Asceticism: Origins, Forms of Religious Asceticism

What is it? From the Greek: “to exercise” or “to train.”

It is the practice of denial of physical or psychological desires to achieve a spiritual ideal or goal.

The origins of asceticism

The origins of asceticism are found in man’s attempts to achieve several ultimate goals or ideals: the development of the “integral” person, human creativity, ideas, and the “I” or skills that demand technical competence.

The athletic part (“training”), which involves the idea of physical fitness and excellence, was developed to ensure the highest possible degree of physical fitness in an athlete.

Among the ancient Greeks, athletes preparing for physical competitions (for example, the Olympic Games) disciplined their bodies by abstaining from various everyday pleasures and enduring complex physical tests.

The warriors also adopted various ascetic practices to achieve high competence in war skills. The ancient Israelites, for example, refrained from having sex before going to battle.

As values ​​other than those related to physical competence developed, the concept expressed by the question and its cognates was applied to different ideals, for example, mental capacity, moral vitality, and spiritual capacity.

 

The idea of training for a physical goal was to acquire wisdom or mental talent by developing and training intellectual faculties.

Among the Greeks, such training of the intellect led to the pedagogical system of the Master’s Sophists (beginners, writers, and lecturers of the fifth and fourth centuries BC). They gave instructions in exchange for fees.

Another change in the concept occurred in ancient Greece when the notion of such training was applied to the realm of ethics in the ideal of the wise, who can act freely to choose or reject the desired object or an act of physical pleasure.

These kinds of questions, which involve the training of the will against a life of sexual pleasure, were exemplified by the Stoics (ancient Greek philosophers who defended the control of emotions by reason).

The view that the person must deny their inferior desires (understood as sexual or bodily) in contrast to the spiritual yearnings and the virtuous aspirations of the person became a central principle in ethical thought.

Plato believed that it was necessary to suppress bodily desires so that the soul could freely seek knowledge.

This view was also proposed by Plotinus, a Greek philosopher of the third century AD and one of the founders of Neoplatonism, a philosophy concerned with the hierarchical levels of reality.

The Stoics, among whom asceticism was primarily a discipline to control the impressions of emotions, confirmed the dignity of human nature and the necessary imperturbability of the sage, who believed that it would be possible by suppressing the affective or appetitive part of man.

Similarly, the value of asceticism to strengthen the will of an individual and their most profound spiritual powers has been part of many religions and philosophies throughout history.

The nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, for example, advocated a type of asceticism that annihilates the will to live.

His compatriot and previous contemporary, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, maintained a moral asceticism to cultivate virtue according to the maxims of the Stoics.

Many factors were operative in the rise and cultivation of religious asceticism: fear of the hostile influences of demons; the opinion that one must be in a state of ritual purity as a necessary condition to enter into communion with the supernatural.

The desire to attract the attention of divine or sacred beings to the self-denial practiced by their supplicants; the idea of ​​winning pity, compassion, and salvation through merit due to self-inflicted acts of ascetic practices; the sense of guilt and sin that causes the need for atonement.

Among the highest religions (for example, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity), other factors became significant in the emergence and cultivation of asceticism.

These include realizing the transient nature of earthly life, which drives the desire to anchor hope in the other world, and the reaction against secularization that is often combined with the belief that the best way to preserve spirituality is to simplify the way of life.

Forms of religious asceticism

In all strictly ascetic movements, celibacy has been considered the first commandment.

The virgins and celibates arose among the first Christian communities and came to occupy a prominent place.

Only celibates were accepted as full church members among the first Mesopotamian Christian communities. In some religions, only celibates were allowed to be priests (for example, in the Aztec religion and Roman Catholicism).

The abdication of worldly goods is another fundamental principle. There has been a strong tendency toward this ideal in the monastic communities.

In Christian monasticism, this ideal was promulgated in its most radical form by Alexander Akoimetos, a founder of the monasteries of Mesopotamia (he died about 430).

Centuries before the activities of the medieval western Christian monk St. Francis of Assisi, Alexander committed himself to poverty and, through his disciples, expanded his influence in the Eastern Christian monasteries.

These monks lived on the alms they asked for but did not allow the gifts to accumulate, creating a problem with some Western monastic orders, like the Franciscans.

In the East, wandering Hindu ascetics and Buddhist monks also live by regulations that prescribe a denial of worldly goods.

Abstinence and fasting is by far the most common ascetic practice. Among primitive peoples, it originated, in part, because of the belief that taking food is dangerous since demonic forces can enter the body while one is eating.

In addition, some foods considered especially dangerous should be avoided. Fasting connected with religious festivals has very ancient roots.

In ancient Greek religion, the rejection of the flesh appeared particularly among the Orphics, a vegetarian mystical cult; in the cult of Dionysus, the orgiastic God of wine; and among the Pythagoreans, a mysterious and numerological cult.

Among several churches, the most critical fasting period in the liturgical year is 40 days before Easter (Lent). Among Muslims, the most crucial fasting period is the month of Ramadan.

However, the regular fasting cycles did not satisfy the needs of the ascetics, who, therefore, created their traditions.

Among Judeo-Christian circles and Gnostic movements, various regulations were established on vegetarian foods, and Manichaean monks gained general admiration for the intensity of their fasting achievements.

Christian authors write about their ruthless and implacable fasting, and between their monks and the Manichaeans, only the virtuous Syrian ascetics could compete in the practice of asceticism.

The Syrian ascetics judged everything that could reduce sleep and make the resulting short rest period problematic.

In their monasteries, Syrian monks tied ropes around their abdomens and then hung them in an awkward position, and some were bound to standing posts.

Personal hygiene also fell into the condemnation of ascetics. In the dust of the deserts (where many ascetics made their dwellings) and in the glow of the eastern sun, the abdication of washing was equated with a form of asceticism that was painful for the body.

Asceticism today

The same movement of spiritual training and obedience to a life of faith still exists today, many centuries later. Its central themes emerge again in the growing popularity of meditation and prayer.

Many desert monasteries that emerged with the first ascetics are still in operation.

There are many examples in Egypt, Syria, Greece, and Eastern Europe, some already erected at the end of the third century (the first buildings in the Sinai of Santa Catalina date from this era), still active as centers of monastic spiritual training.

The interest and practice of silence and prayer extended to the West a long time ago; Today, many monks and nuns live the solitary life of obedience and Christian renunciation.

The ascetic life is thriving. It would be a big mistake to think that because the world of reform turned its back on it or left or did not have anything else to say.

Many contemporary hermits, monks, and nuns, some of them very educated and accomplished, leave the civilized world to seek God in silence and prayer.

Is it necessary to leave the world behind to become spiritually enlightened? Do you need a rigorous asceticism to find God?

It can be argued that many of us already lead solitary lives in our modern equivalent of caves and monasteries: the cells of contemporary apartment buildings found in high-rise impersonal buildings and deserted caverns of urban avenues.

While there has been an exodus away from churches and “organized religions” in recent decades, many spiritual seekers are meditating and praying alone, in new churches, in yoga retreats, or in non-denominational meditation centers.