I DON'T have many heroes. Probably less than a dozen all in. The ones that spring to mind immediately are Marie Curie (Maria Sklodowska Curie as she preferred to be called), Henry David Thoreau, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ikkyu, Irena Sendler, and Hugo Ball. Yes, it sounds like a deliberately obscure, pretentious list for the most part, but I can’t help that.

One other person I’d add is Marcus Aurelius. Roman Emperor. By all accounts a good one. But nowadays he is far better remembered for his private notes to himself about life, the universe and everything. The book, now known to us as Meditations, was originally untitled as it was never intended for publication. It reads like an ongoing unformatted dumping down of reflections, usually done after a hard day’s battling in wars, or doing whatever emperors did when they weren’t fighting wars. It’s a brilliant read, all the more so because its content is so modest, compassionate, intelligent, spiritual yet logical. It’s certainly not what we’d think Roman emperors had in their heads.

Most of all philosophically, he was a Stoic. Today, stoicism is making something of a comeback, along with everything else ancient and classical. The term's usage in everyday conversational verges on the pessimistic. Something along the lines of: “Life is really crap, accept it, and get used to it.” It’s a bit better than that thankfully, as is explained in a lovely new book called More Than Happiness by Antonia Macaro. It’s subtitled Buddhist And Stoic Wisdom For A Sceptical Age, and that’s what makes it really interesting, because Buddhism is also sometimes inaccurately labelled as pessimistic or nihilistic.

Both philosophies start by explaining that life gives us a lot of suffering. In our age, despite healthcare, technology, scientific understanding of nutrition, central heating and comparative wealth, we still suffer. Seemingly we are more mentally unhealthy and unhappy than previous generations. But lest we feel sorry for ourselves, think about what poor Marcus or the Buddha had to put up with. Imagine a toothache 2000 years ago. No sophisticated dental care. No anaesthetics. No headache pills. A 50-50 chance of your newborn dying at birth or shortly thereafter. A high chance of the mother dying giving birth. A sudden downpour or cold spell ruining your harvest, raising the chances that you’d die of hunger come winter.

That’s without all the stuff we still moan about. Loss of parents, arguments with spouse or partner, fall-out with siblings, rebellious children, loneliness, illnesses and diseases. There’s a lot of suffering nowadays, and there was a heap more then. So the Stoics and the Buddhists were onto something. Specifically they were trying to find ways of living a full, purposeful and meaning life, despite all the pain that life brings.

Antonia Macaro’s book is great because it not only compares and contrasts the philosophies of these two traditions and how we can perceive them in a modern light; it also does the same for the practices they recommend. She shares these in a clear, sometimes witty light. She thankfully suggests that we needn’t wander about graveyards looking at the unburied decomposing bodies as was recommended by the Buddha himself as a way of seeing our physical self in a new, less egotistical and possessive way.

I’d recommend not only the book, but the principle behind it. Namely, that we should look back to earlier times to see what different great minds had to say about life and how to live it, without avoiding the hardest aspects. And to view these thoughts and practices critically, putting them to the test of actual experience in your own life. We are so deeply stuck in the rut of modern existence it’s hard to see life for what it actually is nowadays. Marcus didn’t have television, music on Spotify; he didn’t tweet as his modern counterpart Donald Trump feels he has to. They were simpler times. Marcus and the Buddha were not simple people however. They were – and remain – amongst the greatest thinkers of all time, and surely part of practice of mindfulness is to learn from the wisest.

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