I started reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (with a forward by Hays) and there's a few things I'd like to mention here about it that I find particularly interesting.
One, the entire work has a vein that goes through it which reminds me of Lao Tzu - I don't think that Aurelius could've read Lao Tzu - at least I doubt it - but the similarities are there. There's about 500-600 years between the two, so it *is* possible...I just don't recall ever reading or hearing that the Romans had translations of Chinese texts. This being said, I also feel that it's not surprising that there are similarities (and even some similarities with Nietzsche as well) because there's a very strong tendency among certain philosophical idealists, regardless of culture, to pursue a 'higher' kind of life; to be a superior human being.
Two, Aurelius was, at the time of writing Meditations anyway, fairly concerned with his own inevitable death. There's a great deal of self-assuring passages and suggestions for how *he* should stave off his fears and maintain his composure on his march to the same place we all march to.
Three, that Aurelius was not just some high-born who was guaranteed to be Emperor from birth - he was fairly high born in Roman society, but nobody could have predicted he would become emperor until well after a convoluted series of events including becoming adopted by an Emperor-to-be through appointment (and not bloodline.) The forward mentions that Meditations is fairly class-ignorant (it doesn't question class hierarchy) but it seems extremely unlikely that someone coming off as observant as Aurelius wouldn't have noticed some of the less sightly problems with a highly stratified society. My guess is that Aurelius knew nothing could be done of it - he was in politics for most of his life and recognized how many other people he'd have to win over to change anything significantly - and so he utilized his philosophical beliefs to better tolerate that way things were, however less-than-ideal they may be.
Four, that many of his beliefs, especially regarding personal conduct within the context of our all-too-short lives, seems to approximate my own. It's important to work on things that matter to us, and to do for others what we can - to try and improve the world, even on the most insignificant, small levels that most of us are equipped to engage with. There'd be little other purpose otherwise, I think.
Five, his recurring descriptions of the world as unchanging and temporary are visceral and unnerving in a way, because they so exactly describe our own time (and...probably always will.):
i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps
recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see
the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred,
or in an infinite period;
ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest
lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give
up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have,
you cannot lose.
32. The age of Vespasian, for example. People doing the
exact same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick,
dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business,
farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping
others will die, complaining about their own lives, falling in
love, putting away money, seeking high office and power.
And that life they led is nowhere to be found.
Or the age of Trajan. The exact same things. And that life
too—gone.
Survey the records of other eras. And see how many others
gave their all and soon died and decomposed into the
elements that formed them.
