I have no inspir- ation for a haiku this Morning. Read instead. From The Daily Stoic:  Reading these fine words every morning, the profound thoughts by some of history's greatest, means nothing if that's all I do. Observing these ideas isn't enough.  If it doesn't change me for the better, I'm wasting my time.  Today's Meditation: Read widely. Read dangerously. Read courageously. Read wild. Read everything. Read all of it. Every last thing they tell you you are not allowed to read.

Be kind. More than all.  Share your love with ev'ryone.  More than all. Be kind.  From The Daily Stoic:  86,400.  Sounds like a lot. It's all the seconds I have today to do what I should do.  It's 9:51 AM. I've already used 35,460 so far: sleeping, eating, having coffee, etc.  I've got 50,000 left.  Will I do my duties? Will I show my family I love them? Will I learn something new? Will I meditate on the Good and on Virtue and on finding Zen?  That's my commitment to today. Tomorrow I will make a similar commitment. Thus it must be every day if I am going to be a better man.  Today's Meditation: Be kind. It's the #1 principle I try to teach my children. Before work hard. Before study hard. Before be yourself. Before everything. Be kind. 

Abandon thought all Ye who would attain sacred Understanding. See.  Today's Meditation Contradicts the Stoic thought.  Much more to ponder.  Duality of Focus confuses my search.  Enlightenment waits.  From The Daily Stoic:  Using reason to choose, to act rather than re act, is my power. I am in charge of this and nothing else.  If I do wrong, it is because I chose so. If I act virtuously, it is because I chose so.  My thoughts can be directed to virtue if I choose to make that my goal.  I must practice living in accordance with wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.  Today's Meditation:

Good springs forth within.  My soul's joy like the sun's light.  Peace in the morning.  From The Daily Stoic:  Internal good is the only good I can count on. If I want to have a good day, or a good life, that has to come from within.  Today's Meditation: A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy  Again, I'm amazed at the synchronicity between the Stoic thought and the selections from Tolstoy today. So many throughout history have discovered this idea. Maybe, just maybe , there's some truth to it. If I find peace and virtue and knowledge and wisdom within myself, no one can take that from me: it is mine until the end of time no matter what the gods may send against me. Finding my own path to enlightenment is a lesson I first began to understand after reading Siddhartha . While I may learn from others, only I can take that final step. No one can do it for me. No one can lead me to that final place. They can only point me in the right direct...

Coffee and philosophy  Watching nature in the yard.  Kindness at break of day.  From The Daily Stoic:  What a simple point to make — beauty is properly in the realm of the spiritual, not the physical — but how profound an effect would this lesson have had on me had I truly learned it in my youth?  This is a great example of why I study Stoicism: it reminds me not only of what I need to know about living my own life, but also about what I should be teaching my children.  Today's Meditation: Pythagoras recognized what FBI profilers 'discovered' a few thousand years later. 

Tweet chirp chirp chirp tweet Churrupchurrupchurrup tweeeeeet Chirp tshk SWEEEE tweet tweet.  From The Daily Stoic:  I examine my life in daily meditation in hopes of finding it worth living.  In part of that examination, I use my reason to parse what is virtuous and what is damning and to find value in the life I am living. In another, I do my best to see beyond all thought and find my connection with all things, all people.  Both are proper guides for living a good life.  And in both I read the wisdom of others to learn what has already been learned by those who have followed this path before me. The header of this page was chosen with care.  Today's Meditation: How can seeing beyond to see all be so easy? I have SO much work to do.  Is this enlightenment?

Feynman, nature taught  Confusing my little brain. Let's read it again.  From The Daily Stoic:  Spend time doing worthy things. Pursue virtue above objects. Be kind.  Today's Meditation: From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 4: Conservation of Energy  Gravitational Potential Energy  Feynman presents here an analogy to derive conservation of energy from basic principles. He describes a weighing machine that by deduction proves energy must be conserved. Uncharacteristically for Feynman's normal teaching clarity, it confuses the hell out of me. I need to read it seven or twelve more times.... If anyone would like to help me understand this, I'd be much obliged. 

