Vedanta offers the complete teaching on realizing what our true nature is as the nondual Self, or Consciousness. In order for Self-knowledge to obtain, we need a means of knowledge capable of removing ignorance, which is the identification we all have with our body/mind and our personal identity. The means of knowledge that Vedanta provides is elegantly equipped to do this, assuming the inquirer is qualified. Which basically means they have the right values and a mind capable of self-inquiry.
While Vedanta stands alone, there are many schools of thought, especially in philosophy, that help us to live good lives that are in harmony with Vedantic principles. One of them is Stoicism, the ancient Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium. Like other philosophical paths, Stoicism is not a valid means of knowledge to realize the Self because it is purely about living a better life as a person. Like any philosophical teaching, it is open to interpretation. However, like Vedanta, it can be applied to everyday life to help us live happier lives and become more resilient to things that threaten our peace of mind.
Though the teachings of Vedanta are not open to interpretation because they are the eternal logic of existence, in accordance with Vedanta, Stoicism teaches that virtue, which is the highest good, is based on knowledge; that the wise live in harmony with divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and indifference to the vicissitudes of fortune, pleasure and pain is the way to peace of mind.
If you are familiar with the teachings of Vedanta, you can easily see where and how the above principles correspond to its teachings. Vedanta’s main principle is that to live a good life, virtue, which translates to dharma based on non-injury in thought, word and deed, is essential. Reason/Fate or Providence equals Isvara and the forces that govern everything in reality, the gunas; indifference to fortune, or karma, whether in pleasure and pain, is living with the karma yoga attitude.
In Stoicism, there are three core skills, outlined by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, that lay a solid foundation for the practice of its main precepts. I will add next to them the Vedantic principle they correlate to.
These are:
Stoicism: The Discipline of Assent: learning to be mindful of our judgments and words;
Vedanta: Discrimination, dispassion, endurance, control of mind and speech;
Stoicism: The Discipline of Desire: learning to accept fate – Amor Fati;
Vedanta: Karma yoga, surrender to God – bhakti yoga (devotional practice and attitude to life);
Stoicism: The Discipline of Action: learning to act well with regards to others and mankind as a whole;
Vedanta: Karma yoga (appropriate action and surrender to Isvara), mind management (guna yoga) to neutralize likes and dislikes and negate the idea of doership.
1. THE DISCIPLINE OF ASSENT
The discipline of assent is to see things clearly as they are, rather than how we want them to be or clouded by our judgments, preconceptions, prejudices, and biases. It is in non-acceptance of what reality (i.e., God) brings to us, and wanting things to be different by imposing our likes and dislikes that is the main cause of our suffering and dissatisfaction.
This discipline also involves an awareness of how we judge the things around us through the filters of our psychological framework, or conditioning. It is a reminder that life is not necessarily how we see it; our judgments will define how we respond, think, act, and feel emotionally. Therefore, if our judgments are negative, we are more likely to react destructively and harbour negative emotions. This self-awareness, or knowledge, can help us catch our emotions in the act and, in doing so, avoid the snap judgments or impulsive actions that we must avoid to live a good life.
It involves our ability to counteract negative thoughts about ourselves and others with fair-mindedness and compassion, to speak with thoughtfulness and consideration for how our words impact others, and to keep silent when it is not necessary to speak. It is to act rationally and wisely according to knowledge and reason, not purely by our emotions.
This awareness is essentially the practice of knowledge-based mindfulness. In Vedanta, it is the practice of taking the nondual perspective of the witness, Consciousness, the observer of your mind in the present moment, and using this knowledge to control imposing your likes and dislikes on life. In this way, we change the filters of the seer who looks at life through the lens of its likes and dislikes and feels dissatisfied by what it sees, so wants things to be different. We know that the seer is not the same but not different from the seen, the subject and object are only seemingly different. We become the seer who sees only itself, Consciousness. In this way, we live a God-centered life that has one overarching purpose: to live in harmony with whatever life presents to us, and take appropriate dharma-based action where necessary.
Epictetus once said:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own views.”
