July 18, 2019
(Remembering Br. Gabriel on the first anniversary of his
rising to glory)
Go out alone into the wilderness,
to the place where there’s nobody
there to perform for
and the ego has nothing to do and
it crumbles.
And only then are
you capable of being loved.
David Brooks
I am ending up my time up here on the mesa. I certainly hope
that this will be the first of other times I will be able to spend time here.
It is hard to express just how ideal the time in this place has been. There was
been plenty of time and space for prayer and meditation, obviously, but also
exercise, including hikes out into the wilderness, and a bit of music. I have
just left my guitar lying around and picked it up at random when the urge hit.
Another thing I have benefitted from greatly is the luxury to be able to do
some good lectio. Besides scripture itself I have my travel copy of Prabhavananda’s
version of the Upanishads with me, which I am quite fond of. (I say “version”
rather than “translation,” with all due respect. In comparing his with scholarly
editions––not that he is changing the essential teachings at all––you
understand that he is making the text accessible. Even if it is not pure
translation, it is certainly pure Vedanta from a respected teacher.) I also for
some reason had the urge to read Evagrius again during this time, and asked Br.
Evan to secure me a copy from the library, promising both to return it and not
make any little marks in the margins. They have here the Cistercian Studies
edition that I am familiar with by John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO, with is
excellent introductory essay. Perhaps it was the week at Tassajara that got me
thinking of him again.
Three things have stayed with me in my reading of Evagrius
this week, in the line of Universal Wisdom. First of all, I have been thinking
of the difference between holiness and enlightenment. As I wrote to a friend of
mine recently, I think of holiness as the sweetness of love for God and
neighbor as self, which usually looks like devotion and service. Enlightenment on
the other hand is seeing into the true nature of reality, even of Absolute
Reality. I think it is similar to the Buddhists always putting together wisdom
and compassion (hence the song “Compassionate and Wise”). Seeing into the true
nature of reality ought to make us compassionate. At some point they are not
two: holy and enlightened, wisdom and compassion, like prayer and meditation.
Well, Evagrius begins his “sutra” (his century of aphorisms
does remind me of the Yoga Sutras) at the end:
1. Christianity
… is composed of praktike,
contemplation of the physical world and contemplation of God.
2. The
Kingdom of Heaven is apatheia of the
soul along with true knowledge of existing things.
3. The
Kingdom of God is knowledge of the Trinity …
Another important thing that Evagrius asserts which I go
back to all the time, as a reminder to us contemplatives in danger of being
walled in and cut off in our spiritual quest, is that if apatheia is the flower
of our praxis, agape is the progeny of apatheia. But it is even stronger than
that, and even gives us a little bit of a hierarchy in regards holiness and
enlightenment. The way John-Eudes Bamberger describes it, apatheia isn’t the
door to contemplation; it’s only the threshold. “For charity [agape-divine love] is the door to
contemplation.” So there is a hierarchy: ascesis-practice will lead us to
psychological health. That is a good way to understand apatheia––not emotionless, for the passions are disordered
passions. The state of apatheia is when we are psychologically emotionally
healthy. And the will give us, Evagrius says, “contemplation of the physical
world.” Seeing the reality as it really is, not from trapped behind the
wallpaper of our narrative. Is this a good way of describing enlightenment? And
further, at least a glimpse, understanding, Absolute Reality. (It’s interesting
that he distinguishes between the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God!)
But that knowledge is only a first step. It’s like a double scopos! The proof and the offspring of
all this seeing into the true nature of reality is love, divine love, which as
Jesus teaches means loving God with all the heart, the soul and the mind and
loving the neighbor as one’s very self. It’s that then that leads to theoria, beatitude––union with God, the
real telos.
However, speaking of the telos,
if I had read this before, I’d forgotten it… Bomberger lays out Evagrius’
cosmology, which is indebted to but different from the Greek tradition in which
he has been formed. And as I was reading it, before I got to Bamberger’s
conclusion I was thinking to myself, this is weird, very reminiscent of Origen
but also with some of the flavor of Gnosticism bordering on dualism. Remember
Evagrius was condemned as a heretic, which is why for much of history he has
been unknown in Christian, monastic, contemplative spirituality. And Fr. Bamberger
says “the charges brought against him are correct”! I was actually kind of
relived to hear that though surprise at how strange it all was. But he also
adds something that I think would have made Bruno smile: that the charges
against Evagrius “were made with undue harshness and without the restraint
which was due to his personal sanctity and good faith.”
That got me back to the telos and scopos again, and how it
applies not only inter-religiously (as I say often, even though we disagree
about the telos, or at least or articulation of it, we agree on the scopos),
the same thing applies intra-religiously.
Evagrius’ understanding and articulation of the telos, his cosmology, doesn’t accord with orthodox Christianity
(and Fr. Bamberger adds even with Christian scripture); even a broad-minded guy
like me, though not a theologian, can see that. And yet, his articulation of
the scopos as contained in the Praktikos
and the Chapters on Prayer are
inarguably as good as it gets, as well as, following on that, his program of praxis, which finds its way into Western
monasticism via Cassian and Benedict, if there could be any better testimony to
its validity.
The word ‘heresy’ is so strong and sulfuric, and has been
used as a cudgel so often just to shut off all––and I mean all––conversation, even to the point of (shame!) putting those who
were thought of as heretics to death, in the name of Christ, “with undue
harshness and without the restraint which is due” at times to personal sanctity
and often also at least good faith.
Last point: one of the proofs that Evagrius is right about
the scopos is how universal his
teaching is. I guess that’s why the week at Tassajara got me thinking of him
again. Fr. Bamberger notes in two places Evagrius’ similarities to Hinduism:
his idea of the “true gnosis (knowledge) of created things corresponds to the tattva of Hinduism; and when Evagrius
writes that one of the proofs of apatheia is that the soul “begins to see its
own light (#64)”, he points to Mircea Eliade’s teaching concerning the light of
the heart in the Yoga tradition. And the famous Benedictine scholar Jean
Leclerq, who wrote a preface of this edition, cites several others when he says
it was “possible to say that ‘the mysticism of Evagrius was closer to that of
Buddhism than that of Christianity.”
Now I shall begin my trek through the desert, stopping to
see some beloved friends along the way, eventually making my way to my folks in
Arizona.
