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One needs to purify negative karma Four Satipatthanas to free oneself from obstacles to liberation from the vicious circle of rebirth. The purification reduces suffering and in the end one reaches Nirvana , the ultimate purification by realizing selflessness or emptiness. An enlightened being is free of all the suffering and karmas, and will not be automatically born again. In the Old Testament , some sins were punishable by death in different forms, while most sins are forgiven by burnt offerings.
Christians consider the Old Covenant to be fulfilled by the Gospel. In the New Testament the forgiveness of sin is effected through faith and repentance Mark 1: The sinful person has never before been in a favorable relationship with God. When, as a part of the process of salvation, a person is forgiven, they enter into a union with God which abides forever. In Jewish Christianity , sin is believed to alienate the sinner from God even though He has extreme love for mankind.
It has damaged and completely severed the relationship of humanity to God. That relationship can only be restored through acceptance of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross as a satisfactory sacrifice for the sins of humanity. Humanity was destined for life with God when Adam disobeyed God. The Bible in John 3: In Eastern Christianity , sin is viewed in terms of its effects on relationships, both among people and likewise between people and God. Also as in Jewish Christianity, Sin is likewise seen as the refusal to follow God's plan and the desire to be "like God" as stated in Genesis 3: Original sin is a Western concept that states that sin entered the human world through Adam and Eve 's sin in the Garden of Eden and that human beings have since lived with the consequences of this first sin.
The serpent who beguiled Eve to eat of the fruit was punished by having it and its kind being made to crawl on the ground and God set an enmity between them and Eve's descendants Genesis 3: Eve was punished by the pains of childbirth and the sorrow of bringing about life that would eventually age, sicken and die Genesis 3: The second part of the curse about being subordinate to Adam originates from her creation from one of Adam's ribs to be his helper Genesis 2: Adam was punished by having to work endlessly to feed himself and his family.
The land would bring forth both thistles and thorns to be cleared and herbs and grain to be planted, nurtured, and harvested. The second part of the curse about his mortality is from his origin as red clay - he is from the land and he and his descendants would return to it when buried after death. When Adam's son Cain slew his brother Abel , he introduced murder into the world Genesis 4: For his punishment, God banished him as a fugitive, but first marked him with a sign that would protect him and his descendants from harm Genesis 4: One concept of sin deals with things that exist on Earth, but not in Heaven.
Food, for example, while a necessary good for the health of the temporal body, is not of eternal transcendental living and therefore its excessive savoring is considered a sin. Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven. In Catholic Christianity sins are classified into grave sins called mortal sins and less serious sins called venial sin. Mortal sins cause one to lose salvation unless the sinner repents and venial sins require some sort of penance either on Earth or in Purgatory.
Jesus was said to have paid for the complete mass of sins past, present, and to come in future. Even inevitable sin is said to have already been cleansed. The Lamb of God was and is God himself and is therefore sinless. In the Old Testament, Leviticus The term papa cannot be taken however, in literal sense as that of a sin. This is because there is no consensus regarding the nature of ultimate reality or God in Hinduism. Only, the vedanta school being unambiguously theistic, whereas no anthropomorphic God exists in the rest five schools namely Samkhya, Nyaya Yoga, Vaishashikha, and Purva-Mimansa.
To conclude, considering a lack of consensus regarding the nature of ultimate reality in Hinduism, it can be considered that papa has lesser insistence on God for it be translated as Sin, and that there is no exact equivalent to Sin in Hinduism. In Islamic ethics , Muslims see sin as anything that goes against the commands of Allah God , a breach of the laws and norms laid down by religion. A jiva a being acquires sin based on its karma , if it hurts anyone, causes someone to hurt anyone, or commends hurting anyone by thought, speech or action.
Anyone, here, refers to literally any living organism, but not limited to human beings. No jiva can achieve moksha ultimate emancipation without ceasing to accumulate karma and shedding off the already accumulated karma entirely. A jiva accumulates karma if it resorts to violence, non-chastity, falsehood, stealing, and possessiveness. A jiva ceases to accumulate karma if he resorts to the golden trio of samyak gyan right knowledge , samyak darshan right sight and samyak charitra right character.
