Subcategories
Ascetic Practices
14 of 330 entries in Practices. Click any to see everything it connects to.
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Self-denial undertaken to discipline the body, detach from desire or pursue a spiritual goal through voluntary hardship, from fasting beyond what a calendar requires to renunciation of comfort or possessions. Asceticism appears across traditions that otherwise share little theology, from Christian desert monasticism to Jain and Hindu renunciation.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingDisciplines that withhold something the body wants - food, sleep, comfort, sexual activity, company - undertaken for a religious end. The ends differ: Jain sallekhana, Christian and Buddhist monastic renunciation and Islamic itikaf are not one impulse, and the older reading of asceticism as world-denial has been displaced by treatments that read it as the making of a self. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 2 Learn More
The Ascetic Practices
This group gathers ascetic practices: disciplines of self-denial and renunciation undertaken for spiritual ends: fasting, celibacy, solitude, poverty, and the mortification of the body. Asceticism appears across the religious world as a means of purification, detachment and the pursuit of holiness.
The browser will find ascetic practices from various traditions. The entries describe each practice's form and rationale, noting the tradition that prescribes it and the goal it serves.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.