After dark night, morning  Lighting day and land slowly.  Brings a chance to smile.  From The Daily Stoic:  Before I speak, am I sure it is necessary? Before I talk, am I confident what I want to say is worth saying? Before either of these, are my actions better explanations of my thoughts?  I must live my life so that explaining my philosophy is redundant to anyone paying attention.  Today's Meditation: Marcus Aurelius lost a son. I have, too. Trust me when I say that I Epictetus' advice is true. Knowing that any given day may be your last with your child makes you appreciate the days you have more intensely. Hug your children. Now. And tell them you love them. And spend another 5 minutes just listening to them today or reading them an extra story at bedtime tonight. Take your time. And you'll remember this day forever. 

Great things come to those  Who's on first, What's on second Nature is a haunted house.  From The Daily Stoic:  I have to know where I'm going if I want to make any progress toward getting there. And even then, after I've discovered my destination, I have to put in the work.  It's a plain but effective plan. I should do it more.  Today's Meditation: It's that feeling of love that no one seems to remember anymore. Compassion is missing in all modern rhetoric. It's all smoke and mirrors now. It's depressing. 

Oh most cruel fate!  Breaks my daily reading streak.  Ah! It is but life. —————————— Two things Stoic happened in my life yesterday and the day before. 1. My daily streak of using my Kindle app stopped at 180 days. 2. I advised a Reddit user to relax a bit and not take things too seriously.  At the beginning of the year, I set a challenge for myself to see if I could do some reading every day for all of 2021. It didn't work out.  I fell prey to pre-staging my morning posts. See, sometimes I take the screenshots of a day's Daily Stoic and daily meditation the night before so I can focus on contemplation rather than mechanics in the morning.  I did that on the night of the 27th and, though I completed my Blogger post for the day, I never opened my Kindle app on the 28th. That broke the streak . . . and I didn't even realize it until 2 AM last night when I woke up and the thought flashed through my head that I forgot to do anything at all for April 30. ...

2 AM thunderstorms  Child hides under our covers Many May flowers From The Daily Stoic:  It's all too easy for me to become stuck on small and petty concerns, focused on unimportant, mundane things.  That's one of the reasons I am studying Zen, Buddhism, and the sutras: to broaden my perspective and gain a better appreciation of connections to things larger than myself.  Thunderstorms are bigger than I am.  Today's Meditation: Like finding my way through a dense fog, or a heavy rain, what I seek is already here, I am just not able to see it.  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 4: Conservation of Energy  What is energy? Feynman offers a wonderful analogy to explain conservation of energy: a boy has 28 blocks and, no matter what he does with the blocks, they always remain exactly the same in both number and quality. They always remain identical to their original set. (The original is so much better than my summ...

If I wish to have  A good life, I must study  My nature and purpose. From The Daily Stoic:  Desire creates want.  Want creates need.  Need creates power over me by others.  The less I desire, be it money, goods, approval . . . the object of desire is unimportant. Its mere existence creates a way for anyone who can fulfill the need to demand something from me.  There's a reason so many philosophies and religions, including Stoicism and Zen / Buddhism, tell their adherents that eliminating desire is a crucial step in achieving peace and happiness.  Today's Meditation: Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Is that the right quote? If not, it's close enough for jazz or government work. I don't have the mental power for permanent boredom. Not that I feel compelled to be busy at all times, but too long periods of idleness grate on me. (As Montesquieu's quote above implies, that one episode of Black Mirror would indeed be hell.)

New technology...  Nature is pushed aside.  Find balance, find peace.  From The Daily Stoic:  Take a 50,000 foot view — seeing connections and the big picture.  Take a veteran's* view — seeing with a practiced eye and finding that this situation is not unique, repeated uncounted time by innumerable people throughout history.  Take a neophyte's view — finding the naive beauty and mystery of the piece and appreciating its novelty.  Take the skeptic's view — doubting what I see and looking for unspoken assumptions and hidden agendas.  Changing how I see things gives me insight into what's really in front of me. I must practice shifting my mind from view to view so I better understand how best to proceed.    Today's Meditation: Sonde r  — Realizing that other people have a life, including an inner life, as complex as one's own. They are not NPCs to themselves.  They are not villains (or saints) in their own ...

