BOOK 12 -36-3

Completion is determined by that being who caused first your composition and now your dissolution. You have no part in either causation. Go then in peace: the god who lets you go is at peace with you.

And this last entry closes the book. 
Comme c'est trieste!
And I thank everyone for stopping by during these past two years. 
Adieu.

BOOK 12 -36 -2

The laws of the city apply equally to all. So what is there to fear in your dismissal from the city? This is no tyrant or corrupt judge who dismisses you, but the very same nature that brought you in. It is like the officer who engaged a comic actor dismissing him from the stage. 'But I have not played my five acts, only three.' True, but in life three acts can be the whole play.

BOOK 12 - 36

Mortal man, you have lived as a citizen in this great city. What matter if that life is fifty or fifty years?

BOOK 12 -35

For one whose god is what comes in its own proper season, who is equally content with a greater or lesser opportunity to express true reason in his actions, to whom it makes no difference whether he looks on this world for a longer or shorter time - for him even death has no terrors. 

BOOK 12 -34

The clearest call to think nothing of death is the fact that even those who regard pleasure as a good and pain as an evil have nevertheless thought nothing of death.

BOOK 12 -33

How does your directing mind employ itself? This is the whole issue. All else, of your own choice or not, is just corpse and smoke.

BOOK 12 -32

What a tiny part  of the boundless abyss of time has been allowed to each of us - and this is soon vanished in eternity; what a tiny part of the universal substance and the universal soul; how tiny in the whole earth the mere clod on which you creep. Reflecting on all this, think nothing important other than active pursuit where your own nature leads and passive acceptance of what universal nature brings.

BOOK 12 -31

What more do you want? To live on? Or is it to continue sensation and impulse? To wax and then to wane? To make use of your voice, your mind? What in all this strikes you as good cause for regret? But if every one of these objects is contemptible, go on then to the final aim, which is to follow reason and to follow god. To value these other things, to fret at their loss which death will bring, militates against this aim.

BOOK 12 - 30-2

Now in all the above the other parts - such as mere breath, or that material which is insensate - have no direct affinity to each other: yet even here a link is formed by a sort of unity and the gravitation of like to like. But the mind has this unique property: it reaches out to others of its own kind and joins with them, so the feeling of fellowship is not broken.

BOOK 12 - 30

One light of the sun, even though its path is broken by walls, mountains, innumerable other obstacles. One common substance, even though it is broken up into innumerable forms of individual bodies. One animate soul, even though it is broken up into innumerable species with specific individualities. One intelligent soul, even though it appears divided. 

BOOK 12 -29

The salvation of life lies in seeing each object in its essence and its entirety, discerning both the material and the casual: in applying one's whole soul to doing right and speaking the truth. There remains only the enjoyment of living a linked succession of good deeds, with not the slightest gap between them.

BOOK 12 -28

To those I ask, "Where then have you seen the gods? What conviction of their existence leads you to this worship of them?,  I reply first that they are in fact visible to our eyes. Secondly, and notwithstanding, that I have not seen my own soul either, and yet I honor it. So it is with gods too: from my every experience of their power time after time I am certain that they exist and I revere them.

BOOK 12 -27

Continually review in your mind those with whom a particular anger took to extremes, those who reached the greatest heights of glory or disaster or enmity or any other sort of fortune. Then stop and think: Where is it all now? Smoke and ashes, a story told or even a story forgotten. At the same time this whole class of examples should occur to you: Fabus Catullinus in his country house, Lusius Lupus in his town gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius in Capri, Velius Rufus - and generally any obsession combined with self-conceit. Think how worthless all this striving is: how much wiser to use the material given you to make yourself in all simplicity just, self-controlled, obedient to the gods. Pride that prides itself on freedom from pride is the hardest of all to be.

BOOK 12 -26 -2

And have you forgotten this too, that every man's mind is god and has flowed from that source; that nothing is our property, but even our child, our body, our very soul have come from that source; that all is as thinking makes it do; that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose.

BOOK 12 - 26

When you fret at any circumstance, you have forgotten a number of things. You have forgotten that all that comes about in accordance with the nature of the Whole; that any any wrong done lies with the other; further, that everything which happens was always so in the past, will be the same again in the future, and is happening now across the world; that a human being has close kinship with the whole human race -not a bond or blood or seed, but a community of mind.

BOOK 12 -25

Jettison the judgement, and you are saved. And who is there to prevent this jettison?

