to mask one's failures when attempting the impossible than the everyday failure of the possible. 

"The delight of the the frustrated in chaos and the downfall of the fortunate and prosperous does not spring from the ecstatic awareness that they are clearing the ground for the heavenly city.  In their fanatical cry of 'all or nothing at all' the second alternative echoes perhaps a more ardent wish than the first."

(The True Believer, XIII-53)