Freedom

There is an ancient Greek word used in the early Christian tradition that applies to monks of the ascetical orders, and it is the word apeithia. It is also the word from which we get the term apathy in modern English, and so it is easily misunderstood to mean listlessness or unconcern. Originally it means nothing of the sort. A better word is “detachment,” but understood as being cut loose and set free. Freedom from slavery to the horizontal axis and to the self that forms along that axis into a new world of vertical liberation is the goal.

It is that freedom that allows a human being to be rooted, alive, embodied and real. It is a freedom that opens the soul to the world with compassion that is deep, intimate and even festive. Rumi, that universal poetic voice proclaims:

The one who is peaceful and happy in this world
is not attached to wealth or poverty,
to either “less” or “more.”
That one has become detached from the world and its citizens,
and most importantly from the “self,”
and has simply “gone beyond”
with no trace left behind.

This is the sort of freedom to which all monks of the Order aspire. It is a not a freedom found away from this world, but found in this world.