Download or read book Interpreting Ramakrishna written by Swami Tyagananda and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Kali s Child written by Jeffrey J. Kripal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal explores the life and teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a 19th-century Bengali saint who played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism. The work is now marked by both critical acclaim and cross-cultural controversy. In a substantial new Preface to this second edition, Kripal answers his critics and addresses the controversy.
Download or read book Interpretating Ramakrishna written by Tyagananda Pravrajika Swami and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thibetan medicine is about 2500 years old. And some of its elements are even older, about 5000 years or more. The author had a cancer treatment with serious and chronic side effects, and turned to alternative medicine for help.
Download or read book Ramakrishna Miscellany A Comparative Study written by Narasingha P. Sil and published by Ústav orientalistiky SAV. This book was released on 2017-12-31 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṁsa’s (1836-86) reputation as a Tāntrika in view of his being a priest of the Kālī temple at the village of Dakshineshvar in the northern suburb of Calcutta, this study posits that his piety had deep roots in Bengal Vaiṣṇavism (cult of Viṣṇu) at large and in the devotional tradition of his family. His family deity Lord Raghuvῑra (Lord Rāma) was considered as an incarnation of the Vedic-Purāṇic God Viṣṇu and thus a Vaiṣṇava deity by extension. This counter thesis on the saint’s religious identity is supported by an analysis of his emphasis on bhakti [devotion] for and biśvās [faith] in God. My analysis is predicated on a comparison of Rāmakṛṣṇa with two religious reformers of the sixteenth century: the Bengali saint Śrīcaitanya (1486-1533), founder of bhakti movement in Bengal and the German monk Martin Luther (1483-1546), the intellectual child of the twin movements of Humanism and Devotio Moderna, and the progenitor of the so-called Protestant movement that foregrounded fiducia [faith] as the highway to divine grace. Rāmakṛṣṇa’s imitation of Caitanyite Vaiṣṇavism, and thus his reliance on devotion and faith appear almost similar to Luther’s reliance on a merciful and yet a just God through fides [turst or biśvās]. Such a cross-cultural comparative study has not been attempted by any other scholar. Rāmakṛṣṇa’s Vaiṣṇava orientation also helps us understand his sexuality. The currently influential construction of a homoerotic Tāntrika Rāmakṛṣṇa is countered by exploring the fundamental convergence between the Hindu concept of prema and the Christian concept of agape or caritas—both standing for love for, as well as love of, God. Admittedly, there are marked differences among the three religious personalities, particularly between Rāmakṛṣṇa and Luther. Both are radically different personalities in respect of their cultural background, social outlook, and theological consciousness, especially in their understanding of human-divine relationship. Luther’s Judeo-Christian conception of God as an absolutely sovereign and yet a merciful deity is markedly different from Rāmakṛṣṇa’s Vaiṣṇavic image of God as a loving and playful companion of the devotee. Yet their spiritual experiences in their quest for the divine show a similar reliance on faith and devotion. I also discuss the interface between sexual and spiritual consciousness in Rāmakṛṣṅa’s life and teachings, especially because of his Tāntrika identity in the West. The understanding of Tantra as an esoteric cult indulging in clandestine carnal orgies has dovetailed into the saint’s imagined “unconscious” homoerotic desires and behaviors. This comparative exercise thus seeks to achieve the author’s dual objective of foregrounding Rāmakṛṣṇa’s innate Vaiṣṇavic consciousness that is close to Luther’s Protestant faith and to deconstruct the former’s homoerotic profile by interpreting his sexuality in the context of his culture and creed. Needless to mention, I use vernacular sources on Rāmakṣṇa throughout with my own translation. This has the unique advantage of getting at the facts as recorded by the actors personally or perceived and experienced by the contemporaries and eyewitnesses directly.
Download or read book Uniqueness of the Ramakrishna Incarnation and Other Essays written by Bhuteshananda Swami and published by Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math). This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the long tenure of his spiritual ministry, Swami Bhuteshananda, the 12th President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, delivered discourses at various places both in India and abroad in response to the earnest requests of spiritual seekers. Published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, this book is a compilation of forty-one of these discourses classified under the following major headings: - Sri Ramakrishna - Vedanta and Spiritual Life - Religion - Miscellaneous - Reminiscences
Download or read book Approaching Ramakrishna written by Prabuddha Bharata Compilation and published by Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math). This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sri Ramakrishna is an ocean in whose heart the universe is nestled like an island. Awed by the expanse of infinite depth around, we in the universe constantly try to perceive this personality in our own way. Our perception is unique every time as is the knowledge we obtain thereby. Approaching Ramakrishna becomes our prayer to the supreme reality. Published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India in commemoration of the 175th Birth Anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna.
