Detail from a Rodin sculpture depicting monks in varying states of mind including in despair. Evagrius wrote in the 4th century about how to lead an ascetic or monastic life but his writings have relevance in modern times for all sorts of lives.
The Seven Deadly Sins of the Christian church were based on the “Eight Thoughts” compiled by the early church father Evagrius of Pontus in the 4th century CE. Interestingly, one of the eight “evil” or “demonic” thoughts was left out from the later list of seven sins: sadness. So is there anything wrong with being sad?
One of the big challenges in life is overcoming sadness. But is being sad bad for you or a kind of sin?
To answer this question, we can go all the way back to Evagrius of Pontus (c 345-399 CE) who was probably the first person to commit to writing a complete system of Christian spirituality. Evagrius is one of the early fathers of the Christian church and he spent the last 16 years of his life in the desert in Egypt where he wrote “On the Eight Thoughts.” This is a practical handbook on spirituality outlining how to lead an ascetic or monastic life. In it, he said: “A monk afflicted by sadness cannot move the mind towards contemplation or offer up pure prayer, for sadness poses an obstacle to all that is good.”
Similarly he stated: “Sunlight does not penetrate a great depth of water; the light of contemplation does not illumine a heart overcome by sadness.”
He also gave this metaphor: “A prisoner of barbarians is bound in irons; a prisoner of the passions is bound with sadness. Sadness has no strength unless the other passions are present, as a fetter is without strength unless there is someone to attach it.”
A theme in his teachings is to be unaffected or unattached to the “passions” or “emotions” which are common translations of the Greek word pathos. The pursuit of pleasure will inevitably lead to sadness while detachment from worldly pleasure will result in a state of happiness according to him. He writes, “One who disdains the pleasures of the world will not be vexed by thoughts of sadness.”
Sadness is seen in the first instance by Evagrius as resulting from the anger or frustration caused by our worldly desires not being met. In his treatise “Eulogios”, he writes, “Sadness gets stirred up as an intermediary between angry persons…Sadness is begotten of opposing forces; from sadness comes wrath, and from this is born madness and insults.”
So sadness can escalate into madness when two people oppose each other. On the other hand, sadness could also ultimately be the key to being glad.
Godly sadness
Evagrius distinguishes between two types of sadness: “demonic sadness” as outlined above and “godly sadness”. The latter can be constructive rather than destructive. Godly sadness is when we reflect on our own sadness without becoming stuck in it. Demonic sadness shuts us off from our true self, our kin and the rest of creation. In contrast, godly sadness can open up our awareness and is part of the process of awakening. When we weep, we let go.
In a treatise on prayer, Evagrius wrote, “Pray first to receive tears so that through compunction you may be able to mollify the wildness that is in your soul.”
Thus tears have a calming and cleansing effect. The treatise goes on to say that it is perfectly acceptable to break down in tears while praying: “Make use of tears to obtain the fulfilment of your every request, for the Lord rejoices greatly over you when he receives prayer accompanied by tears.”
Cry before God and your prayers have more chance of being answered, it seems.
“Don’t think of Evagrius as preaching some sort of inhuman doctrine about sadness as a vice. He was well known for his empathy and sensitivity in his pastoral work. Though Evagrius talked about vices, he believed that we were all inherently virtuous and that the seeds of virtue could not be destroyed,” says Dr. Monica Tobon, who has lectured on the history of philosophy and Christian spirituality at the Franciscan International Study Centre in Canterbury and is now an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Greek and Latin at University College London. She has written a Ph.D on Evagrius and also a forthcoming book about him.* Incidentally, his writings have only been translated into English since 2003.**
To mourn or not to mourn?
The saddest times in our lives are probably when we lose someone near and dear to us. If we find ourselves in mourning for a loved one, would Evagrius say that it is still going to count as a vice?
“Evagrius would probably want to say that to grieve over a bereavement or an injury isn’t really necessary,” Monica Tobon answers. “If we have a strong enough sense that we and everyone else is in God, we have a strong sense of a good or a love that is so much bigger and better than anything we can experience. So the suffering is put into perspective. Evagrius’s view of sadness is probably best understood as a distancing of the self from God or a failure to connect with God.”
Let’s look at an example of the harsh reality of a tragic loss. A mother who lost her 18-year-old son in a car accident told me that she cried every day for six months until she suddenly stopped one day. Her husband, on the other hand, bottled up the sadness. Every time he began to cry, he swallowed the tears and put on a brave face. So there are different strategies to cope with a loss. Several years later, the father still seems tormented by the loss. Though the mother still finds the loss almost unbearable, she says that through the expression of her sadness, she has discovered happiness. She now treasures her life more and appreciates every day and the little things in life.
A positive way of looking at sadness is to see all the events that have made you sad as allowing you to purify your thoughts and to appreciate happiness. So sadness can represent an opportunity for growth as long as you don’t become stuck in this emotion, which can lead to depression or anger.
