Asian Traditions of Meditation by Halvor Eifring,Edwin F. Bryant,Madhu Khanna,Johannes

By Halvor Eifring,Edwin F. Bryant,Madhu Khanna,Johannes Bronkhorst,Kristina Myrvold,Sarah Shaw,Geoffrey Samuel,Morten Schlutter,Harold D. Roth,Masaya Mabuchi,Are Holen

Meditation has flourished in several components of the realm ever because the foundations of the nice civilizations have been laid. It performed a necessary position within the formation of Asian cultures that hint a lot in their background to historical India and China. This quantity brings jointly for the 1st time reviews of the foremost traditions of Asian meditation in addition to fabric on medical methods to meditation. It delves deeply into the person traditions whereas viewing each one of them from a world point of view, studying either old and conventional connections among meditative practices from a variety of old sessions and various components of the Eurasian continent. It seeks to spot the cultural and historic peculiarities of Asian colleges of meditation whereas spotting easy good points of meditative perform throughout cultures, thereby taking step one towards a framework for the comparative learn of meditation.

The publication, accessibly written through students from a number of fields, opens with chapters that debate the definition and type of meditation. those are by means of contributions on Yoga and Tantra, that are usually subsumed less than the huge label of Hinduism; Jainism and Sikhism, Indian traditions now not frequently linked to meditation; Buddhist ways present in Southeast Asia, Tibet, and China; and the indigenous chinese language traditions, Daoism and Neo-Confucianism. the ultimate bankruptcy explores contemporary medical curiosity in meditation, which, regardless of its Western orientation, is still nearly completely enthusiastic about practices of Asian origin.

Until many years in the past an enormous quandary to the research of particular meditation practices in the traditions explored right here was once a frequent scholarly orientation that prioritized doctrinal matters and sociocultural contexts over genuine perform. The individuals search to counter this bias and complement issues over doctrine and context with the old examine of meditative practice.

Asian Traditions of Meditation will allure largely to readers attracted to meditation, mindfulness, and spirituality and people within the rising box of contemplative schooling, in addition to scholars and students of Asian and spiritual studies.

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Religious Cultures in Early Modern India: New Perspectives by Rosalind O'Hanlon,David Washbrook

By Rosalind O'Hanlon,David Washbrook

Religious authority and political energy have existed in advanced relationships all through India’s historical past. The centuries of the ‘early sleek’ in South Asia observed fairly dynamic advancements during this dating. neighborhood in addition to imperial states of the interval elevated their spiritual patronage, whereas new sectarian centres of doctrinal and religious authority emerged past the confines of the country. Royal and service provider patronage encouraged the expansion of latest sessions of cellular intellectuals deeply dedicated to the reappraisal of many features of spiritual legislation and doctrine. Supra-regional associations and networks of many other forms - sect-based spiritual maths, pilgrimage centres and their guardians, sants and sufi orders - flourished, supplying larger mobility to wider groups of the pious. This was once additionally a interval of growing to be power within the improvement of vernacular spiritual literatures of other forms, and infrequently of latest genres mixing components of older devotional, juridical and ancient literatures. Oral and manuscript literatures too won extra speedy flow, even though the that means and canonical prestige of texts usually replaced as they circulated extra broadly and reached greater lay audiences.

Through explorations of those advancements, the essays during this assortment make a particular contribution to a serious formative interval within the making of India’s sleek spiritual cultures.

This booklet was once released as a unique factor of South Asian historical past and Culture.

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A Living Theology of Krishna Bhakti: Essential Teachings of by Tamal Krishna Goswami,Graham M. Schweig

By Tamal Krishna Goswami,Graham M. Schweig

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup?da (1896-1977), founding father of the Hare Krishna stream, traced his lineage to the fifteenth-century Indian saint Sri Chaitanya. He authored greater than fifty volumes of English translation and commentaries on Sanskrit and Bengali texts, serving as a medium among those far-off specialists and his sleek Western readership and utilizing his writings as blueprints for religious swap and a revolution in realization. He needed to communicate the language of a humans enormously disparate from the unique recipients of his tradition's scriptures with out compromising constancy to the tradition.

