Asceticism

"With asceticism, wisdom bears fruit."

"Ἐὰν μὴ εἴπῃ ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ ἄνθρωπος, ὅτι Ἐγὼ μόνος καὶ ὁ Θεὸς ἐσμὲν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, οὐχ ἕξει ἀνάπαυσιν."

"An old monk said: "The cliffs are the palaces of the monks. Their roof is the sky. Their mattress is the ground. They live on nuts and wild greens. Their neighbours are the wild beasts. Royal chambers are the caves.""

"I so detached my heart from the world and cut short my hopes that for thirty years now I have performed each prayer as though it were my last and I were praying the prayer of farewell."

"Where is Christ, the King? In heaven, to be sure. Thither it behooves you, soldier of Christ, to direct your course. Forget all earthly delights. A soldier does not build a house; he does not aspire to possession of lands; he does not concern himself with devious, coin-purveying trade. … The soldier enjoys a sustenance provided by the king; he need not furnish his own, nor vex himself in this regard."

"There is good reason to believe that man's creative forces cannot be regenerated or his identity reestablished except by a renewal of religious asceticism. Only such a recall to our spiritual foundations can concentrate our powers and keep our identity from coming to dust. ... It is no good to yearn for a new kind of renaissance after such a spiritual drying-up and dilapidation, after such wanderings in the desert of life, after so deep a sundering of human identity. By an analogy we might say that we are approaching not a renaissance but the dark beginnings of a middle age, and that we have got to pass through a new civilized barbarism, undergo a new discipline, accept a new religious asceticism before we can see the first light of a new and unimaginable renaissance."

"Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible."

"Any kind of material form whatever, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near, all material form should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”"

"The ascetic Gotama … avoids watching dancing, singing, music and shows. He abstains from using garlands, perfumes, cosmetics, ornaments and adornments. … He refrains from running errands, from buying and selling."

"Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins remain addicted to such unedifying conversation as about kings, robbers, ministers, armies, dangers, wars, food, drink, clothes, beds, garlands, perfumes, relatives, carriages, villages, towns and cities, countries, women, heroes, street- and well-gossip, talk of the departed, desultory chat, speculations about land and sea, talk about being and non-being, the ascetic Gotama refrains from such conversation."

"The seers of old had fully restrained selves, and were austere. Having abandoned the five strands of sensual pleasures, they practiced their own welfare. The brahmans had no cattle, no gold, no wealth. They had study as their wealth and grain. They guarded the holy life as their treasure."

"Freedom from the world is, in principle, not asceticism, but rather a distance from the world for which all participation in things worldly takes place in the attitude of “as if not.” (1 Cor. 7:29-31)"

"What, said Obstinate, and leave our Friends, and our Comforts behind us!"

"Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their control."

"I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison to its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognises its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness."

"A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name."

"If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not give him more money, but diminish his desire."

"I spit upon luxurious pleasures not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them"

"The man who follows nature and not vain opinions is independent in all things. For in reference to what is enough for nature every possession is riches, but in reference to unlimited desires even the greatest wealth is not riches but poverty."

"Nothing satisfies the man who is not satisfied with a little."

"Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all riches."

"Ascesis is an exercise of self on self; it is a sort of close combat of the individual with himself in which the authority, presence, and gaze of someone else is, if not impossible, at least unnecessary."

"A person of sharp observation and sound judgment rules over objects and keeps objects from ruling him."

"The dunyâ distracts and preoccupies the heart and body, but al-zuhd (asceticism, not giving importance to worldly things) gives rest to the heart and body. Verily, Allâh will ask us about the halâl things we enjoyed, so what about the harâm!"

"On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it."

"Palate, the hutch of tasty lust, Desire not to be rinsed with wine: The can must be so sweet, the crust So fresh that come in fasts divine!"

"Certum voto pete finem."

