From Helen Waddell’s The Desert Fathers – in Fragments From the Paradisus of Palladius (pg 256-7):

A certain Apollonius, that had been a merchant and renounced the world, came to live on Mount Nitria: and since he could learn no art, hindered as he was by weight of years, nor could practice the abstinence laid down in Holy Write, he laid down a rule of continence for himself. For out of his own purse and labour he bought every kind of remedy and food-stuffs in Alexandria, and provided the brethren that were ailing with whatever they needed. You might see him from early morning till the ninth hour traversing up and down through all the monasteries, whether of men or women, in and out of door after door where there were any sick, carrying with him raisins, and pomegranates, and eggs, and fine wheaten flour, especially necessary for the ailing. To such a life for which alone he was adapted, did this servant of Christ devote his old age.

To which can be compared Bhagavad Gita 3.35

Better is one’s own dharma, though imperfectly performed, than the dharma of another well performed. Better is death in the doing of one’s own dharma: the dharma of another is fraught with peril.

A few more from The Sayings of the Fathers in Helen Waddell’s The Desert Fathers

Book 2, Of Quiet
2. The abbot Antony said, “who sits in solitude and is quiet hath escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, seeing: yet against one thing shall he continually battle: this is, his own heart.”

9. A certain brother came to the abbot Moses in Scete seeking a word from him. And the old man said to him, “Go and sit in they cell, and they cell shall teach thee all things.”

Book 7, Of Patience or Fortitude
34. A brother asked an old man, saying, “What shall I do, Father, for I do nothing a monk should, but in a kind of heedlessness I am eating and drinking and sleeping and always full of bad thoughts and great perturbation, going from one task to another, and from one thought to another?” And the old man said, “Sit thou in they cell, and do what thou canst, and be not troubled: for the little that thou dost now is even as when Antony did great things and many in the desert. For I have this trust in God, that whoever sits in his cell for His name and keeps his conscience shall himself be found in Antony’s place.”

Book 10, Of Discretion
15. They told of a certain old man that he had lived fifty years neither eating bread nor readily drinking water: and that he said, “I have killed in me lust and avarice and vainglory.” the abbot Abraham heard that he said these things, and he came to him and said, “Hast thou spoken thus?” And he answered, “Even so.” And the abbot Abraham said, “Behold, thou dost enter they cell, and find upon they bed a woman: canst thou refrain from thinking that it is a woman?” And he said, “No: but I fight my thoughts, so as not to touch that woman.” And the abbot Abraham said, “So then, thou has not slain lust, for the passion itself liveth, but it is bound. Again, if thou art walking on the road and sees stones and potsherds, and lying amongs them gold, canst thou think of it but as stones?” And he answered, “No: but I resist my thought, so as not to pick it up.” And the abbot Abraham said, “So then, passion liveth: but it is bound.” And again the abbot Abraham said, “If thou shouldst hear of two brethren, that one loves thee and speaks well of thee, but the other hates thee and disparages thee, and they should come to thee, wouldst though give them an equal welcome?” And he said, “No: but I should wrest my mind so that I should do as much for him that hated me as for him that loved me.” And the abbot Abraham said, “So then these passions live, but by holy men they are in some sort bound.”

This last can be difficult and I wish I had the original Latin at hand. I want to connect the sentiment to Bhagavad Gita 3.34

The love and hatred that the senses feel for their objects are inevitable. But let no one come under their sway; for they are one’s enemies

and 3.28

But, O mighty Arjuna, he who knows the truth about the gunas and action, and what is distinct from them [atman, the self] holds himself unattached, perceiving that it is the gunas that are occupied with the gunas (guna gunesu vartanta).

Guna here can, with grand unsatisfying imprecision, be taken as ‘senses and sensory objects.’

From Helen Waddell’s The Desert Fathers – in the History of the Monks of Egypt, translated from the Greek by Rufinus of Aquileia (pg. 80). Her introduction and selections try to rehumanize the early monks by swapping focus from the excesses of someone like Simeon Stylites to the simple kindness and community of the mass of brothers.

They tell that once a certain brother brought a bunch of grapes to the holy Macarius: but he who for love’s sake thought not on his own things but on the things of others, carried it to another brother, who seemed more feeble. And the sick man gave thanks to God for the kindness of his brother, but he too thinking more of his neighbour than of himself, brought it to another, and he again to another, and so that same bunch of grapes was carried round all the cells, scattered as they were far over the desert, and no one knowing who first had sent it, it was brought at last to the first giver. But the holy Macarius gave thanks that he had seen in the brethren such abstinence and such loving-kindness and did himself reach after still sterner discipline of the life of the spirit.