Meditate on nature and the cosmos
Sometimes, it can seem that the universe itself is out to get us. When delayed at the airport, it sure seems that way to Albert. He had really been looking forward to being with his wife and children for Christmas, after being deployed overseas for ten months. Now all he can do is sit at the airport, staring out the window as yet another inch of snow falls on the tarmac. Instead of cursing nature, this week we’ll explore how to pay attention to it more carefully, as the ancient Stoics recommended.
"The Pythagoreans bid us every morning lift our eyes to heaven, to meditate upon the heavenly bodies pursuing their everlasting round—their order, their purity, their nakedness. For no star wears a veil.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.27
Contemplating the universe as Marcus describes helps us view ourselves as part of the cosmos. This approach actually predates the Stoics, as it goes back to the Pythagoreans of a few centuries earlier. Marcus uses the Pythagoreans’ meditation to observe the order of nature and to remind himself of the “purity” of the cosmos—the sun and stars go about their rounds, doing what they do. The sun doesn’t shirk its duty to rise and set due to worries or concerns. Nor does it hide what it is by wearing a veil, but rather blazes brightly in the sky and does what it is fated to do.
Which brings us to the question: Do these things happen for a reason? Well, it depends on what you mean by “reason.” Ancient and modern Stoic views differ somewhat, and it’s important to understand to what extent, and how it matters. The ancient Stoics were pantheists—that is, they thought that God was the same thing as the universe. The God/universe was made of matter and regulated by cause and effect. In a sense, the cosmos itself was a living organism, and whatever it was doing was for its own benefit. However, since we are literally bits and pieces of the God/universe, we also play a role in what happens.
So, is the universe out to get us? No, not us specifically. A famous metaphor to explain this, used both by Marcus and Epictetus, is that we are like a foot attached to a body. If we have to step in mud because the body has to cross a sodden field to get where it’s going, we still don’t like it—and we may not understand why we have to do it. But there is a reason why we find ourselves splattered with mud, as unpleasant as this may feel. That is, it is ultimately in the universe’s best interests.
Most modern Stoics are not pantheists, but accept the contemporary scientific account of the world: The cosmos is not a living organism—it’s a wonderfully dynamic, complex system of interchangeable matter and energy. Just as the ancient Stoics thought, it is regulated by a web of cause and effect, but there does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for what happens to us individually. The foot-in-the-mud metaphor doesn’t hold up to modern physics and biology.
Does it matter? Even the ancient Stoics entertained the possibility that the cosmos is not living. Marcus gives the same answer several times in his Meditations, including:
Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or a kind Providence, or a confusion without a purpose and without a director. If then there is an invincible necessity, why do you resist? But if there is a Providence that allows itself to be propitiated, make yourself worthy of the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a governor, be content that in such a tempest you have yourself a certain ruling intelligence.1
In other words, if we are indeed the parts of a cosmic organism, all is well. But if we are not, we still need to get up in the morning and do our job as human beings, which is to be helpful and kind to other such beings.
How might this help Albert, stuck in an airport at Christmas, with dimming hopes of being reunited with his family? Well, if Albert is a pantheistic Stoic, he will recognize that the cosmic being is doing its thing, and that he is playing a part in it. It’s a tiny part, given the smallness of an individual as compared with the cosmos, but he can be consoled by the fact that there is a reason for his current predicament. If, however, Albert is a modern Stoic who thinks the universe is just what it is, and that, although he is a part of it, there is no particular reason (outside of the law of universal causality) for what’s happening to him, then what? He can remind himself of Marcus’s reflection: “Be content that in such a tempest you have yourself a certain ruling intelligence.” This intelligence allows him to understand that sometimes planes are delayed.
Observing the order and churnings of nature fills us with awe for the very fact that we are alive, and that we have a family, or friends, to go back to for the holidays in the first place. There are billions of other beings just like us out there, experiencing the same emotions, subject to the same cosmic laws. Too often we become so wrapped up in what is happening to us right now that we forget we are all literally made of stardust.