Marcus Aurelius
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Born 121 AD Reigned 161 - 180 AD. |
Hadrian determined upon Marcus Aurelius for the succession while he was still
a child. Marcus was the nephew of Faustina and her husband Antoninus Pius, who
succeeded Hadrian. On the death of Hadrian, Marcus married their daughter.
A few years after his accession in 161 AD Marcus was plunged into warfare on the
northern frontiers, where it was essential that the emperor himself led the
campaigns. Here he wrote his philosophical meditations. Before he could bring
these wars to a satisfactory conclusion, he was forced to go to the east where
his general Avidius Cassius had raised rebellion. He was back on the Danube by
178 AD and remained there till his death in 180 AD.
One of the notable features of his reign is his promotion of army officers and
civilian administrators on merit, rather than on noble birth. The increasing
employment of the middle classes had begun under Hadrian. Marcus refined the
process, appointing capable people to posts most suited to their abilities.
The latter reminds one of meritocracy, advocated by Osho
on many different occasions, like for example in his book The Last Testament,
vol. 4 #24 :
Question:
Do you think that a democracy is a desirable political system?
No. Democracy is better than dictatorship, but in
my vision there is
something higher than democracy. I call it meritocracy.
In my idea of meritocracy there is no need for any political party. Persons
should stand on their own merit. Every individual should choose the person,
without any political party programming him, forcing him, bribing him.
Individuals should stand, and individuals should choose, and the choice should
be on merit. Just as you choose your bureaucracy - but that is not an election,
it is an appointment. Your political system should be an election of merit, and
the press can play a tremendously valuable role in explaining to the masses the
merits of different people who are contesting.
I think only a meritocracy is the answer for our problems. Idiots are trying to
solve problems which they don't understand at all.
Marcus Aurelius-The Enlightened Unenlightened Emperor
Your being is a mystery. The more you know, the less you know it. The
deeper you go, the more you see the infiniteness. The depth is such that you
cannot touch the bottom of it - never. People who think they know themselves are
very superficial. People of depth always become aware of something unknown. And
it is beautiful because the unknown is always alive, the unknown is always
infinite. The unknown is eternal.
Socrates said, "Know thyself!" He means: try to know thyself. Not that you will
be able to know. And after Socrates, a Roman, Marcus Aurelius, said. "Be
thyself!" He is better than Socrates. To know thyself is impossible, but to be
thyself is possible. There is no need to know. Just be. Knowledge is irrelevant;
being is enough. Just be yourself.
So don't try to find a definition of your being. It is impossible. Live it, you
can. Know it, you cannot. But why be bothered about knowing? Is not being
enough?
This is my understanding: unless you can enjoy the meaningless, you will never
become religious. God, to me, is the meaningless beauty that surrounds you, the
meaningless song that is heard all around: the meaningless murmur of a brook,
the meaningless whisper of the winds, the meaningless silence of the stars.
Tremendously beautiful, but meaningless. Why do I say meaningless? Because it is
unknowable.
A thing remains meaningless unless it is known. Once you know, then it is
meaningful. And I tell you, stars are mysterious, but they are nothing compared
to your inner being. Rivers are mysterious, but they are nothing compared to
your inner stream of consciousness. The Himalayas are mysterious, but nothing as
compared to your inner peaks of ecstasy.
Be, rather than know. Marcus Aurelius looks to me to be of more and deeper
understanding when he says, "Be thyself!" than Socrates when he says, "Know
thyself!" Though I know well that you cannot be yourself unless you try the
Socratic dictum: know thyself! Try to know. You will never be able to know, and
by and by, you will drop the inquiry of knowing and you will start being.
Knowing is philosophy, being is religion.
In your being, you are God. I will not even say with God. In your being, just
this very moment, you are God, you are divine. No knowledge is needed.
Don't be worried about it. Nobody has ever known who he is. He is! And all those
who have said that they know are just repeating cliches. They must have read it
in the scriptures. But those are only words. You can say: "I am Brahma," or "I
am Atman," or "I am the supreme self," but these words are cliches. They are
ugly. They don't say anything, they don't mean anything.
You say, "I feel like I need grounding." Yes, that's good. You need it. But
grounding has nothing to do with knowledge; grounding has something to do with
being. That's why I say Marcus Aurelius is better than Socrates when he says,
"Be thyself!"
