Don't worry, be still:

...Nothing, of course...

...But if truth were really at stake, my response would never involve anger or irritation or triumph (a feeling which is, I am fairly sure, a variety of anger...

...But even this good thing is, in some important circumstances, a distraction...

...I'm not sure five days is enough time to get bored with monastic life, but the principle is a sound one...

...If we react to this language by assuming that the passions in question are the ones preachers have always taken aim at-lust is probably the first choice there- they can look merely quirky and old-fashioned...

...This isn't without its wisdom...

...That need had to do, instead, with the shoring up of ego...

...The idea of apatheia calls on us to question the ordinary place of the emotions in our life...

...Both of these ideas- waiting for "convert enthusiasm" to die off, and seeing what's there after boredom-may offer a way into understanding what the earliest monastic writers meant when they spoke of "the fires of apatheia...

...Perhaps the difficulty with a simple definition lies in the fact that the experience is distant from ordinary consciousness, which many commentators (not all of them gnostics) have compared to drunkenness or dreaming...

...If someone insults me at an obvious level (say, by calling me ugly or stupid) or at a less obvious level (by telling me that something I have written is shallow, or by laughing at one of my firmly held opinions), my first reaction is to take offense, to feel anger or at least irritation, and to respond in a way which is a direct and emotional reaction, however well-disguised it might be in many instances, to the feeling of having been insulted or humiliated...

...This means atten-tiveness to what goes in and out of our hearts emotionally, and an alertness to the ways we are accustomed to respond...

...of divine nonchalance...

...Simply to be, in the presence of God and others, is not simple at all...

...This has something in common with the Buddhist practice of observing such common and non-moral reactions as revulsion and fear...

...Similarly, if something I have written is shallow or stupid, it is...

...Perhaps the best image of what it means is the one offered in the Gospel, the image of Jesus with his disciples in the storm-tossed boat...

...if not, it isn't-but why be angry when this is pointed out...

...For instance, if I am in fact ugly, that is the case...

...Our culture teaches us to identify our emotional life with the deepest parts of the self...

...The image does not need to be obviously foolish...

...I asked what the reason was for that limitation, and he answered, "So that they will have lost all their convert's enthusiasm...

...And to see nothing good in our feelings, to regard them as essentially unimportant or indifferent, is not Christian...

...The goal of apatheia is stillness...

...Our word "apathy" doesn't begin to convey the right sense of the word...

...Where the idea has gone wrong is not in being applied too strictly, but rather too selectively...

...OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey DON'T WORRY, BE STILL THE VIRTUE OF NONCHALANCE An Orthodox bishop once told me that he receives people into the church only after they have been made part of an Orthodox family's life for a year, allowed by the family to worship and share meals and time with them freely...

...Stillness is sometimes a gift, but it is also in part a learned thing...

...It may not be too much to suggest that apatheia is, finally, a kind of divine nonchalance...

...in either case, anger isn't the appropriate response...

...They panicked and were afraid- they were at the time very attached to their feelings, driven by them...

...What is wrong with a convert's enthusiasm, or with finding the particulars of the monastic life intriguing...

...it could pose easily as a concern for truth...

...There is in some of the stoics and some Christian ascetics too exclusive and negative a concentration on sexual temptation or drunkenness or gluttony- obvious passions, all having to do with the body-and this apparent denial of the goodness of the body has led some people to a rejection of the whole ascetic ideal...

...nor is there anything wrong with enjoying a piece of music you haven't heard before...

...This is so that the person interested in entering the church can observe Orthodoxy as it is lived on a daily basis...

...But the passions in question, when they are identified, are often such emotions as sadness, or our obsession with bitter memories...

...Memories of the past and worries or fantasies about the future pull the attention away from the present...

...We are taught to rely on feeling and emotion as guides, and the jargon of pop psychology reflects this: one should "be in touch with" one's feelings, and not repress them...

...There are a number of prayers in Orthodox prayerbooks which speak of our passions as deluding influences which make us unhappy...

...To deny anger, for example-to refuse to acknowledge its presence in us or the way in which it can determine our behavior-can lead to the worst forms of self-righteousness and self-deception...

...A literal translation-away, or apart, from feeling or emotion-sounds a bit chilly, and so does a possible substitute, "detachment...

...Participants must stay for at least five days, however...

...ATrappist monastery I once visited has a program which allows some guests to participate in the lives of the monks to a greater than usual degree, sharing their work and common worship...

...That's unfortunate, because finally it is an affirmative, rather than a negative, approach to life...

...There are spiritual directors who ask those who come to them to confess everything about the way they live-not only those things which most obviously involve spirituality, but also matters of daily habit and routine, so that the ordinary movements of attentiveness or inattentiveness can be seen more clearly...

...This may be one reading of Jesus' words, "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away...

...Which brings us back to the examples at the start of this...

...What gets hurt and makes anger arise is the challenge to an image of myself, an image which is never ugly, shallow, or stupid...

...The need to hold on to that image is the most common form of idolatry, and many of our feelings are tied up in the effort...

...The monk in charge told someone who asked why a guest couldn't stay a shorter length of time and still participate, "They need to have enough time to begin to be bored...

...Perhaps one of the reasons apatheia began to impress me as an idea which is of genuine practical help was that a number of incidents in my life made it uncomfortably clear to me that my need to be right had little or nothing to do with any love for the truth...

...A Buddhist manual for monks describes revulsion as a kind of anger directed inappropriately toward an object that cannot harm you (for example, a decaying corpse...

...There are instructive parallels in other religious traditions, in (for example) the philosophy of the stoics and in Buddhism...

...Without that, you won't begin to understand monasticism...

...it can also be the image of the self as a humble, responsive and loving person, or a prayerful person, or even a person who is open to correction...

...One prayer to Mary asks for the dispelling of "the dream of despondency," and another asks for "deliverance from my many cruel memories and deeds...

...The body and our feelings assume the places they are meant to have before we distort them...

...No reason to be upset about it...

...If I am not, the person who has claimed that I am has done so to wound me, in which case I should wonder first how I may have caused such offense as to provoke that response, or I should feel compassion for someone who has some other need to wound...

...They are not, however, guides-not, anyway, as we usually experience them...

...Rather than define apatheia abstractly, it is probably a good idea to look at specific situations, to see what can be negative and limiting about our ordinary approach to feeling, and what is positive about the movement toward apatheia...

...But," he said, "I always make sure that the family has been Orthodox for at least five years...

...They can be understood properly only with a certain struggle, an effort at atten-tiveness which does not come easily to us...

...Any attempt to be still can show how the mind jumps from instant to instant, scattering in every direction but the moment you actually occupy...

...I was about to write, "does not come naturally to us"-but one point here is that our true nature is obscured, and must be won...

...They were affronted by the fact that he lay at rest, his head on a pillow...

...Some Orthodox writers speak of "guarding the heart...

...Insofar as they have to do with our humanity they are good...