Seneca Between Sessions: MindIsland's Articles, Read Like an Essay Collection

The British tradition of the essay collection is one of the loveliest forms of literature. From Charles Lamb’s ‘Essays of Elia’ by way of George Orwell’s short pieces to Zadie Smith’s collections, it shows how much thought can fit on a few pages. A good essay takes a small observation and follows it until it reveals something larger. It is short, but not shallow.

It is by this standard that we approach a part of MindIsland that barely features in most reviews: the article collection. Alongside personalised meditations and a library, the app offers a growing collection of short articles on mindfulness, mindset and philosophy, described as ‘from stoic wisdom to modern psychology’. There is also a daily quote. The articles can also be read on the web, and reading progress is saved across devices.

The idea: a reading room next to the practice room

The idea is a good one. Many people come to meditation through books, not apps. Marcus Aurelius’s ‘Meditations’ and Seneca’s letters have enjoyed a remarkable popularity in recent years, and someone who opens a meditation app is often looking not just for an exercise but for a stance on life. An app that offers both takes its users seriously as thinking people.

There is also a practical consideration. A meditation on MindIsland lasts three, five or ten minutes. Afterwards there is often a small void, in which one reaches for the phone anyway. A short text at this point is a better choice than the news feed. The reading room, then, sits cleverly next to the practice room.

The tone

What do such texts sound like? Here we must be candid. According to the privacy policy, the Google Gemini interface generates not only the meditation texts but also the article texts. So we are not reading essays by an author with a biography, but texts that are machine-generated. Whether and how they are editorially checked is not clear from the public information.

That changes the reading experience. An essay in the classical sense lives by a voice, by idiosyncrasies, by detours that only a human takes. A machine-generated text tends towards smoothness: it summarises where an essayist would digress, and closes neatly where an essayist would leave a question open. For a quick thought between two appointments, that may be enough. For the pleasure one takes in Orwell or Montaigne, it is not enough.

An essayist digresses where a machine summarises, and leaves open where it closes neatly.

Stoicism as a leitmotif

That Stoicism in particular is cited as an example is no accident. Stoic philosophy fits remarkably well with the three-step structure on which MindIsland bases its meditations: first acknowledge what is, then reframe it, then come to rest. Epictetus’s famous distinction between what is in our power and what is not is at heart a technique of reframing.

The danger lies in oversimplification. The popular Stoicism of quote tiles readily reduces a strict, demanding ethic to slogans of serenity. Seneca was a contradictory man, adviser to a tyrant and one of the richest Romans of his time, and his letters wrestle with precisely that contradiction. A short article can hardly capture that. A daily quote even less so. We would like the collection to lead its readers to the sources rather than replace them.

Usefulness between two meditations

So where does the value lie? Above all in the integration. The articles are short, they sit where one already is, and they extend the attitude of the meditation into a thought. The reading progress saved across devices is a small but fine detail; it treats reading as something one interrupts and resumes, like a book on the bedside table.

The daily quote, by contrast, is the weakest form. Quotes without context are the chocolates of philosophy: pleasant, quickly consumed, not nourishing. As an invitation to read further they have their place; as a substitute for reading, they do not.

What we cannot judge

We do not know the size of the collection; the maker speaks of a ‘growing’ library. We cannot say how often new texts appear or whether certain themes predominate. We have not read every article and therefore judge the design and form, not each individual text.

How to use the reading room

Anyone wanting to incorporate the articles meaningfully into their own practice can read them like a breviary: one text after meditation, no more. The temptation to read three in a row is great, but it turns the calm after the session into a new form of scrolling. A single thought that accompanies the day is more valuable than a collection of thoughts forgotten over lunch.

A second suggestion: one can take the theme of an article into the next personalised meditation. Anyone who has read about the Stoic distinction between what is in our power and what is not can write in the prompt field which of the day’s worries belongs in the second group. In this way the reading room and the practice room become a conversation.

Our verdict

MindIsland’s article collection is not an essay collection in the sense of Lamb or Orwell, and it does not claim to be. It is a reading room with short texts, sensibly placed alongside the meditations and with a leitmotif, Stoicism, that suits the app’s approach well. Its greatest merit would be to send readers to the originals. Anyone who turns to Seneca’s letters after reading it has made the best of it. The app can be found at mindisland.app.