On Philosophical Meditation. A personal letter on the use of…
By: George Popovic
Tags: History, Spirituality, Stoicism, Meditation, Philosophy

Marcus’ sentiment does positively, if but superficially, describe some sort of spiritual practice that would (I imagine) have been employed by the Stoics to a similar end as that of the Buddhists — the cultivation of virtue and equianimity.

This is perhaps a bold and ill-founded claim (as even scholars such as Pierre Hadot admit the dearth of evidence in ancient texts for spiritual practices), and yet one that I would like to have a little faith in.

I think that it naturally shares some similarity to the praemeditatio malorum (the visualization of potential evils) which Seneca the Younger describes:

“Gentle comes the blow of misfortune that has been anticipated. But to fools who trust fortune every prospect seems ‘new and unexpected’. For the inexperienced a great part of the misfortune lies in the novelty. To understand this, reflect that people can endure what they thought were hardships more bravely when they have gotten used to them. And so a wise person gets used to future misfortunes and what other people make bearable by long suffering he makes bearable by prolonged thinking. Sometimes we hear the voices of inexperienced people saying, ‘I knew this was in store for me.’ The wise person knows that everything is in store for him. Whatever happened, he says ‘I knew it.’” Letter 76.34–35, Trans. by Brad Inwood

Or that described by Epictetus:

“Your duty is to prepare for death and imprisonment, torture and exile — and all such evils — with confidence, because you have faith in the one who has called on you to face them, having judged you worthy of the role.” Discourses 2.1.39–40, Trans. by R. Dobbins

The key to the praemeditatio, if I might suggest as much, is the visualization of events and images from a distance — with a degree of restraint, if you would. The distance itself can only be enacted when the mind is made still, and, simultaneously, when it is most plastic.

If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself.

Rehearse, as Seneca advises, the common ills of human life (e.g., death, loss, separation, the whole host of burdens we suffer) and yet, in picturing them, place yourself ‘away’ from them (there is an odd physicality to mental images).

Carve, as it were, a gap between the consciousness which experiences these things as if they were real and immediate (as we do in everyday life, when an impression first arises, e.g., in the case of physical sensations or the phenomenology of the emotions), and the consciousness which is itself aware of that experience — the experience of that which experiences.

All the while repeat some of the maxims which one is wont to hear from the Stoics, e.g.,

“ I am not eternal, but a man; a part of the whole, as an hour is part of a day. I must come on as the hour and like an hour pass away.” Epictetus, Discourses II.5.13–14, Trans. by W.A. Oldfather

This is the stage, I imagine, where the reformation of ourselves begins; impressions are difficult to assuage amongst the clamor of things in everyday life, and so we must begin to prune the passions at the level at which they arise — to pull them up from the roots.