The Hebrew Song of Songs (whose verses date as early as the
tenth century BCE) presents classic love imagery set in a dia-
logue between a bride and her bridegroom. Traditional com-
mentaries have interpreted the relationship between the
characters of the bride and groom in four ways: literally, as
a man and a woman in love with each other; figuratively, as
a model on which proper marriage should be based; allegori-
cally, as the people of Israel and their god; and anagogically,
as the account of an individual soul’s perfected relationship
to God. Whatever its reference, the love between these two
finds vivid expression:
Bride: Night after night on my bed
I have sought my true love;
I have sought him but not found him,
I have called him, but he has not answered.
Groom: How beautiful you are, my dearest, how
beautiful!...
Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your words are
delightful;
your parted lips behind your veil are like a pomegranate
cut open....
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twin fawns of a
gazelle.
Bride: I am my beloved’s, his longing is all for me.
Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields to lie
among the henna bushes. (3.1–7.11)The Cistercian monks of twelfth-century Europe tended to
see the religious quest as an ongoing apprenticeship in the
ways of love. In his Sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard of
Clairvaux urged his readers to remember that “when God
loves, he wants nothing else than to be loved; for he loves
for no other purpose than that he may be loved, knowing
that those who love him are blessed by that very love” (83.4).
Christian mystics of that era often defined God in masculine
and the soul in feminine terms and described the religious
life as a relationship between the two. Richard of Saint-
Victor, for example, outlined in The Four Degrees of Passion-
ate Charity the stages through which the soul moves in its
relationship to the loving God:
In the first degree, God enters into the soul and she
turns inward into herself. In the second, she ascends
above herself and is lifted up to God. In the third, the
soul, lifted up to God, passes over altogether into Him.
In the fourth the soul goes forth on God’s behalf and
descends below herself.Discipline of the heart carries the seeker further and further
into the depths, or heights, of divine love. This is seen in
India, too. As Kr:s:n:a (i.e., God) is reported in the
Bhagavadg ̄ıta ̄ to have told his disciple, Arjuna:
Through loving devotion [bhakti] he comes to know
Me—my measure, and who, in very truth, I am.
Then, knowing Me in that complete truth, he enters
immediately into Me. (18.55)
Discipline of enduring personal relationships. Ac-
cording to some religious ideologies, religious fulfillment is
best achieved through the observation of principles that serve
to uphold the relationship between the human community
and the deity or to maintain important familial and other in-
terpersonal bonds.
A classical example of such relational discipline appears
in the traditions centered on and developed from the Jewish
notion of mitsvah (“commandment”; pl., mitsvot), a rule of
discipline that is understood to have divine sanction. The
rabbinic tradition of Judaism notes that God has given the
people of Israel 613 mitsvot outlining the 248 positive in-
structions and 365 negative injunctions the people are obli-
gated to honor. The most general and most familiar of the
mitsvot are known as the Ten Commandments (see Exodus
20:2–14 and Deuteronomy 5:6–18), which combine strict
monotheistic ideology with rules against destructive social
behavior. According to these rules of discipline, the people
of Israel are to believe in no other god but Yahveh, not to
construct idols, to keep the commandments, not to misuse
God’s name, to observe the day of rest, to honor their par-
ents, not to commit murder, not to commit adultery, not to
steal, not to testify falsely against their neighbors, and not
to be envious of other people’s possessions. Rabbinic tradi-
tions are careful to say that the Ten Commandments do not
exhaust mitsvot, and remind the people of Israel of the reli-
gious duty incumbent on all Jews, for example, to marry and
have at least two children in accordance with the divine com-
mandment to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gn. 1:22).
Such relational discipline finds similar expression in
Paul’s teachings to the hellenized Jewish-Christians at Thes-
salonica that the true disciple must “not [give] way to lust
like the pagans who are ignorant of God; and no man must
do his brother wrong in this matter, or invade his rights, be-
cause, as we have told you before with all emphasis, the Lord
punishes all such offenses.” Paul further noted to those disci-
ples that we are “taught by God to love one another” in a
selfless way and that “anyone who flouts these rules is flout-
ing not man but God” (1 Thes. 4:4–9).
Discipline based on the maintenance of proper relation-
ships also appears in another way in the classical Hindu no-
tion of varn:a ̄ ́sramadharma, the sacred duties determined by
one’s vocation and stage of life. An entire science ( ́sa ̄stra) of
such sacred duties developed in Brahmanic India in order to
interpret and preserve those rules by which orthodox Hindus
are to act in society.
According to the texts of that tradition, the Dharma-
́sa ̄stras, society is divided into four classes (varn:as, sometimes
translated as “castes”) of people. Each varn:a has its own par-
ticular function, and the whole system may be understood
as a symbiosis in which all parts depend on the others. The
priests (bra ̄hman:as) perform rituals that ensure the favor of
the gods for specific individuals or for society in general.
Warriors (ks:atriyas) protect the society from foreign inva-
sions and increase its land holdings. The responsibilities of
production and distribution of material goods throughout
society fall to the merchants (vai ́syas), and the laborers8706 SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE