The view that Aurelius was depressed is very widespread. I've read the whole meditations, in several translations, and parts in the original. I've translated part of the original in anger at what deceitful translations are being put out today, which delete half of what he says to make him sound more stoical.
Go read more of it. I just chose two parts at random to narrate my thinking in reading these passages again to provide some background here. I'm obviously not making my case on these quotes.
> It's a lot like buddhists reflecting on nirvana.
This is how its bastardized, but that's not there in the text. This is the emperor of rome, at the end of his life, in a state of depression writing a journal to himself. He's an old tyrant, a self-confessed self-righteous "schoolmaster" who goes around admonishing people, including himself.
He's not writing religious literature; this is not scripture -- he isnt starting or continuning a religion or a philosophy. He wanted the whole thing burned. This is a ahistorical cultish reinterpretation to fit an agenda.
Listen to the man himself (2 mins of scrolling through):
NB. Recall you means the man himself. He is talking to himself. This is not a published work of philosophy, there is no audience. He's admonishing himself.
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# 8.1 Another encouragement to humility: you can’t claim to have lived your life as a philosopher—not even your whole adulthood. You can see for yourself how far you are from philosophy. And so can many others. You’re tainted. It’s not so easy now—to have a reputation as a philosopher. And your position is an obstacle as well.
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# 8.9 Don’t be overheard complaining about life at court. Not even to yourself.
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# 8.21 Turn it inside out: What is it like? What is it like old? Or sick? Or selling itself on the streets?
They all die soon—praiser and praised, rememberer and remembered. Remembered in these parts or in a corner of them. Even there they don’t all agree with each other (or even with themselves).
And the whole earth a mere point in space.
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# 8.53 You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves. (Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?)
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# 9.33 All that you see will soon have vanished, and those who see it vanish will vanish themselves, and the ones who reached old age have no advantage over the untimely dead.
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# 9.3
Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things you’ll leave behind you, and the kind of people you’ll no longer be mixed up with. There’s no need to feel resentment toward them—in fact, you should look out for their well-being, and be gentle with them—but keep in mind that everything you believe is meaningless to those you leave behind. Because that’s all that could restrain us (if anything could)—the only thing that could make us want to stay here: the chance to live with those who share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is—this cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death, “Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like them.”
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# 10.3 Everything that happens is either endurable or not.
If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.
If it’s unendurable … then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well.
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I know the man well enough. The idea that he's there a monk writing scripture is an absurdity. Just read what he says to himself. These are his private thoughts, he writes out to himself.
In 9.3 there he basically says, "i'll be glad to be dead and rid of these degenerates" ginned up with his usual self-righteousness -- an emperor of rome indeed.
They are phrased by his teachings as a child, by professional stoic philosophers. These were the manners and habits of thinking he was taught. And he here rehearses them alongside a vast amount of bitterness, and disappointment.