The New Epicurean commenting “From Pain to Pleasure”
The New Epicurean is commenting my Epicurean Guidance ”From Pain to Pleasure – The Proven Pathway to Happiness”:
http://newepicurean.com/?p=1680#more-1680
and suggests to go ahead and tackle more practical topics.
A 4 minute intro video on Epicureanism
I have found this minute intro video on Epicureanism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXaVrfgKzpA
It’s pithy. The guy who made it is Anderson Kith.
As a sign of my appreciation I will send him my ebook
“From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” http://stressfreedomguide.com/
as soon as I find his email address.
Hamlet’s Non-Epicurean Alternatives
Mr William Shakespeare gave Hamlet only two false alternatives: “to be or not to be”, to live miserably (as quoted in my previous post) or to take one”s life (“he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin”).
He concludes that people fear death, because they don’t know “what dreams may come in that sleep of death” so they prefer to continue their miserable lives: ”the dread of something after death – the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns – puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of”.
Mr Hamlet has unfortunately never been told anything about the Epicurean choice of a happy life in the circle of friends.
quiz question of the day
“Who will bear the whips and scorns of time,the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,the pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,the insolence of office, and the spurns,that patient merit of the unworthy takes,[…]Who would fardels bear,to grunt and sweat under a weary life?”
What’s your answer?
I have just asked this on Facebook and I am very curious what answers Epicurus’s friend will come up with.
http://www.facebook.com/stressfreedomguide?v=wall&ref=profile#!/pages/Epicurus/79493658728
I will give mine, too – after a while.
new wiki to discuss Epicurus’s 40 Principal Doctrines
Peter Brook”s new wiki for discussing Epicurus’s Principal Doctrines can be accessed now:
http://epicurus.wikia.com/wiki/Epicurus_Principal_Doctrines_Commentary_Wiki
Peter has given every PD a relevant title that invited the reader to discuss them.
dippers & skimmers
Skimming over the surface of Epicureanism literature, chatting about Epicurus’s teachings will not make you into and Epicurean Life Practicer. Practicing Epicurus’s teachings in your daily life is dipping into the rich and nourishing content of his philosophy.
Skimmers chat at coffee tables or in the internet about some aspects of the Epicurean teachings, their similarities with Stoic or Platonic or Christian or Buddhist concepts. Or their differences. They might think that this is an intellectual pastime they can be proud of.
They remind me of an analogy I heard from a practicing Zen monk. He said that Christians are like people with arrows in their chests who gather every Sunday to remember and celebrate someone, who allegedly managed to get the arrow out of his chest, due to the assistance of his heavenly father. Practicing Buddhists work daily on getting the arrow out of their chest and keep it out of it. I know that this might be unfair to a large number of practicing Christian monks and laymen but it illustrates the difference between the dippers and the skimmers.
Dippers are not interested in talking about the different kinds of pains the arrow in their chests cause or in celebrating mythical arrow pullers. They want to pull the arrow out of their chests and feel free of pain. Therefore they go to people who have already managed to pull out the arrows of their chests and try to follow their PRACTICAL advice.
Removing the arrow from your chest may also imply pain and this is a pain you do NOT know, an unknown pain, and we are taught to fear the unknown. It’s not easy to opt for a short but possibly sharp and acute pain in the hope of eliminating all pain in the future instead of going on enduring the chronic familiar pain for ever.
It’s true that running around with the arrow in your chest causes pain. But then it’s a pain most people you know also have so it seems normal to have it. And it’s a familiar pain: you are used to it.
Certain practical schools of Buddhism teach some proven methods to remove the arrow and the pain. The all have their roots in Asian traditions of mental exercises and meditation. Epicureanism is another proven path to pain- and stress-FREEDOM, based on European rationality and scientific approach, more fitting for the less mystically inclined. But skimming the surface of its tenets will not do the job. If you want to get pain- and stress-FREE you have to dip below the surface into the depth of daily practice. The Buddhists managed to keep their methods alive for centuries but the Epicurean healing tradition was drowned. After 800 years of uninterrupted practice the last Epicurean school was closed in Athens by a Roman emperor who wanted no competition for his new State religion, Christianity.
But the methods used by the Epicureans have been either preserved in their literature or can be reconstructed from the elements of modern scientific research , skills training and life coaching, individual and social psychology. I attempted to outline these methods in my ebook “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” http://stressfreedomguide.com/
But dipping is not for everyone. It takes far more than skimming the surface of teachings about arrows, pains and heroes. Dipping implies changing your life and that is not for everyone. It takes courage and determination, commitment and perseverance.
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