Book description
Asceticism is founded on the possibility that human beings can profoundly transform themselves through training and discipline. In particular, asceticism in the Eastern monastic tradition is based on the assumption that individuals are not slaves to the habitual and automatic but can be improved by ascetic practice and, with theā¦
Why read it?
1 author picked Asceticism of the Mind as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Early Christian monks in the eastern Mediterranean chalked up many of their mental struggles to demonic interferenceāand yet their approaches to the problem of attention share some striking similarities to modern psychology.
Graiver makes the case that monksā talk of demons was not a superstitious diagnosis but a pragmatic one: it helped monks try to strike a balance between monitoring their thoughts and thinking too hard about them, deal with unwanted thoughts before they became all-consuming, and figure how to keep it together when their thoughts were all over the place.
I love that this book takes early monks andā¦
From Jamie's list on medieval brainiacs.
If you love Asceticism of the Mind...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesāall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueā¦
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