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April   10th

JUDGMENTS   CAUSE   DISTURBANCE

“It isn’t   events  themselves  that    disturb people, but only    their   judgments   about   them.”

—EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION,     5

he samurai swordsman Musashi made a distinction between our “perceiving eye” and our “observing
eye.” The observing eye sees what is. The perceiving eye sees what things supposedly mean. Which
one do you think causes us the most anguish?
An event is inanimate. It’s objective. It simply is what it is. That’s what our observing eye sees.
This will ruin me. How could this have happened? Ugh! It’s so-and-so’s fault. That’s our perceiving
eye at work. Bringing disturbance with it and then blaming it on the event.