Watchfulness and the Guard of the Heart

Nepsis (νῆψις), Slavonic трезвение, is the word from which the whole literature takes its name — the Philokalia is an anthology of “the holy neptic fathers”. Its root sense is sobriety: the opposite of drunkenness. This file defines watchfulness, gives its scriptural warrant and its classic treatises, sets out the “guard of the heart” and the guard of the senses, and distinguishes it sharply from the modern attention practices with which it is regularly confused.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Word and Its Root

Greek νῆψις comes from νήφω, “to be sober”, “to be free of wine”. The metaphor is precise and should be kept. A drunk man is not stupid; he is unable to see what is in front of him, unable to judge his own condition, and confident that he can. That is exactly the state the ascetic writers ascribe to a person dominated by the passions, and nepsis is the recovery of the capacity to see.

The English “watchfulness” is a good rendering of the practice but loses the root, which is why the New Testament imperatives should be read alongside it: “let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober” (νήφωμεν, 1 Thessalonians 5:6); “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (νήψατε, γρηγορήσατε, 1 Peter 5:8); “be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you” (1 Peter 1:13); “watch thou in all things” (2 Timothy 4:5). Church Slavonic and Russian трезвение is built on трезвый, “sober”, and preserves the root exactly.

The Greek title of the anthology compiled by St. Nikodemos and St. Makarios is Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν — the Philokalia of the Holy Neptic Fathers. The whole tradition is named after this one word (see The Philokalia).

What Watchfulness Is

Watchfulness is the continual, low-level attentiveness of a person to what is arising within him — a standing guard rather than an episodic effort. Its object is the logismos at the moment of its arrival (see What a Thought Is and the Stages of Assent), and its rationale is entirely practical: a thought met at the prosbole costs almost nothing to refuse, and a thought met at the stage of captivity cannot be refused at all.

Three features distinguish it from ordinary self-examination.

It is continuous rather than periodic. The literature does not primarily recommend a nightly review of the day, though it knows that practice. It recommends a permanent inner attentiveness maintained during work, conversation, and prayer alike.

It is joined to prayer. Watchfulness without invocation is, in this tradition, merely introspection — and introspection is one of the things it warns against. The neptic writers consistently pair the guard with the Name (see Attention, Prayer, and the Descent of the Nous).

Its aim is not self-knowledge but freedom. The point of seeing what arises is to be able to refuse it, and beyond that to have a heart quiet enough for God to be perceived there. Watchfulness pursued for the sake of an interesting inner life is a well-recognized failure mode.

The Classic Treatises

Hesychios the Priest (of Sinai; the dating is uncertain, with proposals ranging from the seventh to the ninth century), On Watchfulness and Holiness, addressed to Theodoulos, is the foundational treatise and stands at the head of the neptic material in the first volume of the Philokalia. Hesychios defines watchfulness as a spiritual method which, persistently practised, frees a person from passionate thoughts, words, and actions, and he enumerates several forms it takes: scrutinizing the form of a thought’s approach; keeping the heart free of thoughts altogether; calling on the Lord Jesus; and the remembrance of death (Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, in The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, London: Faber and Faber, 1979).

Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness, gives the same teaching in more compressed form and is the source of much later citation (The Philokalia, vol. 3, 1984).

Nikephoros the Monk, On Watchfulness and the Guarding of the Heart, is the text in which the psychosomatic method is described most explicitly, and it is also — a point the tradition itself makes — offered as a substitute for the guidance of an experienced elder whom the reader is presumed not to have (The Philokalia, vol. 4, 1995; see The Jesus Prayer: Prelest and the Need for Guidance).

In the Athonite renewal of the eighteenth century, St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite gave the theme its most systematic modern treatment, extending it to the guard of the bodily senses in the Handbook of Spiritual Counsel (see St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite: Watchfulness and the Senses).

The Guard of the Heart

The phrase φυλακὴ τῆς καρδίας, Slavonic хранение сердца, and its companion τήρησις τοῦ νοός, guard of the nous, come from Proverbs 4:23: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” The verse is the charter text of the whole tradition, and its logic explains why watchfulness is directed inward rather than at behaviour: what a person does proceeds from what is in his heart, so the effective point of intervention is upstream of the act (Matthew 15:19).