Download or read book Jnana Yoga written by Ramakrishna Puligandla and published by Jain Publishing Company. This book was released on 2007-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian philosophy reflects some of the earliest thought-traditions in human history. The Indian thinkers of old aimed their pragmatic philosophies at not just the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity or pursuit of theoretical truths but actually the assimilation of intellectually discerned and established truths into one's own personality for a life of freedom and enlightenment. This is true of modern Indian philosophers, like Sri Aurobindo and Dr. Radhakrishnan, as well. Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy reflects the vastness and richness of this philosophic tradition in a comprehensive yet compact presentation that lays bare the essentials of Indian philosophy. Professor Puligandla takes special care to emphasize the methods, temper and goals of Indian philosophy even while delving into the specificities. All the major schools of the philosophic tradition are objectively and thoroughly analyzed.
Download or read book Goddess Kali God Thoughts Sri Sri Ramakrishna and A Few Slices of Sri Sri Ramakrishna s Soul Introducing SoulOlogy written by Dr. Siddhartha Ganguli and published by Allied Publishers. This book was released on 2024-05-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hinduism is a polytheistic religion. For the Hindus, Goddess Kali is the only austere, down-to-earth deity who believes in absolute simplicity and openness. She does not hide her body; she is naked with her private parts covered by a garland of severed hands of demons slain by her. Her mind is overt as she sticks out her tongue representing her thirst for the blood of evil people whom she is determined to overpower and also her feeling of shame. Her soul yearns for pure and authentic love. She is unlike other Hindu goddesses who are opulently dressed and majestically ornamented. Kali’s child, God incarnate Sri Sri Ramakrishna, like his mother goddess is casual not only about his dress but also about his worshipping habits. This book looks at Ramakrishna, his method of devotion, his yearning for the goddess, and his value system and entire philosophy. It analyses the Hindu Saint’s soul and its slices that he had shared and still continues to share, even today—long after he left this planet, with those who understand him thoroughly and are meant to propagate his message. The author’s method of analysis and treatment of the subject are unique as no other Kali or Ramakrishna scholar had used for their probes earlier.
Download or read book Posthumous Editing of a Great Master s Work written by Graham M. Schweig and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-03-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Posthumous Editing of a Great Master's Work: Special Focus on the Writings of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda examines how a leading figure's hallowed written and published works, which remain so important to the religious community, should be editorially treated following the leader's departure from this world. The volume addresses the theological, ethical, social, and legal implications of posthumous editing—and even improving—a great master's works. This book focuses on the extensive posthumous editing of the works of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, the original world-teacher of Krishna bhakti of the twentieth century. After Swami Prabhupāda departed from this world, some of his disciples, without the expressed approval of the author, attempted to improve on his authorized published work, which resulted in the publication of a continuing series of inauthentic altered editions. This extreme editing of Swami Prabhupāda's works precipitated the scholarly research and inquiry into the posthumous editing of a great master's work that forms the basis of this book.
Download or read book Sri Ramakrishna Life and Teachings written by Swami Tapasyananda and published by Sri Ramakrishna Math. This book was released on 2021-09-04 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a short life and select teachings of modern Indian prophet Sri Ramakrishna whose life is a story of religion in practice that enables us to see God face to face. His life was one of constant communion with the divine. The author has presented in an original and striking way a biographical narrative of Sri Ramakrishna, interspersing it with detailed analysis of his deep spiritual states. The book, therefore, serves as an excellent interpretation of the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, for both devotees and scholars.
Download or read book Who Owns Religion written by Laurie L. Patton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who Owns Religion? focuses on a period—the late 1980s through the 1990s—when scholars of religion were accused of scandalizing or denigrating the very communities they had imagined themselves honoring through their work. While controversies involving scholarly claims about religion are nothing new, this period saw an increase in vitriol that remains with us today. Authors of seemingly arcane studies on subjects like the origins of the idea of Mother Earth or the sexual dynamics of mysticism have been targets of hate mail and book-banning campaigns. As a result, scholars of religion have struggled to describe their own work to their various publics, and even to themselves. Taking the reader through several compelling case studies, Patton identifies two trends of the ’80s and ’90s that fueled that rise: the growth of multicultural identity politics, which enabled a form of volatile public debate she terms “eruptive public space,” and the advent of the internet, which offered new ways for religious groups to read scholarship and respond publicly. These controversies, she shows, were also fundamentally about something new: the very rights of secular, Western scholarship to interpret religions at all. Patton’s book holds out hope that scholars can find a space for their work between the university and the communities they study. Scholars of religion, she argues, have multiple masters and must move between them while writing histories and speaking about realities that not everyone may be interested in hearing.
