Section 07: Hesychia and the Jesus Prayer

This section isolates the hesychast and psychological dimension of The Ladder of Divine Ascent — the material that made John Climacus a forerunner of the later prayer-of-the-heart tradition. The two files cover, first, watchfulness and the remembrance of Jesus (the charter text “let the remembrance of Jesus be present with each breath” and its place in the Jesus-Prayer lineage), and, second, the “monastic psychology” of the book — its anatomy of the thoughts, the faculties of the soul, and the diagnostic method that made the Ladder the great manual of spiritual self-knowledge.

Tradition: Athonite-Hesychast

Contents

File Topic
Watchfulness and the Remembrance of Jesus Ladder 27.61, “Let the remembrance of Jesus be present with your every breath”; watchfulness (nēpsis) and the guarding of the mind; John as the hinge from the Sinaite nēpsis tradition to medieval hesychasm; the precise relation to the Philokalia
The Monastic Psychology of the Ladder The logismoi and the three sources of a thought; the stages of temptation; the threefold faculties of the soul; the genealogy and personification of the passions; self-knowledge, compunction, and John’s compassionate realism

How to Use

  • Read Watchfulness and the Remembrance of Jesus for the single most influential Ladder text in the hesychast tradition and for the careful account of what is, and is not, in the Philokalia.
  • Read The Monastic Psychology of the Ladder for the inner anatomy that underlies the whole war on the passions in Sections 03–04.
  • The full reception of this material is traced in Section 09.

Cross-References