Three disciplines in one line. One of the most compressed conspectuses of Marcus's askesis — the very passage on which Pierre Hadot builds his reconstruction of the three disciplines (after Epictetus, Disc. 3.2.1–2). Three actions "available everywhere and always" (πανταχοῦ καὶ διηνεκῶς):

1. DOGMAPiously to be content with the present lot (τῇ παρούσῃ συμβάσει θεοσεβῶς εὐαρεστεῖν) — the discipline of desire: to accept what fate sends as a pious assent to the nature of the Whole.
2. To deal with the people at hand TERMby justice (κατὰ δικαιοσύνην) — the discipline of action: justice to those who are now beside you, not to an abstract humanity.
3. EXERCISETo work with skill upon the present TERMimpression (τῇ παρούσῃ φαντασίᾳ ἐμφιλοτεχνεῖν) — the discipline of assent: to scrutinize the impression, "so that nothing uncomprehended (ἀκατάληπτον) may slip in (παρεισρυῇ)."

"Present" three times. The threefold refrain παρούσῃ… παροῦσιν… παρούσῃ ("present… those present… present") draws the whole exercise to the now: the fate one accepts is the present one; the people one is just to are these; the impression one checks is the one at hand. ἐμφιλοτεχνεῖν is a rare verb, "to work upon with art, lovingly and craftsman-like": assent is not passive vigilance but a craft. ἀκατάληπτον — "un-grasped": the technical antonym of the καταληπτικὴ φαντασία (the cognitive impression); the task is not to let in what has not passed the test of comprehensibility. Cf. 9.6 (the same triad: the judgment true, the act social, the disposition an acceptance of what happens) and 8.7. The governing discipline is desire; the sustaining one, assent (all three in balance).