(Daily Stoic)

It’s weird. According to Stoicism, you shouldn’t be affected by the externals. That means there is no good and evil to judge. You accept everything that happens (that you can’t control). However, in that situation you still decide your own actions, and you label your own actions as good and evil. You have the choice to respond with good or evil to the world where good and evil don’t exist. How do I choose to do good actions in a world where good and evil don’t exist? I’m stuck.

Have we defined our spiritual goal in life? Otherwise we are just going in circles.

On one extreme there is living in the body. You are in complete control of your own situation, you are not afraid. You live in the now. To be honest you can’t actually live in any other moment, if your mind is going crazy about the future or the past it is still your mind going crazy in the now.
On the other extreme there is living in the mind. You can logically reason, like the Stoics, that there is no reason to let the uncontrollable have any impact on how you feel. You deal with the situation that is given to you. You live in the now. So living in the body (extremely) is the same as living in the mind (extremely). They are like two ends meeting each other to create a circle, and everyone is on the circle.

Knowing that you are stuck in the circle is the same as leaving the circle through enlightenment.

 

(Book of Life)

Listen with ease. What he describes sounds like meditating without realising you are meditating. If you can manage to do that you will realise a change that comes without will power. It is like enlightenment that comes when you were not looking for enlightenment.

I guess that something you experience only during a quiet moment when you don’t interact with others. Maybe during a walk through the forest or a swim in the sea.

 

(Both)

‘I don’t mind’ Jiddu Krishnamurti said, and don’t let externals affect your decisions the stoics say. It kind of sounds easy but it’s not.

What about your friends and family. What if they do things that you do mind? What if their actions (externals to you) should affect you (morally)?

Possibly they (Krishnamurti and Stoics) thought about this.

Maybe the very essence of Krishnamurti is that you do not mind, but you do care. And maybe the very essence of Stoicism is that your actions are not affected by externals, but your feelings are.