HERMITAGES

In the posting here entitled “Vivekananda and Pavhari Baba” I wrote that Pavhari Baba dug himself a cave to serve as a hermitage, and I included Vivekananda’s comment that there was a tradition at that time of Hindu yogis choosing caves or similar spots to live and practice in because among other things a cave had an even temperature and no distracting sounds.

Such dwellings were not limited to Hindu yogis, however, as religious practitioners in many faiths, from Christianity, to Buddhism, to Taoism, to Sufism, used them, and still do, in various forms.  Some are caves, but others are small cottages, such as Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

From a religious point of view such isolation is a form of asceticism, where an individual renounces the distractions of contact with human society and the need, for instance, to maintain socially acceptable standards of cleanliness or dress.  Such a lifestyle might also include a simplified diet and/or manual labor as a means of support.

Before he abandoned asceticism for the moderate approach that became Buddhism, Gautama Buddha lived with two hermits in the wilderness.  The Hindu philosopher and saint Ramana Maharshi lived and meditated in caves in Southern India for seventeen years.  The founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu, is said to have spent the end of his life in solitude, as a hermit. 
 
Early Christians back to the 3^rd Century monk Anthony the Great sought complete solitude by moving deep into the Egyptian desert, where they lived in caves.