francis tiso - evagrius of pontus and buddhist abhidharma

Evagrius of Pontus and Buddhist Abhidharma

Rev. Canon Francis V. Tiso

I.

Evagrius of Pontus (345-399) was ordained to the diaconate in Constantinople during the great period of debate on the two fun-damental dogmas of orthodox Christianity, the Trinity and the Incarnation. He assisted St. Gregory of Nazianzus at the First Council of Constantinople (381), at which the Nicene Creed received its final form. A disciple of the Cappadocian Fathers, Evagrius had studied the doctrines of Origen of Alexandria in considerable depth. He continued these studies in the company of Melania the Elder and Rufinus of Aquileia on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. He received the monastic habit from Melania and proceeded to the Egyptian desert south of Alexandria to lead the life of an anchorite. He was in touch with both Coptic and Greek-speaking monks of the period, and became one of the leading figures because of his unusual learning and spiritual gifts.1

Evagrius penned (he was a noted calligrapher) a number of important works on training candidates for the monastic life. Among the surviving works are the Praktikos, the Gnostikos, and the Kephalaia Gnostika, which are considered to constitute a trilogy of texts on spiritual training.2 The Praktikos is a basic introduction to the inner practice of the monk, focusing on conversion of heart, the rejection of sinful thoughts, and the cultivation of the virtues.3 Evagrius called this aspect of ascetic training praktike. The Gnostikos is a short description of the characteristics of a qualified spiritual guide.4 This is given in order that the guide may know how to regulate his or her own life, and how a monk may know how to recognize someone who will be capable of guiding him or her to the higher and deeper dimensions of the Christian monastic life. Finally, the Kephalaia Gnostika provides 540 paragraphs or verses (organized into six chapters of ninety verses) on which the proficient monk is to meditate sequentially as a method of maturing his already established practice of the inner life.5

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The Praktikos offers those meditation topics which nurture spiritual progress in seven stages:

1. Conversion of heart; 2. Nurturance of the virtues in the direction of acquiring apatheia; 3. Apatheia, or purity of heart (Latin: puntas cordis6), which entails

freedom from the irascible and desire-driven aspects of the passions. These three praktike stages are preparatory to the contemplative life, theoria, because in the habitual condition of purity of heart, it becomes possible for the spiritual life to unfold in the next three:

4. Charity (agape); 5. Intuitive knowledge of the created order (gnosis ton kosmou); 6. Inner communion with God (theologia) in this life.

These stages of spiritual progress culminate in: 7. Perfect blessedness (makariotes) in eternal life.7 In his trilogy, Evagrius demonstrated a mastery of the key elements

of the Origenistic and Cappadocian theological speculations. His unique contribution, based on his rich philosophical and Christian training, was to make the theological program into a psychologically, spiritually and existentially coherent path of spiritual development. Evagrius's vision of the monastic life was adopted and adapted throughout the entire Chris-tian monastic movement, spreading to Latin and Celtic monasticism with Evagrius's disciple John Cassian. It was the cornerstone of Byzantine monasticism thanks to the work of Maximus the Confessor and Peter of Damaskos; the Athonite tradition embraces it in the anthology known as the Philokalia. The Syriac Churches took up the same system by preserving translations of Evagrius's works, commenting on them, and transmitting them to monastic communities in Central Asia and China with the spread of Nestorian Christianity. The importance of the system of Evagrius, even after its partial condemnation in the middle of the sixth century,8 cannot be underestimated. Elements of this system even turn up in the Sufi writ-ings such as those of Ibn Arabi.9

Among the verses in the Kephalaia Gnostika, there are many that address topics that are similarly handled in the Buddhist Abhidharma literature. In some cases, the text of Evagrius treats topics such as the structure of the body, the operation of the sensory mechanism, distinctions among mental phenomena, the nature of the cosmos, material and non-material elements of nature, states of being, and other concerns in ways that are startlingly convergent with Buddhist Abhidharma works from the period 1 to 400 CE. 10

Did Evagrius simply borrow these themes from the Stoics, as he certainly did in some instances, or did he have a Buddhist philosophical source from which he was quoting? Or did some of the Stoic material have a Buddhist

42 RELIGION EAST & WEST


provenance, which only emerges with clarity in the contemplative milieu of the Desert Fathers of late fourth century Egypt? Evagrius does not usually cite his sources other than the Bible, but in some cases it is possible to detect a philosophical "voice" behind his practice instructions to disciples.

Had Evagrius been able to engage in dialogue with the Buddhists of northwest India in his own day, he would have found among them contem-plative scholar-practitioners like himself with many interests in common with his own. If we could verify that Evagrius's teachings made use of an Indian Buddhist source, we would have evidence, for the first time, of an accurate and detailed transmission of philosophical teachings from India to the Hellenistic world. However, even should it be demonstrated that Evagrius's teachings derive exclusively from sources within the Hellenistic world and early Christianity, his writings would remain a source, as yet untapped, for a deeper contemporary dialogue between Buddhist and Christian contemplatives.

II.

Evagrius understood our human condition as a falling away from the pure contemplation of the Holy Trinity on the part of spiritual beings who are endowed with freedom from their primordial origin.11 Their return to contemplation is made possible by means of a process of divine pedagogy, itself of a spiraling character. Thus, a work like the Kephalaia Gnostika is not a linear description of the stages of the fall nor of a linear return. Rather, across the six chapters, the means of return are proposed over and over again to the contemplative practitioner so that he or she may not only glimpse the way of return, but may be perfectly stabilized in that return in the form of an entire way of life, i.e., monasticism. This model was elaborated fully in Conferences and the Monastic Institutes, the works of Evagrius's disciple John Cassian, who was born in Dacia and went on to found monasteries in the south of France.

Unlike speculative theologians who describe a generalized overall pat-tern to the history of salvation and the process of sanctification in divine grace, Evagrius's approach was to propose a series of topics of meditation that would transform the day-to-day thought patterns of disciples. We may contrast this approach to that of Origen, for example, who describes to his readers the coming forth of all things from God, their redemption in the Christ-event, and their return (apokatastasis) to God at the end of history. Origen's pattern, a kind of "great parabola" coming from infinity, turning at the Christ-event, and returning to infinity provides a useful catecheti-cal model, a grand narrative of the fall, the redemption and the eschaton.

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However, it does not show how the grand narrative can be applied in the daily struggle of the ascetic Christian.

Evagrius, on the other hand, writes exclusively for those who have committed themselves to the ascetic process in the monastic life. These are people who have become aware of the subtleties of mental falls from and returns to the contemplative states accessible in Christian practice. Thus, Evagrius provides his disciples not so much with a systematic description of a theology of the spiritual life,12 but rather an actual "workbook" of spiritual exercises that are to be followed assiduously and in sequence. In fact, the entire six kephalaia represent a spiraling method of teaching in which spiritual progress takes place through periodic repetition of key themes. Also, in some sections, simpler verses alternate with more difficult ones. The method seems to have been that certain verses were assigned for meditation for a given period of time. The most likely pattern would have

been based on the way of life of the Egyptian anchorites. Evagrius provides The monks lived in solitude for the entire week, follow-

ing a rigorous rule of prayer, restricted diet and manual workbook of labor.13 On Saturday evening, they gathered together for

common prayer and spiritual conversation in the course SpiritUdl exercises. of a. nocturnal vigil that ended with the Eucharistie synaxis

at dawn. Evagrius would have assigned one or more verses to individual monks during the vigil; the following Saturday, the insights gained during a week of meditation would have been discussed during the time of spiritual conversation.14 Evagrius himself followed this practice in his own daily monastic observance.

