One of the points that makes Platonism a hard sell in the modern world is its asceticism. The dialogs of Plato -- some of them, at any rate -- are rich with sensuous imagery, with the promise of wine and sex and song as well as brilliant conversation. But the Platonic tradition as universally practised was in some respects a cold, colorless thing by comparison; and this coldness has its roots in the very same corpus of writings. Taste the Platonic opus here and there almost at random, swirl it around on your tongue for a few minutes, and you find an unending struggle: against Plato's deep and urgent lust for the world tugs his equally desperate yearning to escape it. For every Symposium there is a Phaedo. And it is a bit of a puzzle, really. Plotinus -- clearly inside the Platonic tradition -- wrote a long defense of the goodness of the material world, to refute the Gnostics who taught that the material world is evil. And yet, notwithstanding this unyielding defense of the goodness of the material world (and so, implicitly, of the body), there remained in Platonism at exactly the same time a rejection of the pleasures of the body and a call to strict asceticism. What gives?
Of course maybe they were just being inconsistent, but that's not an interesting answer and it should be our last choice ... when every other answer has failed us. And I don't think we need to go that far. I think if we look we can find more interesting -- and maybe even truer -- reasons to support Platonic asceticism.
What is asceticism, after all? It's a way of life that rejects ... no, wait, hold up a minute. To define asceticism, or anything, in terms of what it rejects makes it sound a purely negative ideal. Is that fair? Let's turn it around. Platonist ascetics eat, but they eat a small amount and their food is simple. They sleep, but without luxury and perhaps not for many hours at a time. They drink water in preference to wine. They may accept the company of others, but for the most part quietly, without a lot of talking or fuss. And without sex -- another important qualifier. And so on. Now is it possible to characterize this way of life positively, rather than negatively? In the abstract it may be a little hard; but when we are faced with concrete choices, nothing could be easier. I'll eat this rather than that; I'll drink this rather than that; I'll sleep here rather than there; I'll get up again at this time rather than that time; I'll hold my tongue rather than gabbing; I'll sleep alone rather than with somebody else. Each of these choices is as positive as the reverse choice would be: A rather than B. And if you put it that way, the choices don't have to be motivated by a hatred or fear of the world. They don't have to proceed from some fanatical belief that the world or the body is evil. Seen in this light, simply as choices, they are no more than an identification that "That may be OK but this is better."
On the other hand ... Why, in real life, would anybody make choices after this pattern? Why would anybody choose water over wine, or abstinence over sex? It's all very well to say that formally speaking either choice is as positive as the other insofar as any choice is just a selection of A rather than B. But is it possible for someone to make these kinds of choices consistently without being motivated by some kind of doctrinaire hatred of the world? Can the Platonists really have it both ways, affirming the goodness of the world but not gorging on it?
Sure. It all depends on what else they want too. A man who is straining to hear a moth flutter by won't do a lot of talking, and he won't beguile his wait by listening to loud music. He needs silence to be able to hear. A man tasting the subtleties of a bottle of fine wine won't clutter his palate with a lot of salty, greasy, highly-spiced snacks. A man straining to perceive anything wants all his other sensory inputs muted so tthat they don't drown out the thing he is looking for.
And so if you want to see the divine pattern back of the world, if you want to see how all the pieces hang together in one big organism, if you want to see how we are all just parts of a grand whole and if you want to feel the unsurpassable peace that flows from such understanding ... why then you also want to cut out the noise and the distractions in your life. So that you can see. So that you can feel.
For this reason alone, asceticism looks like a practical requirement of the contemplative life in the simple sense that you can't get this without that. You can't pursue contemplation without attention, and you can't pay attention without a little peace and quiet. But I think there is even more.
Speaking from my own experience, I can also say that sometimes I find myself feeling fragile. I don't quite know how to explain what I mean, and I surely don't know what causes it. Perhaps it is a form of depression, or some other minor aberration in the mood chemistry of my brain. Perhaps it is something else. But when the feeling steals upon me, I cannot tolerate loud noises or sudden interruptions. When it starts to take me over, I have to back away quietly until it passes. At times like this, I want nothing that will disturb my calm because I feel like too much noise or ruckus will make me shatter. I may eat, but simple foods and not too much; I may drink, but water and not wine; I shun the company of others; I stop talking unless I absolutely must, and then I am stingy with my words. And I am like this for a while ... maybe an hour, maybe a day, maybe more ... until after some time has passed I find I'm not any more. If I lived in a place that had retreat centers set up for this sort of thing, it would feel the most natural thing in the world for me to check into one for a while so that I could be silent and alone, eating simply and sleeping on the hard floor, as long as I had to. Then when I didn't need to live like that any more, I could come back to the world.
But of course I have a job and responsibilities that make this just a fantasy. It won't happen, not any time soon. The only reason it matters is that this is the kind of feeling which makes the ascetic ideal look like a positive one, certainly a happier choice than the noisier and more boisterous way of life that plunges into the world and grabs it with both hands.
The one time that I went on a week-long silent retreat, I found that as the silence deepened I felt more and more fragile. This experience makes me think that the life of contemplation generally -- or of mindfulness, to the extent that those are the same thing -- probably encourages asceticism in a very natural way. It's not that there is anything bad or evil or wrong with the world. It's just that stepping back from the world can be -- especially for the contemplatives among us -- more comfortable.
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