sublime:

The presence of a noble man is of no less service than his memory

Seneca

In his final letters, Seneca has some powerful words to say about sophistry and mind-viruses' -especially relevant today.  It is better to ignore the fraudulent, attention seeking, creative, and sometimes even insulting and/or mentally ill  rhetoric- then let this garbage gestate in one's mind.   An intellectual villain could easy harm someone by targeting their insecurities and transplanting diseased and fallacious ideas.  Seneca warns that these toxins must not be allowed any room or attention in one's mind once they are identified or they will grow and steal the life of those who are thus inflicted.   

‘Happiness is a smoothly flowing life’ (euroia biou), where the mind adapts to any circumstances befalling us."

"the Stoics also reputedly said that the goal of life was ‘living in accord with virtue’, or human excellence. In other words, they believed that we’re all born with the responsibility of excelling by bringing our own nature to perfection. This means completing the job left unfinished by Nature herself by voluntarily making the best use of our highest faculty: reason. Crucially, for the Stoics, adult humans are essentially reasoning creatures and therefore ‘to the rational creature the same act is at once according to Nature and according to reason’ (Meditations, 7.11). So following Nature doesn’t mean acting like a ‘dumb animal’ but rather fulfilling our natural potential as human animals

Another famous 20th-century philosopher, Bertrand Russell, described a similar method of overcoming anxiety, worth quoting in detail. He begins by noting that many people are plagued by fear and worry, which can cause fatigue and stress. However, they tend to avoid doing the very thing that’s most likely to help them:

Probably all these people employ the wrong technique for dealing with their fear; whenever it comes into their mind, they try to think of something else; they distract their thoughts with amusement or work, or what not. Now every kind of fears grows worse by not being looked at. The effort of turning away one’s thoughts is a tribute to the horribleness of the spectre from which one is averting one’s gaze; the proper course with every kind of fear is to think about it rationally and calmly, but with great concentration, until it becomes completely familiar. In the end familiarity will blunt its terrors; the whole subject will become boring, and our thoughts will turn away from it, not, as formerly, by an effort of will, but through mere lack of interest in the topic. When you find yourself inclined to brood on anything, no matter what, the best plan always is to think about it even more than you naturally would until at last its morbid fascination is worn off. (Russell, 1930, p. 60

When some misfortune threatens, consider seriously and deliberately what is the very worst that could possibly happen. Having looked this possible misfortune in the face, give yourself sound reasons for thinking that after all it would be no such very terrible disaster. Such reasons always exist, since at the worst nothing that happens to oneself has any cosmic importance. When you have looked for some time steadily at the worst possibility and have said to yourself with real conviction, ‘Well, after all, that would not matter so very much’, you will find that your worry diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent. It may be necessary to repeat the process a few times, but in the end, if you have shirked nothing in facing the worst possible issue, you will find that your worry disappears altogether, and is replaced by a kind of exhilaration. (Russell, 1930, pp. 59–60)

Russell’s version of premeditation involves facing our worst fears in imagination, patiently, and persuading ourselves that they are not as catastrophic as first assumed.

 Seneca argues that, because Stoics believe every true good resides in the mind rather than in external or bodily things, it follows that whatever strengthens, elevates, or enlarges the mind is good for us. Virtue, in the form of ‘magnanimity’, raises the mind above ‘indifferent’ things and enlarges it far beyond their influence. By contrast, attachment to such bodily and external things can ‘weigh down’ the mind and weaken it or perhaps bloat it with emptiness, rather than allowing it to flourish, grow, and expand naturally. When we become absorbed in petty things, like the pursuit of wealth or reputation, in a sense our souls shrink and are dragged down into a narrow perspective in life.

This notion of expanding our minds is related to another important virtue called ‘magnanimity’ (megalopsuchia, a ‘mega psyche’), literally ‘greatness of soul’ or ‘greatness of mind’ – having a big soul. It’s defined as the quality that allows us to remain superior to and detached from anything that happens to us in life, whether judged ‘good’ or ‘evil’ by the majority, i.e., the ordinary objects of fear and desire. Zeno wrote that magnanimity by itself is sufficient to ‘raise us far above all things’ and that because it is an essential part of all virtue, the Sage will necessarily ‘look down upon all things that appear troublesome’ and attain Happiness or eudaimonia regardless of his external circumstances.

"He should forget about reputation and act purely in the service of wisdom and virtue, as a soul doing so ‘will find it easiest of all to soar upwards to this place, which is its proper habitation and home’. He adds that the ascent will be easier if during life, confined by the body, it has nevertheless ‘ranged freely abroad, and by visualising and meditating upon what lies outside itself, has worked to dissociate itself from the body to the greatest possible degree.’

