The Joy of Renunciation and Asceticism

The Joy of Renunciation and Asceticism, or the World Has
Things Exactly Backwards

by Eric S. Fallick


Though the fact has been forgotten and ignored and even arouses great hostility and opposition and objection in this most dark and deluded brave new modern world of exceptionally deluded and heavy karma souls, true celibate, vegetarian, teetotalling, impecunious, worldly entertainment and activity and involvement avoiding renunciation and asceticism is absolutely necessary and indispensable for, is essential to and part and parcel of, any genuine higher spiritual and philosophic life and practice and genuine higher contemplation or meditation practice. Not only does almost no one practice and embrace the life of renunciation and asceticism anymore, but almost no one, not even, strangely, some of the few remaining institutionalized alleged renunciants, even understands and acknowledges and speaks about its necessity and superiority. In a world where even more people than ever before (if that's possible!) are solely obsessed with the pursuit of hedonism and individual sensual pleasures and worldly desires, and electronic technology has multiplied the means of doing so and provided a ubiquitous culture only concerned with this, where the official dominant dogma of secular materialism and scientism teaches that all there is is the physical sense world and this life and the pursuit of individual desires and that these are valid whatever they are, where it is taboo to even say or think that one way of life is better than or superior to another, where the desires and attitudes of the deluded and foolish many have been elevated to the status of sacred truth and the wisdom of the truly (as opposed to alleged) philosophic and spiritual renunciant, ascetic few has been degraded and derided and disallowed, not only do many people now disavow and object to renunciation and asceticism, but many have never even heard of it or are able to conceive of the idea and find it totally incomprehensible. When or if they hear of someone voluntarily and gladly giving up even the most trivial of the base sensual pleasures that are the focus of their lives, not to mention all unnecessary worldly pursuits and desires altogether, they are astounded and think that this must be a state of the most painful deprivation. Of course, however, just the exact opposite is the truth. The celibate, abstinent, impoverished renunciant and contemplative life without worldly pleasures is the most joyful and happy life without comparison, and the worldly life of the pursuit of worldly desires, wealth, sensual pleasures, worldly involvements, and the possession of these, is altogether the most miserable and painful and sorrowful. The Way of Truth, of the Spirit, of the Few, is completely contrary to and the opposite of the Way of the World, of the Many—in understanding and thought and conception as well as in action and practice. What the world considers life, the truth considers death. What the many consider pleasure, philosophia considers pain. What the world considers sorrow, the truth considers joy—and etc. and vice versa.

We find ourselves in the lowest state of individual souls in becoming in individuated sensate existence in space-time repeatedly and endlessly revolving in the cycle of birth and death being reincarnated over and over and over again in various forms both human and non-human. Our goal is re-union with the One or the Good, the Absolute, or, if you like, God, to cease from individuated existence, to be released from the cycle of rebirth and re-becoming, to become again just the One only Itself. These two conditions—becoming, genesis, the cycle of reincarnation, individuated sensate existence and being just or union with the One—stand in the strongest and sharpest contrast for us. They are completely mutually incompatible and incommensurate. We must choose and have and go in the direction of either one or the other. Both can't be at once and we can't pursue both at once. The soul's love can't be expended in two opposite directions on two opposite objects at the same time. We either love the things of this world and the senses and enter deeper into becoming or love the Good and go higher and higher towards union with it and freedom and salvation. Life in bodily existence is the death of the soul; the death and end of bodily existence is the life of the soul.

