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This chapter investigates how even an apparently negative discourse on bodies serves the Compendium of Training's purpose of producing bodhisattvas with bodies that have transformative effects on others. It shows that in spite of their differences, the ascetic and physiomoral discourses on bodies share the same end: producing bodhisattvas with bodies capable of ripening others. These are the bodies of well-disciplined monastics whose very features, postures, and movements instantiate for others their moral achievement. If these bodhisattvas reach the end of their path, they too will materialize the most virtuous body of all, namely, that of a buddha.

This chapter demonstrates how ascetics gained authority, and used this to promote adherence to the particular religious group with which they were affiliated. It addresses those issues of authority, which surfaced in the anti-Chalcedonian ascetic milieu in the 5th and early 6th centuries in the patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, focusing on the people and events pertaining to Peter the Iberian’s life and career. It examines ascetic influences to which Peter was exposed during the formative years of his life, starting in Georgia, then in Constantinople, and, eventually, in a highly concentrated and direct way in the Holy Land. The specific ascetic style which Peter appears to have developed and which his biographer Rufus further worked out in the literary portrait of Peter is highlighted.

This chapter shows that Abba Isaiah and Philoxenus of Mabbugh were influential contributors to anti-Chalcedonian theological and ascetico-spiritual perspectives in Palestine. They provided an immediate context for the theology and spirituality of Peter the Iberian, John Rufus, and their anti-Chalcedonian ascetic followers in the Gaza area. The importance of the Cross in the spiritual theology of these two teachers and leaders is discussed.

This chapter presents an English translation of the ascetic corpus writing of Evagrius of Pontus about the thirty-three ordered chapters on the definitions of the passions of the rational soul. This treatise consists of a collection of short chapters. The first section defines a variety of ailments, mostly taken from the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as particular passions of the soul. This translation cites relevant biblical verses, not mentioned in the Greek text, for the convenience of the readers.

Gregory sees his advice for the good life as springing from his conceptions of incarnation and salvation. If Gregory thinks that in Christ the human is not obliterated, but transformed, and if in salvation human nature in general will not be obliterated but transformed, then one would expect his ethics similarly to be aimed at the transformation, not the denial, suppression, or punishment of the material aspects of life. However, it must be admitted that some of his language about the soul turning away from the things of this world is very ambivalent. This chapter investigates how some contemporary commentators have reacted to it, and looks at some particular practical issues which have drawn writers' attention to Gregory's theology, notably those of the ascetic life, pilgrimage, and the ethical implications of his doctrine of creation and the Trinity. The chapter then considers what one might call the eschatological fulfilment of these ideas.

The bond between Gregory of Nyssa an his sister, Macrina, as portrayed in On the Soul and the Resurrection and in The Life of Macrina, has been used by some modern writers as a kind of test to verify whether Gregory's real life attitudes toward women bear out his more theoretical advocacy of equality. Other modern authors have approached these texts more suspiciously — not so much reading in them evidence of Gregory's duplicity or androcentrism, as using them to demonstrate how, even in these apparently intimate pictures of a female life, the woman is a construct and is not allowed to speak for herself. This chapter examines a range of these accounts, beginning with the more straightforward ones, which use the texts as historical evidence for the life of a 4th-century ascetic woman and her relationship with her brother. It discusses the problems of such historical readings and then sets out various alternative and more literary readings.

This chapter revisits the fictional story of Thecla of Iconium, a virgin who accepts Paul’s teachings of celibacy and asceticism and is ultimately authorized by Paul to “go forth and teach the word of God.” After summarizing and analyzing contemporary debates about the Acts of Thecla, Kraemer concludes that as in Justin Martyr’s Apology (with which Thecla may have some indeterminate connection), Christians are shown to be the true bearers of morality and piety, as demonstrated in their women, who index the presence or absence of these qualities in ancient social groups. Gender reversal is central to the text’s critique. Christian women exemplify masculine morality and piety: Christian men are deficient and elite polytheist men are the least virtuous, in all senses. Analyzing Tertullian’s opposition to women in positions of authority over men, and his defamation of the story of Thecla in particular as support for such views, Kraemer argues that positioning Thecla as a teacher authorized by Paul himself is part of real ancient Christian debates over the ability of women to assume offices and authority ordinarily constructed as masculine.

The system of the stages of life for a Hindu played a crucial role in the development of celibacy in Indian culture, although there was a tension between the values of domestic life and ascetic values. The classical Hindu attitude toward celibacy affirmed that celibates attain immortality and acquire superhuman powers on earth.

This chapter presents an English translation of the ascetic corpus writing of Evagrius of Pontus about the confession of thoughts and counsel. This piece provides a discursive presentation of the ascetic life and detailed account of the experiences of the monk from the earliest stages of ascetic training onwards. Lengthy sections of this writing are devoted to the proper attitude that the monk must have towards ascetic exercises themselves. Evagrius warns that a dedicated commitment to the ascetic enterprise can easily be diverted from its true purpose, if the monk becomes conceited about his own efforts and their apparent success.

