Download or read book Of Ascetics and Emperors written by Saralabala Mitra and published by . This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of Ascetics and Emperors: Teachings of an Indian Sage is an English translation of Saralabala Mitra's book, Katha Prasanga (Spiritual Discourses). Here one can find the spiritual discourses of the renowned Indian sage, Balananda Brahmachari. His monastery in India was a place of pilgrimage for innumerable spiritual seekers. Attracted by his presence, people from all walks of life came to him. To each and every one, the great sage gave generously and poured out all the precious wealth that lay in his spiritual treasure chest. Through the ages, India has maintained a tradition of spiritual teachers giving Dharma talks to all who care to listen. Listening to a good teacher can be extremely helpful; however, in the busy world of modern times, it is hard to find such sages and even harder for people to make time for them. This book overcomes the hurdles of time and space by transporting readers to a world where great seers taught the basic tenets of the spiritual path to all seekers. To make the extremely profound, complex, and esoteric ideas of Hinduism accessible to people from all backgrounds, Balananda Brahmachari used a variety of stories, anecdotes, parables, and quotations from real life experiences and the Hindu scriptures. Sometimes the discussions are highly philosophical and sometimes they are delightfully simple. What he says pours forth straight from his heart-the heart of an enlightened one who has practiced and realized what is written in the scriptures. If he could be present, in flesh and blood, before his devotees today and they asked him to say a few words of wisdom to them, here's what he would probably say: "Ulat Jao." This phrase literally means "turn yourself upside down," but the deeper meaning is "turn inwards." This has been the advice of all sages and all religions of all ages; they have all asked seekers to turn their gaze from the outside to the inside, from the mortal to the immortal, from the untrue to the true.
Download or read book Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires written by William R. Pinch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-17 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2006 book is an innovative study of warrior asceticism in India from the 1500s to the present.
Download or read book Crisis of Empire written by Phil Booth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-10-26 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book focuses on the attempts of three seventh-century Palestinian intellectuals--John Moschos, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus the Confessor--to determine the Church's power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. Through their stories, Booth documents nothing less than a profound change in the very nature of the self-perception of a religious society. Although focused on the first half of the seventh century, this book throws bright light both behind itself--on the nature of the role of the holy man in late antiquity--and in front of itself--on the nature of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the middle ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe"--
Download or read book Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great written by Conrad Leyser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-10-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conrad Leyser examines the formation of the Christian ascetic tradition in the western Roman Empire during the period of the barbarian invasions, c.400-600. In an aggressively competitive political context, one of the most articulate claims to power was made, paradoxically, by men who had renounced 'the world', committing themselves to a life of spiritual discipline in the hope of gaining entry to an otherworldly kingdom. Often dismissed as mere fanaticism or open hypocrisy, the language of ascetic authority, Conrad Leyser shows, was both carefully honed and well understood in the late Roman and early medieval Mediterranean. Dr Leyser charts the development of this new moral rhetoric by abbots, teachers, and bishops from the time of Augustine of Hippo to that of St Benedict and Gregory the Great.
Download or read book The Hellenic Origins of Christian Asceticism written by Joseph Ward Swain and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI Philosophical Asceticism In the preceding chapter it was seen how, beginning in the last century before Christ, large numbers of people began to give themselves over to all sorts of ascetic practices; from the opening of tbis century until the end of the pagan world, such practices became ever more popular. The persons who did such things, however, did not do them from strictly religious motives, but rather from ethical ones: the asceticism which has been described was a distinctly ethical asceticism. Two different sorts of asceticism have been found in the Roman Empire, then, one religious and largely oriental, the other ethical, and more distinctly Greek--though it too was influenced by oriental forceT. _ 5ut there was a third sort as well, which must be described before the present study will be complete. In general, the persons whose activities were described in the last chapter were not very philosophic persons; they were not the sort who would think things through and formulate a reasoned exposition of the grounds for their conduct; they were content to invoke a few general conceptions and let it go at that. But at the same time there were other persons, likewise interested in asceticism, who were more deep-thinking. These latter were profoundly influenced by the more popular asceticism which they saw about them, and which was undoubtedly the determining cause of their own, but owing to their character, they could not rest content until they had worked out a rationale of the whole thing. These more philosophic persons therefore formulated a philosophy of asceticism which stated in enduring terms the confusedly 104 i felt aspirations of the popular ascetics of their day. Not only do they serve to clarify this popular...
Download or read book Ascetics and Kings in a Jain Ritual Culture written by Lawrence A. Babb and published by Motilal Banarsidass. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jainism is aside from Buddhism, the only surviving example of India`s ancient non-Vedic religious traditions celebrated for its systematic practice of non-violence and for the rigor of the asceticism it promotes. It sheds light on a little known religious tradition and demonstrates that divine absence.
