How difficult is it for the man who dwells
at home to live the higher life in all its fullness, in all its purity,
in all its perfection! Let me then cut off my hair and beard, let me
clothe myself in orange-colored robes and let me go forth from a
household life into the homeless state!'"
In the same parliament, Mozoomdar, the brilliant and attractive
representative of the Brahmo Somaj, in describing "Asia's Service to
Religion," thus stated the motives and spirit of Oriental asceticism:
"What lesson do the hermitages, the monasteries, the cave temples, the
discipline and austerities of the religious East teach the world?
Renunciation. The Asiatic apostle will ever remain an ascetic, a
celibate, a homeless Akinchana, a Fakeer. We Orientals are all the
descendants of John the Baptist. Any one who has taken pains at
spiritual culture must admit that the great enemy to a devout
concentration of mind is the force of bodily and worldly desire.
Communion with God is impossible, so long as the flesh and its lusts are
not subdued.... It is not mere temperance, but positive asceticism; not
mere self-restraint, but self-mortification; not mere self-sacrifice,
but self-extinction; not mere morality, but absolute holiness." And
further on in his address, Mozoomdar claimed that this asceticism is
practically the essential principle in Christianity and the meaning of
the cross of Christ: "This great law of self-effacement, poverty,
suffering, death, is symbolized in the mystic cross so dear to you and
dear to me.
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