Cicero's Search for Yoga

In Books 3 and 4 of the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero presents the ideal of a Stoic sage, free from the emotions of desire, wild gladness, fear, and distress. The sage is described as having a tranquil mind, and is self-controlled, moderate, temperate, consistent and self-contained. However, Cicero himself struggles to reach the ideal, bringing us to an uncomfortable chasm between precept and practice. The primary aim of this project is to examine this division; how is it that we can conceive of ideals that are so pristine, and yet fall short of them without repose? This project is divisible into two primary parts. The first involves a general examination of sage-ideals. The ideal of the Stoic sage that Cicero presents happens to have much in common with the ideal of the sage of settled intelligence, which is found in the Bhagavad Gita of Indian Philosophy. I argue that these ideals share in common the attributes of having evenness of mind and establishment in intelligence, of being beyond many of the emotions within the typical range of human experience, and of being both self-controlled and able to find contentment within. The second part of this project examines Cicero’s difficulties embodying his own ideal; although he attempts to cast his own distress away and banish it as a useless emotion, even going so far as calling it “entirely voluntary,” his reflections do not appear sufficient to remove it. In the face of this difficulty, I argue that the Stoic notion that emotions are voluntary is inaccurate. The reason is that although we possess a capacity for voluntary action (made possible through our capacity to reason), we also have beliefs and emotional responses that were acquired in early, pre-rational development. These are deeply rooted, and cannot be changed through reason alone. In the face of this truth, I turn to Bhakti-Yoga, the Yoga of love and devotion, as an opening to alternative approaches to healing the human heart, and becoming oneself. ; M.A.