Aurelius Quotes on Mindfulness
2.8 Rarely is a person seen to be in a bad way because he has failed to attend to what is happening in someone else’s soul, but those who fail to pay careful attention to the motions of their own souls are bound to be in a wretched state.
2.11 Let your every action, word, and thought be those of one who could depart from life at any moment.
3.4 Do not waste what remains of your life in forming impressions about others, unless you are doing so with reference to the common good. For you are depriving yourself of the opportunity for some other action which may be of real benefit, to imagine instead what so-and-so is doing and to what end, and what he is saying or thinking or planning, and give yourself over to other impressions of that kind which serve only to divert you from paying proper attention to your own ruling centre. Rather, you must exclude from the sequence of your thoughts all that is aimless and random, and, above all, idle curiosity and malice; and you must train yourself only to think such thoughts that if somebody were suddenly to ask you, ‘What are you thinking of?’ you could reply in all honesty and without hesitation, of this thing or that, and so make it clear at once from your reply that all within you is simple and benevolent, and worthy of a social being who has no thought for pleasure, or luxury in general, or contentiousness of any kind, or envy, or suspicion, or anything else that you would blush to admit if you had it in your mind.
5.11 To what purpose, then, am I presently using my soul? Ask yourself this question at every moment, and examine yourself as follows: what is presently to be found in that part of me which is called the ruling centre? And whose soul do I have at present? That of a child? That of an adolescent? That of a woman, of a tyrant, of a domestic animal, of a wild beast?
6.53 Acquire the habit of attending carefully to what is being said by another, and of entering, so far as possible, into the mind of the speaker.
7.29 Wipe out vain imagination. No longer allow your passions to pull you around like a puppet. Confine your attention to the present time. Learn to recognize what is happening to yourself or another. Divide and analyse every given object into the material and the causal. Give thought to your last hour. Let the wrong committed byanother remain where it first arose.
7.54 Everywhere and all the time it lies within your power to be reverently contented with your present lot, to behave justly to such people as are presently at hand, and to deal skilfully with your present impressions so that nothing may steal into your mind which you have not adequately grasped.
7.69 Perfection of character requires this, that you should live each day as though it were your last, and be neither agitated, nor lethargic, nor act a part.
Notes:
Folksonomies: mindfulness stoicism
Taxonomies:
/family and parenting/children (0.873321)
/law, govt and politics (0.749315)
/society (0.663023)
Concepts:
Mind (0.993088): dbpedia_resource
Soul (0.937153): dbpedia_resource
Animal (0.913902): dbpedia_resource
Causality (0.851981): dbpedia_resource
Time (0.722169): dbpedia_resource
Human (0.632252): dbpedia_resource
Present (0.612158): dbpedia_resource
Learning (0.611607): dbpedia_resource
