Obstacles to Stillness: Thoughts, Hindrances, and Self-surrender in Evagrius and the Buddha by Shodhin K. Geiman (review)

The appendix to the Spiritual Exercises by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) sets out the fundamental principles of the Ignatian spiritual tradition and foregrounds the notion of spiritual discernment—the importance of distinguishing between thoughts inclining us to the good and thoughts inclining us to sinful and ultimately self-destructive conduct. Ignatius's main source of inspiration was the Benedictine rule that he had experienced at Montserrat, but what Ignatius could not possibly have known was the genealogy of Benedict's spiritual theology. Benedict of Norcia (480–547) drew heavily on the writings of John Cassian (360–435), but the latter had brought to the Latin West the theology of the Desert Fathers, exemplified in particular by the writings of Evagrius Ponticus (345–399). Until the publication of the Philokalia in 1782 and its translation into other European languages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, very few Western thinkers were aware of Evagrius's existence and the extraordinary impact of his vision on the development of Western spirituality.

Paradoxically, ignorance of the spiritual wisdom of early Christianity continues to characterize mainstream Western society, where seekers, "nones," and practitioners of New Age spiritualities are far more likely to look toward the dharma religions of the East than toward Christianity, out of the conviction that the latter, alas, "lacks a spiritual tradition." Of course, the different strands of Buddhism have preserved extraordinarily detailed accounts of the inner trajectory toward integration and nirvāna, and these traditions continue to attract an increasing number of practitioners in the traditionally Christian and ever more secular West. Only a few scholars and seekers, however, seem to be aware of the echoes and correspondences between what we might call the "technologies of the self" at the core of Christianity and Buddhism—with all the provisos due to the fact, of course, that the second of these two traditions actually questions the very existence of an enduring subject. Shodhin Geiman's monograph seeks to fill this lacuna and sets out to map the points of contact, as well as some of the differences, between the ways the Evagrian and the early Buddhist tradition discuss the inner obstacles to realization—what Evagrius calls the logismoi (obstructive thoughts) and what in the teaching of the Buddha are called the nīvaraṇas (hindrances).

The author—a professor of philosophy at Valparaiso University in Indiana and a teacher at the Chicago Zen center—envisages "practice" as the pursuit of hēsychia (stillness) for Evagrius and the achievement of samatha (tranquility, or inner quietude) in the Buddhist tradition—in both cases, an inner state that helps one achieve clear, radiant wisdom (gnōsis, or paññā/prajña) (xii). The logismoi and the nīvaraṇas comprise a variety of intellectual and affective motions that monopolize one's inner energy and thwart the achievement of dispassion (apatheia). The two traditions develop relatively detailed catalogues of one's inner states as well as a plethora of inner strategies seeking to remedy our tendency to fragmentation and dispersion. Geiman's book devotes two initial chapters to a discussion of the renunciant's horizon—which is effectively the monastic life—and his ultimate goals, and then moves on to an ordered discussion of the obstacles—ranging from the lures of sensory desire to the danger of anger and sadness, moving on gradually to the more treacherous wastelands of acedia and listlessness, and finally charting the most subtle temptation of all: those of vainglory and pride. The author draws on a variety of Evagrian texts—especially the Antirrhetikos and the Praktikos—and on a variety of Abhidharma texts. Despite Geiman's allegiance to the Japanese Zen tradition, however, the text does not parse Zen, Mahāyāna, or Vajrayāna discussion of the nīvaraṇas but focuses on the early Pali or Theravāda texts that first develop a taxonomy of this phenomenon.

In the discussion of the ascetic...