Download or read book Wandering Begging Monks written by Daniel Folger Caner and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such monks often served as spiritual advisors to urban aristocrats whose patronage gave them considerable authority and independence from episcopal control. This book is the first comprehensive study of this type of Christian poverty and the challenge it posed for episcopal authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity. Focusing on devotional practices, Daniel Caner draws together diverse testimony from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and elsewhere—including the Pseudo-Clementine Letters to Virgins, Augustine's On the Work of Monks, John Chrysostom's homilies, legal codes—to reveal gospel-inspired patterns of ascetic dependency and teaching from the third to the fifth centuries. Throughout, his point of departure is social and cultural history, especially the urban social history of the late Roman empire. He also introduces many charismatic individuals whose struggle to persist against church suppression of their chosen way of imitating Christ was fought with defiant conviction, and the book includes the first annotated English translation of the biography of Alexander Akoimetos (Alexander the Sleepless). Wandering, Begging Monks allows us to understand these fascinating figures of early Christianity in the full context of late Roman society.
Download or read book The Rhetoric of the Pious Empire and the Rhetoric of Flight from the World written by Kyung-mee Jeon and published by Peter Lang D. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines early Christian rhetorical language and its broader religious and cultural contexts. The tension of the dual subjectivity emerging in the asceticism of the heart and the ideological and material aspects of Christian imperialism in the context of the Holy Land and Constantinople takes the reader into new intellectual territory.
Download or read book Ambrose and John Chrysostom written by J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz compares the personalities and the respective careers of two of the greatest of the early Christian Fathers, Ambrose and John Chrysostom. While the statesmanlike Ambrose ended his life as a pillar of the Western establishment, Chrysostom, the outspoken idealist, died in exile. However, their views and ideals were remarakably similar: both bishops were concerned with the social role of the Church, both were determined opponents of what they called the Arian heresy, and each attracted a dedicated following among his urban congregation. This similarity, Liebeschuetz argues, was due not to the influence of one on the other, but was a consequence of their participation in a Christian culture which spanned the divide between the Eastern (later Byzantine) and Western parts of the Roman Empire. The monastic movement figures throughout the book as an important influence on both men and as perhaps the most dynamic development in the Christian culture of the fourth century.
Download or read book Subversive Virtue written by James A. Francis and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much attention has been devoted in recent years to Christian asceticism in Late Antiquity. But Christianity did not introduce asceticism to the ancient world. An underlying theme of this fascinating study of pagan asceticism is that much of the work on Christian &"holy men&" has ignored earlier manifestations of asceticism in Antiquity and the way Roman society confronted it. Accordingly, James Francis turns to the second century, the &"balmy late afternoon of Rome's classical empire,&" when the conflict between asceticism and authority reached a turning point. Francis begins with the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121&–180), who warned in his Meditations against &"display[ing] oneself as a man keen to impress others with a reputation for asceticism or beneficence.&" The Stoic Aurelius saw ascetic self-discipline as a virtue, but one to be exercised in moderation. Like other Roman aristocrats of his day, he perceived practitioners of ostentatious physical asceticism as a threat to prevailing norms and the established order. Prophecy, sorcery, miracle working, charismatic leadership, expressions of social discontent, and advocacy of alternative values regarding wealth, property, marriage, and sexuality were the issues provoking the controversy. If Aurelius defined the acceptable limits of ascetical practice, then the poet Lucian depicted the threat ascetics were perceived to pose to the social status quo through his biting satire. In an eye-opening analysis of Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Francis shows how Roman society reined in its deviant ascetics by &"rehabilitating&" them into pillars of traditional values. Celsus's True Doctrine shows how the views pagans held of their own ascetics influenced their negative view of Christianity. Finally, Francis points out striking parallels between the conflict over pagan asceticism and its Christian counterpart. By treating pagan asceticism seriously in its own right, Francis establishes the context necessary for understanding the great flowering of asceticism in Late Antiquity
Download or read book Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism written by David Brakke and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often assumed that early Christian asceticism drew its devotees completely away from worldly interests into the etherial realms of spirituality. This book, which focuses on the life and thought of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria (AD 328-73) - one of the key figures of the church in his time - shows on the contrary just how deeply political ascetic theology could be. Dr Brakke examines how Athanasius joined with other fourth century bishops in determining to create a unified and dominant church of Egypt in the Roman Empire, and organized both the monks of the desert and female ascetics based in the cities into auxiliaries of the emerging local parishes. He integrated ascetic values into a comprehensive vision of the church as a heavenly commonwealth, made up of people practising diverse versions of a single discipline. This new and illuminating study of the turmoils and vicissitudes of fourth century Christianity also includes an invaluable appendix with the first English translations of many of Athanasius' ascetic and pastoral writings.
