210123 What I learned in my studies this morning

I love the confluence of today's lessons: the Tao, the Stoics, and Hoffer all come together in a wonderful coincidence: learn to be content with life as it is. 

Today's Tao:

There is no greater sin than craving, 

No greater curse than discontent, 

No greater misfortune than wanting something for ourselves. 

Therefore those who know that enough is enough will always have enough.

From The Daily Stoic: 

 

“Let us pass over to the really rich— how often the occasions they look just like the poor ! When they travel abroad they must restrict their baggage, and when haste is necessary, they dismiss their entourage. And those who are in the army, how few of their possessions they get to keep . . .”—Seneca, On Consolation to Helvia, 12. 1. b–2

The rich have more money. Ok. Got it. But are they truly different from me?  Do they magically need less? Or more? Do they not suffer from the same insecurities and demands on their life? 

This must be done. That must be avoided. The other must be endured. It happens to all of us. 

Money let's you cry in a Mercedes rather than a Mitsubishi, but you still cry. 

Money also carries with it the seeds of insecurity. Obsessing with worries about losing it and becoming unable to afford a lavish lifestyle. 

One of the greatest Stoic lessons is contentment with what you have. They teach of "preferred indifferents," that is, things which are nice to have but are not necessary. 

Learning how to differentiate between them, and instilling the ability to look beyond expectation and accept reality is a core practice I need to study more deeply. 

From Eric Hoffer, Part III, Unifying Agents:

Imitation 

While imitation can be used as a means of inculcating people into a Movement, it can also be a way to integrate into a new society. 

Generally coming from the lowest and poorest of social classes in their home countries, early American immigrants lacked a sense of superiority which may have lead them to remain fixed in their original way of life. Instead, they imitated the culture they adopted and joined in. 

This Imitation lead them to become Americans, rather than a balkenized pastiche of their former worlds. 

It was due to the fact that the majority of the immigrants were of the lowest and the poorest, the despised and the rejected, that the heterogeneous millions blended so rapidly and thoroughly. They came here with the ardent desire to shed their old world identity and be reborn to a new life; and they were automatically equipped with an unbounded capacity to imitate and adopt the new. The strangeness of the new country attracted rather than repelled them. They craved a new identity and a new life—and the stranger the new world the more it suited their inclination.

(The True Believer, XIV-80)