Tamal Krishna Goswami claims that the social medical, philosophical, and 'insider' sorts of research formerly utilized have did not clarify the presence of a robust interpretative device-a mahavakya or 'great utterance'-that governs and pervades Prabhupada's 'living theology' of devotion on bhakti. For Prabhupada, the wide variety of 'vedic' material is ruled through the axiomatic fact: Krishna is the perfect character of Godhead.

Goswami's educational education on the college of Cambridge, his thirty years' adventure as a practitioner and instructor, and his vast interactions with Prabhupada as either own secretary and managerial consultant, afforded him a different chance to appreciate and remove darkness from the theological contribution of Prabhupada. during this paintings, Goswami proves that the voice of the scholar-practitioner could be in detail attached along with his culture whereas maintaining a mature severe stance relative to his topic. A dwelling Theology of Krishna Bhakti incorporates a serious advent and end by way of Graham M. Schweig.

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The Bhagavad-Gita in Black and White: From Mulatto Pride to by Charles Michael Byrd

By Charles Michael Byrd

The Philosophy of Multiracialism

An necessary relief for somebody trying to go beyond America's oppressive race-consciousness. each one part is formed after the eighteen chapters of the Bhagavad-gita, the essence of India's Vedic knowledge and one of many nice religious and philosophical classics of the realm. in addition to synopses of every Gita bankruptcy is statement culled from Mr. Byrd's Interracial Voice editorials in addition to from different individuals. as well as every one chapter's race statement is a particular Gita verse or that expands on that observation from the Vedic perspective.

This ebook is a revised and enlarged version of past Race: The Bhagavad-gita in Black and White with:

* increased introduction.

* Dozens of latest quotations from articles released in Interracial Voice.

* Deeper realizing of the Gita’s relevance to the USA today.

* New sections further with many certain parallels among scripture and the philosophy of multiracialism.

"An very good and brave piece of work." — N. Brent Kennedy, Kingsport, TN

"Timely new software of undying philosophy." — Belenios Ategnatos, Staten Island, NY

"Highly prompt for these wishing to shed the shackles of 'racial' crew identification in desire of embracing their correct to be an individual." — James A. Landrith Jr., Alexandria, VA

"Minces no phrases in letting the reader precisely find out about the present-day 'racial' panorama within the usa ... emphasis on becoming a member of and uniting the complete human family." — William Javier Nelson, Ph.D., Raleigh, NC

"Useful, well timed, and authoritative." — Michael J. Dahl, writer of The Pharaoh’s Son, Burbank, CA

Virginia local Charles Michael Byrd is of Black, White and Cherokee historical past. As Editor/Publisher of the Interracial Voice journal (1995-2003), he seemed on Jim Lehrer's NewsHour and wrote Op-Eds for the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday. A scholar of Vedic scriptures, Mr. Byrd believes that folks of combined racial backgrounds fast commence trying to find the next non secular fact, whatever that permits them to make feel of the insanity in the back of lumping humans into separate and particular racial groupings.

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Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in by Roman Sieler

By Roman Sieler

Lethal Spots, important Secrets presents an ethnographic learn of varmakkalai, or "the paintings of the very important spots," a South Indian esoteric culture that mixes scientific perform and martial arts. even supposing siddha medication is formally a part of the Indian Government's medically pluralistic health-care process, little or no of a competent nature has been written approximately it.