A jiva begins to shed off the accumulated karma by resorting to penance, repentance, vows and by exterminating foes of lust, anger, attachment, aversion, ignorance and fallacy. If a jiva does not give up sin, his karma will keep accumulating and no sin can be absolved without getting its fruit or repenting for it.
Thus such a jiva is bound to remain in the worldly cycle of constant reincarnation , wherein it will keep taking rebirths, into any of the four broad types of living organisms, depending on the magnitude and nature of karma accumulated in previous birth s. The system resembles a well-oiled machine where everyone has their appointed function and economic niche; but its machine-like character seems repellent, given that no deviations are permitted from the prescribed pattern.
If innovations are forbidden, no room seems to be left for creativity and personal development. It states that every object, animal, and person has a specific function or work ergon. If it performs its function well, it does well: His aim is rather more limited: He wants to present a model , and to work out its essential features. Rather, he wants to explain the generation and decay typical of each political system and the psychopathology of its leaders. It is unlikely that Plato presupposes that there are pure representatives of these types, though some historical states may have come closer to being representatives than others.
Was Plato aware of the fact that his black-and-white picture of civic life in his model state disregards the claim of individuals to have their own aims and ends, and not to be treated like automata, with no thoughts and wishes of their own? These works are the Symposium and the Phaedrus. For though each dialogue should be studied as a unity of its own, it is also necessary to treat the individual dialogues as part of a wider picture. The Symposium and the Phaedrus are two dialogues that focus on the individual soul and pay no attention to communal life at all.
Instead, they concentrate on self-preservation, self-improvement, and self-completion. The Symposium is often treated as a dialogue that predates the Republic , most of all because it mentions neither the immortality nor the tripartition of the soul. But its dramatic staging — the praise of Eros by a company of symposiasts — is not germane to the otherworldly and ascetic tendencies of the Gorgias and the Phaedo.
Contrary to all other speakers, Socrates denies that Eros is a god, because the gods are in a state of perfection. Love, by contrast, is a desire of the needy for the beautiful and the good c—c. Eros is a powerful demon, a being between the mortal and the immortal, an eternally needy hunter of the beautiful. Human beings share that demonic condition; for they are neither good nor bad, but desire the good and the beautiful, the possession of which would constitute happiness for them.
Because all people want happiness, they pursue the good as well as they can a—b. In each case they desire the particular kinds of objects that they hope will fulfill their needs. Such fulfillment is not a passive possession; it is rather the objects of love are deemed to be essential in the struggle for self-preservation, self-completion, and self-fulfillment d: And this is possible in one way only: In the case of human beings this need expresses itself in different ways. Starting with the love of one beautiful body, the individual gradually learns to appreciate not only all physical beauty, but also the beauty of the mind, and in the end she gets a glimpse of the supreme kind of beauty, namely the Form of the Beautiful itself — a beauty that is neither relative, nor changeable, nor a matter of degree.
There is no talk of a painful liberation from the bonds of the senses, or of a turn-around of the entire soul that is reserved only for the better educated. First, all human beings aim for their own self-preservation and -completion. Second, this drive finds its expression in the products of their work, in creativity. There is no indication that individuals must act as part of a community. Though the communitarian aspect of the good and beautiful comes to the fore in the high praise of the products of the legendary legislators e—a , the ultimate assent to the Beautiful itself is up to the individual.
The Lysis shares its basic assumption concerning the intermediary state of human nature between good and bad, and regards need as the basis of friendship. The idea that eros is the incentive to sublimation and self-completion is worked out further in the Phaedrus. Although the close relationship between the two dialogues is generally acknowledged, the Phaedrus is commonly regarded as a much later work. But this difference seems due to a difference in perspective rather than to a change of mind. The discussion in the Symposium is deliberately confined to the conditions of self-immortalization in this life, while the Phaedrus takes the discussion beyond the confines of this life.
The three parts of the soul in the Phaedrus are not supposed to justify the separation of people into three classes. They explain, rather, the different routes taken by individuals in their search for beauty and their levels of success. The misuse of rhetoric is exemplified by the speech attributed to the orator Lysias, a somewhat contrived plea to favor a non-lover rather than a lover.
