ellauri095.html on line 125: Manley Hopkins moved his family to Hampstead in 1852, near where John Keats had lived 30 years before and close to the green spaces of Hampstead Heath. When he was ten years old, Gerard was sent to board at Highgate School (1854–1863). While studying Keats´s poetry, he wrote "The Escorial" (1860), his earliest extant poem. Here he practised early attempts at asceticism. He once argued that most people drank more liquids than they really needed and bet that he could go without drinking for a week. He persisted until his tongue was black and he collapsed at drill. On another occasion he abstained from salt for a week.
ellauri095.html on line 233: In a journal entry of 6 November 1865, Hopkins declared an ascetic intention for his life and work: "On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it."
ellauri095.html on line 234: On 18 January 1866, Hopkins composed his most ascetic poem, The Habit of Perfection. On 23 January, he included poetry in a list of things to be given up for Lent. In July, he decided to become a Roman Catholic and travelled to Birmingham in September to consult the leader of the Oxford converts, John Henry Newman. Newman received him into the Roman Catholic Church on 21 October 1866.
ellauri095.html on line 483: The sequence of events is clear. On 18 January 1866 Hopkins composed his most ascetic poem, “The Habit of Perfection” (Täydellinen asukokonaisuus). On 23 January he included poetry in the list of things to be given up for Lent. In July he decided to become a Catholic, and he traveled to Birmingham in September to consult the leader of the Oxford converts, John Henry Newman. Newman received him into the Church in October. On 5 May 1868 Hopkins firmly “resolved to be a religious.” Less than a week later, apparently still inspired by Savonarola, he made a bonfire of his poems and gave up poetry almost entirely for seven years. Finally, in the fall of 1868 Hopkins joined a “serged fellowship” like Savonarola’s and like the one he admired in “Eastern Communion”(1865), a commitment foreshadowed by the emphasis on vows of silence and poverty in “The Habit of Perfection.”
ellauri095.html on line 499: Hopkins had been attracted to asceticism since childhood. At Highgate, for instance, he argued that nearly everyone consumed more liquids than the body needed, and, to prove it, he wagered that he could go without liquids for at least a week. He persisted until his tongue was black and he collapsed at drill. He won not only his wager but also the undying enmity of the headmaster Dr. John Bradley Dyne. On another occasion, he abstained from salt for a week. His continuing insistence on extremes of self-denial later in life struck some of his fellow Jesuits as more appropriate to a Victorian Puritan than to a Catholic.
ellauri095.html on line 500: Thus it is important to realize that he converted to Catholicism not to be more ascetic, for asceticism was as Protestant as it was Catholic, but to be able to embrace the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence.
ellauri106.html on line 529: Without the sure theoretical footing that orthodox Marxism provided those of Benjamin’s generation, Roth, like many who used to kinda identify themselves with the late-20th century left, has been set adrift amid the wreckage of multinational capital, techno-militarism, and the information and cultural revolutions. In his trilogy, Roth offers a complex and beautifully-rendered document of the final decades of the “American Century,” but it is one that, like its narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, ultimately throws up its hands in despair, surrendering the complexities of life and the possibility of positive change en lieu of aesthetic and ascetic remove.
ellauri161.html on line 1092: His (Mainion) works suggest the thought that the writings of master Eckart (died 1328), with whom Ruysbroeck was contemporary for thirty-five years, exercised influence over our author´s mind. Melkein maisteri Eckartille kävi köpelösti loppupeleissä. Ruisbroeck became vicar of the Church of St. Gudula at Brussels, where he lived in strict asceticism, enjoying the society of persons who had devoted themselves to a contemplative life, composing books and exercising benevolence. Jahas uusi päivä, uusi suopeus. He contended against the sins of the day, and labored to promote reforms. It is said that Tauler once visited him, attracted by the fame of his sanctity.