BOOK 12 -24

Three thoughts  to keep at hand. First, in your own actions, nothing aimless or other than Justice herself would have done; in external happenings either chance or providence is at work, and one should not blame chance or dict providence. Second: the nature of each of us from conception to the first breath of soul, and from that first breath to the surrender of our soul; what elements form our constitution and will be the result of our dissolution. Third: that if you were suddenly lifted up to a great height and could look down on human activity and see all its variety, you would despise it because your view would take in also the great surrounding host of spirits who populate the air and the sky; and that however many times you were lifted up, you would see the same things - monotony and transience. Such are the objects of our conceit.

BOOK 12 -23 -2

Now anything which benefits the Whole is fine and ripe. It follows that for each of us there is certainly no harm in the cessation  of life, as there is no shame either. - not self-chosen, not damaging to the common interest. Rather there is good, in that it falls in due season for the Whole, thereby both giving and receiving benefit. Thus too a man walks with god's support when his choice and his direction carry him along god's own path. 

BOOK 12 -23

Any one individual activity which comes to an end at the appropriate time suffers no harm from its cessation: nor has the agent suffered any harm simply because this particular action has ceased. In the same way,  then, if the total of all his actions which constitutes a man's life comes to an end at the appropriate time,  it suffers no harm from the mere fact of cessation: nor is the agent who brings this series of actions to a timely end exposed to any harm. The time and the term are assigned by nature -sometimes man's own nature, as in old age, but in any case by the nature of the Whole, which through the constant changing of its constituent parts keeps the while world ever young and fresh.

BOOK 12 -22

That all is as thinking makes it so - and you control your thinking. So remove your judgements whenever you wish and then there is calm - as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of the waveless bay.

BOOK 12 -21

That in a short while you will be nobody and nowhere; and the same of all that you now see and all who are now alive. It is the nature of all things to change, to perish and be transformed, so that in succession different things can come to be.

BOOK 12 -20

First, nothing aimless or without ulterior reference. Second, no reference to any end other than the common good.

BOOK 12 -19

Realize at long last that you have within you something stronger and more numinous than those agents of emotions which make you a puppet on theirs strings. What is in my mind at this very moment? Fear, is it? Suspicion? Desire? Something else of that sort?

BOOK 12 -18

Your impulse on every occasion should be to a complete survey of what exactly this thing is which is making an impression on your mind - to open it out by analysis into cause, material, reference, and the time span within which it must cease to be.

BOOK 12 -17

If it is not right, don't do it: If it is not true don't say it.

BOOK 12 -16

Presented with the impression that someone has done wrong, how do I know that this was a wrong? And if it was indeed a wrong, how do I know that he was not already condemning himself. which is the equivalent of tearing his own face?

   Wanting the bad man not do wrong is like wanting the fig tree not to produce rennet in its figs, babies not to cry, horses not to neigh, or any other inevitable fact of nature. What else can he do with a state of mind like this? So if you are really keen, cure his state.

BOOK 12 -15

The light of a lamp shines on and does not lose its radiance until it is extinguished. Will then the truth, justice, and self-control which fuel you fail before your own end?

BOOK 12 - 14

Either the compulsion of destiny and an order allowing no deviation, or a providence open to prayer, or a random welter without direction. Now if undeviating compulsion, why resist it? If a providence admitting the placation of prayer, make yourself worthy of divine assistance. If an ungoverned welter, be glad that such a maelstrom you have within yourself a directing mind of your own: if the flood carries you away, let it take your flesh, your breath, all else - but it will not carry away your mind.

BOOK 12 -13

How absurd - and a complete stranger to the world -is the man surprised at any aspect of his existence in life!

BOOK 12 - 12-2

Do not blame men either: all their wrongs are unwilled. No one, then, should be blamed.

BOOK 12 -12

Do not blame the gods: they do no wrong, willed or unwilled.

BOOK 12 -11

What liberty man has to do only what god will approve, and to welcome all that god assigns him in this course of nature!

BOOK 12 -10

See things for what they are, analyzing into material, cause, and reference.

BOOK 12 -9

The model for the application of your principles is the boxer rather than the gladiator. The gladiator puts down or takes up the sword he uses, but the boxer always has his hands and needs only to clench them into fists.

BOOK 12 -8

Look at causation stripped bare of its covers; what is pain? What is pleasure? What is death? What is fame? Who is not himself the cause of his own unrest? Reflect how no one is hampered by any other; and that all is as thinking makes it so.

