Reading “The Principal Doctrines of Epicurus” (Κyriai Doxai in Greek) I found his “four-fold cure for anxiety.” Its simplicity and potential are impressive, something that can’t be said about most of what the new age self-help gurus preach in this regard. And talking about self-help, how is it self-help if people need someone to tell them what to do and guide them? But that’s a question for another time.
Back to Epicurus’ cure for anxiety. Even though he wrote down these thoughts hundreds of years before the common era, the nature and source of anxiety seem to have remained pretty much the same to this day. We may not fear the gods that much nowadays (not enough to cause anxiety at least), but we still fear death, pain and wish for material happiness.
While this was not intended to be, and is not, a magic pill for curing anxiety, putting effort into becoming aware of these teachings can help a lot in controlling it.
The four-fold cure for anxiety:
Don’t fear the gods; Nor death; Goods are easy to obtain; Evils are easy to endure
1) A blessed and imperishable being neither has trouble itself nor does it cause trouble for anyone else; therefore, it does not experience feelings of anger or indebtedness, for such feelings signify weakness.
2) Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.
3) Pleasure reaches its maximum limit at the removal of all sources of pain. When such pleasure is present, for as long as it lasts, there is no cause of physical nor mental pain present – nor of both together.
4) Continuous physical pain does not last long. Instead, extreme pain lasts only a very short time, and even less-extreme pain does not last for many days at once. Even protracted diseases allow periods of physical comfort that exceed feelings of pain.
~ Epicurus
photograph by: Tikke Sang
- jeff powell
- jeff powell