When my father died suddenly in 2010 in the UK, I was on a pilgrimage in India far from home. I was distraught with grief at the time. The people who I was travelling with were Vedic monks and local devotees following the Vedic teachings. Vedic roughly equates to the modern term Hindu. The word Vedic comes from the vast body of scriptures in Sanskrit known as the Veda including the ancient Rig Veda.
While the monks prayed for the passage of my father’s soul towards the light, the local Indians hosting me in Delhi told me that there was no need to be sad. My 85-year-old father had been ‘liberated’ from the body in their belief and was no longer suffering or in pain. The Vedic or Hindu concept is that the true self is not the body but the soul or consciousness. At the point of death, the soul or consciousness of a person becomes freed from the material body and leaves the body towards another realm existing beyond time and space. This is why Indians will often say “He or she has left the body” when referring to a death. They also believe in reincarnation and that the soul will come back at a later date born in another body. Then the cycle of life and death will begin again. I was comforted by these teachings. This is a rather positive view of death and dying in my opinion. Thus death is not the end but also a beginning.
The renowned holy book that forms a synthesis of the Vedic teachings, Bhagavad Gita, states in Chapter 2, verse 11: “The Lord said: You have been mourning for those who should not be mourned for; yet you speak words of wisdom. Neither for the living nor for the dead do the wise grieve.”
This echoes one of the “Sayings of the holy monks” related by Evagrius: “The death of his father was made known to one of the monks, but he said to the one who brought the news: Stop blaspheming, my Father is immortal!”
Therefore if you have a strong religious faith, you may believe that a deceased person has attained a seat in heaven or is now liberated. Alternatively, you may be philosophical and realise that we will all die one day and we do not know when our time is up. Instead of mourning someone’s death, we could rejoice in their life. This may make it easier for us to carry on with joy in our hearts instead of sadness.
In this way, sadness can be seen as an avoidable emotion or as counterproductive. This may sound cold to the grieving. However, this form of consolation can be said with compassion and warmth.
Shakespeare even pokes fun at the way we look at death in Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5:
Fool: Good madonna, why mournest thou?
Olivia: Good fool, for my brother’s death.
Fool: I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Fool: The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.
Who is the real fool in this case: the Fool or the mourning Lady Olivia?
Evagrius saw the love of God as the ultimate answer: “He who loves the Lord will be free of sadness since the fullness of love drives out sadness.”
In the writings of Evagrius, there is a sanctuary of love beyond all the emotional baggage we carry and beyond our own self-deception.
But sadness remains ambiguous straddling both “demonic” and “godly” according to Evagrius. Perhaps this ambiguity is the reason why Pope Gregory chose not to include sadness in the Seven Deadly Sins (see list) inspired by the work of Evagrius. Sadness is both good and bad.
The word “sin” often has negative vibes but can simply mean a deviation from the spiritual path or losing sight that we are part of something bigger. Monica Tobon believes that “distractions” or “delusions” are perhaps better words than “sins” to convey the meaning of Evagrius’s term “thoughts” in the original “On the Eight Thoughts.”
To be sad occasionally is to be human. But to overcome or to transcend sadness is to be godly and free of the pull of worldy emotions. Free of sadness, you have a new world view.
“Evagrius is not being po-faced when he talks about the Eight Thoughts,” says Monica Tobon. “Evagrius means that these thoughts are coming from a distorted, delusory place. He believes we are seeing the world wrongly. To be in thraldom of pathos is to be trapped in a hall of mirrors like at those old fairgrounds where the mirrors do not show you your true reflection. Because you are trapped in a hall of distorting mirrors, you are never actually engaging or transacting with another person. You are only engaging with distorted reflections of yourself. Only when we attain to ‘impassibility’ does real relationship become possible. This means that we relate to each other from a place of love which is the only real basis for relationship.”
How do we escape from this apparent hall of mirrors we are trapped inside is the question. Is “impassibility” – a state of complete detachment – a possibility for us in our lifetimes? If so, we can escape the state of sadness.
By Peter Goddard
The Eight Thoughts by Evagrius written c 390 CE
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- Gluttony
- Fornication
- Avarice
- Anger
- Sadness
- Acedia
- Vainglory
- Pride
The Seven Deadly Sins by Pope Gregory I from 590 CE
As can be seen, the Seven Deadly Sins compiled by Pope Gregory I were based on the original Eight Thoughts of Evagrius about two centuries earlier. Sadness is missing in the list of sins. Vainglory (a desire for esteem) was absorbed into pride while envy was added.
*Monica Tobon’s book, Apatheia and Anthropology in Evagrius of Pontus: The Health of the Soul, will be published in 2026 by Routledge.
**The quotes from Evagrius of Pontus are taken from the first translation into English from Greek of his writings: Evagrius of Pontus. The Greek Ascetic Corpus. Translated by Robert E. Sinkewicz and published by Oxford Academic Books in 2003.