If you're interested in going deeper than just the intro classes and exploring the community side of Stoicism, please join us for Sunday Stoa.

We begin at **4:00 PM (ET)** with 10 minutes of Stoic breath meditation followed by 15 minutes of writing practice.
At **4:30 PM**, we move into introductions and social time.
Around **5:00 PM**, we’ll listen to selections from the original Stoic texts and then discuss the ideas they present.

This week, we’ll be listening to Letters 39 and 40 from *Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic*: *On noble aspirations* and *On the proper style for a philosopher's discourse*

Here's the text and video if you’d like to check them out beforehand:

Letter 39
Text: [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_39](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_39)
Video: [https://youtu.be/xOt7h1UEiZk](https://youtu.be/xOt7h1UEiZk)

Letter 40
Text: [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_40](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_40)
Video: [https://youtu.be/a3SOrhDVg2I](https://youtu.be/a3SOrhDVg2I)

**Come for the whole thing or join us whenever it works best for you.** See you Sunday!

Stoic Philosophy Practice Group

Joy Salaja

Nimme

Estrella

Bladimir

K Hunter

Samy

Sunday Stoa #130

Online event

Join us for an evening of Stoic philosophy and discussion. We'll kick off the event with a short presentation exploring one of the core ideas of Stoicism, focusing on its real-world application with some practices drawn from the texts. Following the presentation, we'll break into smaller groups for a lightly-facilitated discussion about the topic.

This week, we’ll be discussing benefits, gratitude, and the right way to give and receive. We'll talk about why, who, and how to help, in ways which enrich the lives of both the giver and the receiver, and why becoming skilled at the art of generosity is crucial of achieving peace of mind.

Here's the video we'll be watching: [https://youtu.be/G1nM9UCJCIs?si=K0ad3ZM_lVEdVASQ&t=8922](https://youtu.be/G1nM9UCJCIs?si=K0ad3ZM_lVEdVASQ&t=8922)

And here's the text, along with the rest of the resources for the course: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-6r2KFyv7f-vChnX-9eKovdFsQ6DYoc_CV5RZtJb9XA/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-6r2KFyv7f-vChnX-9eKovdFsQ6DYoc_CV5RZtJb9XA/edit?usp=sharing)

Thanks so much for your interest, and please remember:

*"There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common. And no one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself."* \- Seneca\, Letters from a Stoic\, Letter 48

clarafitzgerald575

peter

Ingrid Sepulveda

Angela 

Abdul

Kara Rothman-Reighard

Stoicism 101: Week 8 - The Right Way to Give

Join us for the next Boston Stoics meetup!

Come meet fellow members, catch up with familiar faces, and dive into good conversation, whether about philosophy, life, or whatever's on your mind.

No agenda, no pressure, just good company and good talk. Whether you've been practicing Stoicism for years or are just curious, you're welcome here.
New faces always welcome, come say hello!

Boston Stoics

Deb S

Jodi

Susan Lally

Saturday Stoa

Panera Bread

There's a word sitting in front of "unhappy," and most of the time we don't hear it.

Desperately unhappy. Not very unhappy. Not deeply, not badly — desperately. It's a stronger word than we usually notice ourselves reaching for, and this chapter argues that the gap between the two makes all the difference.

Why do so many thoughtful, self-aware, well-read people find that:

* a hard week quietly becomes a judgment on their whole life
* disappointment shows up with a prediction attached about everything that follows
* sitting with the feeling makes it deeper rather than lighter
* talking themselves down feels like denying that it mattered
* everyone else's encouragement makes it land harder, not softer

*A Guide to Rational Living* — the 1961 book that became the foundation of modern cognitive therapy — separates two things we usually treat as one. Sorrow and devastation are not the same size, and the difference between them isn't decided by what happened to you. **It's decided by what you say about what happened.** Grief is a fitting response to loss. Devastation is something you add on top of it, and it needs a sentence to stand on.

**We'll get into:**

* the line between an appropriate negative emotion and a destructive one
* why feeling fine about bad things was never the goal
* what the Stoics said about how long you have to keep suffering something
* how "this is unbearable" does more damage than the thing it describes
* what's left of grief when you stop adding to it

**No reading required.** We listen to the chapter together.

**The plan for the night:**

* Quick intro from me — who I am, and where these ideas came from
* We listen to Chapter 9 together (\~20 min)
* Small-group discussion (\~20 min)
* Q&A and open discussion

Not therapy. No diagnosis. Nothing you have to share. Just a good book and a more reasonable way to see the world.

Philosophy + Therapy

Merrill Frank

Holly

Kathy R

Maha

 Pito Rosario

Losingmeisyourloss

Tseti Atsagbede

Victor Adebayo

Connie Donnelly

isabel

Diane Russo

Kim 

Vic F.

Nicole 

susanldorando

Peaceyinny Ihuoma

wren8528

Refusing to Feel Desperately Unhappy

Plotinus is one of the strangest and most rewarding thinkers in the Western tradition — a philosopher whose work reads less like a system and more like a series of maps for looking inward. Pierre Hadot's *Plotinus, or the Simplicity of Vision* is the best short introduction there is: lucid, personal, and written by a scholar who saw ancient philosophy as a way of life rather than a set of doctrines.

Every two weeks we'll take a single chapter, listen to it together, and then open it up for discussion. No prior background in philosophy is required — just curiosity and a willingness to sit with ideas that don't always yield on the first pass. Newcomers are welcome to drop in at any point; each chapter stands well enough on its own.

**Chapter 6 — Gentleness**
Chapter 6 takes us into the house on the Roman aristocracy's edge where Plotinus actually lived and taught. It was not, as some have imagined, a cloistered cenacle of pale ascetics. It was full of people — orphans left in Plotinus's care by dying parents, a widow named Chione and her children, thieving slaves, disciples squabbling over rank, senators, doctors, a rhetorician who couldn't stop lending money at interest. Plotinus arbitrated disputes for twenty-six years without making an enemy. His classroom, often separated from the street by nothing but a curtain, was open to anyone; he encouraged questions to the point that some visitors complained the sessions were chaotic. He once let Porphyry pepper him for three days straight on how the soul is present in the body. He blushed head to toe when a colleague walked in. He caught the young Porphyry quietly planning suicide, diagnosed it as a bile imbalance rather than a spiritual crisis, and sent him to Sicily for the air — a piece of pastoral direction that probably saved his life. Hadot uses all of this to build toward the chapter's central claim: gentleness, for Plotinus, is not a personality trait but a metaphysical principle. The Good acts by presence, not force. The sage transforms what is around him — his own body, his students, his household — simply by being turned toward the Good. There is no combat in Plotinian asceticism, only the quiet, radiating effect of a purified attention. Which is why, Porphyry tells us, when Plotinus spoke, his gentleness "shone forth."

**Format**

* We listen to the chapter together (roughly 50 minutes)
* Open discussion follows — questions, reactions, tangents, disagreements all welcome
* Expect to be here about 2 hours total

**Before you come**
If you'd like to read or listen ahead, here's the links: [Audio](https://drive.google.com/file/d/13s6tN4fqXhz9fKMATSCMHbetDRg6txfH/view?usp=sharing)/[Text](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r6vu6_qBIHNAceLn8kf4xObn8jPkgYe0/view?usp=sharing)

The Cambridge Platonists

Reading Plotinus with Hadot: Chapter 6 - Gentleness

Philosophy as a Way of Life

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