05 — Mental Prayer
At the center of St. Nilus of Sora’s teaching is the hesychast discipline of inner or “mental” prayer — the prayer of the heart, the watchful invocation of the name of Jesus, and the guarding of the thoughts. These files set out, first, his teaching on the prayer of the heart itself (the Jesus Prayer, stillness, and the gathering of the mind into the heart) and, second, his remarkably precise analysis of the rise of a thought through its stages from the first suggestion (prilog) to the settled passion, with the method of resisting it at each step.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (hesychast; “Non-Possessors”)
This is the substance of Nilus’s contribution to the Russian spiritual tradition: the transplantation, with full understanding and from firsthand practice, of the Athonite hesychast method of inner prayer and the ascetic psychology of the thoughts. Where Section 04 describes the writings that contain this teaching, this section draws out the teaching itself — the contemplative core of everything Nilus stood for.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Prayer of the Heart | Nilus’s teaching on the Jesus Prayer and hesychia: the invocation of the name, the gathering of the mind into the heart, the disciplines of attention, posture, and breath, and the goal of unceasing remembrance of God. |
| Guarding the Thoughts | His analysis of nepsis (watchfulness) and the stages of a thought — from prilog (suggestion) through sochetanie (coupling), slozhenie (assent), plenenie (captivity), to strast (passion) — and the method of resisting it at each stage. |
See Also
- The Skete Rule (Ustav) — the work that sets out this teaching
- The Philokalic Inheritance — the hesychast fathers from whom the method comes
- The Jesus Prayer — the prayer of the heart in the wider tradition
- The Skete as a Third Way — the setting designed to make this prayer possible
References
- Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.
- Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008.
- Špidlík, Tomáš. The Spirituality of the Christian East. Trans. Anthony P. Gythiel. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986.