Download or read book Eurasian Philosophy and Quantum Metaphysics written by Juan Valdez and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 918 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eurasian Philosophy and Quantum Metaphysics (Theology Reconsidered) By: Juan Valdez The science of our modern age is able to neither address nor solve our current global problems. Author Juan Valdez believes we should study humanity’s ancient wisdom and philosophy texts to develop a new intellectual paradigm that can respond and support our current needs. Eurasian Philosophy and Quantum Metaphysics (Theology Reconsidered) is an in-depth study of the origins and meanings of ancient philosophies before they were fractured into mythology and religions and attacked by modern science. Beginning with creation mythology in Eurasia through the development of philosophical thought, to the Scientific Revolution to our own modern Quantum Era, the progression – and abandonment – of ancient wisdom is carefully studied. Valdez reviews and analyzes the ancient texts themselves to understand what they truly say and not what later historians have said about them. The Indo-Aryan Vedas, the Torah, Rene Descartes’ Discourse on the Method and Principles of Philosophy, Neils Bohr’s Atomic Theory, and more, are all respectfully and critically assessed. As enlightened as we may consider ourselves, Valdez calls attention to how limited modern thought has become. By reviewing past wisdom, we can not only rediscover the roots of modern thought but place Wisdom itself at the top of intellectual pursuits. Eurasian Philosophy and Quantum Metaphysics (Theology Reconsidered) is a rich and nuanced study on how humanity has thought of itself.
Download or read book Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality written by Ayon Maharaj and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.
Download or read book Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality written by Ayon Maharaj and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.
Download or read book Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavad Gita written by Robert Neil Minor and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of careful, objective, historically sensitive studies of modern commentators on the Bhagavadgita, one of the basic scriptures of Hinduism, and one which has been widely read in the modern West. Experts on modern Indian religious thought show how Ghandi, Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, Bhaktivedanta, Aurobindo, Tilak, Bhave, Sivananda, the Theosophists, and Bhankim read, used and interpreted the Gita. Collectively, the essays display the different backgrounds and orientations of the major Indian thinkers of our time. An Introduction and a Conclusion provide a perspective on the thinkers and identify common themes which are part of modern emphases.
Download or read book Beacons of Dharma written by Christopher Patrick Miller and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today’s globalized society faces some of humanity’s most unprecedented social and environmental challenges. Presenting new and insightful approaches to a range of these challenges, the timely volume before you draws upon individual cases of exemplary leadership from the world’s Dharma traditions—Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism. The volume's authors refer to such exemplary leaders as “beacons of Dharma,” highlighting the ways in which each figure, via their inspirational life work, provide us with illuminating perspectives as we continue to confront cases of grave injustice and needless suffering in the world. Taking on difficult contemporary issues such as climate change, racial and gender inequality, industrial agriculture and animal rights, fair access to healthcare and education, and other such pressing concerns, Beacons of Dharma offers a promising and much needed contribution to our global remedial discussions. Seeking to help solve and alleviate such social and environmental issues, each of the chapters in the volume invites contemplation, inspires action, and offers a freshly invigorating source of hope.
Download or read book Encountering Kali written by Rachel Fell McDermott and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 2005 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encountering Kali explores one of the most ramarkable divinities the world has seen. The Hindu goddess Kali is simultaneously understood as a blood thirsty warrior a deity of ritual possession a tantric sexual partner and an all loving compassionate mothe. Popular and scholarly interest in her has been on the rise in the west in recent years. Responding to this phenomenon McDermott and Kripal`s volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting Kali in both her indigenous south Asian settings and her more recent Western incarnation. Through the shifting lenses of scriptural history temple architecture political reflection and the goddess`s recent guises on the Internet the contributors pose questions that illuminate our understanding of Kali while addressing the problems and promises inherent in every act of cross cultural interpretation.
