I was considering the Orthodox Christian fathers today while doing some research into mystical practice. When reading about them and looking at icons of them, all of them have beards, young and old. Stylistic restrictions on iconography considered, recognize the type of the theologian and the mystic: a male who is undoubtedly male who writes about his experience with the Divine. There are under 100 female saints, but they are not the drivers of spiritual standards in Orthodoxy...
Greco-Buddhism or Graeco-Buddhism was a cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism developed between the 4th century BC and the 5th century AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
I wonder how much of the "mystical practices" in "Orthodox" Christianity trace back to Yoga mystical practices from India that also over lap with Buddhism and Hinduism or if the practices of Yoga did not originate in India but from closer to Greece and influenced Buddhism which came after Yoga
