Hesychasm


Hesychasm is a contemplative monastic tradition in the Eastern Christian traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches in which stillness is sought through uninterrupted Jesus prayer. While rooted in early Christian monasticism, it took its definitive form in the 14th century at Mount Athos.

Etymology

Hesychasm derives from the word hesychia, meaning "stillness, rest, quiet, silence" and hesychazo "to keep stillness".

Origins and development

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a scholar of Eastern Orthodox theology, distinguishes five distinct usages of the term "hesychasm":
  1. "solitary life", a sense, equivalent to "eremitical life", in which the term is used since the 4th century;
  2. "the practice of inner prayer, aiming at union with God on a level beyond images, concepts and language";
  3. "the quest for such union through the Jesus Prayer";
  4. "a particular psychosomatic technique in combination with the Jesus Prayer", use of which technique can be traced back at least to the 13th century;
  5. "the theology of St. Gregory Palamas", on which see Palamism.

    Early Christian monasticism

Solitary ascetic life

Christian monasticism started with the legalisation of Christianity in the 4th century. The term hesychast is used sparingly in Christian ascetical writings emanating from Egypt from the 4th century on, although the writings of Evagrius and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers do attest to it. In Egypt, the terms more often used are anchoretism, and anchorite.
The term hesychast was used in the 6th century in Palestine in the Lives of Cyril of Scythopolis. Many of the hesychasts Cyril describes were his own contemporaries; several of the saints about whom Cyril was writing, especially Euthymios and Savas, were in fact from Cappadocia. The laws of the emperor Justinian I treat hesychast and anchorite as synonyms, making them interchangeable terms.

Inner prayer

The practice of inner prayer, which aims at "inward stillness or silence of the heart", dates back to at least the 4th century. Evagrius Ponticus, John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor, and Symeon the New Theologian are representatives of this hesychast spirituality. John Climacus, in his influential Ladder of Divine Ascent, describes several stages of contemplative or hesychast practice, culminating in agape.
The earliest reference to the Jesus prayer is in Diadochos of Photiki. Neither Evagrius, Maximus, nor Symeon refers to the Jesus prayer. Saint John Cassian, who transmitted Evagrius Ponticus's ascetical teachings to the West, forming the basis of much of the spirituality of the Order of Saint Benedict and the subsequent western mystical tradition, presents as the formula used in Egypt for repetitive prayer "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me."

Addition of psychosomatic techniques

, a Roman Catholic who converted to the Eastern Orthodox faith and became a monk at Mount Athos, advised monks to bend their heads toward the chest, "attach the prayer to their breathing" while controlling the rhythm of their breath, and "to fix their eyes during prayer on the 'middle of the body'", concentrating the mind within the heart in order to practice nepsis. While this is the earliest attestation of psychosomatic techniques in hesychast prayer, according to Kallistos Ware "its origins may well be far more ancient", influenced by the Sufi practice of dhikr, " the memory and invocation of the name of God", which in turn may have been influenced by Yoga practices from India, though it's also possible that Sufis were influenced by early Christian monasticism.
In the early 14th century, Gregory Sinaita learned a form of disciplined mental prayer from Arsenius of Crete, rooted in the tradition of John Climacus. In 1310, he went to Mount Athos, where he remained until 1335 as a monk at the Skete of Magoula near Philotheou Monastery, introducing hesychast practice there. The terms Hesychasm and Hesychast were used by the monks on Mount Athos to refer to the practice and to the practitioner of a method of mental ascesis that involves the use of the Jesus Prayer assisted by certain psychophysical techniques.

