To empty oneself in order to find the Presence, to meet heaven within the earth. In the Orthodox tradition, it is experience that matters: the encounter takes place through sensory and emotional living, not through a theory. And there, surprisingly, one finds the path of yoga.
“To see oneself in another and in the beloved.”
Father Georges
A living tradition
Tradition is a “charismatic” living reality, in the sense of communion — not merely a historical memory. Just as the Hindu tradition seeks to be faithful to the Veda, the Orthodox Churches seek to be faithful to the Gospel and to Tradition, carried by witnesses: the Fathers of the Church and the Desert Fathers. Through their asceticism and their spiritual life, they are like the Rishi of ancient India — they embody and transmit the Way from generation to generation, like the yogis.
The call of the desert: Sinai, Athos, Meteora
- Mount Sinai (the mountain of Moses) shelters the Monastery of Saint Catherine (of the Transfiguration). To reach the summit, one takes the Siket Sayidna Musa, “the road of the 3750 steps of penance”.
- Mount Athos (the Holy Mountain) gathers twenty monasteries and some 2000 monks — the “Christian Tibet”. To stay there you need a permit, the diamonitirion: apply to the Pilgrims’ Bureau in Thessaloniki (109 Egnatia Street, 54622; tel. +30 2310 252578). A 4-to-8-day renewal is obtained at Karyes, the administrative capital.
- The monasteries of Meteora (Μετέωρα), “suspended in the sky” — Athanasius the Great founded the Great Meteoron (Monastery of the Transfiguration). Six monasteries are still active.
The prayer of the heart (Kyrie Eleison)
The prayer of the heart, meant to be repeated ceaselessly like a mantra, is the keystone of the spirituality of the Eastern Church, leading to mystical union with God.
“Man is like a tree: bodily labour is the leaves, while the guarding of the inner self is the fruit… all our effort must look to the fruit, that is, the guarding of the Spirit.”
Apophthegmata, Agathon 8
Such is the teaching of the masters of hesychasm: to be attentive to oneself, to enter into one’s heart — according to Saint John Climacus, “to strive to enclose the incorporeal within the corporeal”, instead of letting it scatter outward. This is what yoga calls pratyāhāra and dhāraṇā.
Hesychasm and yoga: the same path
To the invocation are added outer conditions: first, retreat into solitude and silence; then a determined bodily posture and a control of the breath — the āsana and prāṇāyāma of yoga.
“Let no one think that only priests and monks have the duty to pray without ceasing, and not the laity. No: all Christians share the duty of being always in prayer.”
Gregory Palamas
In the basic practice there is almost no difference between the Hindu ascetic and the Orthodox way: it is through the asceticism of the body, the control of the breath and the repetition of a mantra that one reaches the Ultimate.
Further reading
- The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (the Philokalia of the prayer of the heart).
- Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers.
- Jacques Vigne, “Non-duality and Christian mysticism” — Vedānta and hesychasm.