The exercises and their results in the mind of the contemplative are - to be checked regularly by the spiritual director (the gnostic of the second

volume of the trilogy). The goal of this practice is to attain the highest degree of sanctity humanly possible under grace in this life. This is in fact the numerological importance of the number six, which the author associ-ates with the six days of creation. The world and this human life constitute a "place" providentially created (Kephalaia Gnostika III.36) where rescue and pedagogy would be provided for rational beings (logikoi), but eternal blessedness (the "seventh day," i.e., the Sabbath) lies beyond the scope of spiritual practice in this life. Thus, there are six chapters in the Kephalaia Gnostika, but none of the chapters is dedicated to a single topic in the spiritual life. Rather, across the six chapters there are 540 meditations that are to be done in sequential order to bring about complete transformation in a mature and balanced way.15

The seventh day, the "rest" of Hebrews 4, is not discussed here within the sphere of spiritual method, but is hinted at in such sections as 1.1; 1.2;



1.49; VI.10,13; III.70; IV.9, 16, etc. In the plan of the Kephalaia Gnostika, we are still within the world-system wherein, by pure conceptual processes, a rational being can be lifted up to pure contemplation by means of the active life of conversion and growth in virtue, and in the contemplative life of purity of heart, charity, knowledge of the cosmos, and theological communion. We only look into the dimension of blessedness, the promised land of "rest" (hesychia), as Moses looked into the Promised Land from Mount Pisgah (Deut. 34:1), for as long as we continue to struggle in this embodied life.

In all these meditations, Evagrius takes the Bible as his guidebook, which he reads in a relentlessly mystical way, constantly drawing our atten-tion to allegory and anagogy in the great and well-known texts of scripture as well as in obscure references to minor events that only an assiduous reader of the biblical text might notice. Evagrius sees the Bible as an inspired work for teaching the subtle doctrines of both theological speculation (especially Eph. 1) and the more directly crucial concerns of guidance on the path to spiritual freedom. Evagrius frequently imitates the style of Greek that he knew from the LXX (Greek Septuagint) text, in particular the verses of the book of Proverbs,16 but he does not confine himself to that style of writing. His use of the LXX does not circumscribe him exclusively within the world of Jewish and early Christian Biblical interpretation from the Greek text. Rather, Evagrius makes it abundantly clear that he supports his Biblical reading with supplemental considerations derived from Hellenistic medi-cal, cosmological, psychological and even mathematical research. The final goal of human perfection for Evagrius is thus anything but a renunciation of the world. Instead, the human consciousness, purified of the passions, is disclosed as the most perfect instrument for a faith-enlightened under-standing of all phenomenamaterial, energetic, cosmic and divine.

III.

It is relatively easy to establish the Hellenistic background of most of Evagri-us's philosophical anthropology and psychology. He is clearly influenced by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyry and such Stoics as Zeno, Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus.17 In such works as the Gnosttkos and in the tractate On Thoughts, his Christian sourcesamong them Gregory of Nazianzus, Clement of Alexandria and Origenare harmonized with their Hellenistic colleagues, predecessors or contemporaries. All this is in the tradition of the Christian as the philosopher par excellence. Moreover, Evagrius is writing in a monastic milieu in which study and discussion were given the added dimension of rigorous ascetic practice. The themes



treated in the works of the philosophers were experienced soteriologically and existentially in the daily meditations, temptations and prayers of this learned circle of monastics. For example, the notion that it is impossible for the mind to receive two thoughts simultaneously (Ch. 24, On Thoughts) could have been debated speculatively by any of the authors cited, but in the setting of the desert, among anchorites, the topic has crucial importance in the battle against evil thoughts.18 Ghin and the Guillaumonts tell us19 that this assertion "arises from the Stoic notion that compares a mental image of its object to the imprint of a seal in wax." But notice how Evagrius treats this analogy in On Thoughts:

No impure thought arises in us without a sensory object. If our mind, because of its great rapidity of movement, ties one thought to others in series, one should not for that reason believe that the thoughts are formed all at the exact same time.20

This insight into the rapidity with which mental images can succeed one another corresponds to the experiences of yogins and meditation practitioners. The Buddhist sage Vasubandhu discusses the apparent con-tinuity of the mind-stream and distinguishes the instants of thought in his Abhidharmakosa, where he analyzes the distinct "natures" that constitute phenomena (dharmah)21 and the flux of existence of beings (dravya).22 This observation, for Evagrius and for Vasubandhu, is not a mere matter of psychological empiricism. The discussion of thoughts is concerned with the repulsion of ev thoughts. Only one evil thought can present itself in a single moment of mental attention. Thus, to rid oneself of such thoughts,

One must, in the moment of temptation, try to cause the mind to move from an impure thought to a second mental image, and from that one to a third, thus escaping the wicked "taskmaster." If the mind does not displace itself and does not untie itself from its object, it is submerged in passions and runs the risk of moving in the direction of actually committing a sinful act. Such a mind really does need a great deal of purification, of vigils, and prayer.23

We are clearly in a world of spiritual practitioners here, and at some remove from the style and approach of speculative philosophers.

IV.

When we observe the extraordinary convergences between Buddhist Abhid-harma24 and the teachings of Evagrius, we find ourselves drawn to one or more hypotheses to explain the connection. Is there a literary connection?



Is there any possibility that a work of the Sarvastivada school of Kashmir such as the Abhidharmahrdaya was translated into Greek and entered into the thought world of Middle and Neo-Platonism?25 The Greek-Aramaic inscription of Ashoka gives an indication of the linguistic and cultural set-ting at the interface of Hellenistic and Indie civilizations.26 A Pali text, the Milinda-panha, shows a dialogue between a Greek prince and a Buddhist monk over topics extensively treated in Abhidharma. Much later, we have a Sogdian text, ms. C2,27 which reproduces the Syriac versions of several Christian ascetical works, including the Antirrheticus of Evagrius. Sogdian of this type is heavily influenced ^ a n a wor^ J t"e

by Aramaic (i.e., Syriac), but is a Central Asian Indo-European language, bridging the Hellenistic and Indie oarvasttvada SCHOOL have worlds. The manuscript in question is latedating per-haps from the seventh or even eighth centurybut it is been translated into Greek? important because it indicates a rare instance in which a Greco-Aramaic Christian document undergoes retroversion into a Central Asian language linked to Indian Buddhist transmissions. The suggestion is that the Sogdian Christian community was interested in the same literature of asceticism that arose in Syria, Palestine and Egypt in the fourth century, and that it made use, in some cases, of terminology borrowed from Buddhist Sanskrit/Prakrit milieux. The inscription of Ashoka in the third century B.c.E. was not the last instance of linguistic and cultural exchange between the Indie and Hellenistic worlds.

Of course, we might also consider the possibility that contemplative teachers discovered these insights independently, as a result of long hours of meditation practice. Even should this be true, what particularly attracts our attention is the compatibility of the language in which the experience was embodied in the form of written teachings on the contemplative life.

V

Beyond these more general speculations, we can detect specific instances of a confluence of Buddhist ideas in the Kephalaia Gnostika by attempting to understand the teachings given there in cryptic, sutra-like form. There are many places in the Kephalaia Gnostika in which the full meaning of the text is made clear only by comparison with Indie texts on spiritual practice. Stoicism is not enough, and even Alexandrian Judeo-Christian allegorical hermeneutics does not fully open the door of meaning. Knowledge of In-die, primarily yogic and Buddhist Abhidharma, texts is helpful, along with experience of contemplative practice and spiritual guidance.



1. Two Syriac Versions of the Kephalaia Gnostika In order to demonstrate that some of Evagrius's verses have an Indie, or even Abhidharma Buddhist referents, we need to summarize the nature of the sources we are using. We have already discussed Evagrius's work On Thoughts, available in the Sources Chrtiennes series, as an example of a work clearly manifesting the influence of Stoic and other Hellenistic philosophi-cal ideas. When we come to the Kephalaia Gnostika, the third work in his trilogy on monastic training, we have a source that has come down to us in a number of versions.28 For our purposes, the two Syriac versions translated by Guillaumont are crucial, as are the large number of Greek fragments collected by Irenaeus Hausherr, S.J.,29 and by related scholarship. The two Syriac versions, SI and S2, are significantly different in many of the verses. S2 was made literally from the Greek original of Evagrius, while SI seems to be a simplification of S2 designed to remove most of the teachings that were condemned in Constantinople in the synod of 543.30 In some cases, however, SI may have simplified S2 for pedagogical purposes, and not merely to expunge heretical views from an otherwise valuable work of a Desert Father. Thus, the fact that SI tones down the mythic content31 of S2 suggests two possibilities: first, that the producers of SI wanted to preserve Evagrius's teaching for younger monks in a doctrinally "safe" and digestible form so that they would know early on in their training about the road map to spiritual perfection; and, second, that the producers of SI were aware of Justinian's condemnation of Evagrius's ideas in the sixth century, and they were making an expurgated version that would be safe from ecclesiastical and state censorship. If S1 was S2 adapted for beginners, it is still likely that Syriac-speaking gnostic monks ("gnostic" in the sense of being spiritual masters, not in the sense of membership in an early "Gnostic" sect) would have known and used both versions. SI may have been for the novices, while S2 served as the "teachers' guide" which was not to be openly divulged.32

It is clear that S2 shows a better grasp of the more advanced contempla-tive practices advocated by Evagrius in Kephalaia Gnostika. The translator of S2 was a fine scholar and undoubtedly an experienced contemplative who was concerned about the guidance of others. While I do not think that SI and S2 were produced by the same translator, it is possible that they were in some way related to one another. S2 was the manual for the advanced spiritual teacher and SI was for the advancing scholar-monk. Evagrius himself advocated a pedagogy that takes into careful consideration the intellectual capacity and spiritual state of progress of the disciple.

