We explain what asceticism is in religion and philosophy. In addition, its history and representatives in the East and the West.
What is asceticism?
Asceticism is a doctrine religious and / or philosophical that pursues the purification of the spirit through the deprivation of the body of material pleasures. That is to say, they are ascetic traditions that embrace abstinence, loneliness, seclusion, poverty and fasting, among other forms of material deprivation, as paths to mystical enlightenment.
Asceticism can be part of cultural traditions that are very different from each other, but generally understand enlightenment as a process removed from worldly pleasures and earthly life. Those who practice it are known as ascetics or anchorites.
This type of practice has a millenary history in the East, especially in Zen Buddhism and other Hindu ascetic traditions. He was also present at the Islamespecially in the mystique of Sufism.
However, the term "asceticism" is of Greek origin: in classical antiquity there was talk of askesis to refer to the doctrine of athletic and military exercises that were intended to lead to the citizen greek towards virtue.
There is also a very vast Christian ascetic tradition, made up of various religious orders that sought greater closeness to God through renunciation: vows of chastity and poverty, voluntary confinement in monasteries, or even abandonment of urban life.
An example of Christian asceticism were the "Desert Fathers" or "Wasteland Fathers" of the 6th century, who left Roman cities to go into solitude in the deserts of Syria and Egypt. Similar cases appear in the Orthodox and Catholic churches, in which the punishment of the body or the renunciation of pleasures was frequent.
One of the best known ascetic schools was the Spanish, which lasted from the Baja Middle Ages until the seventeenth century, and which had multiple aspects: the Jesuit, the Carmelite, the Franciscan, the Augustinian, the Dominican, and so on. Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591) himself wrote that "You have to lose your taste for the appetite for things."