Κεφ. ϞΘ'
The Disciplined Heart
The monk maintains spiritual clarity through the renunciation of pleasure, the practice of charity, and the cultivation of discernment against deception.
Another monk said, "I give up pleasures so I can cut off the excuses for anger, because I know that anger is always fighting to defend pleasure, disturbing my mind and driving away spiritual knowledge." One of the elders used to say that love doesn't know how to hoard stores of food or money. The same elder said, “I don’t recall ever being deceived twice by demons in the same matter.”
Read the original Latin
Ἄλλος δὲ πάλιν τῶν μοναχῶν· διὰ τοῦτο περιαιρῶ τὰς ἡδονάς, εἶπεν, ἵνα τὰς τοῦ θυμοῦ περικόψω προφάσεις· οἶδα γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀεὶ μαχόμενον ὑπὲρ τῶν ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐκταράσσοντά μου τὸν νοῦν καὶ τὴν γνῶσιν ἀποδιώκοντα. Ἔλεγε δέ τις τῶν γερόντων ὅτι ἡ ἀγάπη παραθήκας βρωμάτων ἢ χρημάτων τηρεῖν οὐκ ἐπίσταται. Ὁ δ’ αὐτός· οὐκ οἶδα, φησίν, εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ δὶς ὑπὸ δαιμόνων ἀπατηθείς.
The Praktikos companion
A daily portion of stillness
Chosen Portion delivers one short contemplative reading and a guided moment of silence each day — the ascent, one step at a time.
Chosen Portion is the paced doorway into this collection: it portions the dense mystical treatises into one daily reading plus guided silence, exactly as the 14-day plan teaches.
- Daily bite-sized excerpts from the contemplative classics, never a wall of text
- A built-in timed stillness practice that grows from 2 minutes to 10
- Gentle progression through the tradition — the app remembers where you are on the ascent