To Glow

The original meaning of the term "ascesis" was simply "training" and, in a Roman sense, discipline. The corresponding Indo-Aryan term is tapas and it has a like significance except that from the root 'tap', which means "to be hot" or "to glow," it also contains the idea of an intensive concentration, of glowing, almost of fire.

What example can history furnish as the best suited for examination as a comprehensive and universal ascetic system that is clear and undiluted, well-tried and well set out, in tune with the spirit of Aryan man and yet prevailing in the modern age?
Answer: The Doctrine of Awakening

...an ascesis aims at placing all the energies of the human being under the control of a central principle. In this respect we can, properly speaking, talk of a technique that has, in common with that of modern scientific achievements, the characteristics of objectivity and impersonality.

...develop a pure ascesis - made up of techniques for developing an interior force, the use of which, to begin with , reemains undetermined, like the use of the arms and machines produced by modern industrial tecniques.

ONE THE ART, ONE THE MATERIAL, ONE THE CRUCIBLE - clear and transparent water through which can be seen everything lying on the bottom symbolical of a mind that has left behind all unrest and disturbance.

When an ascesis is understood as a technique for the conscious creation of a force that can be applied, in the first place, at any level, then the disciplines taught by the Doctrine of Awakening can be recognized as those that incorporate the highest degree of crystallinity and independence. However, we encounter inside the system a distinction between the disciplines that "suffice for this life" and those that are necessary to take one beyond. Ascetic achievement in Buddhism is exploted essentially in an upward direction. This is how the sense of such achievements is expressed in the canon:

"And he reaches the admirable path discovered by the intensity, the constancy and the concentration of the will, the admirable path discovered by the intensity, the constancy, and the concentration of the energy, the admirable path discovered by the intensity, the constancy and the concentration of the spirit, the admirable path discovered by the intensity, the constancy, and the concentration of investigation-with-a-heroic-spirit as the fifth...And thus attaining these fifteen heroic qualities, he is able, O disciples, to achieve liberation, to achieve awakening, to attain the incomparable sureness(unshakeable calm).
Either certainty in life, or no return after death.

The peoples of the West are so inured to the religion that has come to predominate in their countries that they consider it as a kind of unit of measure and as a model for every other religion:
They are near denying the dignity of true religion to any concept of the supersensory and to man's relationship to it, when the concept in any way differs from the Judeo-Christian type. The result of this has been that the most ancient traditions of the West itself - beginning with the Aryo-Hellenic and the Aryo-Roman are no longer understood in their real significance or effective value, so it is easy to imagine what happened to older and often more remote traditions, particularly to those created by the Aryan races in Asia. But indeed, this attitude should be reversed: and just as "modern civilization is an anomaly when compared with what has always been true civilization, so the significance and the value of the Christian religion should be measured according to that part of its content that is consonant with a vaster, more Aryan, and more primordial concept of the supersensory.(7-8)

...In this ascent beside the abyss the climber refects all "mythologies," he proceeds by means of pure strenth, he ignores all mirages, he rids himself of any residual human weakness, he acts only according to pure knowledge. Thus the Awakened One(Buddha), the Victor could be called he whose way was unknown to men, angels, and to Brahma himself. Admittedly, this path is not without dangers, yet it is the path open to the virile mind.

Virtuous and devout men go to heaven - but a different path is taken by the Awakened Ones. They go beyond as "a fire which, little by little, consumes every bond," both human and divine. And it is fundamentally an innate attribute of the Aryan soul that causes us never to meet in the Buddhist texts any sign of departure from consciousness, of sentimentalism or devout effusion, or of semi-intimate conversation with a God, although throughout there is a sense of strength inexorably directed toward the unconditioned.(10-11)

-Julius Evola, Doctrine of Awakening