art of living

Do external things distract you? Give yourself time to learn something new and constructive. Stop being whirled about. But you must also avoid being swept the other way, and become a trifler grown weary by a purposeless life, with thoughts and activities flying in all directions.

11. Don’t fall prey to following the opinions of your enemy, search out the truth yourself.

We are all part of One; we are One. This being so, it should not make any difference whom we love. Love should be essentially an act of will, of decision to commit my life completely to that of one other person.

Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.” In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

praise? Or spoiled by disrespect? Is an emerald made ugly by lack of attention? How about gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a knife, a flower, a shrub?

Recall how long you’ve been putting off these things, how often you have received an opportunity from the gods and yet did nothing. You must finally accept that you are part of the universe, one with a grand administrator, the spring to your small stream. You have a limited, fixed time here, and if you fail to clear the clouds from your mind, it

breaks it up in order to know it; or it takes an animal apart; cruelly tears off the wings of a butterfly in order to know it, to force its secret. The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life.

Besides such exercises, one must learn to be concentrated in everything one does, in listening to music, in reading a book, in talking to a person, in seeing a view. The activity at this very moment must be the only thing that matters, to which one is fully given.

her). The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love—is the source of shame. It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety.