Stoic WisdomCalm of mind
Passages from the Meditations on this theme.
Marcus treats calm as something the mind can restore by turning inwards and by not worrying about future things. Pain, too, he says, can be borne by keeping the mind from adding to it.
How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquillity.
Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquillity.
About pain: the pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse. But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it.
Pain is either an evil to the body--then let the body say what it thinks of it--or to the soul; but it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquillity, and not to think that pain is an evil. For every judgment and movement and desire and aversion is within, and no evil ascends so high.
Hast thou seen those things? Look also at these. Do not disturb thyself. Make thyself all simplicity. Does any one do wrong? It is to himself that he does the wrong. Has anything happened to thee? Well; out of the universe from the beginning everything which happens has been apportioned and spun out to thee. In a word, thy life is short. Thou must turn to profit the present by the aid of reason and justice. Be sober in thy relaxation.
Let not future things disturb thee, for thou wilt come to them, if it shall be necessary, having with thee the same reason which now thou usest for present things.
The text is George Long's English translation of 1862, in the public domain, and its old-fashioned English ("thou", "thy") is unchanged. The notes beside it are our own wording. Marcus Aurelius wrote these for himself; they are a diary, not a book of rules.