Insights From Epictetus' Manual for Living and Richard Bach's Illusions

For decades, I collected a large number of books--many more than I could read, though I did my best and read a lot of them. Recently, I have begun the process of pruning my book collection to a manageable size, reluctantly yet enthusiastically parting company with books that I realize I do not have the time and/or inclination to read. Yes, "reluctantly yet enthusiastically"--at some level I probably will always have a deep seated aversion to parting company with any book, yet I am enthusiastic about focusing my efforts on reading books as opposed to managing a book collection.

I have also made a determined effort to seek counsel, wisdom and comfort from brief yet meaningful books on days that I know will be challenging emotionally, mentally and/or physically (for example, long travel days involving my parenting time with my daughter Rachel). Last month, I read Epictetus’ Manual for Living on one such day (the specific edition is Sharon Lebell's "new interpretation" published by HarperCollins in 1994). Yesterday, I read Richard Bach’s Illusions. Both books have been in my collection for at least 20 years, yet I had never read either one before.

I wonder how my life would be different had I spent less time/effort buying books and more time/effort reading them, but that would have required me obtaining the realization that it is not possible to read EVERYTHING, which would have been a psychologically uncomfortable admission of defeat (or perceived defeat) that was inconceivable for me to make; only by reframing the issue more realistically (I can't read everything, so I better focus on reading that which is most significant/meaningful) was I able to achieve a more productive outlook. I do not completely regret my earlier mentality, as it is a worthy goal to try to gain as much knowledge as possible; I recall a reviewer noting that Norman Mailer's goal was to be the greatest novelist ever and, whether or not one believes that he achieved that distinction, it was a meaningful goal and he produced works of lasting value while pursuing that bold quest.

The Manual for Living contains several gems that resonate with me. Here are a few:

1) "Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within our control, and some things are not."

2) "From now on practice saying to everything that appears unpleasant: 'You are just an appearance and by no means what you appear to be.'" Epictetus then advises classifying the appearance as either something that one can control or something that one cannot control, and if one cannot control it then one should train oneself not to worry about it.

3) "Regardless of what others profess, they may not truly live by spiritual values. Be careful whom you associate with. It is human to imitate the habits of those with whom we interact. We inadvertently adopt their interests, their opinions, their values, and their habit of interpreting events. Though many people mean well, they can just the same have a deleterious influence on you because they are undisciplined about what is worthy and what isn't. Just because some people are nice to you doesn't mean you should spend time with them."

Three concepts from Illusions grabbed me:

1) "Like attracts like. Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well."

2) "The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

3) "Only a few people are interested in what you have to say, but that's all right. You don't tell the quality of a master by the size of his crowds..."

I will let the reader ponder five of those quotes without further commentary but I will expound on the second quote from Illusions. That quote suggests a multi-part inquiry: Do you believe that evil exists and, if so, do you believe that good ultimately triumphs over evil, either in this world or in some form of afterlife? Or, do you believe, as the quote suggests, that things which seem unjust to us are in fact part of a larger scheme of things in which injustice does not exist? My strong inclination is to believe that evil is real and that we have an individual and collective responsibility to combat evil as forcefully as possible. Regarding whether or not there is a larger picture/higher truth that we are not able to perceive from our current vantage point, I am unsure both if that is true and if it is relevant; I certainly want to believe that this is true but I also tend to incline toward the view that the Holocaust rendered some philosophies/viewpoints irrelevant, if not obscene and disrespectful to the memory of the innocent victims. I struggle to perceive a larger picture in which throwing live babies into crematoria is somehow equivalent to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. I understand conceptually the argument that the Holocaust was a failure of man, not God, but it is hard to reconcile the idea of a Being who is all-knowing/all-powerful with a Being who permits such horrors to occur.

Reframing one's perspective is a useful exercise in many aspects of life, but much like the laws of physics collapse at a singularity, many philosophies/perspectives that have great utility nevertheless seem inadequate when applied to the Holocaust (and the same could be said of other evils, though the dimensions, scale and intent of the Holocaust are unprecedented).

In the Star Wars universe, Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker that truth depends on your point of view. Obi-Wan had told Luke that Darth Vader betrayed and killed Luke's father Anakin, when of course what had happened was that Anakin had become Darth Vader. When Luke learned the truth and confronted Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan replied that when Anakin became Darth Vader the good man that he had been no longer existed and therefore from a "certain point of view" what Obi-Wan had said was true.

Luke tended to think in terms of absolutes. When he used the Force to perceive that his friends were in danger, he cut short his training and essentially challenged Vader and Vader's forces all by himself, defying the advice of both Obi-Wan and Yoda, who believed that from the larger perspective the highest priority was that Luke complete his Jedi training, even if Luke's friends might be killed. Luke answered simply that he could help them and that after he helped them he would return to complete his training. Is Luke a hero, is he reckless or is he both? How you answer that question depends on whether you believe that the potential death of Luke's friends is an unjust tragedy or simply part of a bigger picture.

