Philokalia - Evagrios the Solitary - I
The only drawback in my mind to The Philokalia is that a large portion of it is targeted to those living the ascetic, solitary life of a monk. There is still, however, a lot of wisdom that can be drawn from the writings. There are several works from Evagrios the Solitary in The Philokalia, so I am breaking his writing into sections. One section from the first work, On Asceticism and Stillness stuck out at me:
Be like an astute business man: make stillness your criterion for testing the value of everything, and choose always what contributes to it.
When I think about this I realize how my life would be different if I followed this wisdom every day of my life. Of course I don’t follow this wisdom always, and I am not even sure it is possible to do this 100% of the time, but it is still a good maxim.
That’s all for today. What do you think? More to come tomorrow.
January 4th, 2007 at 10:46
I’m in two minds over this quote.
I certainly believe that stillness is of immeasurable importance; meditation, contemplative prayer, silence, are all hugely important to my spirituality. But I also believe that a still core can allow for active shell.
What I mean by that is, my aim in my Christian is to increase grow still on the ‘inside’; my thoughts, emotions, worries about the future, guilt over the past, etc etc. But at the same time, there are certain activities which, on a surface level, are not still, that I find great value in!
There are little joys to be found in things like going on an insane road trip with friends, riding a roller-coaster, climbing trees, playing football, etc. I suppose my concern is that in reading quotes like this one, people will make the same mistakes I made when I first started on the contemplative journey, and avoid anything that inolves an adrenaline rush, or a bit of adventure; when I believe there is immense value, joy, and even stillness to be found within them!
Maybe this was a bit of a pointless post. It was a bit stream-of-consciousness-y, and in a round-a-bout way, I’ve ended up agreeing with the quote.
But hey, anything to make a name for myself. :-p
January 15th, 2007 at 23:42
Hmm, I might ask where’s Zach?