Sanatana Dharma and Stoicism Crossover

Translation: [Baghavad Gita - Eknath Easwaran]


Reading the Baghavad Gita, you find lines which directly convey the principles of Stoicism.

Baghavad Gita
When the senses contact sense objects, a person experiences cold or heat, pleasure or pain. These experiences are fleeting; they come and go. Bear them patiently, Arjuna. Those who are unaffected by these changes, who are the same in pleasure and pain, are truly wise and fit for immortality. Assert your strength and realize this! - 2:14-15
Having made yourself alike in pain and pleasure, profit and loss, victory and defeat, engage in this great battle and you will be freed from sin. - 2:38
Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill. - 2:49-50
Neither agitated by grief nor hankering after pleasure, they live free from lust and fear and anger. Established in meditation, they are truly wise. Fettered no more by selfish attachments, they are neither elated by good fortune nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers. - 2:56-57
Use all your power to free the senses from attachment and aversion alike, and live in the full wisdom of the Self. - 2:68
Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results. Those who understand this and practice it live in freedom. - 4:14
The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all. Free from expectations and from all sense of possession, with mind and body firmly controlled by the Self, they do not incur sin by the performance of physical action. - 4:19-21
The supreme Reality stands revealed in the consciousness of those who have conquered themselves. They live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame. - 6:7
With body and mind controlled they should constantly practice one-pointedness, free from expectations and attachment to material possessions. - 6:10
Renouncing wholeheartedly all selfish desires and expectations, use your will to control the senses. - 6:24

An emphasis on freedom from expectations is what led me to recall the teachings of Stoicism. Perhaps I'll add specific lines from the works of Seneca, Taleb and others for comparison later.