Once restored to his senses the lover will shun his former beloved and break all his promises. To explain the nature of this madness, Socrates employs the comparison of the tripartite soul to a charioteer with a pair winged horses, an obedient white one and an unruly black one. That is what first makes the soul grow wings and soar in the pursuit of a corresponding deity, to the point where it may attain godlike insights.
The best-conditioned souls — those where the charioteer has full control over his horses — get a glimpse of true being, including the nature of the virtues and of the good c—e. Depending on the quality of each soul, the quality of the beauty pursued will also determine the cycle of reincarnations that is in store for each soul after death c—c. Socrates professes the greatest veneration for such a master: The individual does not find her or his fulfillment in peaceful interactions in a harmonious community.
Instead, life is spent in the perennial pursuit of the higher and better. But in that task the individual is not alone; she shares that task with kindred spirits. The message of the the Symposium and the Phaedrus is therefore two-pronged. On the one hand, there is no permanent attainment of happiness as a stable state of completion in this life. In the ups and downs of life and of the afterlife , humans are in constant need of beauty as an incentive to aim for their own completion.
Humans are neither god-like nor wise; at best, they are god-lovers and philosophers, demonic hunters for truth and goodness. To know is not to have; and to have once is not to have forever. In the Symposium , Diotima states in no uncertain terms that humans have a perennial need to replenish what they lose, both in body and soul, because they are mortal and changeable creatures, and the Phaedrus confirms the need for continued efforts, for the heavenly voyage is not a one-time affair.
On the other hand, the second part of he message conveyed is that the pursuit of the good and the beautiful is not a lonely enterprise. As the Phaedrus makes clear, love for a beautiful human being is an incentive to search for a higher form of life, as a sacred joint journey of two friends in communion a—e. Sober philosophers have a tendency to ignore such visionary talk as too elevated and lacking in substance to be worth serious thought. Artful speaking and even artful deception presupposes knowledge of the truth, especially where the identity of the phenomena is difficult to grasp, because similarities can be deceptive.
This applies in particular to concepts like the good and the just, as witnessed by the wide disagreement about their nature a—c. That dialectic is geared to this end is somewhat obscured in the subsequent discussion in the Phaedrus. First of all, Plato turns away from this issue in his long depiction of the iniquities of contemporary rhetoricians, when he constrasts their efforts with scientific rhetoric. Second, although Plato makes ample use of the method of collection and division in later dialogues such as the Sophist and the Statesman , he seems to pay little heed to problems of ethics, with the exception of the Philebus.
But the aptness of the dialectical method in discerning the nature of the good has already been emphasized in the Republic b—c: That the Good is nowhere subjected to such treatment must be due to the enormity of the task involved in undertaking a systematic identification of all that is good, and in distinguishing good things from each other, as well as from the Form of the Good.
As a closer look at the much later Philebus will show, the determination of what is good about each kind of thing presupposes more than a classification by collection and division. For in addition, the internal structure of each kind of entity has to be determined. But as the late dialogues show, it took him quite some effort to develop the requisite conceptual tools for such analyses.
Before we turn to the late dialogues, a final review is in order of the kind of good life Plato envisages in the dialogues under discussion here. This is what the scala amoris is all about. Just as in the Symposium , the philosophical life is deemed the best. But then, this preference is found everywhere in Plato and itis not unique to him: If there are differences between them, they concern the kinds of study and occupation that are deemed appropriate to philosophy. They may be complementary, rather than rival, points of view, and no fixed chronology need be assumed in order to accommodate both.
Nature and natural things are not among the objects that concern Plato in his earlier and middle philosophical investigations. Thus, in the Republic , he dismisses the study of the visible heaven from the curriculum of higher learning along with audible music.
What he denigrates is not the study of the heavenly order as such, nor that of harmonics; it is rather the extent to which we must necessarily rely on our eyes and ears in those concerns. Students of philosophy are, rather, encouraged to work out the true intelligible order underlying the visible heaven and audible music. If Plato is critical of natural science, it is because of its empirical approach.
Nevertheless, Plato already indicates in his critique of Anaxagoras that comprehension of the workings of the order of nature would be highly desirable, as long as it contained an explanation of the rationale of that order 98a: A lot of ink has been spilt over the following passage in Republic book VI, b: Plato did not attempt to state how such a principle of goodness works in all things when he wrote the Republic. According to Plato, in each case it is the use or function that determines what it is to be good, d: The stringency of these inferences is far from obvious; but they show that Plato saw an intimate connection between the nature, the function, and the well-being of all things, including human beings.