ellauri161.html on line 1102: Ruysbroeck´s mysticism begins with God, descends to man, and returns to God again, in the aim to make man one with God. God is a simple unity, the essence above all being, the immovable, and yet the moving, cause of all existences. The Son is the wisdom, the uncreated image of the Father; the Holy Spirit the love which proceeds from both the Father and the Son, and unites them to each other. Creatures preexisted in God, in thought; and, as being in God, were God to that extent. Fallen man can only be restored through grace, which elevates him above the conditions of nature. Three stages are to be distinguished: the active, or operative; the subjective, or emotional; and the contemplative life. The first proceeds to conquer sin, and draw near to God through good works; the second consists in introspection, to which ascetic practices may be an aid, and which becomes indifferent to all that is not God. The soul is embraced and penetrated by the Spirit of God, and revels in visions and ecstasies. Higher still is the contemplative state (vita vitalis), which is an immediate knowing and possessing of God, leaving no remains of individuality in the consciousness, and concentrating every energy on the contemplation of the eternal and absolute Being. This life is still the gift of grace, and has its essence in the unifying of the soul with God, so that he alone shall work. The soul is led on from glory to glory, until it becomes conscious of its essential unity in God.
ellauri161.html on line 1133: A man from his parish demands a full service funeral for his wife and says he will not pay for it. He confers with the priest of Torcy. The girls of the catechism class laugh at him in a prank, whereby only one of them pretends to know the Scriptural basis of the Eucharist so that the rest of them can laugh at their private conversation. His colleagues criticize his diet of bread and wine, and his ascetic lifestyle. "Concerned" about Chantal, the daughter of the Countess, the priest visits the Countess at the family chateau, and appears to help her resume communion with God after a period of doubt. The Countess dies during the following night, and her daughter spreads false rumors that the priest´s harsh words had tormented her to death. Refusing confession, Chantal had previously spoken to the priest about her hatred of her parents.
ellauri197.html on line 178: Yeats' poem was completed in 1936. Yeats, in an oft quoted letter, describes the gift thus: "Lapis Lazuli carved by some Chinese sculptor into the semblance of a mountain with temple, trees, paths, and an ascetic and pupil about to climb the mountain. Ascetic, pupil, hard stone, eternal theme of the sensual east. The heroic cry in the midst of despair. But no, I am wrong, the east has its solutions always and therefore knows nothing of tragedy. It is we, not the east, that must raise the heroic cry." (Letter to Dorothy Wellesley (as in Wellesley College?) July 6 1935)
ellauri216.html on line 554: Once, while he was praying, St Macarius heard a voice: “Macarius, you have not yet attained such perfection in virtue as two women who live in the city.” The humble ascetic went to the city, found the house where the women lived, and knocked. The women received him with joy, and he said, “I have come from the desert seeking you in order to learn of your good deeds. Tell me about them, and conceal nothing.”
ellauri219.html on line 583: At Princeton, Rawls was influenced by Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein's dumb student. During his last two years at Princeton, he "became deeply concerned with theology and its doctrines." He considered attending a seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood and wrote an "intensely religious senior thesis (BI)." In his 181-page long thesis titled "Meaning of Sin and Faith," Rawls attacked Pelagianism because it "would render the Cross of Christ to no effect." His argument was partly drawn from Karl Marx's book On the Jewish Question, which criticized the idea that natural inequality in ability could be a just determiner of the distribution of wealth in society. Even after Rawls became an atheist, many of the anti-Pelagian arguments he used were repeated in A Theory of Justice. Pelagianism is a heretical Christian theological position that holds that the original sin did not taint human nature and that humans by divine grace have free will to achieve human perfection. Pelagius (c. 355 – c. 420 AD), an ascetic and philosopher from the British Isles, taught that God could not command believers to do the impossible, and therefore it must be possible to satisfy all divine commandments. He also taught that it was unjust to punish one person for the sins of another; therefore, infants are born blameless. Pelagius accepted no excuse for sinful behavior and taught that all Christians, regardless of their station in life, should live unimpeachable, sinless lives, or else... Se oli tollanen humanisti, mitä Hippo aivan erityisesti inhosi. Vittu eihän sitten mitään kirkkoa ja pappeja edes tarvittaisi. Jeesus jäisi työttömäxi, Jahve eläkkeelle.
ellauri257.html on line 52: He also intensified his relationship with a starets or spiritual elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known biblically for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition (damnation) by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative handiwork. Exaggerated ascetic practices with Matvey undermined his health and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of 24 February 1852 he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of Dead Souls. He explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil in the guise of Matvey Konstantinovsky.[citation needed] Soon thereafter, he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later.
