Asceticism

“ Foerster, the well-known German writer on ethics, knowing well how much contempt has been thrown on asceticism in recent years, did not hesitate to say that the fear of weakness is all due to a misunderstanding. The ascetic is not a stunted human being who has mutilated himself, or prevented his development lest by any chance he might wander so far away from the path to his heavenly home that he might not get back. Asceticism has for its derivation the Greek verb which means to exercise,—that is, not to decrease but to increase power. ”

“ For in its spiritual meaning asceticism stands for nothing less than for the essence of the twice-born philosophy. It symbolizes, lamely enough no doubt, but sincerely, the belief that there is an element of real wrongness in this world, which is neither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and overcome by an appeal to the soul's heroic resources, and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering. ”

“ For I saw that asceticism is a garden the hedge of which keeps off at a distance eternal evils, and the door through which man attains to everlasting felicity. And I found that a divine tranquility comes over the ascetic when he is absorbed in meditation ”

“ Is asceticism not the consistent pursuit of holiness? Is not contempt of the world, and of one's self, the consistent effect of asceticism? Can we reach the Holiest of Holies--the blissful original state, the sweet Nirvana--unless we first annihilate ourselves, as far as it can be done in life? ”

“ I believe all manner of asceticism to be the vilest blasphemy—blasphemy towards the whole of the human race. I believe in the flesh and the body, which is worthy of worship—to see a perfect human body unveiled causes a sense of worship. The ascetics are the only persons who are impure. Increase of physical beauty is attended by increase of soul beauty. The soul is the high even by gazing on beauty. Let me be fleshly perfect.
It is in myself that I desire increase, profit, and exaltation of body, mind, and soul. ”

“ On the other hand, asceticism, while it seems to present a loftier ideal and holds men thereby with a more permanent grasp, is all the more baleful by reason of its deceptiveness. It veils pride, ambition, malice, selfishness, under the guise of superior sanctity, which, while imposing on others by its well-masked duplicity, lulls its victims into almost hopeless slumber by its hypocrisy. Those whom it allures by its professions of superior piety it mocks with disappointing dreams. It is the dark shadow that always waits on holiness and liberty ”

“ Asceticism, a definitive characteristic of which is renunciation of the world and all earthly pleasures, springs from various roots. Sometimes it grows out of a dualistic world philosophy, which, holding matter to be an evil creation and “the corruptible body a load upon the soul,” teaches the meritoriousness of the suppression, in the interest of the spirit, of all bodily impulses and appetites. ”

“ In these lights it will be seen that what we call asceticism and what we call libertinism are two sides practically of the same shield. So long as the tendency towards mere pleasure-indulgence is strong and uncontrolled, so long will the instinct towards asceticism assert itself—and rightly, else we might speedily find ourselves in headlong Phaethonian career. ”

“ Properly understood, asceticism is a discipline, a training, which has reference to an end not itself. If it is compulsorily perpetual, whether at the dictates of a religious dogma, or as a mere fetish, it is no longer on a natural basis, and it is no longer moral, for the restraint of a man who has spent his whole life in a prison is of no value for life. If it is to be natural and to be moral asceticism must have an end outside itself, it must subserve the ends of vital activity, which cannot be subserved by a person who is engaged in a perpetual struggle with his own natural instincts. ”

“ Professor Foerster said: "Asceticism should be regarded, not as a negation of nature nor as an attempt to extirpate natural forces, but as practice in the art of self-discipline. Its object should be to show humanity what the human will is capable of performing, to serve as an encouraging example of the conquest of the spirit over the animal self. The contempt which has been poured upon the idea of asceticism in recent times has contributed more than anything else towards effeminacy. ”

“ The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of this earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a hell. ”

“ Asceticism results in a preoccupation with sin.
The ultimate consequence of excessive rigourism is morbid preoccupation with sin: an obsession which, with the fear of the millennium, is one of the greatest of the futile tortures that have afflicted humanity. It is as dangerous for man to magnify his vices as his virtues; to believe one’s self a monster possesses no greater exemption from evil consequences than to believe one’s self perfect. ”

“ Asceticism, the state of an ascetic, or hermit, who flies from society and lives in retirement, or who practises a greater degree of mortification and austerity than others do, or who inflicts extraordinary severities upon himself. ”

“ The ascetic teachers kept on vehemently reiterating their prohibitions, and as the correct rendering of the words shows, with a constantly increasing intolerance. “Handle not” [248] is a less rigid prohibition than “touch not.” The first says, Do not lay hold of; the last Do not even touch with the tip of your finger. So asceticism, like many another tendency and habit, grows by indulgence, and demands abstinence ever more rigid and separation ever more complete. ”

“ O king of kings, among the six senses, the mind alone that is easily moved is the most dangerous! Those high-souled persons that do not commit sins in word, deed, heart and soul, are said to undergo ascetic austerities, and not they that suffer their bodies to be wasted by fasts and penances. He that hath no feeling of kindness for relatives cannot be free from sin even if his body be pure. That hard-heartedness of his is the enemy of his asceticism. Asceticism, again, is not mere abstinence from the pleasures of the world. ”

“ Before that the teachers of asceticism were more concerned to exhort to chastity and modesty than to direct a deliberate and systematic attack on the whole body; they concentrated their attention rather on spiritual virtues than on physical imperfections. ”

