Go Within or Go Without

Ascetics are known for distancing themselves from the world by their austerity. However, as frightful as a life of austerity may at first seem to the worldly, there is something undeniably attractive about asceticism. In the very least, the mystery of how one appears to live “without”—or “within”—peaks our curiosity. We are either enchanted by this prospect or driven to debunk it. In either case it speaks loudly to us, and while ostensibly a life of deprivation, asceticism declares just the opposite, “Go within, or go without.”