Even leaving aside for the present the tremendous pain and suffering and misery and horrors and terrors and vicissitudes and anxieties and unsatisfactoriness of the round of becoming, of endless reincarnation and individuated existence, of this always changing sense world (just look around you at any moment!) that rightly and accurately fill many volumes of the contemptus mundi types of literature of the various spiritual systems and which could more than easily occupy many more essays or a whole book by themselves, becoming, genesis, sensate bodily individuated existence is inherently and intrinsically painful and suffering and miserable. It is so by its very fact, even apart from any particular pains, even when it seems pleasant and pleasurable and happy to ordinary worldlings who know no better. It is so just in itself, in its very nature as being a state of separation, or apparent separation, from the One. The One Itself is pure, inconceivable, inexpressible, wondrous perfection, joy, good, peace, luminosity, happiness, completion, knowing, dynamic rest and well-being. Compared to this even the seemingly happiest and most pleasurable conditions in becoming are just misery and horror. This seems incredible to ordinary worldlings and deluded beings, but it is only because of their not knowing the One, of having forgotten their original state of union with It, that they can't recognize this and it isn't obvious to them and they think that happiness and good is to be found here in genesis. To one who actually knows the Good even a little bit, to the ascetic who has touched the One even a little bit in genuine contemplation, it is more than obvious that this is the case, that being separated from the one and wandering in individuated sensate existence in space-time is in its very self the greatest horror and suffering imaginable, even before the terrible sufferings as conceived in the ordinary sense that are always part and parcel of the cycle of reincarnation are inevitably piled upon it in addition. This being the case, it logically follows that anything that draws us or the soul deeper into becoming, in the direction of individuated sensate existence, anything that looks in the direction of genesis, is ipso facto pain and suffering and misery and unhappiness, even if it seems the opposite to deluded beings who know only the sense world, and anything that draws us to and moves the soul in the direction of the Absolute and re-union with it, that looks away from becoming and toward true higher Being, is ipso facto joy and true pleasure and happiness and well-being, even if it seems like deprivation or discomfort to those same deluded beings who know only the sense world and nothing of the higher noetic realities. All sensual and bodily pleasures and desires, all worldly desires and pursuits, all the things that the world considers goods—sex, romantic love, worldly interpersonal love, the alleged pleasures of food and drink, intoxication, worldly entertainment, wealth, money, possessions, fame, honor, power, privilege, idleness, status, etc., etc., etc.--exclusively turn the soul downwards into becoming, create karma and bind it more and more to the wheel of birth and death, move the soul further and further into separated individuated bodily sensate existence, separate it more and more from and take it further and further away from the One, and, therefore, directly contrary to what the world thinks, are actually pain and misery and unhappiness and deprivation, even, in fact, especially, when they are successfully obtained and 'enjoyed'. Contemplative asceticism, renunciation, celibacy, vegetarianism, minimal simplicity in food, drink, clothing and the necessities of life, voluntary poverty and lack of possessions, avoidance of worldly entertainments and worldly emotional relationships, teetotalling, abstinence, discipline, sole devotion to contemplation and study turn the soul exclusively upwards away from becoming and towards the Absolute, release the it more and more from the wheel of birth and death, make it less and less separate and move it more and more towards union with and closer and closer to the One, and, therefore, directly contrary to what the world thinks, are actually pleasure and enjoyment and happiness and contentment and sufficiency. Even though the contemplative ascetic renunciant Path is, in a sense, very difficult and contains many struggles and pains and ups and downs of its own, especially in the adverse circumstances of the present day, as the soul goes through the very long and difficult process of turning itself away from becoming and towards Being and working through all its massively accumulated habits and karma, these are as nothing compared to its joys and eventual joys, and, in any case, its kind of suffering mixed with movement towards true joy, its difficulties that put an end to all difficulties, its tastes of true happiness, are infinitely better and more enjoyable than the pure unadulterated misery and pain of ordinary worldly life, which is so even and particularly when it seems most pleasant and pleasurable, which contains no real pleasure or happiness even when deluded beings think it does. A drug addict thinks that his condition is desirable and that taking drugs is pleasure and to be pursued and that the process of withdrawal is painful, but obviously it is the taking of drugs and being a drug addict that is misery and the withdrawal process is well worth its difficulty and provides true pleasure in the midst of it in the addict's knowledge that he is getting free thereby and the end state of non-addiction is obviously incomparably better and more pleasurable and happier than the addicted state.