Hesychast controversy and Palamism

About the year 1337, hesychasm attracted the attention of Barlaam of Seminara, a Calabrian monk who at that time held the office of abbot in the Monastery of St. Saviour in Constantinople and who visited Mount Athos. Mount Athos was then at the height of its fame and influence, under the reign of Andronicus III Palaeologus and the leadership of the Protos Symeon. On Mount Athos, Barlaam encountered hesychasts and heard descriptions of their practices, also reading the writings of the teacher in hesychasm of St. Gregory Palamas, himself an Athonite monk. Trained in Western Scholastic theology, Barlaam was scandalized by hesychasm and began to combat it both orally and in his writings. As a private teacher of theology in the Western Scholastic mode, Barlaam propounded a more intellectual and propositional approach to the knowledge of God than the hesychasts taught.
Barlaam took exception to the doctrine entertained by the hesychasts as to the nature of the light, the experience of which was said to be the goal of hesychast practice, regarding it as heretical and blasphemous. It was maintained by the hesychasts to be of divine origin and to be identical to the light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration. This Barlaam held to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. Hesychasm was linked with Messalianiam and Bogomilism.
On the hesychast side, the controversy was taken up by St. Gregory Palamas, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica, who was asked by his fellow monks on Mt Athos to defend hesychasm from the attacks of Barlaam. St. Gregory himself was well-educated in Greek philosophy. St. Gregory defended hesychasm in the 1340s at three different synods in Constantinople, and he also wrote a number of works in its defense.
In these works, St. Gregory Palamas uses a distinction, already found in the 4th century in the works of the Cappadocian Fathers, between the energies or operations '' of God and the essence of God. St. Gregory taught that the energies or operations of God were uncreated. He taught that the essence of God can never be known by his creature even in the next life, but that his uncreated energies or operations can be known both in this life and in the next, and convey to the hesychast in this life and to the righteous in the next life a true spiritual knowledge of God. In Palamite theology, it is the uncreated energies of God that illumine the hesychast who has been vouchsafed an experience of the uncreated light.
In 1341, the dispute came before a synod held at Constantinople and presided over by the Emperor Andronicus III; the synod, taking into account the regard in which the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were held, condemned Barlaam, who recanted and returned to Calabria, afterwards becoming a bishop in the Catholic Church.
One of Barlaam's friends, Gregory Akindynos, who originally was also a friend of St. Gregory Palamas, took up the controversy, which also played a role in the civil war between the supporters of John Cantacuzenus and John V Palaiologos. Three other synods on the subject were held, at the second of which the followers of Barlaam gained a brief victory. But in 1351 at a synod under the presidency of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, hesychast doctrine was established as the doctrine of the Orthodox Church.

Introduction in Russia

St. Paisius Velichkovsky and his disciples made the practice known in Russia and Romania, although hesychasm was already previously known in Russia, as is attested by St. Seraphim of Sarov's independent practice of it.

Practice

Acquiring inner stillness

The hesychast interprets Jesus's injunction in the Gospel of Matthew to "go into your closet to pray" to mean that one should ignore the senses and withdraw inward. Saint John of Sinai writes:

Stages in hesychast practice

Theosis is obtained by engaging in contemplative prayer resulting from the cultivation of watchfulness. This doesn't mean that human, created energy obtains theosis by itself, i.e., without God. Holy Spirit is a doer of theosis, because He gives Christ's grace and Father's love to the purifying ones. According to the standard ascetic formulation of this process, there are three stages:
Sobriety contributes to this mental ascesis that rejects tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention. The hesychast is to pay extreme attention to the consciousness of his inner world and the words of the Jesus Prayer, not letting his mind wander in any way at all. While he maintains his practice of the Jesus Prayer, which becomes automatic and continues twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the hesychast cultivates nepsis, watchful attention, to reject tempting thoughts that come to the hesychast as he watches in sober attention in his hermitage. St. John of Sinai describes hesychast practice as follows:
The hesychast is to attach Eros, that is, "yearning", to his practice of sobriety so as to overcome the temptation to acedia. He is also to use an extremely directed and controlled anger against the tempting thoughts, although to obliterate them entirely, he is to invoke Jesus Christ via the Jesus Prayer.
Much of the literature of hesychasm is occupied with the psychological analysis of such tempting thoughts. This psychological analysis owes much to the ascetical works of Evagrius Pontikos, with its doctrine of the eight passions.