The word asceticism means "training," a strengthening of our will. An athlete is an ascetic who is training in his or her specific field of athletics. For Orthodox Christians, it is spiritual training, exercising our willpower, self-control, self-discipline, and discernment. Apostle Paul directly links asceticism to athletic training (e.g., 1 Corinthians 9:24-26)

In initiating a discussion on the subject, my mind was drawn to a working paper by philosopher Ivan Illich, "Guarding the Eye in the Age of Show.” Illich examines the changes in the concept of the gaze and convincingly argues that even the concept of what we do with the eyes has often changed dramatically over the past few centuries. 

Consequently, when we use such terms familiar to Orthodox Christians as "guarding the eye" and "fasting with the eyes," we must realize that the concepts which initially traveled with these expressions have changed. In some cases, concepts and understandings of various aspects of vision, seeing, gazing, and looking have changed dramatically or vanished altogether. Indeed, more than one hundred words dealing with the quality and meaning of seeing have vanished from our vocabulary over the past four or five centuries.

This makes discussing the asceticism of the eye more difficult both to grasp and to practise. The task is even more complicated by our carelessness in rendering translations of Orthodox prayers and terminology, a problem we will discuss later.

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