Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Meditation written by Miguel Farias and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 1038 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meditation techniques, including mindfulness, have become popular wellbeing practices and the scientific study of their effects has recently turned 50 years old. But how much do we know about them: what were they developed for and by whom? How similar or different are they, how effective can they be in changing our minds and biology, what are their social and ethical implications? The Oxford Handbook of Meditation is the most comprehensive volume published on meditation, written in accessible language by world-leading experts on the science and history of these techniques. It covers the development of meditation across the world and the varieties of its practices and experiences. It includes approaches from various disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, history, anthropology, and sociology and it explores its potential for therapeutic and social change, as well as unusual or negative effects. Edited by practitioner-researchers, this book is the ultimate guide for all interested in meditation, including teachers, clinicians, therapists, researchers, or anyone who would like to learn more about this topic.
Download or read book Contemplative Studies and Hinduism written by Rita D. Sherma and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-10-05 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is one of the first wide-ranging academic surveys of the major types and categories of Hindu contemplative praxis. It explores diverse spiritual and religious practices within the Hindu traditions and Indic hermeneutical perspectives to understand the intricate culture of meditative communion and contemplation, devotion, spiritual formation, prayer, ritual, and worship. The volume extends and expands the conceptual reach of the fields of Contemplative Studies and Hindu Studies. The chapters in the volume cover themes in Hindu contemplative experience from various texts and traditions including classical Sāṃkhya and Patañjali Yoga, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the role of Sādhana in Advaita Vedānta, Śrīvidyā and the Śrīcakra, the body in Tantra, the semiotics and illocution of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava sādhana, mantra in Mīmāṃsā, Vaiṣṇava liturgy, as well as cross-cultural reflections and interreligious comparative contemplative praxis. The volume presents indigenous vocabulary and frameworks to examine categories and concerns particular to the Hindu contemplative traditions. It traces patterns that cut across Hindu traditions and systems and discusses contrasting methods of different theological/philosophical schools evincing a strong plurality in Hindu religious thought and practice. The volume provides intra-religious comparisons that reveal internal complexity, nuances, and a variety of contemplative states and transformative practices that exist under the rubric of Hindu practices of interiority and reflection. With key insights on forms and functions of the contemplative experience along with their theologies and philosophies, the volume suggests new hermeneutical directions that will advance the field of contemplative studies. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of religious and theological studies, contemplative studies, Hindu studies, consciousness studies, yoga studies, Indian philosophy and religion, sociology of religion, philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and South Asian studies, as well as general readers interested in the topic.
Download or read book Transcendent in America written by Lola Williamson and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yoga, karma, meditation, guru—these terms, once obscure, are now a part of the American lexicon. Combining Hinduism with Western concepts and values, a new hybrid form of religion has developed in the United States over the past century. In Transcendent in America, Lola Williamson traces the history of various Hindu-inspired movements in America, and argues that together they constitute a discrete category of religious practice, a distinct and identifiable form of new religion. Williamson provides an overview of the emergence of these movements through examining exchanges between Indian Hindus and American intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and illuminates how Protestant traditions of inner experience paved the way for Hindu-style movements’ acceptance in the West. Williamson focuses on three movements—Self-Realization Fellowship, Transcendental Meditation, and Siddha Yoga—as representative of the larger of phenomenon of Hindu-inspired meditation movements. She provides a window into the beliefs and practices of followers of these movements by offering concrete examples from their words and experiences that shed light on their world view, lifestyle, and relationship with their gurus. Drawing on scholarly research, numerous interviews, and decades of personal experience with Hindu-style practices, Williamson makes a convincing case that Hindu-inspired meditation movements are distinct from both immigrant Hinduism and other forms of Asian-influenced or “New Age” groups.
Download or read book Meditation Works written by Livia Kohn and published by Three Pine Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meditation is the inward focus of attention in a state of mind where ego-related concerns and critical evaluations are suspended in favor of perceiving a deeper, subtler, and possibly divine flow of consciousness. Usually accompanied by muscle relaxation, it has an overall beneficial and often healing effect. As such, it has made major inroads in Western society, aiding in stress relief, pain management, and various psychiatric conditions. Research in meditation tends to focus on the concrete healing effects of the practice, working either with a single form or using an indeterminate mixture of practices. So far studies work with minimal typologies often poorly defined and tend to neglect historical and cultural aspects. Meditation Works remedies this shortcoming. Based on extensive cultural studies and long years of practice, the author creates a new typology of meditation based on six distinct ways of access to the subconscious. In a special chapter on each type, she then outlines the physiology, worldview, and traditional practice as well as its modern medical adaptations and organizational settings. In each case, she substantiates her presentation with examples from the Daoist, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Providing a thorough theoretical framework combined with a comprehensive, analytical overview, the book greatly advances our understanding of meditation.