As we examine some of the verses in the Kephalaia Gnostika, we find recurring themes and resonances with a variety of sources. For example, the existence of a plurality of worlds:



VI.45 (S2): Not one of the worlds was superior to the primordial world; it is said, in effect, that that [primordial] one was made from the original quality and in it all the worlds will be perfected; an athlete, a gnostic, taught us this.00

VI.45 (SI): Thus "Mankind was made in the image of God," is pos-ited without restriction and the ones who are diligent arrive at this, according to the word of the Fathers. First of all, note S2's reference to the myth of the cosmic fall and to the

relationship between the primordial world and the subsequent worlds; this resonates with the Buddhist Aggaa-Sutta story of the origin of embodied beings34 in a series of descents from subtler to coarser states of existence.

The athlete-gnostic who taught this would have been a spiritual master who had perfected the paths of praktike and gnosis; he could have been Macarius or Didymus the Blind, who were the two principal Egyptian teachers of Evagrius.35

2. The Great Origenistic Parabola

The Kephalaia Gnostika has a vision of the human condition based on a descent from a higher spiritual state to a lower, coarser state. Conscious beings were "once" rational and absorbed in the contemplation of the Holy Trinity:

VI.75 (S2): The first-order knowledge that is in the logikoi is that of the Holy Trinity. Following that, there was the movement of liberty, the providence that gives help, and the catching up [of the logikoi] not letting them dissipate completely, and then the judgment, and again the movement of freedom, providence, judgment and so on up to the Holy Trinity. In this way, a judgment is interposed between the movement of freedom and the providence of God. This is a neat summary of the parabola of rational beings as discussed

in Origen's On First Principles. Abiding primordially in the pure knowledge of the Holy Trinity, rational beings experience a movement of freedom that entails their separation from that primordial state.36 Providence is God's help extended to these beings who have separated themselves from primordial knowledge so as to rescue them by offering them the material creation and the three kinds of embodiment (without which they would have fallen indefinitely) and a way by which to return; then comes "judg-ment" which might be a term for the Christ-event itself as the offer of grace so that beings may return to God, followed by a free response to the offer of grace, the providential experience of life in the Church as the way of



return through ascetic discipline (praktike) and growth in contemplative awareness (theoria or gnosis). The final judgment is to be the apokatastasis, and final return to unity within the Trinitarian life of God. The pattern of spiritual growth is a pedagogical-gnostic one.37

Evagrius made use of the terminology "first order knowledge" and "second order knowledge" to describe the two phases of creation. First order refers to the primordial state of pure contemplation; second order refers to the return to contemplation by means of an ascetic ascent in and through the created order of nature. SI at VI.75 tries cautiously to sum this up as follows:

The first order knowledge that was in the rational nature is contem-plation of the Holy Trinity; there followed the movement of freedom, and after that the help of the providence of God, [in the form of] the chastisement that causes a return to life, or by the teaching that causes an approach to first-order contemplation.

3. Nonduality

The Kephalaia Gnostika opens with the following daring assertions:

LI. (S2 and SI): There is nothing over against the Primal Good be-cause it is in its essence that it is Good, and nothing could be contrary to that essence.

1.2 (S2 and SI): Contrariety is to be found in the characteristics, and characteristics are typical of embodiments; therefore, it is among cre-ated things that opposition is found.

The primordial state is oneness in the Good; as we have seen, the primordial rational beings abide in this oneness, contemplating the Holy Trinity. With their fall into negligence and the establishment of the vari-ous forms of the embodied state, there is the arising of contrasts, opinions and preferences. This same insight is found in Daoism and Buddhism: the first movement from the primordial nature or ground is a movement into multiplicity that necessarily creates opposing characteristics. Hence in the Vajracchedika Sutra, the primordial Buddha nature is without char-acteristics. The same view of the absolute is taught in a late work from the Tibetan tradition, the Mahmudra Clarification by Milarepa; this work is relevant despite its lateness in that it summarizes centuries of Buddhist contemplative experience:

Now, in this teaching, understand that the essence of mind is the natural state and this is Mahmudra.... The first topic: The mode



of abiding of phenomena in their natural state.... "The intentions of the Buddhas" and the "nature of the mind of sentient beings" are not established as shape or color, or margins or center; these are free from partiality and extremes. They neither engage in existence nor nonexistence; they do not err, nor are they free from error; they do not arise from any cause, nor do they change in relation to condi-tions. They are not contrived by a skillful (i.e., knowing) Buddha, nor corrupted by dull sentient beings; nor do they improve through Realization nor worsen by error. This is Ground Mahmudra?9,

Although the Gospel of John 17:21-3 has statements suggestive of a nondual view of reality, the notion of oneness without contrariety is alien to nearly all Christian theological discourse, with the telling exception of a theological poem attributed to Evagrius's bishop, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Hymn to God, in PG 37, 507).

Evagrius works with two terms to describe the original state of beings. We have already encountered logikoi; there is also the even more charac-teristic term nous, which refers to the cognitive capacity of mind beyond dependence on concepts and sense data. Evagrius even refers to the "naked nous."39

1.49 (S2 and SI): This is not the Unity which, on its own, puts itself in motion, but it is put in motion by the receptivity of the nous, which, because of negligence, turned its face away and, being deprived of [Unity] engendered ignorance. This could have been said by Origen of Alexandria (e.g., in On First

Principles, book 1, ch. 4), but has obvious affinities with the Buddhist cos-mogenesis depicted in the Aggaa Sutta.

III.70 (S2 and SI): It belongs to the naked nous to say that which is its nature; and there is now no reply to that question, but at the end there will not even be a question.

The section previous to the one just quoted, III.69 in SI, pointed out that "among all things that have been produced, only the nous is capable of the knowledge of the Holy Trinity." III.69.S2 puts it more subtly: "It is not possible that the nous be constituted of anything other than contemplationthat is, unless even that should prove incapable of [rising to] the Trinity."

IV.8 (S2 and SI): The "co-heir" with Christ is the one who arrives in the Unity and delights in contemplation with Christ.

VI. 10 (S2 and SI): The Holy Trinity is not like a tetrad, a pentad, etc.; these are, in effect, numbers but the Holy Trinity is a single essence.



Evagrius is not worried about failing in monotheism (since this is settled in the creedal formula homoousios), he is expressing a distinction in Being. He is also articulating a contemplative manner of knowing that goes beyond such oppositions as singular and plural; this contemplative cognitive capacity is characteristic of the nous. But the nous, having fallen from contemplation, and being enveloped in a "soul" (psyche) and a body (Origen, On First Principles, book 3, ch. 6, no. 9), has to undergo healing and transformation in order to recover its natural condition.

4. The Therapeutic Nature of the Stages of the Spiritual Life The stages of the spiritual life are sequentially therapeutic; to become what we are meant to be, a condition of illness must be cured. This is the basic principle animating the entire project of the Buddhist teachings on the Four Truths of the Noble Ones (catur-arya-satya), which is diagnostic and therapeutic. As we have shown elsewhere in a discussion of the history of Buddhist systematic philosophy,40 the Abhidharma scholars organized their therapeutic research into categories based on the classic Four Truths.41 The three poisons in Buddhism are desire (cf. epithumia), anger (cf. thumos), and ignorance (cf. agnosia)just as they are in the Kephalaia Gnostika.

III.35 (S2): Knowledge cures the nous, love the state of anger (thu-mos), and chastity the state of desire (epithumia). And the cause of the former is the latter, and the cause of the latter is the third.

