From Buddha to Seneca: Finding peace through stoicism

One of Buddhism’s key insights is that much of the suffering in the world comes from people not seeing reality as it really is. Notwithstanding the metaphysical claims of Buddhism, recent research in cognitive psychology seems to have reached similar conclusions. Specifically, Buddhist notions of the self suggest that we don’t author our thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness mediation can help us see that thoughts — and our tendency to linger on them — colour our subjective experience, but that this has little to do with the nature of reality.

Thoughts appear and disappear in consciousness seemingly at random. When it suddenly occurs to you that you’re hungry or that you’ve forgotten to turn the iron off, you are not the originator of these thoughts. You no more control which thoughts occur to you than a pilot fish actually controls a shark. This idea could be disempowering or even overwhelming but, on the contrary, it can be liberating.

Even our most deeply held beliefs are formed unconsciously by unseen processes. Social scientist Jonathan Haidt says that people like to believe that they form beliefs based on a rational evaluation of all the evidence, as if we had a mini parliament debating every issue in our minds. In reality, the brain acts more like a press secretary trying to justify the erratic behaviour of an unruly president (in this metaphor, the president is the amygdala and the press secretary is the frontal lobe).

Life is invariably challenging and unsatisfying. The universe has no interest in making your life easier and, moreover, the process of evolution has ensured that we are never emotionally satisfied. The pursuit of satisfaction is what drives people to greater achievement, so evolution selected for genes that favour ambition. We are hard-wired to desire “things”.

Place this dynamic in a society of pervasive consumerism and it leads people think that a new toy or gadget will make them happy. However, apart from the fleeting joy upon their acquisition, “things” don’t actually make us happy — experiences do. Specifically, spending time with loved ones and people who value you; a sense of achievement; or challenging, enriching experiences that give you a sense of purpose. Being aware of this is incredibly empowering because it helps you to escape from the torment of desire, jealousy, and resentment.

There is a famous quote (often attributed to Nelson Mandela but whose origin is probably unknown) that seems to encapsulate this notion quite well: “resentment is like drinking poison and expecting it to harm your enemies”.

If someone insults you or cuts you up in the street, the origin of your displeasure is clearly the action of the person who wronged you. However, unless that action continues or has a recurring impact on your life, your continued vexation is solely due to the fact that you continue to think about it, which raises your blood pressure. Often when confronted with these types of situation we seethe for hours on end. Sometimes they even affect our mood days or weeks later when we remember them.

Great meditators learn to isolate fear and anger and see them for what they really are: states of the mind. Once we can do this, we are no longer buffeted by waves of anxiety and indignation; we are no longer prisoner to them.

It strikes me that the Stoics had a similar insight. In his 13th letter to Lucretius, “On groundless fears”, Seneca the Elder said, “we suffer more often in imagination than in reality”. And indeed, just as we can dwell on past injustices, we sometimes allow the fear of a future that may not even occur, pollute our present experience.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the lead character muses, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.” Granted, in the context of the story he seems to be wishing for blissful ignorance rather than advocating mindfulness, but the insight is still a powerful one. Likewise, a century later Blaise Pascal said, “distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”

All this is not to say that there is not true suffering in the world, or that we should just ignore our difficulties or wish our worries away, but I believe if we are able to adopt some of the wisdom of these great thinkers then we can go a way to achieving some level of peace and humility — if not enlightenment.