But the predominance of asceticism has been grossly exaggerated.
This path of abstraction and asceticism leaves the soul to theosophic knowledge, which is consummated in the supreme bliss of assimilation with the Divine.
Religious asceticism has been the ideal of the Hindu life from time immemorial.
Harmony of Knowledge and Holiness, Love and Work; Yoga and Asceticism in their highest development.
If in the previous age asceticism was the crowning glory, in this second age knowledge is supreme.
In Hinduism, the rigours of asceticism are, indeed, sometimes a means to an end; but that end is not character or any spiritual achievement, but power with the gods.
His great renunciation is one of the most striking and impressive acts in the history of mankind, and his subsequentasceticism was of the most thorough and rigid type.
Hinduism has exalted asceticismas the highest type of life and the best method of holy attainment.
The people were attached to the bons hommes, whose asceticism imposed upon the masses, and the anti-sacerdotal preaching of Peter of Bruys and Henry of Lausanne in Perigord.
The rational philosophy of control of Self and of adjustment to the Whole implies an asceticism of the emotional and the sensitive life.
It was the great counter-principle to asceticism in life and morals, to formalism in art, to absolutism in the social ordering, to obscurantism in thought.
Consequently even men of pure life, like Condorcet, carried the theoretical protest against asceticism so far as to vindicate the practical immorality of the time.
The impaired reason accepted the coarsest superstitions, the most extreme asceticism and most extravagant theurgy.
The asceticism of the Middle Ages now gives way to intense delight in the life that now is.
Superstition and asceticism held full sway in religion; men sought relief from the sufferings of the life that now is in the contemplation of a new and happier state in the life to come.
Asceticism saps the vitality of human nature and confines the activity of the mind within artificial limits.
These lay-abbots even went so far as to live with their families in their monasteries, and rollicking midnight banquets were substituted for the asceticism demanded by the vows.
His practical mind revolted against the gross ignorance and meaningless asceticism of Egypt.
From the very beginning we observe that she was more unselfish in herasceticism than they.
The teachings of Jesus exerted a profound influence upon the Christian monks, but they cannot explain the Oriental asceticism that flourished before the Christ of the New Testament was born.
The hermit life, which was asceticism pushed to an external separation from the world.
The really distinctive part of the system is the establishment of the views prevailing in Patanjali's time with regard to asceticism and the mysterious powers to be acquired by its practice.
Thus King Vicvamitra, we are told, practised penance for thousands of years in succession; and the power of asceticism is described as so great as to cause even the worlds and the gods to tremble.
Similar miraculous powers later came to be attached to penance and asceticism among the Brahmans, and to holiness among the Buddhists.
Bodily asceticism of this kind is known to the Vedas under the name of tapas.
From this, with the advance of intellectual life in India, was developed the practice of mental asceticism called yoga, which must have been known and practised several centuries before Patanjali's time.
St Francis taught asceticism to his followers, but it was the asceticism of joy rather than of grief and pain.
Will mankind ever accept a modified asceticism as its goal?
Stanley Hall, Havelock Ellis and other writers lay stress on this; and, indeed, one of the bases of asceticism is this disgust.
Dauntless in death and torture, they shunned the mechanical asceticism of the convent.
During this time, however, asceticism made great strides.
Amongst the latter there is developed a monkish asceticism extraneous to Islam and ultimately traceable to Buddhistic influences.
Here we find mysticism, there asceticism the prevailing thought.
I do not think it can be maintained that a¹cAºfiism of the theosophical and speculative type, which we have now to consider, is merely a development of the older asceticism and quietism which have been described in a former chapter.
The asceticism is so gentle and tender, the credulity so childish and poetical, that the ridiculous itself ceases to be so.
A singular charm of simplicity and lucidness in this little book; no fever visions or unhealthy glories; an earnestness not without humour: there is nothing grim or absurd in the credulity and asceticism of these Umbrian saints.
In fact, asceticism is used therein as a means, not as an end.
And yet there is a theory of living in the Gospels which is curiously indefinable, and leans towards asceticism on one side, although it leans away from it on the other.
Jesus Himself did not inculcate asceticism in His teaching, and the absence of that distinctive element from His practice was sometimes a subject of hostile remark (Matt.
Oh, to think that Gian should stoop to such things at his age--his pretended asceticism is but a mask--and at his age!
Here and there some great example of Christian asceticism enforced upon a sensual people the nature of perfect sanctity.
Asceticism formed but a small portion of the religious worship of the people of God, until the great atonement was completed upon Calvary.
And it is certain also that in no other instance has asceticism proved itself so grave a danger to social order and security.
The social and domestic virtues received full recognition from the upholders of the monastic life, and there is no evidence that asceticism ever assumed an epidemic form.
Asceticism is, after all, mainly a reversed sensualism, or at least confesses the existence of a sensualism that must not be allowed expression lest its manifestation becomes overpowering.
On civic life and the civic virtues the influence of asceticismwas equally disastrous.
But the absence of any favourable influence exerted by asceticism on conduct is well illustrated in the description of Salvianus, Bishop of Marseilles at the close of the fifth century, of the condition of society in his day.
There is scarcely a religion of ancient and modern times, certain forms of Protestantism excepted, that does not recognise asceticism as an element in its system.
The consequences of asceticism on morals were almost wholly disastrous.
There is a strain of asceticism in some forms of Judaism, and on this a few words will be said later.
But, on the whole, there is in modern Judaism a tendency to underrate somewhat the value of asceticism in religion.
Thus mysticism had a farther attraction for a certain class of Jews, in that it supplied the missing element of asceticism which is indispensable to men more austerely disposed than the average Jew.
Though the churches, as well as the houses, glittered with mosaics and gems, the asceticismwhich the many monasteries kept always visibly before the eyes of the people, had its influence among the rich as well as the poor.
Asceticism and libertinism always go hand in hand.
Although he lived on bread himself, and poverty was his chosen lady, he regarded the asceticism of the early Middle Ages as futile and rejected it.
It is therefore historically correct, though essentially an error, to regard Christianity as the religion of asceticism, for the asceticism of the Middle Ages was nothing but the immature stage of the principle of personality.
The love of war and valour of the Teutonic tribes and Christian asceticism were diametrically opposed ideals, and very often their relationship was one of direct hostility.
But when asceticism became a moral value, chastity, too, was regarded as a virtue, and personal love between two individuals invested it with a profound significance.
The contempt of and the struggle against the lower form of eroticism animating the dualistic period was absolutely consistent; asceticism represents the highest form of culture attainable by that period.
We read in the Fioretti (perhaps the oldest popular collection of poems in existence) that he expressly prohibitedasceticism as a principle; an idea too foreign to the spirit of the age to have been an invention.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "asceticism" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
