This is a free post for all those who could use a little Marcus in your lives today.
The Buddha, as well as Mick Jagger, said that desire was the cause of suffering.
In more detail, he (the Buddha, that is) laid out his argument as stating that “not getting what you want is suffering and getting what you don’t want is suffering.” The underlying cause of this is “thirst” or “craving,” which is tanha in Pali, the language of the oldest Buddhist texts, and often translated as “desire.” Tanha is the craving for things to be other than they are, or for something that is not present, or for something to remain permanently what it is and not change. These are all impossibilities, hence the suffering. Hence we can’t get no satisfaction.
Desire and aversion are different sides of the same coin, as the Buddha notes above, and their connection to suffering has led many philosophers over time to counsel different strategies of acceptance while setting different boundaries about just how much we should accept.
Marcus Aurelius, at one with Stoics in general, counselled acceptance of things external to one’s own will and natural sphere (that is, to one’s character as a being with reason). Today I read Meditations 5.8 (tr. Waterfield) towards the end of which Aurelius writes, “There are two reasons, then, why you should gladly accept whatever happens to you. First, because the experience happened to you, was prescribed for you, and was the product of a web somehow woven just for you way back in time, out of the most ancient causes.”
“Second, because, for the directing principle of the universe, even what happens to each of us as individuals plays a part in its advancement, perfection, and, by Zeus, its very preservation. After all, any whole is impaired if you cut the connection and continuity of its parts to any extent at all, and the same goes if you cut the chain of its causes. But this is what you do, insofar as it’s in your power, whenever you’re dissatisfied with your lot. In a sense, this is an act of destruction.”
So in essence our ancient Roman Stoic says, “It’s all part of your path, man” and “dude, surrender to the web of the Wyrd.”
Seriously, though, Aurelius says there are two reasons to accept whatever happens to us. The first is simply that it’s happening to you, in other words, it’s part of your very destiny and the fabric of what makes you, you. The causes and conditions that gave birth to you since the beginning of time are the very same ones which caused this thing, whatever it is, that you find hard to accept, to happen. It may seem like it is something alien happening to you, but it is not. Imagining a self abstracted from the flow of life, from these very events, that makes you “you” is a delusion. Embracing what happens to you- amor fati- is simply embracing yourself.
Without the particular matrix of time/space events that are befalling you so annoyingly right now, it’s not that you would be different- you wouldn’t exist at all.
We should note, though that Aurelias is not advocating fatalism. Marcus feels that one should cultivate all of the virtues: courage, wisdom, self-control, discernment, and the rest, and speaks of the importance of fulfilling one’s role in life and of service to one’s community. His philosophy is very proactive. What one is supposed to accept is what happens despite one’s efforts, and apart from the issues of character or rational preference that should concern us- or in other words, what happens outside of one’s will.
This will be a familiar idea to students of Epictetus.
Second, everything that happens is predetermined as part of the weave and weft of the Kosmos, and so Marcus feels that by complaining and resisting what’s happening you’re hacking at the very fabric of life itself. You are in effect a part of a table trying to shift around the other parts of the table in a way that will better suit yourself while destroying the table itself.
As Marcus says, “any whole is impaired if you cut the connection and continuity of its parts to any extent at all, and the same goes if you cut the chain of its causes.” The idea that we can tinker around with what has happened, or that things could have happened any other way, is again a delusion born out of the human capacity for abstraction.
What happens should be accepted, just like our own actions which are now past, whether ten years in the past or tens seconds in the past. Rather than straining at the unfolding web of the Fates, we should limit our question to, “Well, what’s the rational thing to do now?” and then, when we have done that, be content. Our duty is discharged. Spin, O Fates, as you will.
I really liked this translation and your comments. Just a great context - how small our experience is in the cosmic sense but how irreplaceable we are …I really wish the importance of a virtuous response is …courage etc …so many times people take it as the small s stoicism…fatalism…acceptance without agency…thank you for your writing always Matthew!
Just today, a client reached out asking me to address "manifestation" on Substack and/or the pod. Of course, this led to a 20-minute rage-filled monologue about the delicate balance between free will, the willful influence of spirit, and the designs of fate and destiny as a broader mosaic. Perfect timing. Some might even call your wonderful post a synchronicity;)