Practice like a Stoic: 8, Meditate on nature and the cosmos

When was the last time you saw the Sun rise?

Pythagorean students greeting the Sun.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 61-63 of the paperback edition.]

"The Pythagoreans bid us every morning lift our eyes to heaven, to meditate upon the heavenly bodies pursuing their everlasting round—their order, their purity, their nakedness. For no star wears a veil.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.27)

Contemplating the universe as Marcus describes helps us view ourselves as part of the cosmos. This approach actually predates the Stoics, as it goes back to the Pythagoreans of a few centuries earlier. Marcus uses the Pythagoreans’ meditation to observe the order of nature and to remind himself of the “purity” of the cosmos—the sun and stars go about their rounds, doing what they do. The sun doesn’t shirk its duty to rise and set due to worries or concerns. Nor does it hide what it is by wearing a veil, but rather blazes brightly in the sky and does what it is fated to do.

Which brings us to the question: Do these things happen for a reason? Well, it depends on what you mean by “reason.” Ancient and modern Stoic views differ somewhat, and it’s important to understand to what extent, and how it matters. The ancient Stoics were pantheists—that is, they thought that God was the same thing as the universe. The God/universe was made of matter and regulated by cause and effect. In a sense, the cosmos itself was a living organism, and whatever it was doing was for its own benefit. However, since we are literally bits and pieces of the God/universe, we also play a role in what happens.

So, is the universe out to get us? No, not us specifically. A famous metaphor to explain this, used both by Marcus and Epictetus, is that we are like a foot attached to a body. If we have to step in mud because the body has to cross a sodden field to get where it’s going, we still don’t like it—and we may not understand why we have to do it. But there is a reason why we find ourselves splattered with mud, as unpleasant as this may feel. That is, it is ultimately in the universe’s best interests.

Most modern Stoics are not pantheists, but accept the contemporary scientific account of the world: The cosmos is not a living organism—it’s a wonderfully dynamic, complex system of interchangeable matter and energy. Just as the ancient Stoics thought, it is regulated by a web of cause and effect, but there does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for what happens to us individually. The foot-in-the-mud metaphor doesn’t hold up to modern physics and biology.

Does it matter? Even the ancient Stoics entertained the possibility that the cosmos is not living. Marcus gives the same answer several times in his Meditations, including: “Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or a kind Providence, or a confusion without a purpose and without a director. If then there is an invincible necessity, why do you resist? But if there is a Providence that allows itself to be propitiated, make yourself worthy of the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a governor, be content that in such a tempest you have yourself a certain ruling intelligence.”

In other words, if we are indeed the parts of a cosmic organism, all is well. But if we are not, we still need to get up in the morning and do our job as human beings, which is to be helpful and kind to other such beings.

Observing the order and churnings of nature fills us with awe for the very fact that we are alive, and that we have a family, or friends, to go back to for the holidays in the first place. There are billions of other beings just like us out there, experiencing the same emotions, subject to the same cosmic laws. Too often we become so wrapped up in what is happening to us right now that we forget we are all literally made of stardust.