Apatheia

Apatheia, Greek for “absence of passion”, was first a Stoic ideal. The passions, for the Stoics, were false judgments and excessive impulses, such as fear, craving, distress and delight; the sage, who judges truly, is free of them, though not of good feelings such as joy and caution. Apatheia is the calm of a mind governed by reason.

Christian writers took up the word. Clement of Alexandria used it for the perfect Christian, and Evagrius Ponticus made it a central term of monastic teaching: apatheia is the state of a soul that is no longer stirred by the disordered thoughts of gluttony, anger, vainglory and the rest, and so can see clearly and pray. It is not indifference: Evagrius calls love the offspring of apatheia. John Cassian, writing for Latin monks wary of the Stoic word, rendered the same ideal as purity of heart.

The idea has close relatives elsewhere: the dispassion (vairāgya) of the Yoga Sūtras, the Buddhist freedom from craving, and the detachment of the Rhineland mystics. They differ in what the calm is for: self-sufficiency, liberation, or union with God.