Further:

IV.81 (S2): All contemplation is immaterial and incorporeal according to the sign of one's understanding. But whether material or imma-terial, it is said that it [contemplation] is that which grasps or does not grasp the objects that fall under its attention. (Translating from Greek: All contemplation by the sign of its intellection is immaterial and incorporeal; but material or immaterial, it is said to be that which possesses or that does not possess objects which fall beneath it.) Evagrius seems here to be making a subtle critique of ordinary speech

in order to clarify the higher, noetic definition of contemplation that he would prefer his disciples to use. Notice again the language, so close to Abhidharma, of "grasping" and "apprehending," coming from the notion of the senses (including the mental activity, caitta) as "extending" them-selves outward to their objects, a topic that will be repeated in Evagrius's discussion of the senses.42

Further therapeutic analysis relates to the influence of other kinds of beings over the human soul:

RELIGION EAST & WEST


IV.85 (S2 and SI): The demons prevail over the soul when the passions multiply, leaving a man without good sense, extinguishing the powers of his organs of sense, for fear that, should he perceive a nearby [sav-ing] object, he might cause the nous to rise as if from a deep well. The organs of sense are understood to be powers, corresponding to

the Sanskrit term indriya. Combat with "tempters" (cf. Buddhist Mara) is unavoidable in this world system.

The health of the soul is primordial and needs to be restored:

II.8 (S2 and SI): The wealth of the soul is knowledge, its poverty is ignorance. But if ignorance is the lack of knowledge, then wealth precedes poverty and the health of the soul comes before its state of illness.43

Having undergone spiritual healing, the nous ascends to its primordial state:

III.42 (S2 and SI): Contemplation is spiritual knowledge of the things that have been and which will be, which causes the nous to ascend to its first rank.

Ill A (SI): The spiritual renewal of the just is the ascent from one virtue to another and from one knowledge to a superior knowledge.

The world-system itself was established to provide a situation in which this transformation can occur:

III.3 (S2): The world is the natural system that comprehends the dif-ferent and varied bodies of the logikoi, for [the purpose of bringing about] the knowledge of God. Rational beings have a primordial capacity to undergo transformation

and to ascend:

II. 19 (S2 and SI): The knowledge concerning the logikoi is older than duality, and the cognitive nature is older than all natures.

The body itself will become subtle:

11.62 (S2): When the noes [plural of nous] shall have received the contemplation that concerns them, then too shall the nature of bodies be taken away, and thus shall the contemplation [of the nature of bodies] become immaterial.

II.6 (SI): When the noes of the saints shall have received the contem-plation of themselves, then too shall the density of bodies be taken

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away from their midst, and at last the vision will become spiritual (cf. Origen, On First Principles, book 2, ch. 3). SI makes it clear that the body is not "taken away," but rather it is the

density of the body that is removed by the process of ascent. Thus, it is not a question of eliminating the body from eschatology, but of transforming all that is material from density into subtlety by means of contemplation; nothing is actually lost or eliminated, but all becomes the somapneumatikos of I Cor. 15:44. A familiarity with the reversal doctrine of Asanga involv-ing the return to a body "mind-made, feeding on delight, self-luminous, moving through the air, glorious" (Aggaa Sutta 10) would support the view given in I Cor. 15 on the spiritual body. Instead, condemning Evagrius and Origen, Epiphanius of Salamis and Jerome opted for the more material interpretation of the resurrection of the body.44

5. The Experience of Perception Made Progressively Subtle One of the aspects of the Kephalaia Gnostika that most closely resembles the Abhidharma literature is in the theory of perception, based on an analysis of the senses and the perceiving subject/mind.

1.34 (S2 and SI): A sense is naturally made to perceive by itself those things which are its objects; but the nous at all times prepares itself and waits to see that spiritual contemplation that comes to it in vision.

This verse make clearer sense when we keep in mind the classic Ab-hidharma notion of "active" sense organs. This notion also distinguishes between the senses which are active, reaching out to their objects, and the deeper level of consciousness which is purely receptive. A distinct "consciousness" can be distinguished corresponding to each of the five senses; a sixth corresponds to mind itself. For the Abhidharma masters, the senses operate through, first, six external bases of sensory consciousness: visible objects (rpa-yatana), audible objects (sabda-yatana), olfac-tory objects (gandha-yatona), gustatory objects (rasa-yatana), tangible objects (sprastavya-yatana), and nonsensory (mental) objects (dharma-yatana); second, six internal bases of conscious perception (faculties): eye (caksu indriya yatana), ear (srotra indriya yatana), nose (ghrna indriya yatana), tongue (jihva indriya yatana), skin (kya indriya yatana), and mind (mana indriya yatana)45; and third, six consciousnessess linked to the faculties (indriyas): sight-consciousness (caksu-vijnna), hearing-consciousness (srotra-vijna), olfactory consciousness (ghrna-vijnna), gustatory consciousness (jihv-vijnna), tactile consciousness (kya-vijnna), and mind-consciousness (mano-vijna).



In this system, perception is the active, momentary and usually karma-driven connection of external objects with internal faculties. Mind and mental states (citta and caittas) are classed as faculties; citta or mana is the fundamental and ultimate factor that is treated by the Abhidharma masters as a governing indriya, which predominates over the entire process of per-ception.46 The image of the body as a house where the senses "lodge" and where perception occurs suggests yogic practice, especially in the practice of cutting off the senses47 with the bhandhas (pratyahara):

IV.68 (S2 and SI): This body of the soul is the sign of the house, and the sense organs are the sign of the windows, through which the nous looks out and sees sensory things.

More evidence that Evagrius had some knowledge of systems of yogic practice may be found in his distinction between the senses and sense organs:

1.36. (S2 and SI): The senses and the organs of sense are not the same thing, nor is that which senses and that which is sensed. The senses (I), in effect, are those powers with which we customarily perceive materials; the organs (2) of sense are those members in which the senses reside; that which senses (3) is the living subject who possesses sense organs, and that which is sensed (4) is that which falls under the purview of the senses. But it is not thus with the nous, because it is without one [three7.] of these four. We could not be in closer harmony with the way of thinking on the

topic of sense perception as expounded in the Abhidharma literature, sum-marized above.

11.28 (S2 and SI): The sensory eye, when it sees something visible, does not see its totality; but the intelligible eye, in either not seeing or even in seeing, surrounds on all sides that which it sees.

This is a yogic phenomenon and refers to the experience of seeing without use of the material sense organ: a hint at the divyam caksus, the divine eye in Bhagavad Gita 11:8. It ties in to seeing with the light of God in 1.35 (S2 and SI):

lust as the light, as long as it makes it possible for us to see, has no need of a light with which it can be seen, so also God, insofar as he makes all see, has no need of a light with which he will be known; in effect, in his essence, "he is light.'**



We have already seen in Chaudhuri's comments on the Abhidharmakosa that citta is the ultimate faculty; here Evagrius uses nous as a precise syn-onym for citta:

11.45 (S2): The organs of the senses and the nous share things acces-sible to the senses; but only the nous has understanding of intelligible things; it [alone] perceives [both] objects and of understandings (logoi). This could be applied to empirical knowledge, since the meaning

of things understood empirically can only be determined by the noetic capacity of the mind. As Yasomitra points out in his commentary on the Abhidharmakosa, "The world is led by the mind, is entirely subjugated by the mind. All phenomena are subject to this one Dharma: the mind."49

As one makes progress in spiritual practice, sense perception is left behind and immaterial contemplation becomes possible:

III. 17 (S2): Those who have arrived within immaterial contempla-tion are also in the same order; but it is not those who are in the same order who are from now on in immaterial contemplation. In effect, it is possible that they are in the contemplation that concerns intelligible things, which also needs a naked nous, if it is seen again another time nakedly. [The Greek has: Those who have attained to immaterial contemplation are also in the [same] state; but they are not those who are in the same state who are from now on also in im-material contemplation. Indeed, it is possible that they are again in the contemplation that concerns the intelligibles, which also requires a naked nous, if it previously has also seen it nakedly.] Direct noetic cognition is superior to sense data. The previous two

sayings indicate the character of the state of perfection:

III. 15 (S2): If the perfection of the nous is immaterial knowledge, as it is said, and being that the immaterial knowledge is the Trinity alone, it is evident that in that perfection nothing material will remain. And if that is so, once naked the nous will become a seer of the Trinity.

