Sublime

The ability to differentiate between desires and needs is essential for the aspiring yogi. We can practice limiting desires and appreciating the things we do have as a custodian rather than as an owner so as not to build identification and attachment to material items.

Il se trouve que j’ai rencontré, l’année dernière en Engadine, un moine bouddhiste. Cet homme mène une existence frugale. Il consacre la moitié de son temps à la méditation, et passe des semaines entières sans parler à personne. Son régime est austère, il consiste en un seul repas par jour, tout ce que l’on veut bien lui donner, parfois une simple

The Puritan, like every rational type of asceticism, tried to enable a man to maintain and act upon his constant motives, especially those which it taught him itself, against the emotions. In this formal psychological sense of the term it tried to make him into a personality.

Classic Buddhism emphasizes even more strongly than the Old and New Testaments the central importance of giving up craving for possessions of any kind, including one’s own ego, the concept of a lasting substance, and even the craving for one’s perfection.

Day by day you must keep before your eyes death and exile and everything else that seems frightening, but most especially death; and then you’ll never harbour any mean thought, nor will you desire anything beyond due measure.

In the first of these cases, the consolamentum was followed by a practice called the endura. This required the newly consoled Cathar to refrain from taking anything except cold water while they lingered in this world. As fear of betrayal meant that the Perfect could not remain with the consoled to ensure that they did not deviate from the

Wahre Hingabe bedeutet weder ökonomischen noch symbolischen Austausch; sie strebt nicht nach Vorteil und giert nicht nach Anerkennung.