Read the biography of Epictetus
Buy Epictetus’ ‘Discourses and Selected Writings’
Click here to read ‘Stoic Advice from Epictetus on the Art of Living – Part 1′
More stoic lessons from Epictetus to help you learn how to improve and remain happy in life.
Read the biography of Epictetus
Buy Epictetus’ ‘Discourses and Selected Writings’
I will be posting selected passages from Epictetus’ two books: ‘The Discourses’ and ‘The Handbook’
I begin the series with two such passages of stoicism to help you attain a free and peaceful mind, as well as learning the virtues of contented living. Read more…
In an earlier post entitled ‘The Simple Way of Living Towards Peace of Mind’, I shared my own thoughts on living with simplicity, something which walks hand in hand with contentedness on a merry journey towards peace of mind.
So let us call up a wise Chinese Sage of ancient times to start this lesson with a contentment quote or two,
“Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
~ Lao Tzu
We are forever discontented in mind because of the need to complicate our lives with striving for external pleasures and vanities. We are like spoilt children who are given a large amount of toys to play with – we then eventually become bored with them, disposing of them one at a time until we become restless, and then want a particular toy another child has so to temporarily fill the unhappy void of discontentment.
Why is it so difficult to live simply? Wouldn’t it save us a lot of time and effort if we took the simple course of action rather than choosing a more complex one?
What does living simply mean? Well to begin with, one must have the clarity of mind to live simply. Life can become more difficult than it already is once we start to complicate matters by accumulating convoluted knowledge which can obscure clarity and make us disorganised.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
~ Confucius
Latest Comments