The best way to think of paradise is to think about it as a life in Christ. The desert fathers sought most of all their own true self in Christ. The proximate end of all their striving was "purity of heart," a clear unobstructed vision of the true state of affairs, an intuitive grasp of one's own inner reality as anchored — or rather lost — in God, through Christ. The fruit of this was "rest," the creation of inner space for God. A pure heart is a heart that is not attached to anything or anyone except God. A pure heart is a state of being single-minded, or perhaps "single-eyed."

Yushi Nomura, Desert Wisdom by Yushi Nomura, translator