Asceticism and illumination

The Question: The Relationship between Asceticism and Illumination

How does asceticism contribute to the experience that is denoted by such terms as illumination, enlightenment, awakening, or realization? This experience, in which the sense of self is either effaced or greatly attenuated, which is deeply joyful, and which issues both in profound personal transformation and fresh insight into the ultimate nature of reality, is central to a great variety of religious traditions.

How are ascetic practices and this experience related? Why are practices such as fasting, celibacy, and simple living held by many traditions to be helpful, and in some cases necessary, to the attainment of illuminative experience? That there is a strong relationship between asceticism and illumination is presupposed by a great many spiritual traditions, which see ascetic practices as a necessary, although not a sufficient, condition for it. For even though they are not directly productive of this experience in precisely the same way that contemplative practices, such as meditation, are held to be, they are nonetheless seen as highly beneficial, and sometimes even essential, to the process of awakening. Why is this the case?

As a scholar of religion and a practitioner of Vedanta in the tradition of Sri Ramakrishna, the question of the relationship between asceticism and illumination is one that I find to be of both intellectual interest and practical significance. (1) For I am not only seeking, as a scholar, to understand how this relationship functions in the lives of others. I am also seeking, ultimately, to experience illumination myself.

My approach to this question therefore includes both comparative scholarly and practical Vedantic dimensions. It is, in other words, a theological approach--one that does draw upon the intellectual resources of the contemporary academy, but that ultimately pursues knowledge not for its own sake, but serves a spiritual practice and the community to which that practice is vital.

More specifically, my approach could best be characterized as a Hindu process theology. Rooted in the practice and broad worldview of the Ramakrishna Vedanta tradition, I have found in the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (and other thinkers in the process tradition) an excellent way of articulating the many, varied teachings of Sri Ramakrishna as a systematic and coherent metaphysic. (2)

In keeping with the eclectic orientation both of my tradition and my own varied religious background, I shall examine the relationship of ascetic practice and illumination in a comparative context, with my central focus being upon Indic traditions: Vedanta (including both its modern and traditional forms), Buddhism, and Jainism, for different traditions illuminate this relationship from a variety of perspectives and in a corresponding variety of ways. (3) I see each tradition as offering a specific insight to the issue of asceticism and illumination.

A particular focus will be upon the Indic concept of the "two truths" as expressed by Sri Ramakrishna, Shankara, Nagarjuna, and Kundakunda--representing the modern Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhist, and Jain traditions, respectively. A part of my thesis is that the experience of illumination involves a radical shift in consciousness from the subject-object mode of perception, typical of the mundane, relative, level of truth, to a purified mode of perception, a mode that is either free from the subject-object distinction, or in which this distinction is greatly attenuated or profoundly modified, called the ultimate or absolute level of truth. In these terms, the question of the relationship of asceticism to illumination becomes that of the role of ascetic practice in facilitating this radical shift in consciousness.

I will also address the role of bhakti (devotion) in this transformative process and the issue of what Christians would call the relationship between "works" (such as ascetic practice) and "grace" in it. One sometimes notes a tension between practitioners and traditions that emphasize ascetic practice and those that emphasize illuminating grace, which is not the direct outcome or product of a practice, but which comes either from "outside" the practitioner, as a gift from a transcendent divinity, or from a depth level "within" that is nonetheless well beyond the boundaries of the practitioner's conscious ego.

But even in those traditions in which divine grace is given primary emphasis, one finds ascetic practices encouraged, not so much as a direct means to enlightenment, in an instrumental sense, but as in some way facilitating the reception of this divine gift. The question, again, is why this is the case.

Finally, I will also draw upon my own experiences as a practitioner of Vedanta in my attempt to articulate the relationship between asceticism and awakening as I conceive of it. Briefly, the conclusion to which I find myself drawn, is that the state of awakening is, in a sense, already "there"--a claim many traditions have made. Its attainment is then not so much a matter of reaching a goal or accomplishing a task as of creating the conditions in which what is already "there" can be realized. Asceticism is a tool for doing this. In this sense, I am at one with those traditions that deploy the "two truths" doctrine. But I also see an important place for theism and bhakti in the enlightenment process. In his teachings and practices, Ramakrishna emphasized the validity of both approaches, an emphasis that is fundamental to modern Vedantic universalism.