In the Republic , this question is answered only indirectly through the isomorphism of the just state and soul as a harmonious internal order. The postulate of such an orderly structure is not explicitly extended beyond the state and the soul. In contrast, in the later dialogues, the Good clearly operates on a cosmic scale.
What actions and passions properly belong to human nature and distinguish it from all other beings? If, in the Republic , the goodness of the individual soul is explained in terms of its being a smaller copy of a harmonious society, in the Timaeus , Plato goes for a larger model. The structure of the world-soul is replicated in the nature of the human soul.
That there is, nevertheless, a close affinity between the Republic and the project that Plato meant to pursue in the Timaeus and its intended sequels is clearly indicated in the preface to the Timaeus. From antiquity on, this introduction has created the impression that the Timaeus is the direct continuation of the Republic , an impression that explains its juxtaposition in the Corpus Platonicum. Strong indications speak, however, for a much later date for the Timaeus.
If Plato establishes a link between these two works, his intent is to compare as well as to contrast. It is this ideal order that Critias promises to illustrate by narrating the tale of the war between pre-historic Athens, a city that exempified the ideal order, and Atlantis, a powerful tyrannical superpower Ti. However, Plato eventually set aside the project of illustrating the ideal city in action: The difference between the philosophical approach of the Republic and that of the Timaeus lies in the fact that Plato concerns himself in the later dialogue with the structure of the visible heaven as a model for the human soul, and also with the material conditions of human physiology.
Plato now seems convinced that in order to explain the nature of a living being, it is necessary to show what factors constitute such a live organism. This intention explains certain peculiarities of the Timaeus that make the dialogue hard to penetrate. For the dialogue falls into three rather disparate parts. The first part describes the structure of the world-soul and its replication in the human soul in a way that combines the formal principles with those of mathematics and harmonics and illustrates it with fantastic imagery 29d—47e.
The second part consists of a rather meticulous account of the elementary physical constituents of nature, which are held to be formed of geometrically constructed atoms 47e—69a. The third part combines elements from the first and second parts in a lengthy explanation of human physiology and psychology 69b—92c.
Suffice it to say that this structure combines three features — namely, 1 the components or ingredients, of the world-soul itself, which are the essential tools for dialectic ; 2 the mathematical proportions that define the structure of the world-soul; and 3 the influence that the structure of the world-soul has in turn on the observable order of the universe, such as the motion of the heavenly bodies. According to Plato, the soul itself is composed of being, sameness, and difference — i.
Each of the three concepts that constitute the world-soul do so in a mixture of their unchangeable and their changeable types Ti. What is the use of this strange concoction? As Timaeus points out, the combination of the eternal and temporal versions of the formal concepts allows the soul to comprehend both unchangeable and changeable objects in the world 37a—c.
By mixing together the unchangeable and the changeable versions of the formal concepts, Plato maintains the unity of the soul. In other words, there is no such thing as a world-reason — dealing only with eternal being, sameness and difference — separate from the world-soul , which is concerned with temporal and changeable things, their being, sameness and difference. Rather, there is one mental force that does both, resulting in either knowledge or firm belief. The portions 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 3 - 9 - 27 of the mixture, with further subdivisions according to the arithmetical, geometrical and harmonic means, are the proportions that demarcate the intervals in theoretical harmonics 1: As these harmonic divisions suggest, the world-soul is at the same time a kind of musical instrument.
No music of the spheres is mentioned in the Timaeus , but Plato seems to have in mind at least the possibility of heavenly music. The mathematical proportions are applied, in turn, to explain the order and the motions of the heavenly bodies 36b—d. For the soul-bands, divided in different proportions, form circles that are ordered in a complicated system, and in doing so they represent a geometrical model of the motions and distances of the stars revolving around the earth.
Why does Plato burden himself and his readers with such a complex machinery and what does this heavenly instrument have to do with ethics? Since the human soul is formed from the same ingredients as the world soul albeit in a less pure form , and displays the same structure 41d—e , Plato is clearly not just concerned with the order of the universe, but with that of the human soul as well.
He attributes to it the possession of the kinds of concepts that are necessary for the understanding of the nature of all things, both eternal and temporal. A theory of recollection of the nature of all things is no longer being advocated. Rather, Plato is concerned with ascertaining all of the following: This, it seems, is all the soul gets and all it needs in order to perform its various tasks.
His overall message should be clear, however: This last point has consequences for his ethical thought that are not developed in the Timaeus itself, but that can be detected in other late dialogues. It shows up rather early. Already in the Gorgias , Socrates blames Callicles for the undisciplined state of his soul, and attributes it to his neglect of geometry, a: If mathematics looms large, then, it is as a model science on account of its exactness, the stability of its objects, and their accessibility to reason.
A systematic exploration of the notion that measure and proportion are the fundamental conditions of goodness is confined to the late dialogues. The latter is treated with great concern, for the Eleatic Stranger claims that it is the basis of all expertise, including statesmanship, the very art that is the subject of the dialogue itself, a—b: The Eleatic Stranger therefore suggests the separation of the simple arts of measuring from the arts concerned with due measure, e: The importance of measure in a literal sense becomes more explicit, however, in the Philebus , the dialogue that is concerned with the question of whether pleasure or knowledge constitutes the human good.
The dialectician must know precisely how many species and subspecies a certain genus contains; otherwise he has no claim to any kind of expertise. This is because Socrates suddenly remembers that neither of the two contenders suffices in itself for the good life, and that a mixture of the two is preferable. As he now states, all beings belong in one of four classes — namely 1 limit peras , 2 the unlimited apeiron , 3 the mixture meixis of limit and the unlimited, or 4 the cause aitia of such a mixture.
As the subsequent explications concerning the four classes show, the unlimited comprises all those things that have no exact grade or measure in themselves, such as the hotter and colder, the faster and slower. Although at first the examples are confined to relative terms, the class of the unlimited is then extended to things like hot and cold, dry and moist, fast and slow, and even heat and frost.
Mixture takes place when such qualities take on a definite quantity poson or due measure metrion that limits their variation. That only measured entities qualify as mixtures is not only suggested by the examples Socrates refers to health, strength, beauty, music, and the seasons , but by his assertion much later in the dialogue that a mixture without due measure or proportion does not deserve its name 64d—e: For there would be no blending in such cases at all, but really an unconnected medley, the ruin of whatever happens to be contained in it.
Since indeterminate elements usually turn up in pairs of opposites, the right limit in each case is the right proportion necessary for their balance. In the case of health, there must be the right balance between the hot and the cold, the dry and the moist. The cause of the proper proportion for each mixture turns out to be reason; it is the only member of the fourth class. As Socrates indicates, divine reason is the ultimate source of all that is good and harmonious in the universe, while human reason is but a poor copy 26e—27c; 28a—30e.
The adoption of this fourfold ontology allows Socrates to assign the two contenders for best condition in human nature to two of the four classes: Reason, by contrast, belongs to the fourth class, as the cause of good mixtures. It turns out that pleasure is at best a remedial good: The rivals of the pleasures — the different intellectual disciplines — also vary in quality; but in their case the difference in quality depends on the amount of mathematical precision they contain 55c—59d.
In the final ranking of goods, measure and due proportion, unsurprisingly, get the first rank, things in proper proportion come in second, reason is ranked third, the arts and sciences obtain fourth place, whereas the true and pure pleasures get fifth and last place on the scale of goods 64c—67b. If Plato in the Philebus is more favorably disposed towards a hedonist stance than in some of his earlier works, he is so only to a quite limited degree: There is always some deficiency or lack that needs supplementing.
But even they are deemed goods only because they are compensations for human imperfection. There are two questions worth exploring here. One concerns the role that Plato assigns to measure in his late concept of ethics. This explains his confidence that even physical entities can attain a relatively stable state. This applies not only to the nature of the visible universe, but also to the human body and mind, as long as they are in good condition. His confidence seems to have extended not only to the physical, but also to the moral state of human nature.
Fasting may also be part of a religious ritual. Fasting is always practiced prior to surgery or other procedures that require general anesthesia because of the risk of pulmonary aspiration of gastric contents after induction of anesthesia i. In the case of a lipid panel, failure to fast for a full 12 hours including vitamins will guarantee an elevated triglyceride measurement.
