The Utility of Asceticism

Abstract This article explores asceticism as a comparative category in the study of religion and culture. It argues that in order to study the broad range of ascetic beliefs and practices across cultures effectively, scholars must reflect conscientiously on how they use the term asceticism. After making some genealogical observations, the article discusses three different types of definitions (substantive, functional, and discursive) and then shows, by analyzing one exemplary early Buddhist text on the satisfactions of asceticism, how different definitions of the term, when used heuristically, can open multiple new avenues of inquiry.