This article discusses the limitations and advantages of using ›asceticism‹ as a universal category and as a hermeneutic tool in the study of late antique religious life and comparative studies of religious communities. It first explores the roots and the history of the terms ›asceticism‹, ›Askese‹ and ›ascétisme‹ arguing that they originate from early modern scholarly traditions rather than being based on the language of late antique and early medieval Christian texts. A second part traces the origins of the term askēsis in Greek monastic discourse, using the Vita Antonii, the Historia Lausiaca, Theodoret's Historia religiosa and the Greek and Latin versions of the Vita Pachomii as case studies. I argue that Athanasius of Alexandria's decision to use askēsis as a key term of his monastic program was motivated by limiting the range of appropriate religious practices rather than praising what we might call radical asceticism. Askēsis took on a life of its own and attained various meanings in Greek monastic texts but never found an equivalent in Latin monastic language. The third part describes the diversification of ›ascetic‹ practices and ideals in a number of Latin hagiographic and normative texts. I question to what extent it makes sense to consider religious practices emerging in the West (following a rule, unconditional obedience, humility, enclosure, sexual abstinence, liturgical discipline, etc.) as forms of Western ›asceticism‹ and argue that using ›asceticism‹ uncritically carries the danger of obfuscating nuances, diversity and transformations of religious practices in the Latin (but also in the Greek) world of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

"Our oldest sources for ascetical practices in India are embedded in the Vedic ritual literature. There we can identify a cluster of basic practices and attitudes aimed at maximizing control over oneself, with the assumption that such self-control gives rise or provide access to extraordinary power. A distinction should be made between temporary ascetic practice and professional asceticism. The earliest clear examples of ascesis were the regimens, called vrata or dīkṣā, associated with Vedic study and worship. Lasting for a fixed term, they began with a formal rite of consecration (e.g., the upanayana, or the dīkṣā for a soma-offerer), and ended with a ceremony of release (avabhṛtha, uddīkṣā). These regimens all included restrictions on eating, sleeping, sexual activity, and other activities; such restrictions might be mild or severe, depending on the ritual purpose that occasioned the regimen. Yet they all constituted temporary deviations from everyday life; there is no unambiguous allusion to a permanent state of ascetic practice, that is, asceticism as a profession, at least until the upaniṣads. These fixed-term vratas were explicitly used as a model for professional ascetical modes, both Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical. This well-attested progression belies the common assumption that professional ascetics define the practices that are secondarily adopted in mild or partial forms by people otherwise living ‘in the world’. Finally, I will point out how the powers to which these ascetical techniques lead are interpreted very differently according to the respective anthropologies and theologies of the various Indian traditions that employed them."

I consider the rehabilitation of “disciplinary” student formation by a return to the monastic roots of schooling in both the East and the West. Both Buddhist and Christian traditions share a deep concern with ascetic practices which discipline (here in the sense of the Latin disciplinare or “train”) the bodily faculties in order to awaken the discipulus (student) to themselves and to reality. The result is an authentic formatio (fashioning) in an Aristotelian sense.

Asceticism is founded on the possibility that human beings can profoundly transform themselves through training and discipline. In particular, asceticism in the Eastern monastic tradition is based on the assumption that individuals are not slaves to the habitual and automatic but can be improved by ascetic practice and, with the cooperation of divine grace, transform their entire character and cultivate special powers and skills. Asceticism of the Mind explores the strategies that enabled Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity to cultivate a new form of existence. At the book's center is a particular model of ascetic discipline that involves a systematic effort to train the mind and purify attention. Drawing on contemporary cognitive and neuro-scientific research, this study underscores the beneficial potential and self-formative role of the monastic system of mental training, thereby confuting older views that emphasized the negative and repressive aspects of asceticism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the challenges that Christian ascetics encountered in their attempts to transform themselves, thereby lending insight into aspects of their daily lives that would otherwise remain inaccessible. Asceticism of the Mind brings rigorously historical and cognitive perspectives into conjunction across a range of themes, and in so doing opens up new ways of exploring ascet-icism and Christian monasticism. By working across the traditional divide between the humanities and the cognitive sciences, it offers new possibilities for a constructive dialogue across these fields.

Christian asceticism assumes that human beings can profoundly transform themselves over years of systematic training, with divine aid. This contribution joins recent scholarship in stressing the therapeutic and transformative dimensions of asceticism, but argues that it was not solely or primarily through bodily training that asceticism implemented this program. In the Eastern monastic tradition of late antiquity, it was primarily the mind that needed to be transformed and renewed through ascetic practice. The form of asceticism at the center of this study thus involves a disciplined and systematic attempt to purify the mind and train attention, in the service of contemplation

The greatest challenge which is facing christian civilization and culture today are the following: The atrophy of spiritual senses. So, we can ask ourselves what are the most effective steps that we can take to overcome these challenges? The answer lies in the early Christian ascetics (patterns from antiquity as a reply to modernity). In this study we explore how the Christian asceticism can be made relevant to a modern culture in which the idea of " ascetic holy man " has lost much of its power. Regarding to the model of holy man, many scholars continue to assume that a distinction must be made between an ascetic and a monk, as every monk is an ascetic, but not every ascetic is a monk. Peter Hatlie says that " Although spiritual authority and " the holy " remain fertile topics for discussion among early Christian and late antique scholars, it receives considerably less attention from Byzantinists working in the generations to follow " .1 In the context of the secular world's perceived disintegration, monks showed how ascetic renunciation of the world could provide a new style of civic leadership. Susan Ashbrook Harvey manages to capture the relationship between Ascetism and Society in this way: " During the fourth century monasticism flowered across the Christian realm, and with it a critical role for the ascetic – the holy man or woman – to play in society. By their discipline and their conscious imitation of biblical models, especially from the Gospels, the ascetics enacted the image of Christ. To the public this was more than imitation: in the image of Christ, the holy one could do what Christ had done. The ascetics could intercede for divine mercy, and they could be instruments of divine grace in this world; they were a channel between humanity and God that worked in both directions. The ascetic was the point at which the human and the holy met. Often seen as an attempt to leave the worldly for the spiritual, asceticism in fact carried heavy responsibilities in relation to the larger Christian society " .2 In the desert Antony redefined the ascetic as one who fights with the Adversary face-to-face, in the desolate and un-Christianized wilderness. Antony made " the desert a city " , sanctifying a place where God had not been present. And he did more: he brought that strength back into Christian society. By the sixth century, the ascetic's role in society had both expanded and become an orderly part of how society functioned. " We should seek holiness, not clothing, food and drink " , says St. Neilos the Ascetic, because " possessions arouse feelings of jealousy against their owners, cut off their owners from men better than themselves, divide families, and make friends hate one another […]. Why do we abandon hope in God and rely on the strength of our own arm, ascribing the gifts of