Fasting or intermittent calorie restriction may affect cancer and tumor development, but are not currently used as a form of treating cancer. In one review, fasting improved alertness , mood , and subjective feelings of well-being, possibly improving overall symptoms of depression. Although fasting for periods shorter than 24 hours, known as intermittent fasting , have been shown to be effective for weight loss in obese and healthy adults and to maintain lean body mass, [9] [10] [11] some writers argue that using fasting for weight loss is unnecessary.
It has been argued that fasting makes one more appreciative of food. In rare occurrences, [15] fasting can lead to refeeding syndrome.
Fasting is often used as a tool to make a political statement, to protest , or to bring awareness to a cause. A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt, or to achieve a goal such as a policy change. The political and religious leader Mohandas K.
Gandhi undertook several long fasts as political and social protests. Gandhi's fasts had a significant impact on the British Raj and the Indian population generally. In Northern Ireland in , a prisoner, Bobby Sands , was part of the Irish hunger strike , protesting for better rights in prison.
His funeral was attended by , people and the strike ended only after nine other men died. In all, ten men survived without food for 46 to 73 days. It is the complete abstaining from both food and drink during daylight hours including abstaining from smoking.
Consumption of prescribed medications is not restricted. For those involved in heavy labor, they are advised to eat in private and generally to have simpler or smaller meals than are normal. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires. Buddhist monks and nuns following the Vinaya rules commonly do not eat each day after the noon meal.
Once when the Buddha was touring in the region of Kasi together with a large sangha of monks he addressed them saying: I, monks, do not eat a meal in the evening. Not eating a meal in the evening I, monks, am aware of good health and of being without illness and of buoyancy and strength and living in comfort. Come, do you too, monks, not eat a meal in the evening. Not eating a meal in the evening you too, monks, will be aware of good health and Fasting is practiced by lay Buddhists during times of intensive meditation, such as during a retreat.
During periods of fasting, followers completely stray away from eating animal products although, they do allow consumption of milk. Furthermore, they also avoid eating processed foods and the five pungent foods which are; garlic, welsh onion, garlic chives, asana, leeks. Prior to attaining Buddhahood, prince Siddhartha practiced a short regime of strict austerity and following years of serenity meditation under two teachers which he consumed very little food.
These austerities with five other ascetics did not lead to progress in meditation, liberation moksha , or the ultimate goal of nirvana. Henceforth, prince Siddhartha practiced moderation in eating which he later advocated for his disciples. However, on Uposatha days roughly once a week lay Buddhists are instructed to observe the eight precepts [27] which includes refraining from eating after noon until the following morning.
The novice precepts are the same with an added prohibition against handling money. The Vajrayana practice of Nyung Ne is based on the tantric practice of Chenrezig. Chenrezig taught her the method of Nyung Ne [29] in which one keeps the eight precepts on the first day, then refrains from both food and water on the second. Although seemingly against the Middle Way, this practice is to experience the negative karma of both oneself and all other sentient beings and, as such is seen to be of benefit.
Other self-inflicted harm is discouraged. Fasting is a practice in several Christian denominations and is done both collectively during certain seasons of the liturgical calendar , or individually as a believer feels led by the Holy Spirit. In the traditional Black Fast , the observant abstains from food for a whole day until the evening, and at sunset, traditionally breaks the fast.
Partial fasting within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church abstaining from meat and milk which takes place during certain times of the year and lasts for weeks. For Roman Catholics , fasting, taken as a technical term, is the reduction of one's intake of food to one full meal which may not contain meat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays throughout Lent and two small meals known liturgically as collations , taken in the morning and the evening , both of which together should not equal the large meal. Eating solid food between meals is not permitted.
Fasting is required of the faithful between the ages of 18 and 59 on specified days. Complete abstinence of meat for the day is required of those 14 and older. Partial abstinence prescribes that meat be taken only once during the course of the day. Meat is understood not to include fish or cold-blooded animals. Pope Pius XII had initially relaxed some of the regulations concerning fasting in He recommended that fasting be appropriate to the local economic situation, and that all Catholics voluntarily fast and abstain.
The Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence: Pastoral teachings since have urged voluntary fasting during Lent and voluntary abstinence on the other Fridays of the year. The regulations concerning such activities do not apply when the ability to work or the health of a person would be negatively affected. The church had prescribed that Roman Catholics observe fasting or abstinence on a number of days throughout the year.
In addition to the fasts mentioned above, Roman Catholics must also observe the Eucharistic Fast, which involves taking nothing but water and medicines into the body for one hour before receiving the Eucharist. The ancient practice was to fast from midnight until Mass that day, but as Masses after noon and in the evening became common, this was soon modified to fasting for three hours.
Current law requires merely one hour of eucharistic fast, although some Roman Catholics still abide by the older rules. Colloquially, fasting, abstinence, the Eucharistic Fast, and personal sacrificial disciplines such as abnegation of sweets for Lent are altogether referred to as fasting. The Catholic Church has also promoted a Black Fast , in which in addition to water, bread is consumed.
Typically, this form of fasting was used only by monks and other religious individuals who practice mortifications and asceticism, but all Catholics are invited to take part in it with the advice and consent of their spiritual director. The Book of Common Prayer prescribes certain days as days for fasting and abstinence, "consisting of the 40 days of Lent, the ember days, the three rogation days the Monday to Wednesday following the Sunday after Ascension Day , and all Fridays in the year except Christmas, if it falls on a Friday ": Saint Augustine's Prayer Book defines "Fasting, usually meaning not more than a light breakfast, one full meal, and one half meal, on the forty days of Lent.
One traditional expression of abstinence is to avoid meat on Fridays in Lent or through the entire year, except in the seasons of Christmas and Easter. It is common to undertake some particular act of abstinence during the entire season of Lent. This self-discipline may be helpful at other times, as an act of solidarity with those who are in need or as a bodily expression of prayer. In the process of revising the Book of Common Prayer in various provinces of the Anglican Communion the specification of abstinence or fast for certain days has been retained.
Generally Lent and Fridays are set aside, though Fridays during Christmastide and Eastertide are sometimes avoided. Often the Ember Days or Rogation Days are also specified, and the eves vigils of certain feasts. For Eastern Orthodox Christians, fasting is an important spiritual discipline, found in both the Old Testament and the New, and is tied to the principle in Orthodox theology of the synergy between the body Greek: That is to say, Orthodox Christians do not see a dichotomy between the body and the soul but rather consider them as a united whole, and they believe that what happens to one affects the other this is known as the psychosomatic union between the body and the soul.
Christ, by taking a human body at the Incarnation , has made the flesh an inexhaustible source of sanctification. Fasting can take up a significant portion of the calendar year. The purpose of fasting is not to suffer, but according to Sacred Tradition to guard against gluttony and impure thoughts, deeds and words. To engage in fasting without them is considered useless or even spiritually harmful. Wednesdays and Fridays are also fast days throughout the year with the exception of fast-free periods.
In some Orthodox monasteries , Mondays are also observed as fast days Mondays are dedicated to the Angels , and monasticism is called the "angelic life". When a feast day occurs on a fast day, the fast is often mitigated lessened to some degree though meat and dairy are never consumed on any fast day.
For example, the Feast of the Annunciation almost always occurs within the Great Lent in the Orthodox calendar: There are two degrees of mitigation: The very young and very old, nursing mothers, the infirm, as well as those for whom fasting could endanger their health somehow, are exempt from the strictest fasting rules. On weekdays of the first week of Great Lent, fasting is particularly severe, and many observe it by abstaining from all food for some period of time. According to strict observance, on the first five days Monday through Friday there are only two meals eaten, one on Wednesday and the other on Friday, both after the Presanctified Liturgy.
Those who are unable to follow the strict observance may eat on Tuesday and Thursday but not, if possible, on Monday in the evening after Vespers , when they may take bread and water, or perhaps tea or fruit juice, but not a cooked meal. The same strict abstention is observed during Holy Week , except that a vegan meal with wine and oil is allowed on Great Thursday. On Wednesday and Friday of the first week of Great Lent the meals which are taken consist of xerophagy literally, "dry eating" i.
