Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Barrcast. I’m your host, Nick Barr, coming to you on a Wednesday afternoon here in New York. We’re in the middle of a major cold period here and storms may be coming this weekend. So what better time to learn about tactics for resisting the eight evil thoughts or tempting thoughts or logismoi.

So let’s get right into it. We’re picking up where we left off on chapter 15.

Chapter 15: Stabilizing the Three Faculties

The wandering nous is made stable by one reading, two vigils and three prayer. Burning epithumia, that’s desire, is quenched by one hunger, two toil and three solitude. Churning thumos, indignation, is calmed by one, the singing of Psalms, by two, patient endurance and three, mercy. But all these practices are to be engaged in at proper times and in proper measure. What is done untimely or without measure is temporary. And what is temporary is more harmful and not beneficial.

So I did some research on this because here Evagrius is presenting some new vocabulary with epithumia and thumos. And it seems like he’s creating a new kind of framework of these three faculties: wandering nous, burning epithumia (desire), churning thumos (indignation). You could map this onto the three faculties of the Enneagram or the three faculties in Buddhism. There are a lot of pre-existing maps, but just so we can ground ourselves in Evagrius’s own influences, this is from Plato’s tripartite model of the soul with kind of the logical center. I place it in the head, the logical center. Desire, epithumia in the lower body could say in the gut. And then thumos, indignation in the chest. And thumos, or indignation is a word that we’re going to visit many more times in these chapters. So let’s continue.

When our soul longs for a variety of different foods, then its portion should be reduced to bread and water to make it thankful for a little more soul. It is satiety that desires variety in food. Hunger considers it blessedness just to have satiety of bread. A great aid to chastity is deprivation of water, as persuaded by 300 Israelites who defeated Midian in company with Gideon.

Just as life and death cannot coexist in the same subject at the same time, so also is it impossible for love (agape) to coexist with wealth. Love destroys not only wealth, but also this agape, our temporal life. The one who flees all worldly pleasures is a tower inaccessible to the demon of gloominess. For gloominess is the deprivation of pleasure that is either present or anticipated. So it’s impossible for us to drive away this enemy as long as we have any earthly attachment. He sets his trap and produces gloominess just where he sees our inclinations lead us.

So, you know, typical kind of monastic advice here around receding from pleasure, down to, you know, receding from food and water.

Understanding Anger and Indignation

Anger and hatred amplify indignation. Merciful compassion and gentleness decrease it even when present. So anger is this logismos that amplifies the natural indignation, thumos. So I think, as we’ll learn later, thumos, indignation is a natural state for Evagrius, but it gets inflamed by anger and cooled in contrast by compassion and gentleness.

He continues: The sun should not set on our anger so that the demons do not, rising up by night, terrify the soul and make the nous more cowardly the day after for the fight. For terrifying phantasms are produced by the disturbance of indignation. And nothing makes a deserter out of the nous so much as disturbed indignation.

When the irascible part of our soul, that’s the thumikon, so there’s an inherently irascible part of our soul, seizes some excuse and is troubled, then the demons suggest to us how good it is to withdraw into solitude, thus keeping us from resolving the cause of the gloominess and freeing ourselves from the disturbance. But when our desiring part, that’s the epithumeticon, is enkindled, then they make us sociable and call us hardened and uncivil, so that by desiring bodies we then come into contact with bodies. We should not obey them, but instead do the opposite.

Actually I think this is very good, simple advice here, which is when our anger is inflamed, we do have a way of retreating, I think. I know for myself I can withdraw where it’s easy for me to tell myself the stories that further my anger, as opposed to, say, calling a friend, seeking to resolve the cause of the gloominess. In contrast, when we’re in a desiring state, we want to be with other people, when actually maybe we should be withdrawing.

