Asceticism


Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth
The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
The New Asceticism
The Philokalia, Volume 1: The Complete Text
Making of the Self, The: Ancient and Modern Asceticism
Asceticism of the Mind: Forms of Attention and Self-Transformation in Late Antique Monasticism
The Mystic Mind
Clothed in the Body: Asceticism, the Body and the Spiritual in the Late Antique Era (Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity)
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India
The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)
St. John of the Cross for Beginners: A Commentary on The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul
The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism (Studien und Texte zu Antike Und Christentum / Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity, 78)
Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: Reception and Use of New Testament Texts in Ancient Christian Ascetic Discourses (Novum Testamentum Et ... Testaments) (English and German Edition)
Conversation With Christ: The Teaching of St. Teresa of Avila About Personal Prayer
Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion
The Jains by Paul DundasLife Force by Michael TobiasEastern Philosophy by Victoria S. HarrisonThe A to Z of Jainism by Kristi L. WileyJainism by Jeffery D. Long
Jainism
46 books — 7 voters
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers by Benedicta WardThe Forgotten Desert Mothers by Laura   SwanWalking the Bible by Bruce FeilerDesert Fathers and Mothers by Christine Valters PaintnerThe Lives of the Desert Fathers by Norman  Russell
Desert Spirituality
49 books — 11 voters

LIII Abbott Palladius said: The soul that wishes to live according to the will of Christ should either learn faithfully what it does not yet know, or teach openly what it does know. But if, when it can, it desires to do neither of these things, it is afflicted with madness. For the first step away from God is a distaste for learning, and lack of appetite for those things for which the soul hungers when it seeks God.
Thomas Merton OCSO

If the average American were to jump right into week long retreat in a Zen monastery, it would certainly feel like an excruciatingly painful practice of extreme asceticism—but so would trying to run a full marathon on the first day one decides to take up jogging. It may be the case that many Zen monasteries tilt too far in the direction of asceticism, even more than is necessary as a corrective to our more hedonistic lifestyle. But it is no doubt true that many of our lifestyles tilt too far in ...more
Bret W Davis, Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism

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