More thoughts on asceticism, from the previous post about sitting in a chair for hours on end to meditate.
I remembered learning in grad school about Christian ascetics who sat atop columns (from the Greek, stylos), or pillars.
The first to do this was St. Simeon Stylites (the Elder), who took up residence atop a column in Syria in A.D. 423. The best known among his imitators were his Syrian disciple St. Daniel (409–493) in Constantinople, St. Simeon Stylites the Younger (517–592) on Mount Admirable near Antioch, St. Alypius (7th century), near Adrianopolis, St. Luke (879–979) at Chalcedon, and St. Lazarus (968–1054) on Mount Galesion near Ephesus.
This puzzles me no end.
So I did some more research: From Wikipedia: Asceticism is a life-style characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures (especially sexual activity and consumption of alcohol) often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals. Christianity and the Indian religions (including yoga) teach that salvation and liberation involve a process of mind-body transformation that is effected through practicing restraint with respect to actions of body, speech and mind.
The founders and earliest practitioners of these religions (e.g. Buddhism, Jainism, the Christian desert fathers) lived extremely austere lifestyles refraining from sensual pleasures and the accumulation of material wealth. This is to be understood not as an eschewal of the enjoyment of life but a recognition that spiritual and religious goals are impeded by such indulgence.
Asceticism is closely related to the Christian concept of chastity and might be said to be the technical implementation of the abstract vows of renunciation. Those who practice ascetic lifestyles do not consider their practices as virtuous but pursue such a lifestyle in order to satisfy certain technical requirements for mind-body transformation.
There is remarkable uniformity among the above religions with respect to the benefits of sexual abstinence. Religions teach that purifying the soul also involves purification of the body which thereby enables connection with the Divine and the cultivation of inner peace. In the popular imagination asceticism is considered a sort of perversion (self-flagellation by birch twigs as the archetypal stereotype of self-mortification) but the ascetics enjoined by religion functions in order to bring about greater freedom in various areas of one's life, such as freedom from compulsions and temptations bringing about peacefulness of mind with an increase in clarity and power of thought.I respect practitioners of the above no end--though still confused about the pole-sitting thing--but I eschew the idea that "the body"/flesh is something that must be overcome. Given that anything, including the body can be abused, and another's body for one's own gain, the "body" in and of itself is good and God-given. Depends on how we are stewards of it.
And what do you think? (If you are currently meditating atop a pole, you can get back to me later.)
3 comments:
Writing this from atop a pole on the Riverwalk.
At the risk of sounding anti-religious, these people are nuts. Getting close to Christ by helping other people and trying to be the best person you can be seems a lot more real to me than, say, sexual abstinence.
I'm gonna have to agree with bebe. If God gives you life, shouldn't you show a little appreciation by living life to its fullest rather than abstaining from it?
Amen.
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