Download or read book Living Landscapes written by Christopher Key Chapple and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the role of meditation on the five elements in the practice of Yoga. In Living Landscapes, Christopher Key Chapple looks at the world of ritual as enacted in three faiths of India. He begins with an exploration of the relationship between the body and the world as found in the cosmological cartography of Sāṃkhya philosophy, which highlights the interplay between consciousness (puruṣa) and activity (prakṛti), a process that gives rise to earth, water, fire, air, and space. He then turns to the progressive explication of these five great elements in Buddhism, Jainism, Advaita, Tantra, and Haṭha Yoga, and includes translations from the Vedas and the Purāṇas of Hinduism, the Buddhist and Jain Sūtras, and select animal fables from early Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Chapple also describes his own pilgrimages to the Great Stupa at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado, the five elemental temples (pañcamahābhūta mandir) in south India, and the Jaina cosmology complex in Hastinapur. An appendix with practical instructions that integrate Yoga postures with meditative reflections on the five elements is included. “Chapple has brought together material that informs and educates others into the depth and profundity of what Yoga is and its relevance today. It is a timely work in our recognition of the need for greater reflection, contemplation, awakening, and action for the benefit of all life.” — Ian Whicher, coeditor of Yoga: The Indian Tradition
Download or read book Hindu Meditation written by Crystal Moon and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meditation is both the art and science of becoming at one with yourself, mindful in the present moment, and clearing your mind of clutter and suffering. Meditation is the key to obtaining nirvana. Even if the end of suffering is not your ultimate goal, meditation is a necessary practice to clear your mind of clutter.
Download or read book Meditation from Buddhist Hindu and Taoist Perspectives written by Robert Altobello and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engages readers with its original philosophical and pragmatic analysis of traditional Asian religions, philosophy, meditation practice, and the supreme spiritual ideals associated with the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions. The text boldly bridges the theory/practice distinction. A central underpinning rests on the assumption that meditation practice without theory is groundless and that theory without practice is useless. Identifies and analyzes common elements found across traditions in which the practice of meditation plays a central role in human development, and readers will find a wealth of detailed reflection on the relationship between spiritual growth and meditation practice from the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist perspectives. From publisher description.
Download or read book Indian Philosophy and Meditation written by Rahul Banerjee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India has a rich tradition of meditative practices designed to study the phenomenon of consciousness. From the distant past to the present, India has evolved a unique psychological culture with grand unifying themes and universal modes of meditative practice. This book provides a detailed analysis of classical and modern Indian views on consciousness along with their related meditative methods. It offers a critical analysis of three distinct trends of Indian thought, viz., a dualistic mode of understanding and realizing consciousness in Hindu Sāṃkhya, an interactive mode in early Buddhist abhidhamma, and the evolutionary transformational mode in the teachings of the twentieth-century sage Sri Aurobindo. This book explores the unifying features in Indian first person practices with regard to consciousness and the importance of these applied psychological practices and their associated understanding of our conscious inner lives. The most striking feature of the work is that side by side theoretical exposition of consciousness, it includes a number of worksheets which explain how to use meditation to achieve relaxation as well as cognitive ‘maps’ of the different levels of conscious states and instruction and how one can traverse from one state to another. The final chapter explores Sri Aurobindo who introduced new and decisive Indian spiritual thought and practice to India in the form of Integral Yoga. This innovative book will be of interest to scholars studying Indian philosophy, Indian religion and the emerging field of contemplation studies.
Download or read book How to Do Hinduism Meditation written by Kuriakos and published by . This book was released on 2008-07-02 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, How to do Hinduism Meditation, is a very short to the point book on how to quickly and easily do Hinduism Meditation anytime and anywhere. Hinduism Meditation allows you to quiet the loud thinking conscious mind and access the subconscious mind to bring amazing peace into your life, to solve your life's problems and to get answers about ways to improve your life from the spiritual world and to greatly improve your health! This book makes it so easy to do and requires no experience of any kind and will show you step by step how to quickly go into a Hinduism Meditation. You will be able to get answers about your past, present or future situation in your life concerning money, relationships, health, spirituality and many more things as well. Over 20 years of experience has been accessed in this book to give you the most quick and effective method to do Hinduism Meditation and to see immediate results in your life.
