What is monastic life?

The Indonesian word “bertapa” (to live a monasatic life) comes from Sanskrit and means “to heat up, warm up, shine, burn”. In the context of soul nurturing, the activities of asceticism are intended to be watchful, compassionate, live mortification of the body, undergoing penance to “burn off past karma” and liberate oneself. In the literature of India, inherited sins are heated up like a fowl incubating its eggs and in due course will hatch and fly away in freedom.