III. 14 (S2 and SI): The deficient soul is that whose power subject to passion inclines towards vain [things].

111.16 (S2 and SI): The perfect soul is one whose passible power acts according to nature.



The difficult text at III. 17 refers to a form of subtle knowledge of intel-ligible things that is not quite the knowledge of the Trinity, but is at the same time not the knowledge of material sense objects either. It is the knowledge of the meaning of things that are created: gnosis tou kosmou, but it is not theologia. This distinction suggests that Evagrius has combined teachings on higher perception from Indie sources with the teachings he received from the Cappadocian Fathers on knowledge of the Holy Trinity:

TV.77 (S2): Objects are outside the nous, and the contemplation of them is constituted within it. But when the [contemplation] is of the Holy Trinity, it is not like that, because it is exclusively essential gnosis.

This is a key text on nondualistic consciousness. First, normal sense data are with reference to the second-order creation (Providence) and have a within and a without appearance. Second, the nous is the perceiver. Third, contemplation of the Trinity, which is gnosis, is not the same as sense-data perception. It is essential gnosis, i.e., first order, of the primordial nature of nous in itself.

At this level of spiritual development, Evagrius is discussing visionary, charismatic forms of perception:

III.48 (S2): The change of the just is the passage of bodiesboth praktike and seeing, to seeing bodies or to increasingly seeing bod-ies. (Greek: The change of the just is the passing from bodies which are praktike and seeing, into bodies which are seeing or very clearly seeing.) It is significant that to translate this passage, the Syriac translation uses

hzhy, i.e., visionary seeing, rather than a word based on the sense organs. SI tries to be helpful to the beginner: "The spiritual renewal of the just is the ascent from one virtue to another and from one knowledge to a superior knowledge." Again we can see the pattern of a pedagogical process based on successive stages of refinement. One undergoes this refinement by un-dertaking rigorous spiritual discipline (praktike) and gradually opening up the faculties to their true, natural state of higher perception.

IV.67 (SI): The objects that, through the senses, come to the souYs attention shape it to make it receive in itself their forms, because this is the work of the nous in knowing, just as the animals that breathe from outside, and it (the nous) falls into danger if it does not work, according to the saying of Solomon the sage: "The light of the Lord is the breath of men" (Prov. XX, 27).



The theory linking sense phenomena with mind and with breath sounds very Indian. The impression of an object shapes the perceptive capacity of the soul, replicating itself therein; perception nourishes the soul as air nourishes the body; light is prana. Yogic theory, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, has mind "riding upon" breath; breath and internal ener-getic currents work together in the yogin's body, under his or her control. Ultimately, breath, energy, mind and light are dimensions of the one basic reality. Those who are on the spiritual journey begin to notice these matters intuitively and with greater and greater clarity as they go along:

V.57 (S2): lust as we now approach sensory objects via the senses, and at the end, when we have been purified, we will also know the ways of understanding them, so when at first we see objects, and more so when we shall be purified, we will know the contemplation that concerns them, after which it will be possible to know evermore also the Holy Trinity.

V.58 (S2): The nous discerns sensation not so much as "sensory" but as so much sensation; and sensation discerns sensory things not so much as objects, but in as much as they are sensory objects.

Here we can see how subtle Evagrius's thinking on sense perception really was, and how close to Abhidharma teachings. Here the nous would correspond to the principle of consciousness, vijnna, as the base of percep-tion; the act of perception in which the nous receives data from the sense organs is a grasping of a set of sensations from which an object is inferred. All objects are therefore conceptualized as having "suchness" but are in reality an inference derived from a complex set of sense data assembled by the base of consciousness. S2 goes on to say in V.59 that sensation does not discern sensation, but it discerns only the sense organs, not as sense organs, but as entities capable of sense perceptions. The nous discerns sensation as a set of sensory perceptions, and the sense organs as a set of sense organs.

More on pedagogy:

111.57 (S2 and SI): Just as those who teach letters to children trace them on tablets, so also Christ, in teaching his wisdom to the logikoi, traced it in the corporeal nature;

111.58 (S2): The one who wants to see things that are written needs light; and the one who wants to learn the wisdom of beings needs spiritual love.


} Evagrius of Pontus and Buddhist Abhidharma

The humanity of Christ serves as a model of conduct for humans, es-pecially when they are beginners in the spiritual life. The "light" is the text of the Scriptures, given a mystical interpretation (Psalm 35: "In your light we see light"), and spiritual love prepares one for the stage of the knowledge of created things in Evagrius's sevenfold scheme.

6. The Theme of Nourishment Eating as a spiritual problem is theologically connected with the Fall (Gen. 3) and the eating of the forbidden fruit, and also with the Buddhist myth of the decline of primordial beings in the Aggaa Sutta. In fact, Evagrius's understanding of the Fall arises from the esoteric tradition of Biblical in-terpretation, in which, for example, the "garments of skin" are understood to be the body of flesh given to Adam and Eve only after their sin.50 The original condition of the human person was to be immortal and nonfleshly. These views were condemned in the anti-Origenist canons of 543 and 553, linked to the decrees of the Second Council of Constantinople.51 Evagrius, however, returns frequently to the theme of nourishment, both bodily and "mental." Without a knowledge of Buddhist cosmological speculation, it is difficult to interpret his teachings:

1.23 (S2): Understandings of things of the Earth are "the good things of the Earth." But if the holy angels "know" these, according to the word of the Tekoite [a wise woman from Tekoah who told David: "Your majesty is as wise as the angel of God and knows all that goes on in the land" 2 Sam. 14:20], the angels of God eat the good things of the Earth. But it is said that "man ate the bread of angels" [Ps. 77(78): 25]; it is thus apparent that also a few among men have known the understanding ofthat which is on Earth. It is interesting to see how Evagrius cites an obscure Old Testament pas-

sage to discuss the question of bread as knowledge, and knowledge as linking things of Heaven to things of Earth. At first glance, the reference to the bread of angels in Psalm 77(78) seems to be to the manna story in Exodus, to which the Psalm alludes. But the relationship between noetic understanding and "eating" something good (i.e., sweet) on the Earth puts us very close to the Buddhist Genesis story of Digha Nikaya XXVII, lOff, the Aggaa Sutta (cf. Abhidharmakosa III, 98 a/b). Not only that allusion, but also the discussion of King David as having unusual knowledge in order to protect the land from the insidious plots of his son Absalom, suggests the Aggaa Sutta. In the sutta, the origin of the warrior (ksatriya) caste is depicted in the need to protect the people from thieves who would steal crops from the field. In the case of Absalom, to get Joab's attention, he has Joab's field of barley



burned (2 Sam. 14:30-32). David is a true ksatriya, knowing and protecting the fields (ksetra); Absalom is a criminal plotting against the king, his father, and destroying the fields; he is therefore unworthy of kingship.

Another reference to the Buddhist cosmological sutta is found in 1.26. (S2andSl):

If the human body is a part of this world and if "the form of this world is passing" [I Cor. 8:31], it is apparent that the form of the body is also passing.

This passage takes Evagrius on the road to denying the resurrection of the body in a literal sense. We are tempted to find here a resonance with the notion in the Aggaa Sutta, in which the primordial form of the body is pure mind and luminous, only to become gross and material as a consequence of karmic negativity, which began with the act of glut-tony in consuming the sweet substance on the surface of the Earth. From the Evagrian point of view, the return to pure contemplation will require a reversal of the density of embodied existence and a purification of the operation of the senses. A similar idea of "reversal" can be found in the writings of Evagrius's Indian Buddhist contemporary, Asanga52, in the Bo-dhisattvabhmi That this is about spiritual transformation is clear from the following passage:

III.7 (S2): Each change has been established to nourish the rational beings (logikoi); and those who so nourish themselves arrive at the excellent change, but those who do not so nourish themselves arrive at an evil change [cf. 111.4 on the nourishment of angels, humans, and demons]. This is a key passage for understanding Evagrius's pedagogical theory,

itself inseparable from the sevenfold scheme of growth in holiness (cited in the first chapter of the Praktikos; see above). First of all, here we have the dimension of choice: one can choose to progress in virtue; the choices are programmed and established; the character of learning is a cognitive pro-cess (noesis) described as "nourishment" that leads to transformation. The Kephalaia themselves constitute this program of spiritual nourishment. Not to follow them leads one to a bad end, just as the student who does not study fails. Thus, we can identify the imperfect nous and the perfect nous:

III. 10 (S2): The imperfect nous is the one who still needs that con-templation known through corporeal nature.

III. 11 (S2 and SI): The perfect nous is that one which can receive easily the essential knowledge.



The nature of this perfection corresponds to the "luminosity" that char-acterized the primordial beings in Buddhist cosmology. "Bodies of light," which at first seem to refer to stars but which are really the luminous clothing of the noes, are mentioned in III.5 (S2 and SlJ. The theory of the body of light is the basis for later Syriac speculation53 on the mystical experience of light: "The noes of the heavenly powers are pure and full of knowledge, and their bodies are the luminaries that are resplendent upon those who come near to them." This may be compared to V.15 (S2 and SI):

The nous that has despoiled itself of passions becomes entirely like light, because it is lit up by the contemplation of beings.

