Stoicism

[Belacqua]

Have you looked into the Stoic's metaphysics at all? 

Their ideas about how to live derived directly from their views about how the Logos pervades the universe. I'm not sure I'd want to take their ethical advice if I rejected all of its foundations. 

Basically, the One emanates the Logos. This was common to several schools of thought in those days, including the Neoplatonists. And of course it is taken into Christianity with John 1:1.

Nah, I'm not into metaphysics.  For me, the origin of the idea matters less than its practical usefulness, and I find the tenets of Stoicism to be useful to me.  YMMV obviously.

I think the Stoics, like all schools of philosophy, derive their ethics from their metaphysics. Basically: the world is this way, therefore you should behave this way. 

In other words, if you ask a Stoic why you ought to live according to his ethics, he can give you strong reasons. Much more than just "this sounds good to me." 

In fact an emphasis on practical usefulness is probably a very modern thing. So choosing a set of ethics based on what seems useful would go against the original Stoics. They would say you ought to choose your ethics based on the the truth of the way the universe is. 

I used to read about Buddhism a lot too, and spent some time at a Zen retreat. But in the end I stopped because I couldn't accept their metaphysics. Granted, if I had continued to meditate seriously I might be better off psychologically right now -- but that would make Zen practices into mood therapy rather than real Buddhism.