Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.
Interpretation
Embrace gratitude and contentment, regardless of your circumstances, recognizing their potential benefits.
This quote by Plutarch emphasizes the importance of acceptance and gratitude in life. It suggests that we should learn to be content with our situation, whether we possess wealth or are in poverty, and appreciate the benefits that each state can offer. Wealth can enable us to help others, poverty can free us from the burdens of excessive care, and obscurity can protect us from envy. This mindset encourages a focus on the positives in any circumstance and promotes a life of humility and service.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing life's challenges.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
When the mind is full of memories and preoccupied by the future, it misses the freshness of the present moment. In this way, we fail to recognize the luminous simplicity of mind that is always present behind the veils of thought.
All the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions, or religious principles, are likewise due to non-existence, because they originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom.
Do not base your life on the likings and dislikings or whims of others. What you are in life - whether you enjoy or suffer - it is your own responsibility. Be regular in your meditation and do not postpone for a later date your striving for God consciousness.
The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.
It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
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