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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Some people cannot get near gentle language about acceptance and hear all of it as being told to lie down. The Cynic flavour suits them better: not needing what everyone else is scrambling for is its own freedom, and being unbothered is a stronger position than being provoked. The stories about him are ancient and probably half invented. The stance still works.
do not gaze longingly at what We have given some of them to enjoy, the finery of this present life (Quran 20:131). The instruction is not to despise what others have but to stop staring at it, which is where a lot of resentment starts.
طه
وَلَا تَمُدَّنَّ عَيۡنَيۡكَ إِلَىٰ مَا مَتَّعۡنَا بِهِۦٓ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا مِّنۡهُمۡ زَهۡرَةَ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَا لِنَفۡتِنَهُمۡ فِيهِۚ وَرِزۡقُ رَبِّكَ خَيۡرࣱ وَأَبۡقَىٰ
and do not gaze longingly at what We have given some of them to enjoy, the finery of this present life: We test them through this, but the provision of your Lord is better and more lasting
Qur’an 20:131read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of mindfulness-based stress reduction in people without a clinical diagnosis found moderate benefits for stress and related outcomes, smaller than the effects seen in clinical samples. Ordinary people under ordinary pressure do get something from this kind of training. No one has tested a Cynic version of it, so the flavour is a matter of what you will actually keep doing.
Khoury B, Sharma M, Rush SE, Fournier C. (2015). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for healthy individuals: A meta-analysis.. Journal of psychosomatic research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
If what they can take from you is something you were not gripping, there is less left to defend.
Light bounces off a face, lands at the back of your eye, and becomes a signal your brain assembles into a person. What you see is a reconstruction, a very good one, and never quite the thing itself.
Every one of us is trying to tame ourselves, which no other animal is attempting. Finding it hard is the ordinary result, not a sign that something is wrong with you in particular.
After you lose it, the sentence you say to yourself matters. I have no self control leads somewhere much worse than I have not drilled that one yet.