Meditation in a Time of War: On Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations”
By Aaron Poochigian
The emperor Marcus Aurelius spent most of the last decade of his life (170–180 AD) waging war. In 166 AD Germanic tribes invaded Roman territory in Upper Pannonia at the northeastern edge of the empire (roughly Austria today). The Marcomannic Wars (166– 180 AD) that ensued kept Marcus away from Rome for years at a time. This decade of conflict also was the one in which he wrote most, if not all, of the philosophical notebook we know as “Meditations.”
Headings that likely belong to Marcus’ original manuscript set the composition of two of the twelve books at specific military outposts. War seeps into the text in other places as well. He at one point describes a perfected soul as an “impregnable mental fortress.” He also likens life to “fighting in a foreign war” and gives us scenes of a siege and hacked-off body parts.
During these years Marcus was also fighting an internal war. On one side were the misconceptions that result in unhappiness and wrong action; on the other was the great Stoic goal: living in harmony with Nature, which runs the universe. We can imagine him residing in tents and other temporary structures and stealing time to add to his notebook in the morning before waging war or in the evening after war had been waged. In several entries Marcus tells himself to repeat set speeches mentally on first waking. This suggests he had a morning practice. The Stoic Seneca, in contrast, set aside time in the evening for a reflective retrospective of the day. Marcus’ sessions, it seems, did involve a sort of meditation. He exhorts himself to retreat inwardly as often as he can.
One Ancient Greek word Marcus uses for these sessions is anachoresis, which can refer to a literal vacation. In philosophical works, it means a retreat from one’s body and the outside world into one’s mind. Marcus explains that meditation is better at refreshing people than literal vacations to the country or the beach: A man can withdraw to no more soothing and untroubled a getaway than his own soul, especially if he has those sorts of things inside him that take him away to tranquility as soon as he starts deeply considering them.
One of the rules of his sessions seems to have been “no books by others allowed.” Dependence on some philosophical authority’s book would have, Marcus implies, compromised the purity of the experience.
One entry in “Meditations” (4.30) lays out Marcus’ meditation process in two stages. First, he should check in on himself to find out whether there is anything disturbing him. If it is the misdeeds of others, he should remember that assistance to and affection for his fellow humans is a built-in expectation of his human design. If some perceived misfortune is distressing him, he should push himself to accept it “because it has come from the gods out of the causal power that weaves everything together.” That causal power is Nature, the living system of the universe. It does no wrong, so we should gratefully embrace whatever it brings about for us in our lives.
Next, after he has checked in with himself and extracted any distractions from his mind, Marcus exhorts himself to move on to the contemplation of Stoic principles. They should, he writes, be concise, fundamental, and capable of both washing away all his pain and sending him back to what he faced before in such a way that he feels no indignation. Here’s an example of a principle: “What’s good is to do what makes you just, self-controlled, manful, and independent.” This “good” is, in Marcus’ understanding, truly good, in contrast to the ephemeral and irrelevant things that the unenlightened pursue.
There are many excellent qualities to exhibit (tolerance, temperance, forthrightness, for example), but Marcus stresses that the primary objective of his meditation sessions is just action. He concisely sums up what that entails: “Just action happens when the initial impetus and the effort itself culminate in a deed that serves humanity.” Marcus believes that all humans, in addition to being citizens of their home states, belong to a greater socio-political republic (koinonia in Greek). Just deeds are actions that benefit both one’s individual state and the commonwealth to which we all belong. Yes, Marcus enjoyed his meditation sessions. (He calls him them “refreshing.”) But he stresses that this me-centered relief is only the by-product of a process that finds fulfillment in helping others.
Marcus portrays himself as an aspirant forever working to improve himself. His movement away from distraction and toward virtuous action is, he acknowledges, an incremental process. Sometimes he is patient with himself; sometimes he is frustrated with his lack of progress. Still, he knows what he is working toward. Again and again, he holds up the character of the perfected Stoic as an ideal: “his whole being is dyed the color of justice, and he embraces what has been allotted to him with his whole soul.” This paragon focuses on doing good deeds, one after the other, with no expectation of praise or any other sort of reward.
So it was that, during a time when Marcus was besieging and besieged by Germanic tribes, he fought calmly, day by day, to shut out the distractions that were trying to invade him. As he returned to the safety of the fortress of Carnuntum after a battle, so he retreated to his own mind, a bastion he worked to make impregnable to the armies of greed, lust and dishonesty.
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Aaron Poochigian is a poet, classics scholar, and translator who lives and writes in New York City. His work has appeared in such newspapers and journals as The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, and Poetry Magazine. He’s the author of Four Walks in Central Park: A Poetic Guide to the Park, and his translations include Stung with Love (Penguin UK). His new translation is Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Learn more at aaronpoochigian.com.