To put the matter a different way, the One is also the Good. It is the only true Good, the pure perfect Good, the unmixed and unadulterated Good, the real Good, the Source of all Good. All other lesser derivative realities and lower beings only have whatever good or goods they have as derived from the Good, not from themselves, but to the extent that they participate in the Good Itself, as they also only have such being and existence as they have from the Good, not from themselves. If the things of the senses, the things and objects and desires of this world, have any good at all, it is only as derived from and to the extent that they participate in the Good Itself, to the extent that they are very faint images or phantoms or projections or derivations of part of the Good, that they have a surface coating, as it were, or tinge of apparent good supplied by the Good. All people and beings seek good or their good. This is considered self-evident and no other reason needs to be supplied for seeking good. People, deluded beings, have, however, turned the wrong way in looking for their good and, seeing the projected phantom tinge of good seeming to appear in sense objects, have transferred looking for good and the idea of good from the real Good to illusory seeming goods. They look the exactly wrong way away from the true Good towards these illusory seeming goods and grasp at and pursue them. When people desire and pursue the alleged pleasures of the things of the senses and the body, of this world, they are tossing away their true Good, their true birthright of returning their souls to the Good, and chasing after false goods and considering this to be pleasant and pleasure and happiness, both in the pursuit and the obtaining. Contemplative ascetics and renunciants, on other hand, reject and see through all false goods and wholeheartedly pursue only the and their true Good, the Good Itself. Clearly, to aim at and pursue, and eventually obtain, one's true good is actual pleasure, enjoyment, happiness, etc. To miss this and be deprived of one's true good, to instead aim at and pursue, and even apparently obtain, false illusory seeming goods and consider this satisfactory and all there is, is actually pain, discomfort, unhappiness, etc., even if it seems to be otherwise to those who don't know at all where the and their true Good lie. Thus, it is clear that sensual and worldly pleasures, possessions, etc. are actually pain, misery and deprivation, and contemplative asceticism and renunciation is actually pleasure, happiness and sufficiency.

Again, the One is Beauty. It is the only true real perfect pure Beauty Itself. It is the only source of all beauty. All other things that seem to be beautiful are only so as derivative from, as participating in Beauty Itself. It is the only true real perfect pure Love and the only true real perfect pure Truth. All other things that seem to be lovable and true are only so as derivative from, as participating in Love and Truth Itself. All the things of the senses, of this world, that seem to be beautiful, lovable, desirable and true only appear to be so because of a faint participation in and surface tinge of the Beautiful, Love and Truth Itself. To pursue and engage in and 'enjoy' sensual pleasures and worldly desires is to miss the true Beauty, Love and Truth entirely and to mistakenly simply grasp and experience phantoms and illusory things thinking that they are beauty, love and truth when they are not at all so. Wouldn't this be the very definition of pain and misery and unhappiness and lack? To be a true and proper contemplative ascetic and renunciant is to reject and abandon all illusory phantom things masquerading as beautiful, lovable and true and to turn towards and aim at and eventually, to varying degrees as the Path proceeds, obtain true, actual, real Beauty, Love and Truth Itself. Isn't this the very definition of pleasure, satisfaction, happiness and sufficiency?