"When one sees the way in which wealth-getting enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation, one wonders whether a revival of the belief that poverty is a worthy religious vocation may not be ... the spiritual reform which our time stands most in need of."

"Have you thought about what life-weariness means? That life-weariness emerges just when everything finite is taken away from a person although he is still allowed to retain life, that then everything around him becomes desolate and empty and repugnant, time becomes so indescribably long, indeed, that to him it is as if he were dead – yes, self-denial calls this dying to the world – and the truth teaches that a person must die to finitude (to its pleasure, its preoccupations, its projects, its diversions), must go through this death to life, must taste (as it is said, to taste death) and realize how empty is that with which busyness fills up life, how trivial is that which is the lust of the eye and the craving of the carnal heart. Alas, the natural man understands the matter exactly the opposite way. He thinks that the eternal is the empty. Certainly there is no drive so strong in a human being as that with which he clings to life – when death comes, we all pray that we may be allowed to live, but self-denial’s dying to the world is just as bitter as death. And in the house of the Lord you get to know the truth that you must die to the world, and if God has found (which, of course, is unavoidable) that you have learned this, then in all eternity no escape will help you. Therefore take care when you go to the house of the Lord."

"Schopenhauer … makes asceticism interesting—the most dangerous thing possible for a pleasure-seeking age which will be harmed more than ever by distilling pleasure even out of asceticism."

"The ascetic position is one of the highest fear, the gravest immobility. The severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession. And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation."

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

"Praise praise to fierce asceticism which uproots karma like an elephant uproots a tree. It removes the karmas and passions of the past, present, and future, bound in which one burns. Asceticism is said to be of two kinds, outer and inner; joined with renunciation of ill intentions it cuts aimless bad meditation. Attainments and perfections are gained from its splendor and glory. From lack of desire comes the purity that stops karma. Asceticism is the cause of great joy; like an auspicious woman it is the sign of success."

"Ascetic ideals reveal so many bridges to independence that a philosopher is bound to rejoice and clap his hands when he hears the story of all those resolute men who one day said No to all servitude and went into some desert."

"Impulsus furiis homines terrasque reliquit et turpem latebram credulus exsul adit, infelix putat illuvie caelestia pasci seque premit laesis saevior ipse deis. num, rogo, deterior Circaeis secta venenis? tunc mutabantur corpora, nunc animi."

"The peculiar, withdrawn attitude of the philosopher, world denying, hostile to life, suspicious of the senses, freed from sensuality, which has been maintained down to the most modern times and has become virtually the philosopher’s pose par excellence—is above all a result of the emergency conditions under which philosophy arose and survived at all; for the longest time, philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without ascetic wraps and cloaks, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding. To put it vividly: the ascetic priest provided until the most modern times the repulsive and gloomy caterpillar form in which alone the philosopher could live and creep about."

"The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others."

"Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last."

"How was Moses able to withstand Pharaoh when he had nothing but holiness to give him courage (cf. Exod. 5)? ... A solitary prophet once censured a king for his unlawful acts, when the king had his whole army with him. ... These holy men achieved such things because they had resolved to live for the soul alone, turning away from the body and its wants. The fact of needing nothing made them superior to all men. They chose to forsake the body and to free themselves from life in the flesh, rather than to betray the cause of holiness and, because of their bodily needs, to flatter the wealthy."

"The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are."

"We must enter deep into ourselves, and, leaving behind the objects of corporeal sight, no longer look back after any of the accustomed spectacles of sense."

"Ascetic Christianity called the world evil and left it. Humanity is waiting for a revolutionary Christianity which will call the world evil and change it."

"Brevissima ad divitias per contemptus divitiarum via est."

"Natural desires are limited; those which spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop, for falsity has no point of termination."

"Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est."

"Anyone entering our homes should admire us rather than our furnishings."

"Life cannot move forward just by being drenched in emotions."

"I spent the years of my life as a stone, and then I longed to live the rest of my life with her, as a human."

"To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half."

"None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."