This teaching highlights the fact that we can decide how we look at the world by understanding how our thoughts and emotions (subjective reality, gunas) influences how we see things. When we clean up our subjective filters with knowledge of the how the gunas function, we change the way we look at things, and the things we look at change.
Examples of this can be seen in daily life: This traffic is a nightmare. My terrible boss has asked me to work late. Some idiot almost crashed into me. Why are you being so difficult? I will never be good/smart/beautiful enough….etc.
We add “guna-based value judgments” to things all the time without knowing it, and without knowing it, these judgments seep into how we think, feel, and behave. If you’re new to all this, there’s a high chance you do this a lot.
In reality, to a Stoic, as to a true Vedantin, life just is the way it is. No more, no less. How things are is the karma the field (God) delivers to us, not intrinsically good or bad. It’s the individual that adds the judgment. Slowly, day by day, through practicing this habit of knowledge-based mindful awareness, we can incrementally remove these value judgments from our thought processes, and our experiences. As a result, we improve the way we think, feel, and act toward what happens around us, and peace of mind grows.
2. THE DISCIPLINE of DESIRE
If the discipline of assent is deciding how we view things, the discipline of desire is deciding what we want. As Vedantins, what we want most is to examine why we want what we want. Desires that are not contrary to dharma are no problem, such as doing what we need to do on a daily basis, working towards a goal to better our lives and for the good of all, or keeping up good lifestyle habits. It is gratuitous desires in the form of likes and dislikes that are the problem. They turn the mind outwards to manipulate our reality, hoping to get something we do not have or avoid something we do not want. It is in wanting things to be other than the way they are that causes suffering.
In the Stoic or Vedantic view, this can be seen as the practice of living in accordance with the nature of the universe, or to Isvara. This means not wanting anything to happen that conflicts with nature’s laws. We have surrendered to life, or to God, whatever you want to call it. It is living with that one overarching purpose, which is to take direction from life itself what we think, say, or do next. This is the practice of karma and bhakti yoga.
Epictetus expresses this in the following quote:
“Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”
Life will unfold as a result of nature. Isvara alone is omniscient and controls the dharma field. People die, storms will rage, things decay, night turns to day, we age, and time goes by. All of this is part of the natural order of the universe, and Epictetus, as well as Vedanta, instruct us to accept this and avoid falling into the trap of a wishing life unfolded as per our own desires. God takes care of the total first.
This is an important lesson because much of our suffering—our stress, anger, frustration, resentment, or grief—comes when we anchor our emotions and feelings to our expectations, when we don’t get what we want or do get what we don’t want.
We can take appropriate action and achieve our goals, but ultimately, the majority of what happens around us is outside our control. As Vedanta points out, the Stoics recognized this and saw that when our wellbeing is linked to something outside our control, it becomes fragile, bound to rise and fall depending on what happens around us. We live in fear, stress and anxiety. Generally, the greater our desire for an outcome, the more we suffer when it doesn’t happen. Hence the importance of karma yoga, dispassion towards results.
Amor Fati
As an antidote to this kind of suffering, the Stoics learned to love fate, a practice called “amor fati”. When we can learn to love fate, which is just a term to describe Isvara, and accept that fate is simply the natural laws of nature acting out across time, we can free ourselves of our expectations and therefore free our wellbeing from being bound to that which is outside our control. We can then meet each and every moment of life as a sacred moment.
Nietzsche once wrote:
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”
3. THE DISCIPLINE OF ACTION
For the Stoic, the things we do are either good, bad, or indifferent. The discipline of action is the choice to behave in alignment with the principles of ethics.
For the Vedantin, the discipline of action is to live in harmony with dharma, which is basically, the value of non-injury. This means personal dharma, which is living in accordance with your nature and in harmony with what life presents to you, which is situational ethics. Both must be in accordance with universal dharma, or surrender to God, which also involves non-injury in thought, word and deed.
