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Bear and forebear
Understanding a Stoic mantra that is crucial to daily practice
Mantras are sacred utterances common in Eastern traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism. Sometimes these sounds are words that have a semantic content, in other instances they don’t. Mantras are taken to have profound spiritual meaning, and occasionally even magical powers.
Stoics don’t believe in magic, and the word “spiritual” has a very narrow meaning for a philosophy that is rooted in physicalism and causal determinism. Still, Stoicism too has mantras, of a sort. They are always meaningful phrases, meant to be “at hand” whenever a challenge arises for which they may be useful. For instance, if I have a discussion with someone whose ideas are clearly confused or wrongheaded and I see that I’m not making progress by using facts and rational arguments, I will attempt not to be frustrated by repeating to myself “so it seems to him.” If I make a commitment to do something in the future, or be at a particular place at a particular time, I tell myself or my interlocutor “fate permitting,” a reminder that I control my intentions, but not necessarily the outcomes of my actions. And so on.
One of the most famous of Stoics “mantras” was apparently uttered by the second century teacher Epictetus: “ἀνέχου (bear) and ἀπέχου…
