Overlooking the Honey: Asceticism

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“Those [willing to be eunuchs for heaven’s sake] should accept it.”—Jesus of Nazareth

“Let but one tenth part of humanity pursue [asceticism] consistently, and in a day’s time, they will have turned it into a Hell.”—Jeremy Bentham

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—10/17/11—If more squat-jumps and wind sprints make the sprinter stronger, depriving the body surely strengthens the marathon monk.

That’s the faulty logic on which asceticism is built, but it’s a house of straw built on a balsa platform.

Epic abstinence represents the extreme in the world of soul-building but, as Aristotle taught 2,300 years ago, moderation is the rule: neither too much nor too little. The word ascetic literally means “exerciser” in Greek as St. Ignatius, the author of The Spiritual Exercises, surely understood. Among Ignatius’s recommendations is: scourge yourself with thin cords which do not penetrate to the bone.

Aristotle’s influence is weakly felt in the recommendation that flagellants use cords of a certain diameter, but moderation is a rare commodity at the Club God gymnasium.

—The Russian Skoptsys decided the best way to show God they loved Him was to castrate the men and cut off the women’s breasts.

—The “sky-clad” Jains go naked their entire adult lives, never bathe, avoid electric street lights, and beg for every morsel they eat. In the winter, they warm themselves by practicing Yoga.

—In 2006, at a U.N. interfaith prayer service, Swami Bua blew a conch horn for eight days, continuously inhaling as he exhaled. Kenny G could only handle 45 minutes of what the Swami called “breathing through the eyes.”

—On Good Friday in 1980, Maritza Tamao survived 15 hours nailed to an upright cross, surpassing Jesus’s best time by nine hours.

—In 1902, Fakir Agastiya held an arm overhead for three months, causing it to lock in place. A bird finally agreed to build its nest in his open palm.

—Another fakir walked about with an 18-pound stone dangling from his penis.

—Another crawled 870 miles on his knees, after which his scabs were venerated as holy relics.

—For nearly 40 years, St. Simeon sat atop a 45 foot stone column in all kinds of weather. When he noted a maggot had fallen from one of his festering wounds, he fed it some more of himself.

—Such displays of “heroic virtue” led one fanatical follower of Francis Xavier to bite off a toe as his body was being carried to the grave. Such are the risks run by celebrities of the spirit.

Cartoonists such as Nick Anderson have had fun with ascetics, marching outside their monastery walls demanding, “Harder beds and coarser threads.”

Robert Weber pictures one cloistered monk in the moonlight confiding to another, “I always feel a tad secular on Saturday nights.”

Dik Browne has a mountain-top guru tell the Viking Hagar, “Fasting, sobriety, and poverty . . . that is the secret of happiness.”

Hagar wonders, “How many points do I get for poverty?”

But my favorite is an anonymous, caption-less cartoon showing a buxom majorette high-stepping it and twirling two batons. She leads, not a brass band, but a parade of holy men, whose backs are bent horizontal by the crosses they bear.

In his short story, “The Hunger Artist,” Franz Kafka more fully develops the send-up ofGod’s athletes. After years of fasting, the unnamed artist loses his public when the circus in which he once was a featured freak places a well-fed panther in a cage next to his own. Soon thereafter, the serial weightwatcher dies ignored. Before his death, he had apparently convinced himself that whatever is offensive to sinful man surely is admired by God, and whatever is pleasant to man is offensive to the Almighty.

The “hunger artist” is a spiritual extremist who has studied the habits of bees, for example, and seen only paragons of chastity, poverty, and obedience while overlooking their perfect wax hexagons bursting with honey.

Excluding sugar from life has always struck me as a reproach to joy. But if Jesus never married, the Greek monks on Mt. Athos reasoned centuries ago, they should exclude all females from their midst except birds or insects. Yet most men I know say that disregarding women would be a renunciation of life’s greatest pleasure. The pillar saint St. Simeon even refused to allow his sainted mother, Martha, to approach the platform where he sat for 39 years.

Too humble, the Jews say, is half-proud.

While I admire the work of Jesuit scholars and those nuns who serve as nurses, I draw the line at mortifying the flesh.

When St. Thérèse contracted tuberculosis, her followers at the convent of Lisieux tried to prove themselves worthy of their sainted sister by drinking her drool. Such a desecration of the body-temple surely is what Oscar Wilde had in mind when he wrote that “self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity,” but I doubt that even Wilde imagined anything as vile as imbibing tubercular sputum.

One irony in self-abnegation, especially in knee-worn Christian establishments, is how social and indulgent Jesus was. As his peers noted in Matthew 11, “When the Son of Man came, he ate and drank, and everyone said, ‘Look at this man! He is a glutton and wine-drinker, a friend of tax collectors and other outcasts!’” Furthermore, he had a girlfriend, he refused to fast, he punned occasionally and, when the wedding keg ran dry, he turned water to wine.

The sole place in the ascetic world where the monks seem to have achieved the right balance is at the Monastery of St. Catherine on the Sinai Peninsula. It was on these grounds that Jehovah reportedly spoke to Moses from the burning bush in about 1,250 BC. Three millennia later, the venerable bush is thriving in Catherine’s courtyard and, should it burst into flame again, the monks have placed a fire extinguisher beside it.

Perhaps you are wondering from what ascetic experience I criticize an ancient tradition. After eight weeks of basic training in the army, I was sent for three years to a tiny outpost in the shadow of the Iron Curtain to electronically eavesdrop on the East Germans and Russians.

After receiving my Ph.D., I taught for 42 years in a small South Carolina town at a medium-sized university that thinks of itself as a “high seminary of learning.” It’s not exactly the Grand Chartreuse, but it’s not “Gay Paree,” either.

Yet, in all those lean years, I cannot recall ever trying to master the art of doing nothing. My wife and I live simply, not ascetically. Mendicant Buddhist monks, the Kodo drummers, some Sufi dervishes, and various agents of the Peace Corps have all passed through the SC Upstate in recent years. But every time I’m tempted to run off with one of these circuses, I remember Gandhi’s confession: “It takes a lot of money to keep me living in poverty.”

Frankly, I’d rather earn my way.

As for extinguishing desire, I figure there will be plenty of time for that in the grave. On the rare occasions when I feel stressed, I jog barefoot in the grass or take a bike ride. One gets no aerobic points for meditating. Do I feel virtuous when I rise early? Of course, but I have not cornered that market, either.

Finally, if the meek are going to inherit the earth, where are the Shakers? The last I heard, only three were left.