The Philosophical Meditation Technique

This is a short guidance to meditate philosophically. Here is hot wo to proceed. Take the quote below, read it slowly, first aloud then silently in your mind until it permeates inside yourself; savour its meaning, expand it, feel only the meanings that it involves.

“The liberation of a pain produces a pleasure that cannot be increased” Epicurus

You may choose to focus on one aspect. For instance, I was marked by the concept that a pleasure cannot be increased. In fact, I thought about one’s habit of drinking wine. You start with a glass and then you keep going, trying to increase the pleasure you first received. Until that pleasure becomes a pain. You let some day pass and then you go back to it again. And so on. This can be thought of any pleasure, that is there is the possibility to make it stronger, more intense, that can be increased. Such a possibility creates a vicious cycle.

But, if put aside the incessant research of pleasure and one day you experience a suffering and that pain then disappears, the pleasure you will go through is natural and at its maximum pick, there is nothing you can do to make it bigger, more intense. You just accept it and are grateful for it. It teaches you to live in the present moment, it teaches you to live in here and now.

A few short texts to meditate:

Truth and mental health- when we oppose opinion to science, we think empiricism without paying attention to the possibilities of a rational discourse which allows to move away from the common sense toward knowledge. During a philosophical meditation you can reach knowledge.

The marks of a proficient stoic philosopher

“are, that he censures no one, praises no one, blames no one, accuses no one, says nothing concerning himself as being anybody, or knowing anything: when he is, in any instance, hindered or restrained, he accuses himself; and, if he is praised, he secretly laughs at the person who praises him; and, if he is censured, he makes no defence.” Epictetus