It matters not whether, on the one hand, the escape from tsuris takes the form of a state of the psyche such as happens in Buddhism and Its Nirvana, or Stoicism and Its apatheia. |
Evagrius sees gentleness and compassion as at the heart of apatheia. |
As such, the Stoic emphasis on self-sufficiency and the ideal of apatheia are wrong-headed from the start. |
Evagrius described the goal of monastic asceticism as apatheia. |
Despite the description of the sage as in a state of apatheia, the Stoics also allowed that the sage can experience eupatheia, good feelings. |