In the old monarchical days it was possible that in the western hemisphere a man like Marcus Aurelius could happen. He was a religious man, but this was just accidental. Marcus Aurelius cannot become a president or a prime minister today because he would not go asking for votes; he would not beg - for what?
(Osho in From Ignorance to Innocence #15)
In the East we have all the three words that English has, but we also
have a fourth word that English - or any Western language - has missed. And the
reason is not just linguistic; the reason is that this kind of experience has
not been available to them.
The first word is 'concentration'. In the East we call it ekagrata,
one-pointedness.
The second word is 'contemplation'. In the East we call it vimarsh,
thinking, but only about a particular subject. Not diverting, going astray, but
consistently remaining with the same experience and going deeper and more
comprehensively into it. It is a development of concentration.
The third word is 'meditation'. In the West, since Marcus Aurelius, meditation
has been in a mess. His was the first book written in the West about meditation.
But not knowing what meditation can be, he defines it as a deeper concentration
and a deeper contemplation. Both definitions are unjustified.
In the East we have another word, dhyan. It does not mean concentration,
it does not mean contemplation, it does not mean meditation even. It means a
state of no-mind. All those three are mind activities - whether you are
concentrating, contemplating, or meditating, you are always objective. There is
something you are concentrating upon, there is something you are meditating upon,
there is something you are contemplating upon. Your processes may be different
but the boundary line is clear cut: it is within the mind. Mind can do all these
three things without any difficulty.
Dhyan is beyond mind.
(Osho in Om Mani Padme Hum #4)One of the greatest emperors India has known was the Mogul emperor, Akbar. He can be compared only to one man in the West, and that is Marcus Aurelius. Emperors are very rarely wise people, but these two names are certainly exceptions.
(Osho in Satyam, Shivam Sundram #16)
You ask me, 'Why do you live like a king?'
There are four possibilities after you become enlightened. The first possibility
Nanak and Marcus Aurelius followed. They were born as kings; after they became
enlightened they remained kings.
The second possibility Jesus and Kabir followed. They were born as beggars,
after they became enlightened they remained beggars.
The third possibility was followed by Mahavir and the Buddha: they were born as
kings; when they became enlightened they remained beggars.
Then, I thought, for a change... I was born as a beggar; I decided to live as a
king. That is the fourth possibility and there is no other, so I am finishing
the last. Somebody had to do it, otherwise history would remain incomplete.
Perhaps if Jesus had taught a little longer - he was only
thirty-three when he was crucified - I think, being a real Jew, he would have
become pacified by the time he was seventy. There would have been no need to
crucify him at all. The Jews were in a hurry.
I think it was not only the Jews who were in a hurry - because Jews know better
- perhaps the crucifixion of Jesus came from the Romans, who have always been
childish and stupid. I don't know of anyone like a Jesus, or a Buddha, or a Lao
Tzu, who has ever happened to their race and to their history.
Only one man comes to me, he was the emperor Aurelius. He wrote the famous book,
Meditations. Of course it is not what I call meditation, but meditations.
My meditation is always singular; there can be no plural to it. His meditations
are really contemplations; there can be no singular to it. Marcus Aurelius is
the only name I can remember in the whole Roman history worth mentioning - but
that not too much. Any poor Basho could defeat Marcus Aurelius. Any Kabir could
hit the emperor and bring him beyond his senses.
I don't know whether this is permitted in your language or not, to "bring
someone beyond their senses." Bringing him to his senses is certainly permitted,
but that is not my work, anybody could do that. Even a good hit could do it, a
stone in the road could do it. A Buddha is not needed for that, a Buddha is
needed to bring you beyond your senses. Basho, Kabir, or even a woman like Lalla
or Rabiya could really have brought this poor emperor to that beyond.
But this is all that has come from the Romans - nothing much, but still
something. One should not reject anybody totally. Just by way of courtesy I
accept Marcus Aurelius, not as an enlightened one but as a good man. He could
have been enlightened if, by chance, he had come across a man like Bodhidharma.
Just a look from Bodhidharma into the eyes of Marcus Aurelius would have been
enough. Then he would have known, for the first time, what meditation is.
He would have gone home and burned what he had written so far. Perhaps then he
would have left a collection of sketches - a bird on the wing, a rose withering
away, or just a cloud floating in the sky - a few sentences here and there; not
saying much, but enough to provoke, enough to trigger a process in the person
who comes across it. That would have been a real notebook on meditation, but not
on meditations.... There is no plural possible.