“ Hence he originates or justifies that false asceticism which treats matter as impure or unclean, and makes the proper discipline of the soul consist in despising and maltreating the body, and in seeking deliverance from it, as if our bodies were not destined to rise again, and, reunited to the soul, to live forever. ”

“ Some of the most fervid, religious natures of the past endeavored to escape the sorrows of the world by having recourse to the cruel remedy of asceticism. The ascetic ponders the origin of suffering; he sees that the desire for pleasure is the cause of pain. ”

“ The fact that chastity, or asceticism, is a real virtue, with fine uses, becomes evident when we realize that it has flourished at all times, in connection with all kinds of religions and the most various moral codes. We find it pronounced among savages, and the special virtues of savagery—hardness, endurance, and bravery—are intimately connected with the cultivation of chastity and asceticism. [70] It is true that savages seldom have any ideal of chastity in the degraded modern sense, as a state of permanent abstinence from sexual relationships having a merit of its own apart from any use. ”

“ If the merely self-renouncing, we tend in the direction of monastic chastity, which though not so distinctly an evil thing, may become cruel and inhuman, and a bar to human progress. Asceticism is not, like lust, a disease, physical and spiritual, but it may lead to disease, spiritual if not physical. There is an asceticism, the Greek ασχησις, a training of the lower faculties to act in subordination to the higher, which is the strait gate by which we enter upon the arduous ascent toward noble passion and noble action. ”

“ Thus does the commerce with beautiful things and beautiful thoughts tend to develop in us that healthy kind of asceticism so requisite to every workable scheme of greater happiness for the individual and the plurality: self-restraint, choice of aims, consistent and thorough-paced subordination of the lesser interest to the greater; above all, what sums up asceticism as an efficacious means towards happiness, preference of the spiritual, the unconditional, the durable, instead of the temporal, the uncertain, and the fleeting. ”

“ When any one speaks of the morality, pure and simple, inculcated by Sakya Muni and Jesus, it is a fair question to ask whether asceticism is included therein. In other words, is there anything of the nature of absolute goodness in the attempt to make oneself miserable? ”

“ This standard will not regard any asceticism as moral which contemplates the freeing of the soul from the bonds of sensuality, as is the great aspiration of Eastern asceticism. It only recognises the claim of such self-discipline as brings about an ever-increasing unity between the soul and the will of the body. ”

“ He makes no distinction among pleasures and pains excepting what strictly concerns their value as such—intensity, duration, certainty, and nearness. He makes happiness to mean only the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. The renunciation of pleasure for any other motive than to procure a greater pleasure, or avoid a greater pain, he, disapprovingly, terms asceticism. ”

“ The spirit of asceticism, rapidly gaining ground in the Roman Church, pointed out absolute chastity in both sexes as the only praiseworthy condition of life, made marriage only an excusable sin, and recognized in that relationship, merely its use for the propagation of the species. Views so absurd and unnatural could not fail in producing the most evil results. ”

“ That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. ”

“ Will mankind ever accept a modified asceticism as its goal? I think it will be forced to, but it may be that the wish is father to the thought. Sometimes it seems as if the real crucifixion for every one of us is in our contending desires and tastes, in the artificial competing standards that are mislabeled refinement. To be finicky is to court anhedonia, and the joy of life is in robust tastes not easily offended and easily gratified. ”

“ By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle, which, like the principle of utility, approves or disapproves of any action, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question; ”

“ With clothing as with food, the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its naked form. It is a grave error: we are much more beneficently constituted. It is not obedience to the sensations, but disobedience to them, which is the habitual cause of bodily evils. ”

“ When the ascetic temper and philosophy assumes control it easily degenerates into a mania. Acts are regarded as meritorious in proportion as they are painful, and they are pushed to greater and greater extravagances because what becomes familiar loses the subjective force from which the ascetic person wins self-satisfaction. Asceticism then becomes a mental aberration and a practical negation of the instinct of self-preservation. ”

“ Sensuality, too, which used to show itself coarse, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism. ”

“ This state is connected with two primary emotions, both of which have a depressive character: on one side fear, on the other the self-feeling under its negative form of humility and dejection. An unconscious or conscious course of reasoning leads the subject to a feeling of abjectness and self-contempt; he tries to weaken himself, to make himself worthy of pity. Asceticism, though, rightly or wrongly, invoking moral reasons in its own favour, rests on the fundamental desire of depreciating the individual, at least in this life. ”

“ This is where Asceticism has committed its fatal blunder, and for thousands of years has made miserable the lives of millions. Instead of self-control, it has demanded self-abnegation; instead of the due and proportioned exercise of all the powers, it has ordered the absolute disuse of some Pg 25 of them; quite as often of the highest as of the lowest, of reason as often as lust. ”

“ Austerities, macerations—in short, the asceticism which is an institution in the so-called pessimistic religions—though springing from a multitude of causes which need not here be inquired into, prove at least that the physiological factor is not regarded as indifferent. ”

“ It is curious to see how the devil-worship of the savage, surviving in various disguises among the civilized, and leaving as one of its products that asceticism which in many forms and degrees still prevails widely, is to be found influencing in marked ways men who have apparently emancipated themselves, not only from primitive superstitions but from more developed superstitions. ”

“ Or read thoughtfully the history of the Church and of the sects, and you will not fail to note what things apparently the most remote are yet in the most fearful proximity with one another: how often, for example, a false asceticism has issued in frantic outbreaks of fleshly lusts, and those who avowed themselves at one time ambitious to live lives above men, have ended in living lives below beasts. ”