BOOK 12 -7

How one should be in both body and soul when overtaken by death; the shortness of life, the immensity of time future and past, the feebleness of all things material.

BOOK 12 -6

Practice even what you have despaired of mastering. For lack of practice the left hand is awkward for most tasks, but has a stronger grip on the bridle than the right -it is practiced in this.

BOOK 12 -5-2

Now if this is indeed the case, you can be sure that if it should have been otherwise the gods would have made it otherwise: because if that t were right, it would also have been possible, and if in accordance with nature, nature would have brought it about. Therefore the fact (if indeed that is a fact) should assure you that it is not to be otherwise.  You can see for yourself that in raising this presumptuous question you are pleading a case with god, But we would not enter such debate with the gods if they were not supremely good and just: and if that is so, they would not have let any part of their ordered arrangements of the world escape them through neglect of justice or reason.

BOOK 12 -5

However was it that the gods, who have ordered all else so well and with such love for men, overlooked this one thing, that some men, the very best of them, those who had conducted, as it were, the most commerce with the divine and reached the closest relation to it through their acts of devotion and  their observances - that these men, once dead, should meet perpetual extinction rather than some return to existence?

BOOK 12 -4

I have often wondered how it is that everyone loves himself more than anyone else, but rates his own judgement of himself below that of others. Anyway, if a god or some wise tutor appeared at his side and told him to entertain no internal thought or intention which he won't immediately broadcast outside, he would not tolerate this regime for a single day. So it is that we have more respect for what our neighbors will think of us than we have of ourselves.

BOOK 12 -3-2

If, as I say, you separate from the directing mind of yours the baggage of passion, time further and past, and make yourself like Empedocles' 'perfect round rejoicing in the solitude it enjoys', and seek only to perfect this life you are living in the present, you will be able at least to live out the time remaining before your death calmly, kindly, and at peace with the god inside you.

BOOK 12 -3

There are three things in your composition: body, breath, and mind. The first two are yours to the extent that you must take care of them, but only the third is in the full sense your own. So, if you separate from yourself - that is, from your mind - all that others say or do, all that you yourself have said or done, and associate breath bring on you without your choice, all that is whirled round in the external vortex encircling use, so that your power of mind, transcending now all contingent ties, can exist on its own, pure and liberated, doing what is just, willing what happens to it, and saying what is true.

BOOK 11 -3

God sees all our directing minds stripped of their material vessels, their husks and their dross. His contact is only between his intelligence and what has flowed from him into these channels of ours. If you train yourself to do the same, you will be rid of what so distracts you. Hardly likely, is it, that one blind to the enveloping flesh will spend his time eying clothes, houses, reputation, or any other such trappings and stage scenery?

BOOK 12 -2

If, then when you finally come close to your exit, you have left all else behind and value only your directing mind and the divinity within you, if your fear is not that you will cease to live, but that you never started a life in accordance with nature, then you will be a man worthy of the universe that gave you birth. You will no longer be a stranger in your own country, no longer meet the day's events as if bemused by the unexpected, no longer hang on this or that.

BOOK 12 -1

All that you pray to reach at some point in the circuit of your life can be yours now if you are generous to yourself. That is, if you leave all the past behind, entrust the future to Providence, and direct the present solely to reverence and justice. To reverence, so that you come to love your given lot: it was Nature that brought it to you and you to it. To justice, so that you are open and direct in word and action, speaking the truth, observing law and proposition in all you do. You should let nothing stand in your way; not the inequity of others, not what anyone else thinks or says, still less any sensation of this poor flesh tag has accreted round you: the afflicted part must see to its own concern.

BOOK 11 -39

Socrates used to question thus. 'What do you want to have? The souls of rational or irrational beings?' 'What sort of rational beings?

The pure or the lower?'

'The pure.' 

'Why then don't you aim for that?'

'Because we have to.'

'Why then your fighting and disagreements?'

BOOK 11 -38

Again, 'So this is not a contest for a trivial prize: at issue is madness or sanity.'

BOOK 11 -37

Another saying of his. 'We must discover an art of assess, and in the whole field of our impulses take care to ensure that each impulse is conditional, has a social purpose, and is proportionate to the value of his goal. We must keep absolutely clear of personal motivation, and at the same time show no disinclination to anything outside immediate control.

BOOK 11 -36

'No thief can steal your will' - so Epicetus

BOOK 11 -35

Grapes, unripened, raisined: all changes, not into non-existence, but into not yet existence.