In the end, as Yoda later pointed out, Luke's friends rescued themselves and had to rescue Luke as well, which to Yoda's way of thinking rendered Luke's mission foolhardy. Yoda's perception is that Luke should have followed his training path and let events happen as they would, while Luke felt that he had the power and the responsibility to fight evil with all of his might.

During the Holocaust, the Bielski Partisans battled the Nazis with guerilla warfare while also rescuing thousands of civilians and sheltering them from the death camps. One faction of the Bielski Partisans leadership deemed the civilians who were too young, too old or too infirm to fight as "useless eaters" but the prevailing consensus was that rescuing the helpless gave meaning to the Bielski Partisans' efforts. What would it matter if they blew up a few more supply bridges at the cost of letting their children and elderly relatives perish?

Luke Skywalker thought like a Bielski Partisan; do your best to rescue anyone who you might be able to save and don't just focus on your own training/efforts/path.

Yoda (and Richard Bach) may be right conceptually but as a human being who is pained by the injustice and suffering that I perceive (however illusory it may supposedly turn out to be from some larger perspective), I identify with Luke and the Bielski Partisans.

Don Miguel Ruiz' Five Levels of Attachment and Four Agreements

Don Miguel Ruiz' The Five Levels of Attachment poses a key question: "Are you using knowledge, or is knowledge using you?" His grandmother asked him this when he struggled to translate her words and it took him a while to grasp the full import of her message: he was imposing his own meanings and preconceptions on what she said. Ruiz writes, "This is a simple example of how we narrate life--explaining it, but, more importantly, justifying and judging it. Instead of taking an experience for what it is, we create a story to make it fit our beliefs. During Madre Sarita's talks, I had to completely shut down my thoughts, because if my mind's commentary got in the way, I would miss out on her message. With this simple process, my grandmother showed me that if we only see the world through the filters of our preconceptions, we are going to miss out on actually living. After much practice, I eventually learned to close my eyes, shut out the world that existed outside my head, and translate every single word she said accurately."

Frank Herbert's Whipping Star contains an interesting quote: "If you say 'I understand,' what have you done? You made a value judgment." Assuming that you understand what another person is saying involves an act of interpretation that may not be correct. As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, "You must unlearn what you have learned"; sometimes knowledge can be a prison if that knowledge is used to form preconceptions that prevent us from looking at the big picture.

After reading The Five Levels of Attachment, I researched some of Ruiz' earlier work and I came across his 1997 book The Four Agreements. Those agreements are:

Be Impeccable with Your Word

"Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Impeccable means 'without sin' and a sin is something you do or believe that goes against yourself. It means not speaking against yourself, to yourself or to others. It means not rejecting yourself. To be impeccable means to take responsibility for yourself, to not participate in 'the blame game.'

Regarding the word, the rules of  'action-reaction' apply. What you put out energetically will return to you. Proper use of the word creates proper use of energy, putting out love and gratitude perpetuates the same in the universe. The converse is also true.

Impeccability starts at home. Be impeccable with yourself and that will reflect in your life and your relationships with others. This agreement can help change thousands of other agreements, especially ones that create fear instead of love."

Don't Take Anything Personally

"Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

We take things personally when we agree with what others have said. If we didn't agree, the things that others say would not affect us emotionally. If we did not care about what others think about us, their words or behavior could not affect us.

Even if someone yells at you, gossips about you, harms you or yours, it still is not about you! Their actions and words are based on what they believe in their personal dream.

Our personal 'Book of Law' and belief system makes us feel safe. When people have beliefs that are different from our own, we get scared, defend ourselves, and impose our point of view on others. If someone gets angry with us it is because our belief system is challenging their belief system and they get scared. They need to defend their point of view. Why become angry, create conflict, and expend energy arguing when you are aware of this?"

Don't Make Assumptions

"Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

When we make assumptions it is because we believe we know what others are thinking and feeling. We believe we know their point of view, their dream. We forget that our beliefs are just our point of view based on our belief system and personal experiences and have nothing to do with what others think and feel.

We make the assumption that everybody judges us, abuses us, victimizes us, and blames us the way we do ourselves. As a result we reject ourselves before others have the chance to reject us. When we think this way, it becomes difficult to be ourselves in the world.

Take action and be clear to others about what you want or do not want; do not gossip and make assumptions about things others tell you. Respect other points of view and avoid arguing just to be right. Respect yourself and be honest with yourself. Stop expecting the people around you to know what is in your head."

Always Do Your Best

"Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

Doing your best means enjoying the action without expecting a reward. The pleasure comes from doing what you like in life and having fun, not from how much you get paid. Enjoy the path traveled and the destination will take care of itself.

Living in the moment and releasing the past helps us to do the best we can in the moment. It allows us to be fully alive right now, enjoying what is present, not worrying about the past or the future.

