CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health articles from January 2008

CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health archives from January 2008

Editorial.
January 1, 2008... The juxtaposition of "asceticism" and "today" signals a need to inquire into the meaning of asceticism not only in history but in and for these times. The past twenty-five years have seen the growth of considerable new interest in asceticism by...

Asceticism and the hopeful self: subjectivity, reductionism, and modernity.
January 1, 2008... Recently at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem I was struck by an Orthodox nun who queued to kneel by Christ's tomb in a very pious way, to be ushered out after only a minute or so by a monk whose job it was to ensure a regular flow...

Earth-honoring asceticism and consumption.(Critical essay)
January 1, 2008... "Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." --Stanza 3, America the Beautiful (1) Thousands know Wordsworth's famous opening line. "The world is too much with us." Most have forgotten what follows ... late and soon,...

Asceticism and the environment.
January 1, 2008... Trees, Robes, Jewels Mahavira exhorted his disciples more than 2,400 years ago to see the trees in the forest not as a resource to be exploited, but for their beauty and form. A monk or a nun, seeing big trees in parks, on hills,...

Mei's invitation: a gentle asceticism for Chinese and Americans.
January 1, 2008... Real peace cannot come from reliance on military force.... If we want to protect real world peace, humanity must mutually understand, mutually tolerate and sympathize, mutually assist and not battle.... To achieve this goal everyone must...

Celibacy today: mystery, myth, and miasma.(Report)
January 1, 2008... It was from sexual purity that the priesthood was believed to derive its power. --Mayke de Jong (1). Celibacy, popularly understood, is the state of non-marriage and/or the abstinence from sexual activity. (1) The voluntary sacrifice...

The way of torah as askesis: an ascetic conceptualization of the life of Mitzvah.(Critical essay)
January 1, 2008... Asceticism and Judaism generally have not been associated with each other in the popular and, until recently, scholarly mind. It has long been assumed that Christianity is an ascetic religion while Judaism is not. In fact Judaism is widely...

Devotion, renunciation, and rebirth in the Ramananda Sampraday.(Report)
January 1, 2008... Introduction The practice of renunciation and adoption of the ascetic lifestyle can be traced back to the earliest periods of history in the Indian sub-continent, and they continue up through present day. They comprise one of the more...

Asceticism in Islam.
January 1, 2008... Every religion crystallizes after the death of its founder into differentiated exoteric and esoteric institutional forms. We tend to call the exoteric "religious" or "outer" practice and the esoteric "spiritual" or "inner" practice, while both...

Asceticism and illumination.
January 1, 2008... 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...