What Is in Our Power
The Teaching
Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, reputation, command, and whatever are not our own actions.
Now, the things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others.
Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.
Commentary
Epictetus’s fundamental distinction, what is ‘up to us’ and what is not, is the Stoic version of the Gita’s teaching on action without attachment. Both locate freedom in the interior relationship to circumstances, not in the circumstances themselves.
Epictetus was a slave. His teaching emerged from the most extreme possible test of this principle, and it worked. The Buddha’s Fire Sermon diagnoses the same disease (grasping and aversion) and prescribes the same cure.
‘Wish the things which happen to be as they are’, this is the Taoist going with the grain of reality, the Sufi tawakkul, the Gita’s ‘let go of the fruits of action.’ The same wisdom in Greek philosophical dress.
Themes
Connections 20
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Stoicism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Stoicism while these teachings took shape. Their worlds touched after Alexander, but no Stoic text shows Buddhist influence, or the reverse.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Stoicism and Taoism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Stoicism and Sufism while these teachings took shape.
Unsure
Judaism and Stoicism were in contact, but no influence of Judaism on Stoicism is documented. Stoic ideas appear in the Wisdom of Solomon (1st c. BCE) and 4 Maccabees, and Philo of Alexandria used the Stoic Logos.
Unsure
No documented reading of Stoicism by Alan Watts.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Stoicism while these teachings took shape. Their worlds touched after Alexander, but no Stoic text shows Buddhist influence, or the reverse.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Stoicism while these teachings took shape. Their worlds touched after Alexander, but no Stoic text shows Buddhist influence, or the reverse.
Travelled
Stoicism reached Christianity by 50 CE. Paul debates Stoics in Athens (Acts 17:18), and Stoic ethics runs through the Church Fathers.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Stoicism and Taoism while these teachings took shape.
Unsure
No documented reading of Stoicism by Ram Dass.
Travelled
Greek thought reached Stoicism by 300 BCE. Stoicism is a Greek school, founded in Athens c. 300 BCE. It took its fire and its Logos from Heraclitus.
Travelled
Greek thought reached Stoicism by 300 BCE. Stoicism is a Greek school, founded in Athens c. 300 BCE. It took its fire and its Logos from Heraclitus.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Stoicism and Taoism while these teachings took shape.
Travelled
John Vervaeke read and drew on Stoicism.