Drawing on a various array of fabrics, together with Tamil manuscripts, interviews with practitioners, and his personal own event as an apprentice, Sieler lines the practices of varmakkalai either in numerous spiritual traditions--such as Yoga and Ayurveda--and inside of quite a few strive against practices. His argument relies on in-depth ethnographic examine within the southernmost area of India, the place hereditary medico-martial practitioners examine their profession from family members or expert experts via an esoteric, religious schooling approach. Rituals of secrecy and apprenticeship in varmakkalai are one of the vital focal issues of Sieler's examine. Practitioners safeguard their esoteric wisdom, yet additionally they interact in a type of "lure and withdrawal"---a functionality of secrecy---because secrecy features as what should be known as "symbolic capital." Sieler argues that varmakkalai is, chiefly, an issue of texts in perform; wisdom transmission among instructor and scholar conveys tacit, non-verbal wisdom, and constitutes a "moral economy." it isn't only simple evidence which are communicated, but in addition ethical duties, moral behavior and tacit, physically knowledge.

Lethal Spots, important Secrets is an insightful research of practices not often mentioned in scholarly circles. it will likely be a necessary source to scholars of faith, scientific anthropologists, historians of drugs, Indologists, and martial arts and function studies.

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Lord Siva's Song: The Isvara Gita by Andrew J. Nicholson

By Andrew J. Nicholson

A translation of the Īśvara Gītā, a parallel textual content to the Bhagavad Gītā that promotes non secular inclusion.

While the Bhagavad Gītā is an stated treasure of global religious literature, few humans be aware of a parallel textual content, the Īśvara Gītā. This lesser-known paintings is additionally devoted to a god, yet for that reason it really is Śiva, instead of Kṛṣṇa, who's depicted because the omniscient writer of the realm. Andrew J. Nicholson’s Lord Śiva’s Song makes this article on hand in English in an available new translation. a piece of either poetry and philosophy, the Īśvara Gītā builds at the insights of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra and foreshadows later advancements in tantric yoga. It bargains with the pluralistic non secular surroundings of early medieval India via an exploration of the connection among the gods Śiva and Viṣṇu. The paintings condemns sectarianism and violence and gives a method for accommodating conflicting non secular claims in its personal day and in our own.

“…an very important paintings … guaranteed to be obtainable to many yogis today.” — San Francisco e-book Review

“This is a superb advent to, and a valid scholarly translation of, a foundational textual content. Andrew J. Nicholson is a main scholar.” — Andrew O. citadel, writer of Jīvanmukti in Transformation: Embodied Liberation in Advaita and Neo-Vedanta

Andrew J. Nicholson is affiliate Professor of Asian and Asian American reports at Stony Brook collage, country collage of recent York. he's the writer of Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and id in Indian highbrow History.

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Dictionary of Indology by Dr. Vishnulok Bihari Srivastava

By Dr. Vishnulok Bihari Srivastava

Dictionary of Indology provides the historical past of Indian Scriptures, Languages, Literature and arts in all of the types, colors and dimensions; no longer graphically yet alphabetically; from the main primitive time to the new previous; via special description of and references to, just about all the books on hand and the authors identified in either Vedic and Laukika Samskrit. It offers quite often with the evidence yet a few serious perception can also be given at any place wanted or necessary.
Such a convenient ebook is the necessity of the time as such a lot folks are unexpected with lots of the stupendous works via highbrow doyens. A familiarity and affection will immediately develop, in order to carry the readers as regards to the richest and widest diversity of illuminating items of chic minds.

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Hinduism in India: Modern and Contemporary Movements by Will Sweetman,Aditya Malik

By Will Sweetman,Aditya Malik

A significant contribution towards the continued debates at the nature and heritage of Hinduism in India

Is Hinduism coherent, or should still or not it's considered as a conglomeration of many specified traditions? What have been (or are) its most vital and vital teachings? while did the assumption of “Hinduism” first come up and what were the results? What have been the results of British rule at the faith and what are the results of constant modernization?

This e-book responds to all such debates surrounding Hinduism within the colonial and modern sessions. It emphasizes on Hinduism because it arose and built within the subcontinent itself—an strategy which allows higher recognition to element and an realizing of the categorical context during which new routine and adjustments have taken place.

 

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