Have patience with yourself. Take action. Practice forgiveness. If you do your best always, transformation will happen as a matter of course."

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Many elements of Ruiz' Agreements are similar to the Jedi philosophy; Yoda counsels Luke Skywalker to avoid attachments and to simply feel the Force, to become one with the way that the Force binds all life forms together. The three epigraphs in my article about Garret Kramer's Stillpower also express this outlook:

Luke Skywalker: "But how am I to know the good side from the bad?"
Yoda: "You will know...when you are calm, at peace, passive."--Dialogue from "The Empire Strikes Back"

"In war, as in life, there is a wrong way and a right way to compete. Avoid danger and greed. Embrace concentration and awareness. And when it becomes inevitable--let go."--Kwai Chang Caine, "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues"

"Colors blind; Sound deafens; Beauty beguiles; the enemy of stillness is desire. Eliminate desire, and the truth will become clear."--Kwai Chang Caine, "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues"

Before Luke Skywalker made his fateful walk into the "domain of evil" cave on Dagobah, he asked Yoda what was in the cave and Yoda responded, "Only what you take with you." The world sometimes seems like a "domain of evil" but ultimately we each find what we take with us: if we take with us anger, fear and weapons then we will find strife, despair and conflict. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never attack, and that is how each of us should use our own powers and gifts; fight for what is important--be willing to die for it if necessary--but do not fight for the sake of fighting or turn every situation into a struggle when it is possible to take a less confrontational approach.

Living and Dying in 4/4 Time

"Some people believe in life after death. I believe in death after life."--Grandmaster Anatoly Lein

"Genius is pain."--John Lennon

"People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing...I'm just watching the wheels go round and round"--John Lennon, "Watching the Wheels"

Somehow, until yesterday it escaped my attention that Matt Dobek--former p.r. director for the Detroit Pistons--committed suicide in late August. Dobek took his life just a few months after the Pistons fired him, had him escorted from team headquarters by security and then informed him that he would not receive his severance package (the Pistons alleged that Dobek had violated a confidentiality agreement). I enjoyed Dobek's book Bad Boys (which detailed the story of Detroit's 1989 championship) but I did not know Dobek; the closest I came to meeting him was being in the same room with him a few times when I covered various Cleveland-Detroit games. I have no idea whether or not he violated the terms of his contract but it does not surprise me that someone who loyally and tirelessly served a franchise for nearly three decades could be summarily fired and then treated like a worthless piece of garbage--that is the way the world works.

Why should the Pistons care about destroying a man's career and pushing him over the brink? All that matters to the Pistons is that they kept their "corporate secrets" safe--and what exactly were those secrets? The only "secret" formula the Pistons have seems to be the one that transforms a championship caliber team into an afterthought.

******

A young man founded a magazine but soon his business went under and he had no money, so his father took out a second mortgage on his house and maxed out his credit cards to help the son start over. Seven years later, the son was a billionaire and he purchased the Washington Redskins. Daniel Snyder did not come from a wealthy family but his father believed in him so much that he literally put everything on the line as a show of faith and an act of support. I wonder what it is like to have someone in your life who believes in you to that extent but I am sure that I will never, ever find out.

There is no such thing as "trying" to help someone; as Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, "Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'" Skywalker subsequently failed to levitate his swamp-bound X-Wing fighter but watched in disbelief as Yoda freed the X-Wing and deposited it gently on dry land. "I don't believe it," Skywalker said. "That is why you fail," replied Yoda.

You either believe in someone and you help that person or you don't. It really is just that simple.

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I have always been fascinated by the thin line between success and failure. The life stories of talented people like William James Sidis and Earl Manigault are compelling and tragic; Sidis may have been as intellectually gifted as anyone who ever lived, while Manigault was a breathtakingly talented basketball player, but Sidis died in obscurity and Manigault became a streetball legend instead of an NBA superstar. When I was younger I spent a lot of time thinking about Sidis, Manigault and other talented "failures" (I am not calling them "failures" but merely describing how the outside world views the disparity between their talents and their publicly known accomplishments) and I tried to figure out if they fell short because of their own internal weaknesses or because society failed them in some way; at that time I thought that the truth is somewhere between those extremes but I was quite sure that I was smarter, tougher and savvier than they had been in terms of achieving my goals: I certainly am well aware of the irony of my youthful perspective in light of the fact that my career is currently on the "Sidis track." It is liberating to just "watch the wheels go round" instead of trying to sell articles to idiots but while my failure to connect with idiots does not disturb me in the least my failure to attain the NM title haunts me to the depths of my soul (melodramatic, pathetic--and true). The bitter irony is that even if do I manage to attain the NM title, I will still be haunted by how long it took (there is nothing quite like having a mind that places you in a no win position combined with a competitive spirit that insists you must find a way to win!).

Maybe 40 years after I am dead the next Amy Wallace will emerge to write a sympathetic biography of me--but if GM Lein is right then that really will not do me much good, will it?