A Conversation with David Valerio
Clerestory (Bryan Kam)
The Ascetic Ideal of the Desert Fathers
The Buddha started out with that ascetic ideal, extreme fasting and stuff. And then when he attains enlightenment and comes back to his followers, like, they're all like, dude, you put on weight, you're like, you've lost the true path. But apparently they see that he's transformed and that he's lost suffering, even though he's given up on these ascetic practices. So there was, you know, some of those are very old, like, a thousand years older than the desert fathers.
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