سلام به دوستان زبانشناس.
امیدوارم حالتون خوب باشه.
در این تاپیک قصد دارم نقل قولهایی از کتاب تأملات مارکوس اورلیوس رو که این چند روز برای سومین بار میخوندم با شما به اشتراک بذارم. این کتاب رو در لینک زیر مفصل تر معرفی کرده ام:
تأملات مارکوس اورلیوس یکی از بهترین کتابها در زمینه خودشناسی و زندگی اخلاقی و دستیابی به آرامش و رضایت درونه. این کتاب بر پایه فلسفه رواقی (Stoicism) نوشته شده که به عقیده من یکی از بهترین نظامهای فکریه که تا به حال به ذهن بشریت خطور کرده. رواقیان باستان معتقد بودند که عقلی کیهانی بر این جهان حکمفرماست که به آن لوگوس (Logos) می گفتند. در نتیجه نظام فکری آنها مشابه همه خدایی یا پانتئیسم (Pantheism) است. رواقیان جبرگرا بودند و انسانها را به پذیرش سرنوشت خود دعوت می کردند. فلسفه اخلاق رواقیان به اندازه ای تأثیرگذار بوده که برخی عبارتهای لاتینی آن تبدیل به ضرب المثل شده، عباراتی مانند Amor fati (عشق به سرنوشت) و Memento mori (به یاد داشته باش که روزی خواهی مرد). حتا واژه stoic در زبان انگلیسی به کسی اطلاق میشه که مشکلات زندگی رو با خونسردی و آرامش و بدون آه و شکوه تحمل میکنه.
اصل کتاب تأملات به زبان یونانی نوشته شده، ولی خوشبختانه در زیبوک ترجمه انگلیسی این کتاب ارزشمند موجوده. امیدوارم از این نقل قولهایی که انتخاب کردم و تنها پرتوی از حکمتهای ناب این کتابند لذت ببرید و انگیزه ای بشه تا خود کتاب رو مطالعه کنید.
Now departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve you in any harm.
If they do not exist, or if they have no care for humankind, then what is life to me in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence?Remind yourself too that each of us lives only in the present moment, a mere fragment of time: the rest is life past or uncertain future.
Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial.
All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil.
But I have seen that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I have reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own – not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity.
Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong.
Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him.
We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth.
So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition.And here are two of the most immediately useful thoughts you will dip into.
> First that things cannot touch the mind: they are external and inert; anxieties can only come from your internal judgement.
> Second, that all these things you see will change almost as you look at them, and then will be no more.
Constantly bring to mind all that you yourse lf have already seen changed.Has something happened to you?
Fine.
All that happens has been fated by the Whole from the beginning and spun for your own destiny.
In sum, life is short: make your gain from the present moment with right reason and justice.Consider, for example, the time of Vespasian.
You will see everything the same.
People marrying, having children, falling ill, dying, fighting, feasting, trading, farming, flattering, pushing, suspecting, plotting, praying for the death of others, grumbling at their lot, falling in love, storing up wealth, longing for consulships and kingships.
And now that life of theirs is gone, vanished.
Pass on again to the time of Trajan.
Again, everything the same.
That life too is dead.
Similarly, look at the histories of other eras and indeed whole nations, and see how many lives of striving met with a quick fall and resolution into the elements.Think constantly how many doctors have died, after knitting their brows over their own patients; how many astrologers, after predicting the deaths of others, as if death were something important; how many philosophers, after endless deliberation on death or immortality; how many heroes, after the many others they killed; how many tyrants, after using their power over men’s lives with monstrous insolence, as if they themselves were immortal.
Think too how many whole cities have ‘died’ – Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, innumerable others.
Go over now all those you have known yourself, one after the other: one man follows a friend’s funeral and is then laid out himself, then another follows him – and all in a brief space of time.
> The conclusion of this?
> You should always look on human life as short and cheap.
> Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes.'It is my bad luck that this has happened to me.
’ No, you should rather say: 'It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearful of the future.
’ Because such a thing could have happened to any man, but not every man could have borne it without pain.An unphilosophic but nonetheless effective help to putting death in its place is to run over the list of those who have clung long to life.
What did they gain over the untimely dead?
At any rate they are all in their graves by now – Caedicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, and all others like them who took part in many funerals and then their own.
In truth, the distance we have to travel is small: and we drag it out with such labour, in such poor company, in such a feeble body.
No great thing, then.
Look behind you at the huge gulf of time, and another infinity ahead.
In this perspective what is the difference between an infant of three days and a Nestor of three generations?Realities are wrapped in such a veil as it were that several philosophers of distinction have thought them altogether beyond comprehension, while even the Stoics think them hard to comprehend.
Go on now to the characters of your fellows: it is hard to tolerate even the best of them, not to speak of one’s difficulty in enduring even oneself.
In all this murk and dirt, in all this flux of being, time, movement, things moved, I cannot begin to see what on earth there is to value or even to aim for.