Download or read book Metaphysical Meditations written by Paramhansa Yogananda and published by Crystal Clarity Publishers. This book was released on 2023-01-05 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysical Meditations The reprint of the original 1952 edition By Paramhansa Yogananda Most people want to meditate but do not know how to do so. The purpose of meditation is to connect the little joy of the soul with the vast joy of the Spirit with focused practice. Meditation is not the same as concentration which consists in freeing the attention from objects of distraction and focusing on one thing at a time. Meditation is that special form of concentration in which the attention has been liberated from restlessness, and is focused on the Infinite, to be focused only on God or sacred thoughts and ideas. Meditation consists in certain physical, psychological, and metaphysical processes—by which the static of restlessness can be removed from the body, mind, and soul radios, which can then be tuned in with the Infinite. By calm, continuous, one pointed attention the ego must be kept connected to the Spirit until they both become merged into everlasting bliss. In Metaphysical Meditations Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the best-selling spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, gives some concrete metaphysical methods of meditation, for the student who has already struggled through the mobs of rowdy thoughts and crossed the portals of silence. The instructions will be found in the various sections of the book preceding each type of meditation: prayers or demands addressed to the Divine, affirmations about God, and those spoken to the individual consciousness.
Download or read book PHILOSOPHY OF HINDU SADHANA written by NALINI KANTA BRAHMA and published by PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: None else could have made a better presentation on the practice side of Hindu religion, with its underlining concepts of Hindu faith, than Dr. Nalini Kanta Brahma. His classic work, Philosophy of Hindu Sadhana, is now being relaunched in the Eastern Economy Edition for the benefit of students, researchers, and all those who have an abiding interest in philosophy and religion. The author stresses those characteristics of Hindu religion that bring out its kinship with the higher religious thoughts of the world so that the reader can discern a common fabric of organic unity of higher religions. The text brings to fore the correlation between theory and practice of different Hindu philosophical systems. Sadhana, the instrument to attain perfection as propounded in Hindu Philosophy—being a means to a better end—has been discussed in the text in its various forms as followed by different religious systems of the Hindus. Part I of the book deals with the function and characteristics of Hindu Sadhana in general. Part II elucidates the specific forms of Hindu Sadhana that includes Karma, the path of prescribed actions, Jnana, the path of higher intellect, and Bhakti, the path of devotional worship. The book also deals with Yoga, the form of Sadhana as propounded by Patanjali. Finally, it emphasizes the importance and value of discipline and devotion that are inherent in the good practice of Hindu religion.
Download or read book Meditation and Its Methods written by Swami Vivekananda and published by editionNEXT.com. This book was released on 2015-12-09 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swami Vivekananda's thoughts on this subject are spread throughout his Complete Works, and these have been brought together in this book. In reading these selections the reader comes in touch with a teacher who taught with authority and not merely as a scholar. The book has been divided into two sections: Meditation according to Yoga and Meditation according to Vedanta. For all the seekers of Truth and practitioners of meditation this book is sure to provide flashes of deep insight helping them to reach their goal through meditation.
Download or read book Hindu Buddhist and Daoist Meditation written by Halvor Eifring and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hinduism written by Crystal Moon and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will discuss the history and founding of Hinduism, the basics of the four main beliefs of Hinduism, the gods and goddesses which are associated with these beliefs, and how to practice the beliefs of Hinduism in everyday life.
Download or read book Raja yoga Or Conquering the Internal Nature written by Swami Vivekananda and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Hindu Way of Awakening written by Swami Kriyananda and published by Crystal Clarity Publishers. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hinduism, as it comes across in this book, is a robust, joyful religion, amazingly in step with the most advanced thinking of modern times, in love with life, deeply human as well as humane, delightfully aware of your personal life's needs–or so it seems, for the teaching in this book is no abstraction: It is down-to-earth and pressingly immediate. Swami Kriyananda's inspired, entertaining, energetic writing style make this book delightful reading for anyone interested in spirituality and the deeper meanings of religion. A master of word imagery, he brings order to the seeming chaos of symbols and deities in Hinduism. This book reveals the underlying teachings from which the symbols arise, truths inherent in all religions, and their essential purpose: the direct inner experience of God.
Download or read book Sam dhi written by Stuart Ray Sarbacker and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical and comparative study grounded in close readings of important works, this book explores the dynamics of the theory and practice of yoga in Hindu and Buddhist contexts. Author Stuart Ray Sarbacker explores the fascinating, contrasting perceptions that meditation leads to the attainment of divine, or numinous, power, and to complete escape from worldly existence, or cessation. Sarbacker demonstrates that these two dimensions of spiritual experience have affected the doctrine and cultural significance of yoga from its origins to its contemporary practice. He also integrates sociological and psychological perspectives on religious experience into a larger phenomenological model to address the multifaceted nature of religious experience. Speaking to a broad range of methodological and contextual issues, Samadhi provides numerous insights into the theory and practice of yoga that are relevant to both scholars of religious studies and practitioners of contemporary yoga and meditation traditions.