Stoics also believed that virtue and eudaimonia have a timeless quality, and their worth is not undermined by the brevity of their duration. An act of exemplary wisdom and courage that lasts a split second is still intrinsically good,

[Epicurus said:] 'Practice death in advance,' or if it is easier to convey his meaning, something like this: 'It is a great thing to learn how to die.' Perhaps you think it superfluous to learn something that can only be implemented once. This is the very reason we have to practise; we must always learn anything that we cannot test to see if we know it. 'Practise death!' The man who says this is bidding us practice liberty. The man who has learned to die has unlearned how to be a slave; he is above all power, or at least beyond its reach. What do prison and guards and locked doors mean to him? He has a free way out. There is only one chain that keeps us bound, the love of life, and even if this should not be rejected, it should be reduced so that if circumstances require nothing will hold us back or prevent us from being ready instantly for whatever action is needed. (Letters, 26)

Marcus Aurelius asserts the Stoic and Socratic view that true philosophy consists above all in ‘waiting for death with good grace’, remembering that it is merely a natural and inevitable dispersal of atoms, and not to be feared as a catastrophe (Meditations, 2.17).

The Stoic ideal holds that the Sage, the man we should seek to emulate, ‘finds it a joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die’, accepting his mortality and facing death with dignity when the time comes (Letters, 54). Marcus therefore advises contemplating death in each action, to focus our attention on its true worth: ‘During every one of your actions pause at each step and ask yourself: Is death deemed catastrophic because of the loss of this?’ (Meditations, 10.29). Seneca likewise imagines that we should respond to those afraid to die by saying ‘So are you living now?’ Paradoxically, we cannot be truly alive when we are enslaved by fears, especially the fear of death itself (Letters, 77). We make ourselves the puppets of fortune and, in particular, we become slaves to other men by valuing what is in their power. Stoic heroes like Cato were called ‘invulnerable’ to tyrants like Caesar because they were unwilling to sacrifice their values to save their own lives

In a world torn by hope and worry, dread and anger, imagine every day that dawns is the last you'll see; the hour you never hoped for will prove a happy surprise. (Horace, Letters, 1.4)

‘Although I was witnessing the death of one who was my friend, I had no feeling of pity, for the man appeared happy both in manner and words as he died nobly and without fear.’ (Phaedo, 58e)
So what did Socrates do? Well, he acted normally. He saw his persecutors, the men responsible for his death, as simply misguided rather than hateful. 

philosophy is essentially a lifelong ‘meditation on death’ (melete thanatou), as the reason for his surprising indifference. He says that those who practice philosophy in the right way are constantly training for death, and true philosophers fear dying least of all men (Phaedo, 67e).
The ‘contemplation of death’ therefore emerged right at the most dramatic moment in the birth of Western philosophy, spoken at the heart of what Socrates called his philosophical swansong. When the time came, he calmly drank the poison and waited to die. He’d clearly reconciled himself to this and he confronted death with equanimity and an attitude of philosophical curiosity.

: ‘Some men at the price of a glorious death have won a fame that generations will venerate; some indomitable in the face of punishment have given others an example that evil cannot defeat virtue’ (Consolation of Philosophy, 4.6). However, the most important aspect of the good death is the fact that it's approached with wisdom and virtuous intentions, rather than the actual consequences for other people, which are largely in the hands of fate. Even someone who dies in obscurity can have a ‘good death’, if she can meet her fate with dignity and courage.

Cicero says [in Letters to Atticus, 2, 1, 8] of Cato of Utica that he used to act as if he were living in Plato’s Republic, and not in the mud of Romulus. … This is the eternal drama of humanity in general and of politics in particular. Unless it transforms people completely, politics can never be anything other than a compromise with evil.” (p. 304)

And this, unfortunately, was true during the Roman Republic and Empire just as it is true pretty much everywhere on the globe in the 21st century. That’s why it isn’t the job of politics to transform people, but rather that of philosophy. Politics is needed to compromise with evil, until, perhaps, we can ban evil by changing people.

Political participation, then, even when virtuously conducted, is a human activity that as such is of little or no account, and to be contrasted with the divine; but also a divine activity that exemplifies our own divinity as participants in the government of the universe. Virtue is its own reward, insofar as it is to be identified with that participation in the universal order than which there can be nothing finer. And although the heavenly rewards are evidently presented in the Dream as a motivation on top of that, the notion of being transferred to a heavenly location seems also to represent, in concrete form, the realization of the true nature of a human being as ally of god.

terrific:

Buddhism:  There is no inherent meaning in anything in the world, the world just "is".  Meaning is a human construct, and tends to narrow one's mind in accordance to a certain narrative, making one blind to things operating on the side.  Deviations from this central meaning lead to anxiety, anger, and other forms of distress.

Desire and hatred are rooted in ignorance