Ascetic

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Bhagavad Gita: 5.26: The beatitude of Brahman is imminent in the

ascetic, who removed his desire and anger, whose mind exercises restraint, and who has knowledge of the self.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matted hair, deerskin, and pious pretension do not make an

ascetic. An ascetic in name and epicure in practice, though he professes to know Brahman, is far away from Brahman. Appearance does not make an ascetic, though he wanders naked and shameless; a donkey does the same. Jackals, rodents and deer live in the forest, eat grass, and drink water: are they ascetics? The frogs and fish take birth, eat and die in Ganga. Are they ascetics? –Garuda Purana, II.49.64-67-68.

 

 

This passage has reference to

Avadutas, who renounce the world and live on what is offered to them or on leaves, roots and fallen fruits.

 

 

 

Avadhûta = one who has shaken off himself worldly feeling and obligation.

 

 

 

Here is what Sankara says in Bajagovindam about a false ascetic.

 

Verse 14. (There goes) one with matted hair; (here comes) one with shaven head; (there sits) yet another with plucked hair and saffron cloth; the fools sport various disguises. They all claim to "see;" (What they "see" no one knows and neither he knows what he "sees.") In reality he does not "see." All this Vesha (disguise) is to fill the belly.

 

 

Here is what Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (February 18, 1836 - August 16, 1886) says in saying 386, page 115, in Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna: The wearing of the orange garb of the Sannyasin naturally causes sacred thoughts to rise in the mind. Every kind of dress has its own association, although dress in itself has no special significance.

 

 

Here is what Tirumular (around 500 CE) of Tirumantiram says about ascetics.

 

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Devoid of delusive intellect or mind, devoid of egoism, devoid of feeling of self-centeredness, devoid of passion of fondling the tender hands of fish-eyed damsels, and devoid of delusion of mind, the ascetics find Sivaness and become Siva themselves. They sport the guise of Siva, having abandoned all external acts and becoming themselves-- one with the One (that is Siva).

 

Here the guise of Siva indicates the orange garb that ascetics wear.