Which is also why, according to a celebrated Buddhist proverb, you must learn to live as if this present moment were the most vital of your whole life, and as if those people in whose company you find yourself were the most important in your life. For nothing else exists, in truth: the past is no longer and the future is not yet. These temporal dimensions are real only to the imagination, which we ‘shoulder’ – like the ‘beasts of burden’ mocked by Nietzsche – merely to justify our incapacity to embrace what Nietzsche called (in entirely Stoic mode) amor fati: the love of reality for itself. Happiness lost, bliss deferred, and, by the same token, the present receding, consigned to nothingness whereas it is the only true dimension of existence.
It is with this perspective that the Discourses of Epictetus aimed to develop one of the more celebrated themes of Stoicism: namely, that the good life is a life stripped of both hopes and fears. In other words, a life reconciled to what is the case, a life which accepts the world as it is. As you can see, this reconciliation cannot sit alongside the conviction that the world is divine, harmonious and inherently good.
Here is how Epictetus puts the matter to his pupil: you must chase from your ‘complaining’ spirit
all grief, fear, desire, envy, malice, avarice, effeminacy and in temperance. But these can be expelled only by looking to God, and attaching yourself to him alone, and con and con secrating yourself to his commands. If you wish for anything else, you will only be following what is stronger than you, with sighs and groans, always seeking happiness outside yourself, and never able to find it: for you seek it where it is not, and neglect to seek it where it is. (Discourses, II, 16, 45–7)
This passage must of course be read in a ‘cosmic’ or pantheistic sense, rather than in a monotheistic sense (monotheism: the belief in only one God).
Let us be very clear about this: the God of whom Epictetus speaks is not the personal God of Christianity, but merely an embodying of the cosmos, another name for the principle of universal reason which the Greeks named the Logos: the true face of destiny, that we have no choice but to accept, and should yearn for with our entire soul. Whereas, in fact, victims as we are of commonplace illusions, we keep thinking that we must oppose it so as to bend it to our purposes. As the master advises his pupil, once more:
We must bring our own will into harmony with whatever comes to pass, so that none of the things which happen may occur against our will, nor those which do not happen be wished for by us. Those who have settled this as the philosopher’s task have it in their power never to be disappointed in their desires, or fall prey to what they wish to avoid, but to lead personal lives free from sorrow, fear and perturbation. (Discourses, II, 14, 7–8)
Of course, such advice seems absurd to ordinary mortals: amounting to an especially insipid version of fatalism. This sort of wisdom might pass for folly, because it is based upon a vision of the world which requires a conceptual effort out of the ordinary to be grasped. But this is precisely what distinguishes philosophy from ordinary discussion, and, to me, why it possesses an irreplaceable charm.
I am far from being an advocate of Stoic resignation, and later on, when we touch upon contemporary materialism, I will explain more fully why this is so. However, I admire the fact that – when things are going well! – Stoicism can seem to offer a form of wisdom. There are moments when we seem to be here not to transform the world, but simply to be part of it, to experience the beauty and joy that it offers to us. For example, you are in the sea, scuba diving, and you put on your mask to look at the fish. You are not there to change things, to improve them, or to correct them; you are there to admire and accept things. It is somewhat in this spirit that Stoicism encourages us to reconcile ourselves to what is, to the present as it occurs, without hopes and regrets. Stoicism invites us to enjoy these moments of grace, and, to make them as numerous as possible, it suggests that we change ourselves rather than the order of things.
To move on from this concept to another essential Stoic counsel: because the only dimension of reality is the present, and because, of its nature, the present is in constant flux, it is wise for us to cultivate indifference or non-attachment to what is transient. Otherwise we store up the worst sufferings for ourselves.
Non-attachment
Stoicism, in a spirit remarkably close to that of Buddhism, appeals for an attitude of ‘non-attachment’ towards the things of this world. The Tibetan masters would no doubt have approved of this text from Epictetus:
The principal and highest form of training, and one that stands at the very entrance to happiness, is, that when you become attached to something, let it not be as to something which cannot be taken away, but rather, as to something like an earthenware pot or crystal goblet, so that if it breaks, you may remember what kind of thing it was and not be distressed. So in this, too, when you kiss your child, or your brother, or your friend, never give way entirely to your affections, nor free rein to your imagination; but curb it, restrain it, like those who stand behind generals when they ride in triumph and remind them that they are but men. Remind yourself likewise that what you love is mortal, that what you love is not your own. It is granted to you for the present, and not irrevocably, not for ever, but like a fig or a bunch of grapes in the appointed season … What harm is there while you are kissing your child to murmur softly, ‘Tomorrow you will die’? (Discourses, III, 24 84–8)
Let us be clear about what Epictetus is saying: it is not in any sense a case of being indifferent, as we might know it, and even less of lacking in the obligations which compassion imposes upon us in respect of others and, most importantly, of those close to us. He is saying that we must distrust all attachments that make us forget what the Buddhists call ‘impermanence’: the fact that nothing is stable in this world, that everything passes and changes, and that not to understand this is to create for oneself a hopelessness about what is past and a hope of what is yet to come. We must learn to content ourselves with the present, to love the present to the point of desiring nothing else and of regretting nothing whatsoever. Reason, which is our guide and which invites us to live in accordance with the harmony of the cosmos, must therefore be purified of that which weighs it down and falsifies it, whenever it strays into the unreal dimensions of time past and time future.
But once the truth of this is grasped we are still far from putting it into practice. Which is why Marcus Aurelius invites his disciples to embody it practically:
So, if you separate, as I say, from this governing self [i.e the mind] what is attached to it by passions, and what of time is left to run or has already flown, and make yourself like the sphere of Empedocles, ‘rounded, rejoicing in the solitude which is about it’, and practise only to live the life you are living, that is the present, then it will be in your power at least to live out the time that is left until you die, untroubled and dispensing kindness, and reconciled with your own good daemon. (Meditations, XII, 3)
As we shall see, this is precisely what Nietzsche refers to in his suggestive phrase, ‘the innocence of becoming’. To attain this level of wisdom, we must have the courage to live our lives under the guidance of the ‘future perfect’ tense.
‘When Catastrophe Strikes, I Will Be Ready’
What might this mean? Epictetus is speaking about his child, and what is at stake is once again death and the victories that philosophy can enable us to gain over (fear of) death. It is in this sense that the most practical of exercises connect to the most exalted spirituality. To live in the present and detach oneself from the regrets and anguish that define the past and the future is indeed to savour each moment of existence as it merits; in the full awareness that, for us mortals, it may be our last.
Your time is circumscribed, and unless you use it to attain calm of mind, time will be gone and you will be gone