Things are good if they result in peace of mind and cause no injury to yourself or anyone else. Things are bad if they cause anxiety and stress because they are in conflict with virtue and cause injury to yourself and others. Everything else is indifferent. For example:
Good: Acting with virtue. Stoics believed that as virtue is the only good, anything outside of virtue can only be indifferent or bad. Good can be showing courage in the face of fear, showing moderation despite the desire to be greedy or indulge in addictive behaviour, being just to those around us and not allowing our own incentives to get in the way of what is right. Good is keeping silent when you know your words are unnecessary or could cause injury.
Bad: This can be any action that is not virtuous, meaning, causes injury. For example, lying to someone to avoid responsibility, speaking unkindly or thoughtlessly, ignoring moderation, and choosing laziness, greed, and bad habits. It could be ignoring justice and taking advantage of other people or the community to get ahead. It can also include cowardice and shying away from doing what is right, or avoiding anything you know you need to do.
Indifferent: To the Stoics, there were many things that fell under indifference. For example, money, possessions, fame, etc. can all be things that we can use for good or for bad. In and of themselves, these things are not good or bad; they are simply indifferent.
What is Virtue?
To act with virtue, we need to define exactly what virtuous behaviour is. The Stoics defined four cardinal virtues, which all concur with Vedanta:
Wisdom – In Stoicism, this is the ability to use reason (knowledge) to think and speak rationally. Our capacity to see things for what they are, free from judgment, bias, and prejudice. This includes our ability to determine what is good, bad, and indifferent. In Vedanta, this is called discriminating satya ( the impersonal witness/Consciousness, ever-present and unchanging) from mithya (the personal seer, always changing, not always present).
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where, then, do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own” — Epictetus
Justice – Our ability to treat others with moral integrity, compassion, and fairness. This is the Stoic virtue of being a good citizen and a good neighbour, and again, it is the Vedanta value of non-injury in thought, word and deed. The virtue of justice in this context is much broader than the way we use the word today, which is often used in a legal context. It extends to how we behave generally as part of a group, and part of humanity as a whole.
“And a commitment to justice in your own acts. Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good. What you were born to do.” — Marcus Aurelius
Temperance – Temperance is a combination of mindfulness and self-control, or self-discipline. In Vedanta it is called titiksha, the value of endurance, acceptance and renunciation. The Stoics saw temperance as our capacity to resist the pull of our desires, fears, and passions. In Vedanta it is mind management, and management of the senses. However, to do this effectively, we need to be aware of the things that pull at us in this way; this is where the mindful nature of temperance comes into play. In Vedanta, what is invaluable as a tool to manage the mind is knowledge of the three forces that govern it, rajas (desire/action), tamas (denial/dullness) and sattva (clarity/peace). Every thought and emotion is governed by these three gunas, and they create our likes and dislikes. In addition to this, we need the practice of karma yoga – surrender of the results to Isvara.
“Since habit is such a powerful influence, and we’re used to pursuing our impulses to gain and avoid outside our own choice, we should set a contrary habit against that, and where appearances are really slippery, use the counterforce of our training.” – Epictetus
Courage – Courage is our ability to do the right thing despite pressure not to. Courage is closely connected with temperance in that they both require us to overcome our passions and desires. However, courage is specifically about overcoming fear or hesitation and procrastination. This could be stepping in when someone is threatening another person, standing up for your values, and very importantly, giving up the need to be right or admitting when we are wrong. It could even be challenging our boss when we think our business is non-compliant, or a friend or relative when they are breaking dharma. Mostly, it is having the courage to live an impeccable dharmic life, no fine print, no matter what life brings to us.
“There are misfortunes which strike the sage – without incapacitating him, of course – such as physical pain, infirmity, the loss of friends or children, or the catastrophes of his country when it is devastated by war. I grant that he is sensitive to these things, for we do not impute to him the hardness of a rock or of iron. There is no virtue in putting up with that which one does not feel.” – Seneca
Living a dharmic life based on these principles is not complicated. But it is not easy because our personal conditioning stands in the way and will trip us up. Therefore, to succeed, we need to submit the mind to self-inquiry to understand what it is, how and where it originated from, and what conditions it. It is the contention of Vedanta that only with knowledge can we succeed at managing the mind and keep it in line so that our lives are an expression of wisdom
Sundari