Those desiring to receive Holy Communion keep a total fast from all food and drink from midnight the night before see Eucharistic discipline. The sole exception is the Communion offered at the Easter Sunday midnight liturgy, when all are expressly invited and encouraged to receive the Eucharist, regardless of whether they have kept the prescribed fast.
During certain festal times the rules of fasting are done away with entirely, and everyone in the church is encouraged to feast with due moderation, even on Wednesday and Friday. Fast-free days are as follows:. In Methodism , fasting is considered one of the Works of Piety.
There is a strong biblical base for fasting, particularly during the 40 days of Lent leading to the celebration of Easter. Jesus, as part of his spiritual preparation, went into the wilderness and fasted 40 days and 40 nights, according to the Gospels. Good Friday , which is towards the end of the Lenten season, is traditionally an important day of communal fasting for Methodists. Jacqui King, the minister of Nu Faith Community United Methodist Church in Houston explained the philosophy of fasting during Lent as "I'm not skipping a meal because in place of that meal I'm actually dining with God".
All Oriental Orthodox churches practice fasting; however, the rules of each church differ. All churches require fasting before one receives Holy Communion. All churches practice fasting on most Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year as well as observing many other days. Monks and nuns also observe additional fast days not required of the laity. The Armenian Apostolic Church with the exception of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem has followed the Gregorian Calendar since , making it and the Finnish Orthodox church the only Orthodox churches to primarily celebrate Easter on the same date as Western Christianity.
As a result, the Armenian church's observation of Lent generally begins and ends before that of other Orthodox churches. With the exception of the fifty days following Easter in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria , fish is not allowed during Lent , or on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Paramon days. Other than that fish and shellfish are allowed during fasting days. The discipline of fasting entails that, apart from Saturdays, Sundays, and holy feasts, one should keep a total fast from all food and drink from midnight the night before to a certain time in the day usually three o'clock in the afternoon the hour Jesus died on the Cross.
Also, it is preferred that one reduce one's daily intake of food, typically by eating only one full meal a day. The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church generally follows the fasting practices of the Coptic Church however in some cases it follows the Ethiopian Church. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has an especially rigorous fasting calendar. Fasting in the Ethiopian Church implies abstention from food and drink. No animal products are consumed, including dairy, eggs and meat, and utensils that have touched such products must be washed before touching the strictly vegan foods that are consumed on fast days.
During fast periods, Holy Liturgy Mass is held at noon except on Saturdays and Sundays , and because no food can be consumed before communion, it is traditional for people to abstain from food until mass is over around 2 to 3 in the afternoon. Every Wednesday and Friday are days of fasting because Wednesday is the day that the Lord was condemned and Friday is the day he was crucified the Wednesdays and Fridays between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday are an exception as well as when Christmas or Epiphany fall on a Wednesday or a Friday.
The fasts that are ordained in the canon of the Church of Ethiopia are:. In addition to these, there is the fast of repentance which a person keeps after committing sin, it being imposed as a penance by the priest for seven days, forty days or one year. There is also a fast which a bishop keeps at the time he is consecrated. Also there are fasts that are widely observed but which have not been included in the canon of the church and which are therefore considered strictly optional such as the "Tsige Tsom" or Spring Fast, also known as "Kweskwam Tsom" which marks the exile of the Holy Family in Egypt.
All persons above the age of 13 are expected to observe the church fasts. Most children over age seven are expected to observe at least the Fast of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin. Dispensations are granted to those who are ill. The total number of fasting days amounts to about a year. While many observe the Coptic Church's allowance for fish during the longer fasts, it has increasingly become practice in the Ethiopian Church to abstain from fish during all fasts according to the canons of the Ethiopian Church. The observation of Lent within the Syriac Orthodox Church was once very strict but now is comparatively lenient compared with how it is observed in other Orthodox Churches.
The Assyrian Church of the East practices fasting during Lent , the seven weeks prior to Easter , wherein the faithful abstain from eating eggs, meat and any dairy or animal products. This is preceded by Somikka night. This annual observance occurs exactly three weeks before the start of Lent. This tradition has been practised by all Christians of Syriac traditions since the 6th century.
At that time, a plague afflicted the region of Nineveh, modern-day northern Iraq. The plague devastated the city and the villages surrounding it, and out of desperation the people ran to their bishop to find a solution.