Perennial Meditations

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. What does it mean to learn how to live? Where does one even begin? The existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Everything in the world has been figured out, except how to live.” [...] Support the show: Subscribe to Perennial Meditations on Substack Read articles on...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. In this episode, I share a short clip from a recent conversation with Massimo Pigliucci , the author of the new book The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Can Teach Us about Our Search for Good Leaders . The full conversation will release next week o...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we search for ancient lessons for modern life in the writings and Stoic philosophy of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Follow us: Instagram | Twitter | Youtube | Website In a letter known today as On Sharing K...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. Follow us: Instagram | Twitter | Youtube | Website Why does criticism impact us? Even feedback from someone we don’t know can affect us. This episode explores what wisdom traditions (like Stoicism and Buddhism) can teach us about responding to criticism. Strangely, many great th...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we search for ancient lessons for modern life in Stoic philosophy. Today’s selected reading comes from a letter titled On the Philosopher’s Seclusion . In addition to the selected reading from Seneca...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. How do you see your place in the world? The late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh suggested, “When you ask the question, ‘Who am I?’ — if you have enough time and concentration — you may find some surprising answers.” [...] Support the show: - Subscribe to Perennial Meditations on Sub...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we search for ancient lessons for modern life in Stoic philosophy. Today’s selected reading comes from a letter titled On Crowds . Seneca stressed to Luciulius: “Do you ask me what you should regard...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. Is the happiest person you know—the wisest person you know? According to the American philosopher William James, there is a direct connection between philosophy and joy. Similarly, Montaigne called cheerfulness the surest sign of wisdom. [...] Support the show: Subscribe to Pere...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we search for ancient lessons for modern life in Stoic philosophy. Today’s selected reading comes from a letter titled On the Philosopher’s Mean . Seneca stressed to Luciulius: “I commend you and rej...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. According to psychologist Carl Jung, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” Jung believed our vision only becomes clear when we dare to look into our own hearts. In the classic Modern Man in Search of a...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. Strangely, many of us know the feeling of loneliness all too well. We all have parts of ourselves that no one will truly understand. In my interview with Dr. Kelly Flanagan (author of True Companions ), he explained: “Loneliness is one of the most misunderstood words in the Engl...

Welcome to Sundays with the Stoics on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we search for ancient lessons for modern life in Stoic philosophy. 📩 Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter to receive ancient lessons for modern life right to your inbox daily. In a letter titled, On True and False Friendship , Seneca wrote, “You have sent a letter to me through the hand of a “friend” o...

📩 Want ancient lessons for modern life delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter. All of us want to find happiness and many books, teachers, and resources attempt to help us become happier. Yet we all continue to suffer in some form or fashion. What if happiness is available right now, but this happiness cannot be without suffering? In his classic book  No Mu...

Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we search for ancient lessons for modern life in Seneca’s timeless classic Letters from a Stoic . In a letter titled On Discursiveness in Reading , Seneca wrote, “Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited...

📩 Want philosophical and spiritual lessons delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the Perennial Meditations newsletter: Immanuel Kant once said, “It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.” Similarly, the Buddha stressed that there is no need for dogmas or blind faith — one should experience the teachings firsthand. Buddhist scripture tells the story of the Buddha and...

Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we explore Seneca’s timeless classic Letters from a Stoic in search of wisdom for modern life. In the letter titled On Saving Time , Seneca wrote, “Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius—set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which until lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has...

Perennial Meditations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber. What if there is more going on within us than we realize? The philosopher Kierkegaard once asked, “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?” In The Stranger , philosopher Albert Camus wrote, In the midst of hate, I fo...

Sign up for 📩 The PATH Newsletter (our FREE weekly email) and receive a free 3-DAY Introduction to Ancient Lessons for Modern Life. How comfortable are you with questions that have no answer? The psychologist Carl Jung suggested, “The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble.” There are questions in life that can never be solved — only outgrown. This ‘outg...

Sign up for 📩 The PATH Newsletter (our FREE weekly email) and receive a free 3-DAY Introduction to Ancient Lessons for Modern Life. An essential practice of any philosophy of life is examing your actions. A century before Socrates famously proclaimed that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” the philosopher Pythagoras stressed the practice of self-reflection. [...] ***If you're interes...

Is practice or theory more important in acquiring virtue? The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus was asked this very question 2,000 years ago. Theory teaches what we ought to do, and practice demonstrates it. Musonius taught that although understanding the theory behind the action enables one to speak, it is practice that enables one to act. [...] ***If you're interested in a deeper dive, you c...

Navigating our way through life is a perennial challenge. But does it have to be? One can discover what the most remarkable thinkers had to say on virtually any topic within minutes. Although read any book on living a good life, and you’ll find what seem to be contradictions. Take this passage from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius , “Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our...

Is it possible to know too much? According to Leo Tolstoy (regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time), “It is better to know a few good and necessary things than many useless and mediocre things.” Basic knowledge is necessary to be a human being; until a person has acquired this knowledge, all other knowledge is harmful, stressed Tolstoy. In A Calendar of Wisdom , Tolstoy wrote, "It...

When we search for practical wisdom today — we are wise to look to Buddhist teachings. What distinguishes the Buddha’s teaching from other religious approaches to the human condition is its directness, thoroughness, and practical nature. The Buddha explained, "The teaching begins by calling upon us to develop a faculty of careful attention." [...] ***If you're interested in a deeper...

Is the fear of death inevitable? In the classic Denial of Death , Ernest Becker stressed, “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity — designed largely to avoid the fatality of death.” Although 2,000 years before Becker, the philosopher Epicurus asked, “Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I...

Today's reflection comes from a portion of The  PATH weekly email meditation we send every Monday, and it's on potential.  One of the heartbreaking things about humans is our tendency to settle, to place false limits on our true potential. The theologian Thomas Merton said, “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.” In Meditations , Marcus Aurelius wrote this himself, “I...