A Lecture by Musonius, the Stoic of Ancient Rome
Musonius Rufus
Editorial Note:
There are four
great Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome, whose lessons are especially
significant in the 21st century. Three of them are well-known and their writings
can be found in good bookshops around the world: Lucius Seneca, Marcus
Aurelius, and Epictetus. The fourth one, however - Musonius Rufus (28? - 100 or
102, C.E.) - is still little known. Yet he is as great as any Stoic could be.
Helena P. Blavatsky quotes Epictetus several times
in her writings; and Epictetus is one of the best known disciples of Musonius. He
adopted the same pedagogical method and followed the steps of Musonius in
concentrating his attention on ethics, or “right living”.
Musonius’ teachings certainly belong in any theosophical
library. The following transcription is taken from a work that is available
online. [1] Another version of the
same transcription is included in a little-known book. [2] Original
title of the online version: “That One Should Disdain Hardships”.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
NOTES:
[1] Link: https://sites.google.com/site/thestoiclife/the_teachers/musonius-rufus.
See Lecture 7.
[2] “Musonius Rufus”, translated by Cynthia King, with
a preface by William B. Ervine , CreateSpace, Lexington, KY, USA, 2011,
copyright 2010, 101 pp., see pp. 38-39. Another good book is “Musonius Rufus
and Education in the Good Life”, J. T. Dillon, University Press of America,
Dallas, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford, 2004, 101 pp.
Why
One Should Disdain Hardships
Musonius Rufus
In order to support more easily and more cheerfully
those hardships which we may expect to suffer in behalf of virtue and goodness,
it is useful to recall what hardships people will endure for unworthy ends.
Thus for example consider what intemperate
lovers undergo for the sake of evil desires, and how much exertion others
expend for the sake of making profit, and how much suffering those who are
pursuing fame endure, and bear in mind that all of these people submit to all
kinds of toil and hardship voluntarily. Is
it not then monstrous that they for no honorable reward endure such things,
while we for the sake of the ideal good - that is not only the avoidance of
evil such as wrecks our lives, but also the acquisition of virtue, which we may
call the provider of all goods - are not ready to bear every hardship?
And yet would not anyone admit how much better
it is, in place of exerting oneself to win someone else’s wife, to exert
oneself to discipline one’s desires; in place of enduring hardships for the
sake of money, to train oneself to want little; instead of giving oneself
trouble about getting notoriety, to give oneself trouble how not to thirst for
notoriety; instead of trying to find a way to injure an envied person, to inquire
how not to envy anyone; and instead of slaving, as sycophants do, to win false
friends, to undergo suffering in order to possess true friends?
Now, since, in general, toil and hardship are a
necessity for all men, both for those who seek the better ends and for those
who seek the worse, it is preposterous that those who are pursuing the better
are not much more eager in their efforts than those for whom there is small
hope of reward for all their pains.
Yet when we see acrobats face without concern their
difficult tasks and risk their very lives in performing them, turning
somersaults over up-turned swords or walking ropes set at a great height or
flying through the air like birds, where one misstep means death, all of which
they do for a miserably small recompense, shall we not be ready to endure
hardship for the sake of complete happiness? For surely there is no other end
in becoming good than to become happy and to live happily for the remainder of
our lives.
One might reasonably reflect upon characteristics
even of certain animals which are very well calculated to shame us into
endurance of hardships. At all events, cocks and quails, although they have no
understanding of virtue as man has and know neither the good nor the just and
strive for none of these things, nevertheless fight against each other and even
when maimed stand up and endure until death so as not to submit the one to the
other.
How much more fitting, then, it is that we
stand firm and endure, when we know that we are suffering for some good
purpose, either to help our friends or to benefit our city, or to defend our
wives and children, or, best and most imperative, to become good and just and
self-controlled, a state which no man achieves without hardships.
And so it remains for me to say that the man
who is unwilling to exert himself almost always convicts himself as unworthy of
good, since “we gain every good by toil.”
These words and
others like them Musonius then spoke, exhorting and urging his listeners to
look upon hardship with disdain.
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The above text is
reproduced from “The Aquarian Theosophist”, November 2012 edition.
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In September 2016, after a careful analysis of the
state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided to form
the Independent Lodge of Theosophists,
whose priorities include the building of a better future in the different
dimensions of life.
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