A Lenten Project: The Oxherding Askesis

Images by Tokuriki Tomikichiro (1902-1999)

Odd perhaps to approach this solemn Christian observance from this angle, but I like the story presented here and find a number of points that tell a similar story about facing yourself to free yourself (which is what the Desert is about, isn't it?). For a lovely commentary by Kubota Ji'un Roshi , use this link and scroll down to the pictures which you can open one by one and use for your contemplation.

Freeing the self is not, as Foucault objects (with a mischeivous characterisation of Christian askesis) a means of abandoning the self or detaching from the world. Indeed this is just what Digital Nun objected to in her post on False Asceticism in which she rues the connections between asceticism, flesh-hating and punishment. No, she says,

True asceticism has nothing whatever to do with punishment, but everything to do with training and discipline. The Greek origins of the word are enough to show that (askesis means practice, athletic training). It is not to be identified with austerity, although a certain restraint is necessary since what we aim at is mastery over our appetites and any bad habits they may have led us into.
    . . .
     Asceticism is always ethical, both in origin and in scope. There is nothing mystical about it, although some modern writers seem to confuse the two. Nor is there anything sad or heavy about it. Like all exercise, it is meant to invigorate, only for Christians it is a spiritual invigoration that we seek.

Freeing the self involves a shedding and a kenosis and for directions we turn, in all traditions I believe, to the saints and the true sages. I do not really know how an renunciation of self would look in any healthy way -- its unhealthy modes are easy to see. But on this sticky point, I find myself drawn to the notion of kenosis for

the saints embody something of Christ's kenosis: making themselves nothing, they make room for God. But this yielding of the self to God does not mean a sheer 'immersion' of the saint in the Other . . . Holiness is not the self's erasure but its intensification. (Myers, 75)

Rather than ignoring or ill-treating the flesh or the self this Lent, make space and make time for self-care that you might emerge with greater understanding and compassion and altogether better-connected.

Until next time, may you make a good Lent.

無 ('moo')