A question

How should I live?

The umbrella question — every tradition gives an answer as a practice: examine, cultivate, flow, love, accept, create.

9 perspectives

  1. Socrates

    Athens

    The unexamined life is not worth living

    “The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Plato, Apology 38a
  2. Confucius

    State of Lu, China

    Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself

    “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.” — Analects 15:24
  3. Laozi

    Chu, China (traditional)

    The softest things overcome the hardest

  4. Epictetus

    Hierapolis → Rome → Nicopolis

    Some things are up to us, some are not; peace lies in knowing which

    “It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” — Enchiridion (paraphrase of ch. 5)
  5. Rumi

    Balkh → Konya

    Love is the force that dissolves the separate self

    “Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.” — Divan-e Shams (as popularly translated; A. Arberry's translations vary)
  6. Attar of Nishapur

    Nishapur

    The journey's end is a mirror: what the birds sought was themselves

  7. Dōgen

    Kyoto → Song China → Eiheiji

    Practice and realization are one (shushō ittō)

    “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.” — Genjōkōan (Shōbōgenzō)
  8. Søren Kierkegaard

    Copenhagen

    Subjectivity is truth: the deepest truths are lived, not proven

  9. Friedrich Nietzsche

    Germany / Basel / Turin

    God is dead — and we must come to terms with what that empties

    “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows §12