If externals cannot control your mind, as marcus believes, then nothing can harm you. And it's important to realize here that, to marcus, all harm exists in the mind. The effect of the loss on your mind is where the real threat of ongoing, permanent harm exists. If it were me writing this meditation, it would have been reduced to just the first sentence and the last one. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you say. Think, death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these things happen to the good and bad alike,. They are neither noble nor shameful, and hence neither good nor bad