The Stoic Magazine Library

Having problems means being alive or, “The day all your problems vanish is the day they will throw dirt on you!” 

Marcus Aurelius said “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.” Ron Pies has been studying the similarities among Stoicism, Buddhism, and Judaism. This article is written from that perspective. Editor

What do Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) have to do with ancient philosophies of Judaism, Buddhism, and Stoicism? 

Well, a great deal, as it turns out. 

Genuine Stoicism is not about keeping a “stiff upper lip” or tamping down your feelings with an iron rod. On the contrary, Stoicism is a mental and spiritual outlook and discipline that emphasizes living in harmony with reason, and with Nature’s laws—an idea also found in Taoism and Buddhism.

All of us are bothered by negative emotions—anger, rage, revenge, worry, sorrow and depression. In this article, psychiatrist Ron Pies reviews some solutions to these problems offered by the Stoics. 

Chuck Chakrapani, Editor 

Tact, Empathy and Compassion 

Any man who does not think that what he has is more than ample is an unhappy man, even if he is master of the whole world. 

Epicurus 

[How do we deal with ingratitude? Sometimes we forget to be grateful and at other times we are at the receiving end of ingratitude. What does Stoicism say about ingratitude and how we deal with it? In this first-part of a two part article, Ron Pies, MD presents the story of Izzy and his ungrateful behavior. How would you deal with it? In the next issue Ron will present the Stoic approach to ingratitude. Chuck Chakrapani, Editor.] 

You have more than you need 

As we saw Izzy’s near total lack of gratitude has left him a very “unhappy man” 

1. “Things do not touch the soul,” as Marcus Aurelius put it. Rather, we are perturbed by “the opinion which is within [us].” This is very much in the spirit of Buddhism, as we find in the Dhammapada: “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.” Shakespeare said much the same thing in Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” 

Dear brother or sister, One substance and one law, one common Reason of all intelligent creatures, and one truth

Biblical Judaism—arguably the world’s oldest monotheistic religion— preceded the development of Stoicism by well over a thousand years. In comparing and contrasting Talmudic Judaism with Stoicism, we can analyze two quite different frames of reference: (1) metaphysics and theology; and (2) ethics, psychology, and character.