From RIA Novosti, another update on the Siberian taiga hermit Agafya Lykova, 63, whose Old Believer family moved to Siberia in 1937. Their lives are described in the 1992 book Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family’s Fifty-year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness, by Vassily Peskov, reviewed here.
French hermit Adalbert De Vogue interviewed
Adalbert De Vogue (born 1924) has been a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Pierre-qui-Vire, France, since 1944. In 1974 he entered a hermitage on the abbey grounds and has remained a hermit since, researching and writing histories of monasticism and the monks of antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
A rare half-hour video interview (of a young Adalbert) titled “Se vaincre soi-même” or “To Conquer the Self” was produced by CBC Television (Canada) and is available at http://www.dieu-parmi-nous.com/R/dom.adalbert.de.vogue.wmv. For best results, download the video rather than attempt to launch it from the website: right click the link and select “Save Target As” or “Save Link As.”
Thanks to friend of Hermitary for bringing it to our attention.
Appeal of silence
An article in the Independent titled “Holidays: the Appeal of Silence” summarizes the growing interest in retreat settings:
Monasteries and convents are reporting a surge in enquiries for their “tester” long weekends, where spiritually-hungry visitors can sample a life of silence. Secular retreat centres are also booming. And on the internet, would-be hermits can now book solitude by the week.
Mentions Father Cyril, novice master of the Carthusian St. Hugh’s Charterhouse in England and Canadian Anglican priest Cynthia Bourgeault.
URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/holidays-the-appeal-of-silence-1631232.html
German hermits today
A February 20, 2009 audio report (about 3 and a half minutes long) from Deutsche Welle or DW-World.de describes and interviews German hermits. The report, “Almost One Hundred Germans Have Become Hermits,” notes that the majority of Germany’s hermits are women religious.
URL: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4042299,00.html.
The report can also be downloaded as an MP3 file.
Ray on “Forest Dwelling Yogi”
Podcast episode 105 of Buddhist Geeks is titled “The Forest Dwelling Yogi” and interviews Reginald Ray on
the forest dwelling meditator, a category of practitioner outside of the normal lay / monastic dichotomy. In particular we look at the role that retreat — both group and solitary — plays for the type of practitioner that does intensive retreat but is not a full-time practitioner.
Ray notes how the solitary retreat opens new space in self-awareness, and enhances awareness of one’s body and of details of our physical environment.
URL: http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/236-buddhist-geeks/episodes/26539-forest-dwelling