7. The Theory That Beings Correspond to Their Proper Sphere or Abode (comparable to the Sanskrit term loka)5A

Evagrius shows some familiarity with the idea of multiple worlds (some-thing also present in Origen), and he has clear ideas about the nature of beings in those worlds:

1.65 (S2andSl): Those whose genesis is second-order are established by their own knowledge within various worlds wherein they pursue indescribable combats. But in the Unity, none of this occurs; there there is an ineffable peace and there are only naked noes who forever satiate themselves of its abundance, if, according to the word of our Savior: "The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to Christ."

In Evagrius's understanding of cosmogenesis, the second-order creation was God's providential offer of a material world within which beings could be held and eventually recovered and restored to first-order contemplation. But the way of life that beings (angels, demons and humans) follow in their respective worlds or abodes is full of violence. Salvation will consist of an ineffable peace in which the noetic beings return to the primordial Unity, having purified both the primordial fall and the subsequent combats of the world of the senses.

The worlds of beings have a variety of nourishments:

11.82 (S2): The spiritual powers do not have bodies, but only [beings that have] souls [have bodies], which are naturally made to nourish themselves from the world to which they belong. In the Aggaa Sutta, the primordial food of all beings was samdhi, but

they fell into the habit of indulging in the sweet Earth, which transformed itself according to the karmic level of successive appearances of beings. The



spiritual powers mentioned here are the primordial noes before their fall and the appearance of embodied existence composed of various proportions of the prime elements. Spiritual powers correspond to the "bodies made of mind, luminous," and undifferentiated as to sex in the early Buddhist account. As beings decline under the influence of negative karma, their consciousness principle (nous or vijnna) are enveloped by the soul, or subtle body, and are gradually distinguished by sex and the material body. The soul (psyche) (III.28) consists of the nous which, because of negligence, has fallen from the Unity and which, as a consequence of its nonvigilance, has fallen to the level of praktike. The nature of embodied existence in the Kephalaia Gnostikos strangely resembles Buddhist teaching:

III.29 (S2 and SI): The sign of the human order is the human body, and the sign of each of the orders is greatness, forms, colors, qualities, natural forces, weakness, time, place, parents, growth, modes, life, death and that which latches on to things.

This list corresponds in several points to the twelvefold chain of pratttyasamutpda: ignorance, karmic formation, consciousness, name and form, six involvements, contact, feeling, craving, grasping, existence, birth, old age and death.

This is also the theme of the categories of beings in V.ll (S2 and SI): From the order of angels come the order of archangels and that of psychics; from that of psychics [will come that] of demons and of men; and from that of men will come anew that of angels and demons, if a demon is that which, because of an abundance of rage (thumos), has fallen from praktike and has been joined to a darkened and extensive body.

The text has strong affinities with the notion of metempsychosis, even if it could be interpreted to refer to the spiritual state of a monk who has failed momentarily in his ascetic practice (praktike). It is also clear that there is some affinity with the notion of distinct realms or destinies (San-skrit: goti) corresponding to karmic fruition. This later became the basis for the Tibetan Bardo Thodol (instructions to be heard after death in the intermediate statethe "Book of the Dead").

Another text with affinities with this thought-world is V.42 (S2), which hints at experiences encountered in Tibetan-style dark retreat:

The world built up out of thought is considered hard to see by day, because the nous is attracted by the senses and by the sensory light that shines, but it is possible to see it by night, when it is imprinted luminously at the time of prayer.

RELIGION EAST 8c WEST


Here, S2 is speaking of the world or body made of pure luminous con-sciousness, the state of the primordial beings in the Aggaa Sutta; being involved with materiality and sense perception draws us away from that kind of interior universe. Dark retreat, or nocturnal contemplation, opens it up for us and teaches us about the spiritual world. (SI occupies himself here with a discussion relevant to dealing with distractions at prayer.) VI.87 should dispel any doubt about this interpretation:

According to the word of Solomon, the nous is joined to the heart; and the light that appears [to the nous] seems to arise in the physi-cal head.

This is a very esoteric insight that could only be based on experience with meditation practice. Endless controversies about the nature of this light ensued in Eastern Christian monastic circles. Simeon the New Theo-logian and Gregory Palamas articulated the hesychastic doctrine on the inner luminosity. In the Buddhist Vajrayana, vijana is in the heart chakra, accompanied by the seed syllable hung, which means indigo blue in color; the white light is experienced in the head (forehead) accompanied by the white seed syllable Om; at the throat chakra, the red seed syllable Ah is visualized to give access to communication in the dream state. By working with this light, the contemplative initiates a process that will consume both soul and body to leave the nous naked and free:

11.29 (S2 and SI): Just as fire has the power to consume the body of its fuel, so too will the nous have the power to consume the soul when it will be entirely blended with the Light of the Holy Trinity.

VI. The Method of Retroversion

Retroversions of Evagrius's Greek text into Sanskrit can give us some indication of the extreme closeness in worldview and approach between the Kephalaia Gnostika and Buddhist Abhidharma texts. I can justify this procedure on the basis of the translations from Prakrit into Greek and Aramaic that were done in the Ashokan inscriptions in the third century B.c.E. I am borrowing the Buddhist Sanskrit terminology from such works as the Abhidharmakosa of Vasubandhu, a contemporary of Evagrius whose writings accurately reflect the evolution of Buddhist cosmology and psy-chology during the first eight centuries of the spread of the Dharma.

My method will be as follows: I will give the Greek text of the Kephalaia Gnostika, recovered from surviving Greek fragments of Evagrius, and my English translation of the Greek. The translation from the Greek is refined by



comparison with A. Guillaumont's French translation of Syriac manuscript S2. Then I will suggest corresponding Buddhist Sanskrit terms for a retrover-sion into a hypothetical Sanskrit source that came into the Hellenistic world some time before the composition of the Kephalaia Gnostika.

1.11.45 (S2) Greek original: Atsthesis men kai nous merizontai ta axstheta; nous de monos chei ta nota kai gar tn pragmatn kai tn logon ho autos ginetai theates.

English translation: The organs of the senses and the mind share things accessible to the senses, but only the mind has understanding of intelligible things; it [alone] can perceive [both] objects and understandings.

Retroversion: English: Sense organs and the mind share Greek: Asthsis men kai nous merizontai Sanskrit: indriyh ca cittah vibhajanti

English: things accessible to the senses but only the mind Greek: ta asthta nous de monos Sanskrit: indriyrthni cittah va hi

English: has understanding of intelligible things. It alone Greek: chei ta noeta. Kai gar Sanskrit: upalabhate cittrthni. Eva hi

English: can perceive Greek: ginetai theates Sanskrit: payan

2.11.19.

both objects and understandings, tn pragmatn kai tn logon ho autos arthabuddhivis'ayu

The Greek corresponds to the Syriac text: Gnosis dioti tn logikn presbutera deutereian kai gar ho nous presbutera pasan tn logikn.

English translation: The knowledge concerning all the logikoi is older than duality, and the cognitive nature is older than all natures.

Retroversion: English: The knowledge Greek: gnosis Sanskrit: jnnah

concerning dioti prati

the rational natures logikn sarva-cetanni



English: (is) older than Greek: presbutera Sanskrit: varsyah

English: (is) older than Greek: presbutera Sanskrit varsyah

3. IV.68

duality and deutereian kai gar dvaitt ca api

all natures, pasn tn logikn sarvadharmabhyah

the cognitive nature ho nous buddhih

Greek fragment from Hr-nfg 231: Otkou men eikona to soma to tespsuches, hai de aistheseis thuridn epechousi logon, dt hnparakuptn ho nous blepei ta aistheta.

English translation: This body of the soul is the sign of the house, and the sense organs are the sign of the windows, through which the mind looks out and sees sensory things.

Retroversion: English: This body of the soul (is) the image of the house Greek: to soma to tes psuchs eikona okou Sanskrit: tat s'arra dehinas rpah grhasya

English: and the sense organi 5 correspond to the function Greek: hai de aisthseis epechousi logon Sanskrit: caeva indriyh grhnti laksanam

English: of the windows out of which the mind looks out Greek: thuridn di' hn ho nous parakuptn Sanskrit jlasya yena buddhih pasyn

English: and sees objects of the senses. Greek: kai blepei ta aisthta. Sanskrit: api pas'yati indriyrthni.

VII: Conclusions

It is obvious that this article is meant to raise more questions than it re-solves. Since there are no known Greek texts that make any claim to be direct translations of an Indie original (with the precious exception of the Khandahar inscription of Ashoka), it is particularly difficult to establish a line of transmission for philosophical ideas from northwest India to the



centers of Hellenistic learning. However, it is possible to establish lines of communication going the other way at various periods. We know that trade certainly went both ways. An Indian ivory figurine at Pompeii is matched by numerous examples of Roman wares dispersed in the archeological remains identified across India. There was an entire Roman trading town south of what is now Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu. Examples of Greco-Roman influ-ence on Gandharan sculpture are numerous, and not irrelevant to our study of Abhidharma transmission to the West (in fact, so numerous that they merit a more careful chronology, since many of the pieces date from the third and fourth centuries CE.the period most relevant to our study, and not from the post-Ashokan period, three centuries before the birth of Christ).

All the more valuable, therefore, is it to find a text like the Kephalaia Gnostika of Evagrius containing remarkable passages that lend themselves to retroversion into Buddhist Sanskrit. Such passagesand those that contain typical early Christian and Stoic themes, but which are brought into full relief only in the light of yogic and Buddhist terminology and practicesuggest a much stronger exchange of ideas than has heretofore been demonstrable. We have heard of the parable of the prodigal son in the Lotus Sutra or the entry of the child Buddha into the temple and the astonishment of the elders in the Lalitavistara (comparable to Luke 3, the child Jesus in the temple), but these

tales have many characteristics in common with orally We are tempted to imagine transmitted folklore.55 With the Sogdian Christian man-

uscript C2, we have a late example of a Greco-Aramaic palm-leaf manuscripts in text translated into an Indic-related language (Sogdian).

Only in texts from the pen of Evagrius at Wadi Natrun the library at Alexandria. and Sketis in Egypt do we have anything that looks even

remotely like an author of Hellenistic culture fully mak-ing use of teachings that have strong affinities with specific Buddhist and yogic teachings (as distinguished from oral folk tales, proverbial material and the like). Even where Clement of Alexandria mentions "Buda" in the Stromateis, we are not given an extensive account of any distinctly Buddhist teachings. And in the Manichean Kephalaia that have come down to us,56 the extent of Buddhist content is reduced to an extreme minimum.

How then do we find teachings on the mind, on the operation of the senses, on cosmology and so many other topics in a Christian scholar who was a disciple of the Cappadocian Fathers? We are tempted to imagine palm leaf manuscripts in the Library of Alexandria57 read by a disciple to Didimus the Blind and handed on to Macarius and Evagrius! Did Melania and Rufi-nus have Buddhist texts translated into Greek in their Origenistic collection in Jerusalem? We have certainly stumbled upon one of the most intriguing mysteries of ancient Christianity, one that has implications for our present-



day dialogue with and study of Buddhism. In fact, this research embraces the entire drama of religious relations in virtually all of Eurasia.

The very topics that interest us were among those condemned in 543 and 553 at Constantinople. One can only wonder if a proper understand-ing of the yogic basis of these teachings might have rescued them from the condemnation. Were these teachings about a cosmic vision of the human person, or were they about the spiritual processes of interior transforma-tion? Were they ontological/cosmological, or mystical/psychological? The same question bewilders students of Nagarjuna's negations in the Mlam-dhyamkakarka: are these a description of the ontological openness of being itself, or are they instructions for meditators to remain in the freshness of the stream of mental processes so as to be free from impurities and attach-ments? In the Kephalaia Gnostika, there are many teachings that do not fall under the condemnation of Constantinople II, but which have strong affini-ties with Abhidharma, such as the teachings on perception and the senses. Again, these are too close in their Indie affinities to be easily explainable as typical Hellenistic descriptions of psychological phenomena.

We need to revisit the history of the evolution of Buddhist systemat-ics58 for the chronology and character of the Buddhist works which predate Evagrius and which therefore might have been the literary sources for the topics that Evagrius worked into his system of mental training for advanced anchorites. Certainly the Abhidharmahrdaya would be a prime candidate. Unfortunately, it seems to exist only in a Chinese translation, a precious witness to the abundant writings of the Vaibhashikas and Sarvastivadins of Kashmir in the first three centuries of the CE.

Further research will want to investigate the key moments in our chro-nology from Ashoka to the Sogdian manuscript C2 to establish the likely paths of transmission for intellectual properties across the trade routes of south and southwest Asia.

We will also want to accomplish more precise translation from Greek back into Sanskrit, and to evaluate carefully the vocabulary and the met-rics of the possible retroversions. This will require a careful examination of the existing Evagrian Greek fragments. Evagrian studies have become something of a cottage industry, and we can hope that scholars will answer our questions sooner or later. In the meantime, I hope this essay will spur them on their task, and that it will be a ray of hope to those of us who are committed to perseverance in interreligious dialogue, considering that what we are doing today was done with extraordinary fecundity in the remote past. We are picking up the scattered threads of ancient sutras, allowing them to question us after so many centuries on the life and death concerns that are at the heart of the unicum necessarium. **



Notes

1. Robert T. Meyer, trans., Palladius: The Lausiac History (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press; London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1965), Evagrius #38, 110-4; Melania the Elder #46,123-5.

2. Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., and Mark Sheridan, O.S.B., eds., Spiritual Progress: Studies in the Spirituality of Late Antiquity and Early Monasticism (Roma: Studia Anselmiana 115,1994), 63.

3. Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos: Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Eudes Bamberger, O.C.S.O. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1978).

4. vagre le Pontique, Le Gnostique ou Celui qui est Devenu Digne de la Science, trans. Antoine Guillaumont and Claire Guillaumont, Sources Chrtiennes no. 356 (Paris: Les ditions du Cerf, 1989).

5. Les Six Centuries des 'Kephalaia Gnostica' D'vagre le Pontique, trans. Antoine Guillaumont, Patrologia Orientalis XXVIII, Fase. 1 (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Ci, 1958).

6. This is the term used by Evagrius's disciple John Cassian. See Bruno Barnhart and Joseph Wong, eds., Purity of Heart and Contemplation: A Monastic Dialogue Between Christian and Asian Traditions (New York: Continuum, 2001), 4-6.

7. Evagrius, Praktikos, 14, which sums up the sevenfold scheme of the spiritual life according to Evagrius.

8. See Augustine Casiday, "Gabriel Bunge and the Study of Evagrius Ponticus," St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 48, nos. 2-3 (2004): 249-98, for a recent detailed discussion of the much-debated topic of Evagrius's condemnation at the Second Council of Constantinople (553).

9. Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi ( 1165-1240 ?), Journey to the Lord of Power: A Sufi Manual on Retreat, trans. Rabia Terri Harris (New York: Inner Traditions International Ltd., 1981).

10. Jos Pereira and Francis Tiso, "The History of Buddhist Systematics from Buddha to Vasubandhu," Philosophy East and West 38, no. 2 (April 1988): 172-86.

11. M. Parmentier, "Evagrius of Pontus' 'Letter to Melania' I," 272-310, in Everett Ferguson, ed., Forms of Devotion: Conversion, Worship, Spirituality, and Asceticism (New York and London: Garland, 1999), is the best original source for Evagrius's system. See also Columba Stewart, "Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus," Journal of Early Christian Studies 9,2 (2001): 173-204.