Learning a new skill Takes much time and patience From Plato's cave to . . . From The Daily Stoic:  If I can learn to approach life and its ups and accidents as training, it can help me handle mistakes more easily.  By seeing things as practice, if my "opponent" screws up, I can see it as a mistake s/he can learn not to make next time.  Too often, I see other's errors as deliberate, though they surely were not. When a car cuts me off in traffic, or a coworker doesn't get a task quite right, it's not about me.  It's about them and they don't know better.   The inconsiderate driver I will never see again and there's nothing I can do to improve it later, but it certainly makes my reaction better than the ire I used to (and, unfortunately, sometimes still) feel. The coworker is someone I can interact with, showing them the correct way to do XYZ and improving both their performance and my attitude at work. Today's Meditation:

Overindulgence  Blinds senses to truth, beauty.  Control must be learned. From The Daily Stoic:  Show me I'm wrong, and I will change my mind, but remember Asimov's warning:  I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ~ Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind Disagreement on matters of opinion can be harder still. A lot rides on the effects of the belief in question.  This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.  ~ Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein's "Time Enough F...

Cats are zen perfect. Existing beyond caring,  Animal masters.  From The Daily Stoic:  How often do I fall for appearances? Do I miss the truth behind the veil? I mistake illusion for reality?  Promises for reality?  All too often, student. All too often.  Today's Meditation: This quote, from Tolstoy's book rather than the Daily Stoic, again serendipitously parallels the one above.  Is it an illusion?  Confirmation bias?  And I overlook and forget the misses?  Damned phantasms.  Perception is the theme.  Again. Though this time, in Zen, perception and non-perception are the same and lead past illusion to enlightenment. 

 Have I studied yet?  Realize that I have not.  Time to get to it.  From The Daily Stoic:  Control of my body can be taken from me by disease, other people, time, and more. My breath can be labored after exercise or stolen by choking or drowning. My mind, however, no matter what, is mine to control.  Even the existentialists knew that.  Today's Meditation: A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine 4. Diogenes Laertius, "Diogenes," VI.44,VI.71,VI.66

Silly thoughts invade Dawn's early contemplations. Thoughts like rivers flow. From The Daily Stoic:  And thus the purpose of these daily journals is stated clearly: if the unexamined life is not worth living, I am determined that mine will belong to those souls who are tested and have done all they can to improve. Successful or not, I'll not sit by and float my way through life, content with trinkets and distractions.  Today's Meditation: Examined lives at least have the possibility of finding the divine.  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 3. The Relation of Physics to the Other Sciences: How Did It Get This Way  Physics is good at answering What and How questions. That is its purpose and method. Why is for philosophers.

Cats are Zen.  Sits in my lap, purr Petually now.  From The Daily Stoic:  The problem is you think you have time . ~ Internet inspiration Epictetus is talking about time. He's talking about losing it: once it's gone, you can never get it back. And because you can never get it back, its loss affects all that follows.  I must be present, finding now and not wanting to escape it.  EDIT: Serendipity . . . Today's Meditation: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki I don't get it. Boy, do I have a lot of work to do..... My wheel has no hub.  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 3. The Relation of Physics to the Other Sciences: Geology and Psychology  We cannot predict (yet, possibly ever) the weather because no matter the extent of our knowledge of current state, turbulence is introduced as the system progresses and disrupts what we would try to predict. We cannot (yet, possibly ever) understand the movemen...

Early rise, refreshed  Mind ready to learn from the  Masters of old words.  From The Daily Stoic:  Wisdom. Temperance. Justice. Courage.  These four Stoic virtues form the basis for the Stoic philosophy of life. The summum bonum of what we should pursue to find true happiness and contentment in life.  I carry a coin in my pocket which reminds me of these. I don't think about them enough, even with that small, weighty, reminder.  Today's Meditation: Being kind to others is a basic tenet of my philosophy of life. It is one of the most important parts of the philosophy that I try to model my children.  It is not so much as to idolize self-sacrifice, as these passages proclaim. It makes me wonder, though, if these ancient wise men know something I don't. Do I need to do more?  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 3. The Relation of Physics to the Other Sciences:  Astronomy Astronomy predates physics, dev...

New lamp to read by Shining forth on old wisdom. Lightning in bottles. From The Daily Stoic:  An emperor quoting a former slave . . . I should never look down upon a source of wisdom or inspiration.  There is a 100% probability that they have experiences different from mine and that makes learning possible. Today's Meditation: A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy Wisdom and knowledge are everywhere if we know how to look. From Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Rhetoric, Chapter 2. Structural Matters : 8. Reversal of Structure: CHIASMUS Technical term:  Chiasmus : repeating words or other elements in reverse order, resulting in an ABBA pattern. Antimetabole : reversing words (as opposed to purely structural reversals) Patterns and Examples  — Describing a reversal of action  — Suggesting reciprocity — Describing matches and mismatches — Showing relationships between sets ...