Shall we take a few specific examples a little more in detail? Sex, romantic love and celibacy may be considered the first great demarcation line and division between the worldly and renunciant lives. The world generally considers sex to be the very greatest and most intense of sensual and bodily pleasures and romantic love to be the greatest of emotional fulfillments, and many are driven nearly mad or will go to great lengths to have these things. Celibate religious ascetics reject sex and romantic love entirely as being the greatest error, bondage and impediment and making any true higher, substantial spiritual and contemplative progress impossible. The world considers this to be the greatest of deprivations and hardest thing to give up. Celibate ascetics consider it the greatest relief to be free from the madness of sex and romantic love. (Note that this refers to the whole, complete, true celibate practice and understanding and change of attitude and view and perception. Celibate ascetics are, of course, generally and for a long time not at all without sexual desire and thoughts, though they don't act on them, and have to struggle with them and many ordinary worldlings are de facto without sex and romantic relationships due to various circumstances for much of their lives, but the attitudes, understandings, weltanschauungs and practices are completely different.) Which of these is the true pain and misery and which is the true pleasure and joy, however it may seem to deluded worldlings? Of all sensual 'pleasures', sex is considered the most intense and, by the world, enjoyable. Nothing more greatly binds the soul to the body and becoming. Nothing more makes the soul think that the things of the senses are real. Nothing more incapacitates the rational divine soul and mind and strengthens and activates the lower animal soul. No physical 'pleasure' more takes the soul deeper and further into multiplicity and sensate existence and away from the One and the Good. Thus, sex is, by the criteria established above, actually the greatest pain and misery even though world considers it the greatest pleasure and happiness! By contrast, celibacy, abstinence from all sexual activity, for proper spiritual purposes with a proper spiritual understanding and attitude is taking the greatest stand and determination and action to turn the soul from becoming to re-union with the One. Thus, by the criteria established above, full celibacy is the greatest pleasure and joy and happiness and sufficiency, even though the world considers it the greatest deprivation! It is the same with romantic love, which is not really to be separated or distinguished, of course, from sex and sexuality. Being one of if not the greatest emotional attachment to this world, it turns the soul most the wrong way and is thus the greatest pain and misery and deprivation and unhappiness, even when it seems just the opposite to deluded worldlings, and the abandonment of it and freedom from it of the celibate religious ascetic is the greatest pleasure and joy and happiness and sufficiency!

Vegetarianism is, of course, morally and spiritually incumbent on all human beings, and many moral vegetarians are not in the slightest ascetics or renunciants. Let us, however, briefly view the matter from the perspective of the worldling/renunciant and pleasure/pain divide. Most people, incredibly, consider flesh-eating to be a habitual, substantial pleasure gratifying their taste and desire for pleasurable bodily experiences. They consider vegetarianism to be a painful deprivation and to be missing a big pleasure. But to be an inter-species cannibal, to knowingly kill and promote killing, to unnecessarily take the lives of other non-human souls for no reason but habitual greed and ignorance and desire for pleasure and taste is to most vigorously and eagerly and willing separate and alienate oneself and one's soul from the Good, from the Absolute, from the Beauty and Love and Truth Itself and plunge deeply into self-enclosed tiny individuality and multiplicity, to bind oneself ever more and very tightly to the wheel of birth and death and produce the causes for a sub-human, irrational rebirth. Clearly, by the principle established above, this is actually great pain and misery and unhappiness and deprivation, even if it seems like 'pleasure' to ordinary deluded meat-eating worldlings. All true, renunciant contemplative ascetics are pure vegetarians and, just opposite to the worldly view, this is not deprivation or loss of pleasure at all, but the greatest pleasure and joy and satisfaction to live and eat in a way that causes no death to other souls and causes minimum harm and makes one more and more like and assimilated to the Good, to Divinity, which, as indicated above, is the greatest and only true well-being and happiness. Flesh-eating that the world considers a pleasure is actually a great and painful horror and unimaginably miserable in its very act, and the vegetarian contemplative ascetic rejoices and experiences great pleasure and peace in abstaining from it and the very thought of flesh-eating invokes horror, revulsion and disgust in him!