> Rather the opposite: one should console oneself with the anticipation of natural release.
>
Reflect often on the speed with which all things in being, or coming into being, are carried past and swept away.
Existence is like a river in ceaseless flow, its actions a constant succession of change, its causes innumerable in their variety: scarcely anything stands still, even what is most immediate.
Reflect too on the yawning gulf of past and future time, in which all things vanish.
So in all this it must be folly for anyone to be puffed with ambition, racked in struggle, or indignant at his lot – as if this was anything lasting or likely to trouble him for long.Death is relief from reaction to the senses, from the puppet-strings of impulse, from the analytical mind, and from service to the flesh.
Disgraceful if, in this life where your body does not fail, your soul should fail you first.He who sees the present has seen all things, both all that has come to pass from everlasting and all that will be for eternity: all things are related and the same.
You should meditate often on the connection of all things in the universe and their relationship to each other.As Antoninus, my city and country is Rome: as a human being, it is the world.
In this world there is only one thing of value, to live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.
Generally wherever you look you will find the same things.
The histories – ancient, more recent, and modern – are full of them: cities and households are full of them today.
There is nothing new.
All is familiar, and all short-lived.For a rational being, to act in accordance with nature is also to act in accordance with reason.
It is human nature to love even those who trip and fall.
This follows if you reflect at the time that all men are brothers; that they go wrong through ignorance, not intent; that in a short while both you and they will be dead; and, above all, that the man has not harmed you – he has not made your directing mind worse than it was before.Do not dream of possession of what you do not have: rather reflect on the greatest blessings in what you do have, and on their account remind yourself how much they would have been missed if they were not there.
> On death.
> Either dispersal, if we are atoms: or, if we are a unity, extinction or a change of home.So, to a man endowed with noble intelligence and a vision of all time and all being, do you think that this human life will seem of great importance?
“Impossible,” he said.
So such a man will not think there is anything fearful in death either?
“Certainly not”.Further, when your talk is about mankind, view earthly things as if looking down on them from some point high above – flocks, armies, farms, weddings, divorces, births, deaths, the hubbub of the law-courts, desert places, various foreign nations, festivals, funerals, markets; all the medley of the world and the ordered conjunction of opposites.
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that it stands ready for what comes and is not thrown by the unforeseen.
In most cases of pain you should be helped too by the saying of Epicurus: 'Pain is neither unendurable nor unending, as long as you remember its limits and do not exaggerate it in your imagination.
It is ridiculous not to escape from one’s own vices, which is possible, while trying to escape the vices of others, which is impossible.
> Just as you see your bath – all soap, sweat, grime, greasy water, the whole thing disgusting – so is every part of life and every object in it.
If your distress has some external cause, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgement of it – and you can erase this immediately.
>
He who fears death fears either unconsciousness or another sort of consciousness.
> Now if you will no longer be conscious you will not be conscious either of anything bad.
> If you are to take on a different consciousness, you will be a different being and life will not cease.The whole is either a god – then all is well: or if purposeless – some sort of random arrangement of atoms or molecules – you should not be without purpose yourself.
One reflecting on these waves of change and transformation, and the speed of their flow, will hold all mortal things in contempt.
Calm acceptance of what comes from a cause outside yourself, and justice in all activity of your own causation.
Epicurus says: 'In my illness my conversations were not about the sufferings of my poor body, and I did not prattle on to my visitors in this vein, but I continued to discuss the cardinal principles of natural philosophy, with particular reference to this very point, how the mind shares in such disturbances of the flesh while still preserving its calm and pursuing its own good.
’ He goes on: 'I did not allow the doctors either to preen themselves on any great achievement, but my life continued fine and proper.Whatever happens to you was being prepared for you from everlasting, and the mesh of causes was ever spinning from eternity both your own existence and the incidence of this particular happening.
When you are high in indignation and perhaps losing patience, remember that human life is a mere fragment of time and shortly we are all in our graves.
In Epicurean writings there is laid down the precept that one should continually keep in mind one of those who followed the path of virtue in earlier times.
Epictetus used to say that when you kiss your child you should say to yourself: 'Tomorrow you may be dead.
All that you pray to reach at some point in the circuit of your life can be yours now – if you are generous to yourself.
That is, if you leave all the past behind, entrust the future to Providence, and direct the present solely to reverence and justice.I have often wondered how it is that everyone loves himself more than anyone else, but rates his own judgement of himself below that of others.
What a tiny part of the boundless abyss of time has been allotted to each of us – and this is soon vanished in eternity; what a tiny part of the universal substance and the universal soul; how tiny in the whole earth the mere clod on which you creep.
Reflecting on all this, think nothing important other than active pursuit where your own nature leads and passive acceptance of what universal nature brings.
سال نوتون هم پیشاپیش تبریک میگم و براتون آرزوی بهترینها میکنم. 
