How to Live

First I must decide what life is, then I can decide how to live.

I must have a theory of what nature is, what reality is, why I am here at this place and this time. My beliefs about reality will affect my view of the best way to live and the proper goals for my life. Everyone has some ideas about the nature of reality—even if they don't consciously consider the issue. We all carry unconscious background assumptions that shape our thinking and perception of the world.

If my theory of reality is warped, my theory of life will be warped, too.

I believe that mind is real and that consciousness and experience are the most important facts about reality. If the universe consisted only of unthinking physical "stuff" (as science tells us), I wouldn't be around to wonder about anything. What's most important is not that my body exists, but that it thinks and feels. The most important aspect of nature, then, is that, besides physical existence, it is full of experience. Nature is full of gods.

Because mind is the most important fact about nature, and because I am part of nature, I must focus on my mind above all else. The things around me matter only insofar as they affect my mind. None of the things around me are bad or good, except to the degree I allow them to affect my mind.

Mind is most important, and a life principally devoted to cultivating the mind is the best life of all. Because complex thought most distinguishes humans from the rest of nature, to be most human I need to be most thoughtful.

If I live my life without thought, without considering my place in reality, reflecting on the nature of things, I am not living a truly human life. Any animal can live that way, but only a human can live a truly thoughtful life.

Emotions and Desires

This ability of the outside world to affect our minds makes life challenging, partly because we are constantly buffeted by a storm of sensations. By their very nature, our minds are restless, constantly projecting themselves onto the outside world.

Emotions often erupt without warning, and if we are not careful they can easily sweep us away. We evolved as social animals in a struggle for survival, and emotions developed to help win that struggle. Buried deep within us, left over from our evolutionary past, we all carry desires for safety, comfort, and pleasure. Like many people, I feel their attraction and have spent precious time chasing them. And even though from time to time I have possessed what I desired, those things never really made me happy.

Sensual pleasures dull the mind. The more I indulge in such pursuits, the more I lose control of my thoughts. My mind is the most precious part of me; why, then, would I blunt it? The desire for wealth calls out for "more"—always more, more, more. Once I have met my basic needs, what more should I want? And if I go for fame or honors, then I must depend on the opinions and evaluations of others. Why should I put my happiness under their control?

Happiness is not found outside me. All my emotions happen entirely within my mind. There's no point looking for happiness elsewhere; I can find it only within myself. I value things outside me only insofar as they help me find happiness. But if I make my happiness depend on those things, then I'll be like a dog chasing its own tail.

Isn't it much more reasonable to work on cultivating happiness directly inside myself? Quite literally, happiness is a state of mind. So the best route to happiness is to learn to control your mind. If you don't control your own mind, you have no control over your own happiness.

What is Happiness

True happiness is not a bubbly feeling of delight and should not be confused with joy or euphoria. True happiness is, rather, a form of understanding—knowing who you are and your role in nature. It is not pleasure, or jubilation, or comfort. True happiness encompasses many positive and negative emotions. Although it's an emotion, it can also be found through reason. Happiness is a form of peace that comes from understanding and accepting the world as it is.

On what, then, does happiness depend? I say it depends on the nature of the things I love. If I love vulgar things, then my mind will be polluted. If I love noble things, then my mind will remain free and pure. The things that surround me are perishable, transient, and empty. They can bring me small pleasures, but I must put them in their proper place.

I can be happy if I learn to be simple. The best things in life are easy to get, if I learn to control my desires. Human relationships are the most beautiful gift from the universe and they surround me! A beautiful relationship is free; it costs no money, and asks nothing of me except that I remain open, true, and just. The interplay of two minds is a miracle, a marvel of nature that we each exist and can somehow communicate.

For us, nature's final accomplishment is contemplation, becoming aware, and a way of living in harmony with nature. Make sure, then, that you do not die without having contemplated all these realities . . . will you never realize, then, who you are, why you were born, and what this spectacle is to which you have been admitted?

—Epictetus

Control

Some things are in our control and others are not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in a word, whatever are not our own actions.

—Epictetus

When I look out at the vastness of the night sky and see innumerable stars, I feel small. Several hundred billion stars populate our galaxy, and hundreds of billions of galaxies exist in the universe, each galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars of its own. The universe is so large and so old, I am so small, frail, and temporary by comparison.

I have very little control over the things that lie outside me. Nature proceeds on its course, and I can do little about it. I am swept along as time and matter flow through me. Human affairs are convoluted and unpredictable. However, even though I cannot control those external things, I can control my own mind—my opinions, my beliefs, and my desires.

If I make my happiness depend on external things—on other people, on events I believe must happen in order for me to be happy, on things I believe I must own, on a certain status in society I believe I must have—then I'm a fool. I cannot control any of that, only my own thoughts and actions.

To live a beautiful life, I must shape my mind. I must arch my desires toward a worthy goal. I have to learn how to enjoy the things that come my way, regardless of whether I asked for them. Beauty exists in everything; I just need to learn to see it.

Everything is Full of Gods

Our world is one of tears, of joy and pain. Mind or intelligence is the pervasive ground of the universe, the foundation of existence. Reality is so strange. Truth comes in glimpses and flashes. When those moments disappear, we are left with our inadequate thoughts and concepts, waving our hands, trying desperately to describe small pieces of what surrounds us.

The nature of things is mysterious. We perceive its physical nature and we experience its mental nature. From this fundamental being, everything is composed. Nature is action, it is growth and decay, change and transformation, folding and unfolding into itself, creating within itself all possibility and all life. This cosmos fills each of us.

Many have come before me and many will come after. While I am here, however, I must decide how to live. I cannot waste these moments; all too soon, they will slip away and dissolve back into the ground of creation.

Life is a struggle; but in that struggle comes fulfillment. In that trial comes stillness, when my understanding pierces the veil of nature it breaks free of my small and temporary form to fuse itself back into the universal being, back into the All. When I develop my awareness and achieve a deeper understanding of my own nature, I can see myself in all things and all things in me.