The Danger of Mental Combat

Do not give yourself to the tempting thought of anger by fighting mentally the distressing person, nor to that of fornication by spending most of the time in fantasies of pleasures. For the one darkens the soul, the other summons it to burn with passion. Both of these pollute your nous. And thus at the time of prayer, you will fantasize images. And not being able to offer pure prayer to God, you will immediately fall victim to the demon of acedia. This demon readily leaps upon such states and like a dog with a young deer, tears the soul to pieces.

Again, acedia has this sort of special property for Evagrius. And he’s naming kind of, I would say, the three temptations that are most closely associated with these three parts of the soul. So, and I’m applying more framework and more structure than I think we ever see Evagrius do. But because we’re in relationship to the Enneagram, we’re inclined to do that kind of connective work.

So he talks about the wandering nous. And I would say this wandering nous is closest to the demon of acedia. The inflamed indignation is most closely associated with the temptation of anger or orge. And then here, he’s saying the desire, inflamed desire is most, susceptible, you could say, to the demon of, here he says, fornication or lust. We could call it elsewhere.

Interesting. Those are the eight, nine and the one. So, in some ways maybe that’s, that top part of the Enneagram is in some ways sort of the falling point of the mind or of the soul. That’s where the soul first errs in these, in potentially these three ways, depending on which part of this tripartite soul is activated.

Again, like, why do we want to even do this kind of analysis? It’s to create a map of sorts for experiential sense making. And we’ll get to that soon. What do we do here? So we’ll get to instructions, I think, in this episode. And the point of the map is to facilitate a kind of inner combat ultimately that Evagrius is going to give us.

The Nature and Role of Indignation

Here he says the nature of indignation, so that the nature of indignation, the natural quality of this part of the soul, thumos, is to fight the demons and to struggle over any kind of pleasure. I did a little bit of translation inquiry on struggle over any kind of pleasure. And what I got back from the Greek was not struggle against any pleasure but to essentially, you could say wrestle with pleasure or, you know, either fight for pleasure or fight against pleasure to some extent. But it’s ambiguous, I would say for this reason. The angels suggest to us spiritual pleasures and the blessedness coming from them. They encourage us to direct our indignation towards the demons. The latter, however, dragging us toward worldly desires, violently force our indignation against nature to fight human beings so as to darken the nous, separating it from knowledge and thus making it a traitor to the virtues.

Take heed to yourself that you never so provoke any of the brethren that he runs away, or you will never escape during your lifetime from the demon of despondency, which will always become an obstacle for you at the time of prayer.

Gifts quench memory of injury. Let Jacob convince you of this. He insinuated himself into Esau’s graces with gifts when he came against him with 400 men. But as we are poor, we should make up for our lack by hospitality at the table.

When we are oppressed by the demon of listlessness, then with tears let us divide our soul in two. Or perhaps tears, let us divide our soul in two, one part encouraging, the other sowing good hopes within us, soothing with David’s chant, why are you downcast, my soul? Why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I will confess him, the Savior of my countenance and my God.

That almost feels like sort of prototypical parts work here, tearing one soul into two, such that one part of the soul can console the other.

Facing Temptation

We must not abandon our cell in time of temptation, making eloquent excuses. We should stay seated within and persevere and bravely receive all comers, especially the demon of acedia. It’s interesting: receive all comers, receive all demons. So this is sort of the Ajahn Chah instruction of put a chair in the middle, sit down and see who comes to visit. That’s the attitude that’s being advocated for here.

The demon of acedia, the most oppressive of all and thereby most highly proving the soul’s quality. Fleeing from such conflicts and trying to shun this teaches the nous to be incompetent, fearful, and fugitive. So Evagrius is not saying flee demonic thinking. He’s saying sit and face and receive demonic thinking. That’s the attitude here.

And then use indignation, we’ll learn more about, to fight it. I think it’s important for us to learn more about what is the nature of this indignation, how does it function?

Our holy teacher, who is greatly experienced in asceticism, said the monk must always be ready as though he were to die tomorrow, but he must as well treat his body as if he were going to live with it for many years. The first approach cuts off the thoughts of acedia and makes the monk more zealous, while the second maintains the body and keeps its control in balance.

And f...