This chapter concerns Nietzsche's claim that Genealogy III is a commentary on an aphorism placed in front of it, which illustrates the art of interpretation or exegesis required to decipher aphorisms. A standard view is that the aphorism in question is the epigram from Thus Spoke Zarathustra concerning ‘wisdom is a woman’. The standard view is argued to be wrong both on grounds internal to the text and on grounds of the publication history of the Genealogy. Instead, the aphorism in question is section 1 of Genealogy III itself, concerning the many meanings of the ascetic ideal. The resonances of the metaphor of ‘wisdom as woman’ are discussed. But there is no need to read Nietzsche as putting forward a radical or paradoxical theory of reading and interpretation, nor to connect his view of interpretation here with the metaphor of ‘woman’ as tightly as was once fashionable in feminist theory.

Part of Nietzsche's discussion of the ascetic ideal in Genealogy III concerns aesthetic experience. This chapter first examines Nietzsche's criticisms of Kant for conceiving of beauty from the passive spectator's point of view and in terms of disinterestedness. Nietzsche diagnoses all philosophers as having a propensity towards the ascetic, and uses Schopenhauer as an illustration: Schopenhauer's conception of aesthetic experience as a pure will-lessness was motivated by his own wish to escape from tormenting sexual desire. Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory provides the model for Nietzsche's discussion of pure, disinterested objectivity in Genealogy III, 12. Nietzsche argues that such pure objectivity is an impossibility, and that its motivation is very much ‘interested’. Nietzsche can also be seen here as turning Schopenhauer's doctrine of the primacy of the will over the intellect against Schopenhauer.

This chapter addresses three themes in Genealogy III: the role of the ascetic priest in the creation of values; the persistence of the ascetic ideal in the overvaluation of truth by modern scientists and scholars; and the claim that the ascetic ideal gains its power by giving a meaning to suffering. The treatment of the ascetic priest as both identifying with the weak and being a case of will to power is shown as complex but not contradictory. In the discussion of science and scholarship as manifestations of the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche questions not the possibility of truth but the unconditional valuation of truth, which he interprets as ultimately a moral valuation. The final part of the Genealogy argues that the ascetic ideal, by interpreting human existence as an unworthy ‘nothingness’ in contrast with supposed higher values, has given meaning to existence, and in particular to the suffering it contains.

This chapter establishes the wider context of the Miaphysite movement in the sixth century and examines how this interacted with earlier ideas of Suryoyo cultural independence, focussing on the works ofJohn of Ephesus. The chapter examines the emergence of distinct religio‐ethnic communities within the eastern Roman‐Empire, with their own distinct forms of political thought. Against a background of persecution and dispersal, John's writings sought to preserve the unity of a divided movement by recording the ascetic heroes of a previous generation. His hagiography has an unashamedly provincial focus, in which he establishes Mesopotamia as an orthodox land, whose pious history and ascetic customs give authority to the Miaphysite beliefs of its inhabitants, where holy men took on the role of the emperor in defending the people from barbarians and the Jews.

This chapter details Hardwar’s mundane history, gleaned from multiple sources. For centuries, Hardwar’s primary attraction was a spring bathing festival—which has drawn larger numbers for the Kumbha Mela at least since the late 1600s—but this pattern shifted late in the 1700s. During the early nineteenth century, the Hardwar fair (the bathing festival) was also north India’s largest marketplace, creating unprecedented wealth. Later, the Upper Ganges Canal and the railroads radically altered Hardwar’s local and religious environment. Each major change also generated conflict—whether between the warrior ascetic bands (akharas) that battled for control over Hardwar’s rich marketplace, or for control over Hardwar between local elites and a colonial administration worried that festivals were breeding grounds for cholera epidemics. The most important struggle came in 1914–17, when Hindu groups led by Madan Mohan Malaviya forced the British to modify plans to dam the Ganges.

Ascetics are Hardwar’s final group of religious contractors. The chapter first examines their general characteristics as renunciants living an alternate lifestyle—whether as independents or as members of particular ascetic orders (sanyasis, bairagis, or Udasis)—as well as how these characteristics simultaneously reflect and shape Hardwar’s religious environment. The chapter later examines different economic strategies and means of livelihood. Most ascetics are individually poor, but the groups called akharas control enormous wealth, and their leaders (mahants) are powerful and politically influential. For ascetics outside the akharas, the most prestigious livelihood is to be a guru (religious preceptor) supported by one’s disciples. Gurus guide their householder disciples not only on religious matters but also on a host of worldly troubles—from business, legal, and medical matters to personal and family problems. As such, they are still intimately connected with a life they have outwardly renounced.