Meditiations by Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A book shorn of religious overtones but imparting simple wisdom for living a happy and fruitful life

Body, soul, mind. To the body belong sense perceptions, to the soul impulses, to the mind judgements.
So one should pass through this tiny fragment of time in tune with nature, and leave it gladly, as an olive might fall when ripe, blessing the earth which bore it and grateful to the tree which gave it growth.
Take the baking of bread. The loaf splits here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker’s profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite. Figs likewise burst open at full maturity: and in olives ripened on the tree the very proximity of decay lends a special beauty to the fruit. Similarly, the ears of corn nodding down to the ground, the lion’s puckered brow, the foam gushing from the bear’s mouth, and much besides – looked at in isolation these things are far from lovely, but their consequence on the processes of Nature enhances them and gives them attraction.
Love the art which you have learnt, and take comfort in it. Go through the remainder of your life in the sincere commitment of all your beings to the gods, and ever making yourself tyrant or salve to any man.
Gladly surrender yourself to Clotho: let her spin your thread into whatever web she wills.
All is ephemeral, both memory and the object of the memory.
You are a soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

Just what the Bhagvadgita says

If you are doing you proper duty let it not matter to you whether you are cold or warm. Whether you are sleepy or well-slept, whether men speak badly or well of you, even whether you are on the point of death or doing something else: because even this, the act in which we die, is one of the acts of life, and so here too it suffices to ‘make the best move you can’.
Revere the ultimate power in the universe: this is what makes use of all things and directs all things. But similarly revere the ultimate power in yourself: this is akin to that other power. In you too this is what makes use of all else, and your life is governed by it.
Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence….When you have done good and another has benefited, why do you still look, as fools , for a third thing besides – credit for good works, or a return?

A book to be kept by the bedside and dipped into everyday on getting up in the morning, or when one is inordinately euphoric or down in the dumps.

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