The image the Fathers use is of a doorkeeper. The heart is a house with a door; thoughts present themselves at it; the doorkeeper’s business is to know who is knocking and to admit or refuse. What he is not to do is invite the visitor in to interrogate him — the standard warning against disputing with thoughts (see What a Thought Is and the Stages of Assent).

The guard of the senses is the outer perimeter of the same work. Because what is admitted through the eyes and ears becomes the material of thought and memory, the neptic writers treat custody of the senses as the practical precondition of custody of the heart. This is the least exotic and most immediately transferable part of the tradition, and it is the part St. Nikodemos develops at greatest length.

The Unseen Warfare

The Greek phrase ἀόρατος πόλεμος, Russian невидимая брань, names the whole inner combat and is also the title of the most widely read modern handbook of it. Its history is worth stating accurately, because it is a good instance of how the tradition handles borrowed material.

Unseen Warfare is St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite’s Greek adaptation of Il combattimento spirituale, a Counter-Reformation work by the Italian Theatine priest Lorenzo Scupoli (first published 1589). St. Nikodemos revised it substantially for Orthodox use; St. Theophan the Recluse then translated and further revised the Greek into Russian, again making changes. The English version most readers encounter renders Theophan’s Russian (Unseen Warfare: The Spiritual Combat and Path to Paradise of Lorenzo Scupoli, as Edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Revised by Theophan the Recluse, trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer, London: Faber and Faber, 1952). The provenance is not concealed by the tradition and is treated at St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite: Unseen Warfare and Spiritual Exercises and Discernment in Borrowing, with which this collection agrees; and at St. Theophan the Recluse: Unseen Warfare. A reader quoting “Unseen Warfare” as a patristic source should know that he is quoting a triple-layered text with a sixteenth-century Italian Catholic foundation, twice reworked.

What Watchfulness Is Not

It is not modern mindfulness. The resemblance is real at the level of technique — sustained non-reactive attention to what arises — and misleading at every other level. The object differs: watchfulness attends to the movements of the heart before God, and its characteristic accompaniment is the invocation of Christ and the confession of sin, not equanimity toward whatever appears. The aim differs: not the reduction of suffering or the improvement of function, but repentance and union with God. And the frame differs: the neptic tradition assumes baptism, the sacraments, obedience, and a spiritual father, and it holds that the same practice pursued outside that frame is dangerous rather than merely less effective (see The Marks of Delusion and the Safeguards; and, on the Orthodox assessment of borrowed contemplative techniques, Seraphim Rose: Eastern Religions Critique). Stating this is not a judgment on the therapeutic value of other practices; it is a refusal to identify two things that differ in object, end, and means.

It is not scrupulosity. Watchfulness observes and refuses; scrupulosity investigates, rehearses, and despairs. The tradition’s own markers of the difference are peace and the ability to move on: genuine watchfulness leaves a person freer, while anxious self-scrutiny leaves him more entangled and is itself treated as a work of the enemy (Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 23; trans. Luibheid and Russell, New York: Paulist Press, 1982; see Cautions for the Modern Reader).

It is not merely moral vigilance. Watchfulness in this tradition is ordered to prayer and to the perception of God, not principally to behaving well. A person who has reduced it to keeping himself out of trouble has kept the discipline and lost the reason for it.

References

John Climacus. The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 23. Trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.
The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware. Vol. 1 (1979): Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness. Vol. 3 (1984): Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness. Vol. 4 (1995): Nikephoros the Monk, On Watchfulness and the Guarding of the Heart. London: Faber and Faber.
Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain. A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel. Trans. Peter A. Chamberas. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1989.
Unseen Warfare: The Spiritual Combat and Path to Paradise of Lorenzo Scupoli, as Edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Revised by Theophan the Recluse. Trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer. London: Faber and Faber, 1952.
Scupoli, Lorenzo. Il combattimento spirituale. Venice, 1589. (The underlying Latin-rite source.)
Scripture: Proverbs 4:23; Matthew 15:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:6; 2 Timothy 4:5; 1 Peter 1:13; 5:8.