How people have sought ekstasis through disciplined ritual.
In the selection “Homo Religiosus,” from Karen Armstrong’s A Case for God, the author describes a series of diverse religions, spanning many continents and millennia, and summarizes their respective goals and practices. She argues that the common thread between these varied cultures is how practitioners of each undertake a series of rigorous practices in order to achieve a different, fulfilled state, a feeling that she dubs ekstasis. Ekstasis is a Greek term literally meaning “‘stepping outside’ the norm,” and a feeling she defines as having one “inhabit humanity more fully” in an “enhancement of being” (Armstrong 7). The belief systems examined in this selection spring from a range …show more content…
While Buddhism and Confucianism were encouraging self-restraint and altruism in the early centuries of the Common Era, long before then, in 12,000 BCE, evidenced by discoveries in a cave at Lascaux, one of the earliest examples of organized human religion developed a much more demanding path to adulthood. In response to the discomfort that emerged from the ancient hunters who felt “profoundly uneasy about slaughtering” animals for their own survival, they adopted a complex set of rules governing how they hunt, eat, and respect the animals (4). In an effort to cope with their role in the natural order, of having to depend on the animals they killed, they sought to respect their victims and designated the Animal Master as their deity. In this case, religion was developed directly from the need to cope with the consequences of one’s existence and repair one’s poor self-perception. In this ancient religion, children are thrust into maturity by undergoing a series of frightening ordeals, including flogging, burial, and being sent through miles of caverns, meant to break down his individual personality in order to create one “psychologically prepared to risk his life for his people” (5). This process also induces ekstasis in how it changes a child into a warrior concerned with the wellbeing of his community and more attuned to the natural world. They believed that these harsh rituals would both develop the young into responsible leaders and that it would help them transcend the guilt and anxiety of their daily existences. Even in this ancient world, millennia away from modern perceptions of religion, tribes would also organize to seek an enhancement of being that would free them from the anxieties of daily struggles. Inevitably, as humanity stopped relying upon the hunting of untamed meat and settled together in quiet, less violent
In the selection “Homo Religiosus,” from Karen Armstrong’s A Case for God, the author describes a series of diverse religions, spanning many continents and millennia, and summarizes their respective goals and practices. She argues that the common thread between these varied cultures is how practitioners of each undertake a series of rigorous practices in order to achieve a different, fulfilled state, a feeling that she dubs ekstasis. Ekstasis is a Greek term literally meaning “‘stepping outside’ the norm,” and a feeling she defines as having one “inhabit humanity more fully” in an “enhancement of being” (Armstrong 7). The belief systems examined in this selection spring from a range …show more content…
While Buddhism and Confucianism were encouraging self-restraint and altruism in the early centuries of the Common Era, long before then, in 12,000 BCE, evidenced by discoveries in a cave at Lascaux, one of the earliest examples of organized human religion developed a much more demanding path to adulthood. In response to the discomfort that emerged from the ancient hunters who felt “profoundly uneasy about slaughtering” animals for their own survival, they adopted a complex set of rules governing how they hunt, eat, and respect the animals (4). In an effort to cope with their role in the natural order, of having to depend on the animals they killed, they sought to respect their victims and designated the Animal Master as their deity. In this case, religion was developed directly from the need to cope with the consequences of one’s existence and repair one’s poor self-perception. In this ancient religion, children are thrust into maturity by undergoing a series of frightening ordeals, including flogging, burial, and being sent through miles of caverns, meant to break down his individual personality in order to create one “psychologically prepared to risk his life for his people” (5). This process also induces ekstasis in how it changes a child into a warrior concerned with the wellbeing of his community and more attuned to the natural world. They believed that these harsh rituals would both develop the young into responsible leaders and that it would help them transcend the guilt and anxiety of their daily existences. Even in this ancient world, millennia away from modern perceptions of religion, tribes would also organize to seek an enhancement of being that would free them from the anxieties of daily struggles. Inevitably, as humanity stopped relying upon the hunting of untamed meat and settled together in quiet, less violent