In a letter to his dear friend Lucilius, Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote: “There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” Chronic worriers tend to be more occupied by the future than by present circumstances. During the day, and even […]
Read More
When Life Falls Apart, Does it Actually Fall Into Place?
A man is chased by a tiger. Suddenly, he encounters an abandoned well. He jumps in, hoping that the tiger can’t reach him there. But then, he realizes that there’s a poisonous snake at the bottom of this dried out well. Before he reaches the bottom, he grabs a root poking out of the wall […]
Read More
Why Letting Go Is Wealth
One day, the legendary Chinese recluse Xu You watched a mole drinking water from a pond. He then realized that the mole, when thirsty, only drinks a bellyful: no more, no less, but exactly the quantity it needs. The mole doesn’t encumber itself with excesses, because that would only impede its movement. Unlike humans, who […]
Read More
Miyamoto Musashi | A Life of Ultimate Focus
Miyamoto Musashi is one of the most legendary samurai and famed as Japan’s greatest swordsman – undefeated in more than sixty duels. After he escaped death during the Battle of Sekigahara, Musashi became a ronin. Aside from being a swordsman, he was also a philosopher, artist, and well-learned Buddhist. Before he died, Musashi left us […]
Read More
The Art of Doing Without Doing
Have you ever reflected on the word ‘doing’? ‘Doing’ points to performance, achievement, effort. It also implies that there’s a ‘doer’ who engages in ‘doing something’, and that there’s a passive element or ‘the thing that’s being done’. But does it work that way? Is there a separation between the thing that ‘does’ and the […]
Read More
The Philosophy of Cobra Kai
It’s not just to reignite his old passion for karate and to avenge his old nemesis Daniel LaRusso. One of the reasons why Johnny Lawrence re-opens his old dojo Cobra Kai is that he believes that by doing so he can give today’s youth exactly what they need: the way of the fist. After saving […]
Read More
How to Endure The Pain of Life
The nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observed that nature is driven by an all-encompassing force, which he called Will, or more specifically, the Will-To-Live. This force is unconscious, aimless, and blind, and gives rise to an insatiable striving within human beings. We live our lives grasping, craving, and attaching ourselves to external things, and we […]
Read More
The Beauty of What We Just Don’t Know
There’s this human tendency to find explanations for the things that we don’t understand. This tendency has been the birthplace of folklore and creation stories that are the cornerstones of many religions. Imagine living in the tribal age, gazing at the stars on a clear night, illuminated by the light of a full moon. How […]
Read More
Miyamoto Musashi | The Way of the Ronin
The Japanese word ‘rōnin’ describes a samurai without a master, who wanders alone. The status of a ronin varied across different time-periods. In a general sense, being a ronin implied failure. More specifically, a ronin had renounced the act of ‘seppuku’, which is a form of Japanese ritual suicide that was applied to restore honor […]
Read More
5 Life Lessons From Lao Tzu
Can you celebrate life and not cling to it? Can you give up control and still get things done? Can you achieve your goals without forcing? These are all themes we find in the ancient Taoist key work called the Tao Te Ching, which was written by a mysterious sage named Lao Tzu. Not much […]
Read More