xxx/ellauri075.html on line 172: Furthermore, although a Jewish philosopher, Shestov saw in the resurrection of Christ this victory over necessity. He described the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus as a transfiguring spectacle by which it is demonstrated that the purpose of life is not "mystical" surrender to the "absolute", but ascetical struggle:
xxx/ellauri130.html on line 176: In 394, Epiphanius claimed that after beginning as an ascetic, Marcion seduced a virgin and was accordingly excommunicated by his father, prompting him to leave his home town. Similarly doubtful is Tertullian's claim that Marcion had professed repentance, but that he was prevented from doing so by his death.
xxx/ellauri137.html on line 787: Sujata, also Sujātā, Eugenie, well-born, was a farmer´s wife, who is said to have fed Gautama Buddha a bowl of kheer, a condensed milk-rice pudding, ending his six years of asceticism. Such was his emaciated appearance that she wrongly believed him to be a tree-spirit that had granted her wish of having a child. The gift provided him enough strength to cultivate the Middle Path, develop jhana, and attain Bodhi, thereafter becoming known as the Buddha. The story does not tell what the holy tree spirit said when Gautama ate his rice and curry.
xxx/ellauri157.html on line 214: Besides contemporary methods established by Lurianic Kabbalah, Ba'al Shem Tov learned and took part in traditional practices of Practical Kabbalah. As a stroke of genius, Ba'al Shem Tov taught that one could remove asceticism from the practice of Judaism. This allowed a larger array of people to become devout within Judaism, and therefore within Hasidism. Moreover, he taught that the letters, in contrast to the words, were the key element of sacred texts. Therefore, intellectual and academic skills were no longer necessary to reach mastery of the sacred texts. Average skills in solving crossword puzzles and sudoku were enough. Another point in favor of hasidism.
xxx/ellauri157.html on line 218: With its emphasis on Divine Omnipresence, Hasidic philosophy sought to unify all aspects of spiritual and material life, to reveal their inner Divinity. Dveikut was therefore achieved not through ascetic practices that "broke" the material, but by sublimating materialism into Divine worship. Nonetheless, privately, when nobody was looking, many Hasidic Rebbes engaged in ascetic practices, in Hasidic thought for mystical reasons of bringing merit to the generation, rather than formerly as methods of personal elevation.
xxx/ellauri229.html on line 539: The period of private initiative in body building lasted three quarters of a century. At first there was much enjoyment taken in the newly won freedom of automorphosis, once again the young people led the way, the men with their gambrel thills and timbrels, the women with their pettifores, but before long a generation gap developed, and demonstrations-under the banner of asceticism-followed. The sons condemned their fathers for being interested only in making a living, for having a passive, often consumerist attitude towards the body, for their shallow hedonism, their vulgar pursuit of pleasure, and in order to disassociate themselves they assumed shapes deliberately hideous, uncomfortable beyond belief, downright nightmarish (the antleroons, wampdoodles). Showing their contempt for all things utilitarian, they set eyes in their armpits, and one group of young biotic activists made use of innumerable sound organs, specially grown (electric guitars, glottiphones, hawk pipes, knuckelodeons, thumbolas). They arranged mass concerts, in which the soloists-called hoot-howls-would whip up the crowd into a frenzy of convulsive percussion. Then came the fashion - the mania, rather - for long penises, which in caliber and strength of grip underwent escalation according to the typically adolescent, swaggering principle of "You haven´t seen anything yet!" And, since no one could lift those piles of coils by himself, so called processionals were attached, caudalettes, a self-perambulating receptacle that grew out of the small of the back and carried, on two strong shanks, the weight of the testicles after their owner. In the textbook I found illustrations depicting men of fashion, behind whom walked testicle-bearing processionals on parade; but this was already the decline of the protest movement, or more precisely its complete bankruptcy, because it had failed to pursue any goals of its own, being solely a rebellious reaction against the orgiastic baroque of the age. LEM ei paljon perustanut sodanjälkeisestä 60-luvun sukupolvesta, eikä hipeistä. No en minäkään.
xxx/ellauri233.html on line 399: The Vilna Gaon led an ascetic life, being called by some of his contemporaries "the Hasid". This term meaning "pious person", and has no relevance to the Hasidic movement. The similarity is purely accidental.
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