Somehow, much of the world and the many consider the drinking of alcohol and intoxication, whether to a mild or severe degree, to be a major pleasure and desirable thing, and teetotalling to be somehow a deprivation. Of course, all upright human beings of any at all spiritual or even moral or practical perception don't drink alcohol at all or take intoxicants and there are many who abstain without the slightest notion of asceticism or renunciation and some large religions are all teetotalling. But looked at from the perspective being discussed here, to deliberately dull one's consciousness and awareness, even to a slight degree, by willingly and gladly drinking alcohol, to deliberately incapacitate, to whatever degree, the rational and divine part of the soul, which is what drinking does even down to a single glass of wine, is, horrifically, to deliberately and consciously lower the soul to a lesser sub-human state, to deliberately and consciously change oneself further from a divine and rational being to an earthly and irrational one, to take one's soul further and further from the Divine Mind and the One and Intelligible Unity and Light into the darkness and dullness of multiplicity, isolated individuality, phantom reality, stupidity and the endless round of reincarnation—in fact, it is knowingly taking on a sub-human reincarnation for a limited space of time. Although the world considers this a 'pleasure', what, in fact, could be more painful and foolish and miserable and deprivation than that! The genuine contemplative ascetic and renunciant would never even dream of taking even a drop of alcohol and deliberately and knowingly dulling his awareness and disabling the rational and divine part of the soul, which is the only part he identifies with, and separating himself further from the Divine Intelligence. Far from being a deprivation or giving up of something desirable, this teetotalling is a great pleasure and happiness and satisfaction as he rejoices in and enjoys strengthening the rational and divine higher soul and re-assimilating it more and more into the Divine Intelligence Itself!

As a last of many possible examples that could be cited and discussed, let's take the watching of television and movies and reading of fiction. The world and worldly people, especially now, consider these as indispensable pleasures and gratifications and can't imagine and wouldn't know what to do giving them up and doing without them. Real contemplative ascetics and renunciants avoid these entirely and wouldn't imagine wasting their time and damaging their souls with them, but worldly people are incredulous at this, can't imagine why or how they can do it, and think they are being deprived of a very great good and pleasure indeed. But look what they are saying. Television, movies and fiction, far from being pleasures, are to deliberately and consciously for a time to enter into a lower rebirth, to turn off for that time the divine and rational higher soul that strives solely for re-union with the Good and Divine Intelligence and to indulge in and activate the lower animal soul taking the passions, emotions, pursuits, actions, desires, etc. of ordinary, and often base, worldlings as real and true and correct and desirable and wallowing and rejoicing in them and imbibing them as habits to strengthen the lower self and further and further estrange it from the Good. From the principles we have established, what could be more painful and horrible and silly than this! What could be more pleasant and pleasurable, happy and contented than the contemplative ascetic and renunciant's abandoning all this without regret and devoting himself solely to his higher self and his true Good and withering all his worldly passions and desires and thoughts and attitudes and assimilating himself more and more to the One and Divine Intelligence!

Many more specific cases could be examined where what the world considers pleasure and desirable—wealth, money, cars, possessions, gadgets, family and worldly loves and attachments, having children, worldly, as opposed to spiritual, friendships, sports, popular music, fame, honor, chauvinistic enthusiasms for teams, schools, countries and so forth, fancy clothing, travel, tourism, shows, recreations, fancy houses and furnishings, technological advances, politics, extensive news and gossip, etc., etc., etc.--turns out to actually and obviously be really pain and misery and unhappiness and deprivation, just the exact opposite of what the world thinks, and the contemplative ascetic and renunciant life and practice gladly abandoning all these things and singlemindedly and exclusively directed towards re-union with the Good turns out to be actually and obviously the greatest pleasure and joy and happiness and sufficiency and satisfaction, again, directly contrary to what the world thinks. Enough, however, has, hopefully, been said and the principles and understanding have been made clear enough that the reader can apply them to every instance of alleged worldly 'pleasure' and alleged contemplative ascetic 'deprivation'. The worldly life and pursuit and obtaining of worldly 'pleasures' and desires and passions and possessions and 'goods' is really, contrary to what it seems to the worldlings involved, just pure, unadulterated, unmixed pain and misery and unhappiness and deprivation of the true Good. It is just endless suffering on the wheel of birth and death. The contemplative ascetic and renunciant life, abandoning and rejecting all the 'pleasures' and desires and passions and 'goods' of the world, with its exclusive orientation to the true Good, is the actual great pleasure and happiness and satisfaction and sufficiency and well-being. Choose what you will—real pleasure or real pain, real happiness and sufficiency or real unhappiness and deprivation, endless misery throughout endless reincarnations or release and freedom and re-union with the One, the true Good, Beauty, Love, Truth and Intelligence or the most thorough and depraved deprivation of these!


© 2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee)mail (period) com