12. This was given in the "Letter to Melania" where the speculative framework is accompanied by due warnings of caution about divulging it to those who have not practiced the ascetic disciplines that are the indispensable transformative preparation for such knowledge.

13. Stewart, "Imageless Prayer," 184-5. 14. Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., The "Ad Monachos' of Evagrius Ponticus: Its Structure and

A Select Commentary (Roma: Studia Anselmiana 104,1991), 338-45 15. See Driscoll, Spiritual Progress, 77, for an attempt to see areas of focus in the six

chapters of the Kephalaia Gnostika. 16. See Driscoll, AdMonachos, 312-22. 17. vagre le Pontique, Sur les Penses [Greek title: Peri Logismon (see 129)], trans. Paul

Ghin, Claire Guillaumont and Antoine Guillaumont (Paris: Les ditions du Cerf, 1998), Sources Chrtiennes No. 438,24-6. This treatise may be closely linked to the Praktikos because both works discuss topics related to the threefold stage o praktike.



18. See Stewart, "Imageless Prayer," 186-91. 19. Le Pontique, Penses, 236 . 2. 20. Cf. Kephalaia Gnostika 1.76; 11.19, 63. The citation is from Penses, 237-39;

all translations from the French are my own. Compare Points of Controversy (Kathavatthu) (Pali Text Society, 1993), "Applications of mindfulness," 104-8, and The Path of Discrimination (Patisambhidamagga) (Pali Text Society, 1991), "On breathing, Treatise III."

21. See the Abhidharmakosa 1,2b, for the definition of Dharma and Abhidharma. 22. Abhidharmakosa on dravya: 1,16-19; II, 147,260; III, 142. 23. Le Pontique, Penses, 239. 24. The literature of Buddhist Abhidharma is vast. Vasubandhu calls Abhidharma

"envisioning that nature which is the object of supreme cognition, ultimately, nirvana!' Dharma is that which bears distinctive and/or collective characteristics. (ADK I, 2b). The Pali Canon includes seven works in the Abhidhamma Pitaka: Dhammasangani, Vibhnga, Kathavatthu, Puggalapaatti, Dhtukatha, Yamaka, and Pattana. However, later commentaries and original compendia are important to our work, since any of the works (especially those taught in NW India) might have migrated west to the Hellenistic libraries. See Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism: A Survey with Bibliographical Notes (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1989), 104-29.

25. For example, in the "Letter to Melania" the senses are listed in the same order as that given below in our discussion of indriyas, with specific significance, in the Abhidharmakosa.

26. A Bilingual Graeco-Aramaic Edict byAsoka: The First Greek Inscription Discovered in Afghanistan, trans. G. Pugliese Carratelli and G. Garbini (Roma: IsMEO, 1964). See also Romila Thapar, Ashoka and the Decline oftheMauryas (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), especially the afterword, 271-321, which discusses the Greek-Aramaic inscription, archeological evidence and textual evidence for contact between India and the Hellenistic world. Naresh Prasad Rastogi, Inscriptions of Ashoka (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1990), gives a Prakrit rendering of Greek and Aramaic originals, 333-44, demonstrating the method of retroversion.

27. Nicolas Sims-Williams, The Christian Sogdian Manuscript C2 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985).

28. See Guillaumont, Les Six Centuries des "Kephalaia Gnostica," 7-13, for a discussion of manuscript sources.

29. Ir. Hausherr, "Nouveaux fragments grecs d'vagre le Pontique," Orientalia Christiana Periodica V (Rome, 1939), and J. Muyldermans, Evagriana, Extrait de la revue Le Muson 44, augment de: Nouveaux fragments grecs indits (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1931).

30. The condemnations of this synod were appended to the decrees of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553, as reported in Grillmeier's work, Christ in Christian Tradition (vol. II, pt. 2, ch. 3,385-410), but are not included among the decrees of the ecumenical councils in recent editions. See Norman P. Tanner, S.J., ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume I Nicaea I to Lateran V. (London: Sheed & Ward; Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 105-22, taking particular note of 105-6, which explains that the condemnations of Origen cannot be attributed to this Council.

31. I.e., the unusual teaching on the Fall, the notion of creation as a providential


Rev. Canon Francis V Tiso

"catchment" for falling rational beings, and the ambiguity between this mythic structure as the overall pattern of creation, over against the insight that the pattern is relived by the contemplative in the daily battle with thoughts.

32. See Parmentier, "Letter to Melania," 278, 281, in which Evagrius expresses his unwillingness to put everything into written form because there are "secrets which should not be learnt by everyone" (1.4).

33. Origen, On First Principles (Gloucester: Peter Smith Publishers, 1973), book 2, ch. 3, no. l,88f.

34. The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Digha Nikaya, ed. Maurice Walshe (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 27: 407-15.

35. Driscoll, Ad Monachos, 348,350. 36. Origen, On First Principles, book 1, ch. 4. The cause of the Fall was negligence.

Compare any of the satti-patthana (mindfulness) treatises of Buddhism. 37. Origen, On First Principles, book 3, ch. 6, no. 9, and book 1, ch. 6, cf. lviii and 25 n.

10. 38. The text is my own translation from the Tibetan text found in the gDams ngag

mdzod, comp. Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye, vol. 5,66-7 and 120-1. 39. The term logikoi describes the plurality of noes (nous) before the Fall; nous is the

core reality of rational beings that has been sheathed in the psyche. See Origen, On First Principles, book 1, ch. 4 and 5. One can compare the use of the terms cittam, manas, and vijnna in the Dhamma samgani, sections 6, 63, and 65, taking note of the fact that there is no permanent substratum in the Abhidharma analysis of mental phenomena, an insight that does not appear in Evagrius or Origen.

40. Jos Pereira and Francis Tiso, op. cit. 41. Two of which, by the way, are not "noble"; rya refers to those who know the truths,

the noble ones, the saints who have attained realizationin other words, the gnostics of Evagrius's second volume.

42. This action of the senses extending themselves toward their objects is also referred to as the "contact" theory of perception. See Dhamma samgani, section 597f. Discussion of this topic by Caroline A. E Rhys Davids is quite in line with our research; see lix-lxiii (theory of perception) lxv, lxxii, lxix, etc.

43. Similarly 11.29 and VI5 also III.46, ailments of the soul. 44. Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-

1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 86-94. 45. P. Pradhan. Abhidharmakosabhasyam ofVasubandhu (Patna: K. P. Jayaswal Research

Institute, 1975), 33-4. 46. Sukomal Chaudhuri, Analytical Study of the Abhidharmakosa (Calcutta: Sanskrit

College, 1976), 104f. 47. Hatha Yoga Pradipika, chap. 3, verses 19f, 54f, 59f, 69f. 48. Siva Samhita 22: "The yogin . . . sees his soul in the shape of light" (atmanam joti

rupan sa pasyati//). 49. Cittena niyate lokas cittena parikrsyate/eka-dharmasya cittasya sarva-dharma

vasanugah// 50. James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of

the Common Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 132-5. 51. Aloys Grillmeier, S.J., with Theresia Hainthaler, Christ in Christian Tradition: From

the Council ofChalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590-604), Part Two: The Church of Constantinople in the Sixth Century, trans. John Cawte and Pauline Allen (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1995), 404-9, and ch. 3, discussing canons I, II, IV, X, XI, XIV, XV



of the Second Council of Constantinople. 52. Alex Wayman, "Asanga's Ideas on Food," in Buddhist Insight: Essays by Alex Wayman,

ed. George Elder (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990). 53. Robert Beulay, La Lumire Sans Forme: Introduction Vtude de la mystique chrtienne

syro-orientale (Namur, Belgium: ditions de Chevetogne, 1987). 54. See Abhidharmakosa III for the thorough discussion of loka. 55. The classic example of which is St. John Damascene, Barlaam and loasaph, trans.

G. R. Woodward and H. Mattingly (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). 56. Iain Gardner, The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in

Translation with Commentary (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995). 57. Ptolemey gave the orders to "seek out books from India, Persia, Georgia, and Armenia

... for the library in Alexandria." The Greeks wanted everything translated into their language. See Guy G. Stroumsa, "Alexandria and the Myth of Multiculturalism," in L. Perrone, ed., Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition, Papers of the 8th International Origen Congress (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), I: 23-9.

58. Jos Pereira and Francis Tiso, op. cit.


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