Download or read book The Faith of Ascetics and Lay Sm rtas written by Yoshitsugu Sawai and published by Sammlung de Nobili Institut Fur Indologie Der Un Wien. This book was released on 1992 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book St Maximus the Confessor written by St Maximus the Confessor and published by . This book was released on 2023-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: St. Maximus the Confessor (1955) is a collection of theological works by the 1st-century monk St. Maximus, as well as interpretation by Polycarp Sherwood, an American Benedictine scholar from the 20th century. Including both The Ascetic Life and The Four Centuries on Charity by St. Maximus, as well as detailed research into the life and beliefs of the monk by Sherwood, this work includes both source material and commentary. The work begins with Life by Sherwood, a deep exploration into the life and theistic beliefs of St. Maximus. Born in 580 CE, Maximus enjoyed an education that prepared him for imperial service. He fulfilled this goal early in his career, serving as first secretary to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. But he soon withdrew to monastic asceticism at Chrysopolis, seeking a routine of solitude and thought. Throughout his life, he traveled across the Byzantine Empire, including present-day Turkey, Crete, and parts of Africa, clarifying his position on important theological issues and writing his many works. Eventually, he was drawn into one of the great Christian controversies of the day-the nature of Christ's will. Maximus supported the Chalcedonian interpretation, which stated that Christ had both a human and a divine will. This was in contrast to the Monothelite position, accepted as canon at the time, which held that Christ had both a divine and human nature, but only a divine will. For this belief, Maximus was persecuted. Eventually, his tongue was cut out and his right hand cut off, so he could no longer speak or write his "heresy." He was then exiled to modern-day Georgia, where he died after just a few weeks. He was soon after vindicated and his position was upheld by the Third Council of Constantinople just 18 years after his death. It wasn't long before he was venerated as a saint. The next section, Doctrine, is also by Sherwood, and it explores St. Maximus' views on the nature of God as "goodness itself," the nature of man as a composite of body and soul, and on the salvation and deification of man through the works of Christ and asceticism. Next, we reach the works of St. Maximus himself. The first, The Ascetic Life, is a question-and-answer book in which a young brother asks an old wise man about the Christian life and the nature of Christ. In the old man's simple words, "...the purpose of the Lord's becoming man was our salvation." The old man answers the young brother's questions about the nature of Christian love, forsaking attachment to the worldly, and how to devote oneself entirely to God. Finally, the book concludes with The Four Centuries on Charity, also by St. Maximus. This collection of aphorisms is organized into four separate "centuries," or collections of one hundred. Kept short to aid in memorization and providing subjects for prayer, these sayings were presented to a Father Elpidius for his reading and benefit. The sayings range from the simple ("Happy is the man who is able to love all men equally") to the more complex ("Of the passions, it happens that some belong to the irascible, some to the concupiscible part of the soul. But both are moved by means of the senses.") Through study and prayer, St. Maximus hoped that these aphorisms would help the reader to live a Christ-like charity and grow closer to God. A work for study and reflection, this collection of St. Maximus' writings and Polycarp Sherwood's research and interpretation illuminates the beauty of God's love and the peace of a life of charity and forgiveness.
Download or read book Asoka the Buddhist Emperor of India written by Vincent Arthur Smith and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Hellenic Origins of Christian Asceticism written by Joseph Ward Swain and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Emperor Who Never Was written by Supriya Gandhi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of the eldest son of Emperor Shah Jahan, whose death at the hands of his younger brother Aurangzeb changed the course of South Asian history. Dara Shukoh was the eldest son of Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, best known for commissioning the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. Although the Mughals did not practice primogeniture, Dara, a Sufi who studied Hindu thought, was the presumed heir to the throne and prepared himself to be India’s next ruler. In this exquisite narrative biography, the most comprehensive ever written, Supriya Gandhi draws on archival sources to tell the story of the four brothers—Dara, Shuja, Murad, and Aurangzeb—who with their older sister Jahanara Begum clashed during a war of succession. Emerging victorious, Aurangzeb executed his brothers, jailed his father, and became the sixth and last great Mughal. After Aurangzeb’s reign, the Mughal Empire began to disintegrate. Endless battles with rival rulers depleted the royal coffers, until by the end of the seventeenth century Europeans would start gaining a foothold along the edges of the subcontinent. Historians have long wondered whether the Mughal Empire would have crumbled when it did, allowing European traders to seize control of India, if Dara Shukoh had ascended the throne. To many in South Asia, Aurangzeb is the scholastic bigot who imposed a strict form of Islam and alienated his non-Muslim subjects. Dara, by contrast, is mythologized as a poet and mystic. Gandhi’s nuanced biography gives us a more complex and revealing portrait of this Mughal prince than we have ever had.
Download or read book The Final Pagan Generation written by Edward J. Watts and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling history of radical transformation in the fourth-century--when Christianity decimated the practices of traditional pagan religion in the Roman Empire. The Final Pagan Generation recounts the fascinating story of the lives and fortunes of the last Romans born before the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Edward J. Watts traces their experiences of living through the fourth century’s dramatic religious and political changes, when heated confrontations saw the Christian establishment legislate against pagan practices as mobs attacked pagan holy sites and temples. The emperors who issued these laws, the imperial officials charged with implementing them, and the Christian perpetrators of religious violence were almost exclusively young men whose attitudes and actions contrasted markedly with those of the earlier generation, who shared neither their juniors’ interest in creating sharply defined religious identities nor their propensity for violent conflict. Watts examines why the "final pagan generation"—born to the old ways and the old world in which it seemed to everyone that religious practices would continue as they had for the past two thousand years—proved both unable to anticipate the changes that imperially sponsored Christianity produced and unwilling to resist them. A compelling and provocative read, suitable for the general reader as well as students and scholars of the ancient world.
