Download or read book Religious and Non Religious Perspectives on Happiness and Wellbeing written by Sharada Sugirtharajah and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the theme of happiness and well-being from religious, spiritual, philosophical, psychological, humanistic, and health perspectives. Taking a non-binary approach, it considers how happiness in particular has been understood and appropriated in religious and non-religious strands of thought. The chapters offer incisive insight from a variety of perspectives, including humanism, atheism and major religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. Together they demonstrate that although worldviews might vary substantially, there are concurrences across religious and non-religious perspectives on happiness that provide a common ground for further cross-cultural and interreligious exploration. What the book makes clear is that happiness is not a static or monolithic category. It is an ongoing process of being and becoming, striving and seeking, living ethically and meaningfully, as well as arriving at a tranquil state of being. This multifaceted volume makes a fresh contribution to the contemporary study of happiness and is valuable reading for scholars and students from religious studies and theology, including those interested in interreligious dialogue and the psychology of religion, as well as positive psychology.
Download or read book Religion s Relationship to Happiness Civic Engagement and Health Around the World written by Dalia Fahmy and published by . This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book John Hick s Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective written by Sharada Sugirtharajah and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains fresh scholarly contributions to mark the birth centenary of John Hick, the internationally well-known philosopher of religion, whose works continue to have significant global relevance in today’s religiously diverse and conflict-ridden world. His writings have reset the parameters of religious pluralism. Up till now, Hick’s religious pluralism has been mainly seen in relation to the Western context where Christianity is the predominant religion. This volume includes both Western and non-Western engagement with his thinking in contexts such as Japan, China, Korea, Nigeria, and India, where Christianity is a minority religion with little political power. Its distinctiveness lies in widening the debate on religious pluralism by bringing Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis into a constructive cross-cultural and interreligious conversation with scholars of Hinduism, Jainism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and African traditional religions. In doing so, this collection examines how Hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism has been received, appropriated and appraised by these scholars. It has been appreciated and critiqued in equal measure, and continues to impact on current thinking on religious pluralism. This volume makes a significant contribution to the debate initiated by Hick.
Download or read book Religious and Spiritual Practices in India written by Kamlesh Singh and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the positive psychological aspects of religion and spirituality in the Indian context. It discusses the concepts and practices of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, and Sikhism and their impact on overall well-being. As the global enthusiasm for Indian spirituality grows, this book brings together scholars to share their perspectives and reflections on various religious aspects. The chapters offer readers a psychological "capsule" of mental health, well-being, compassion, kindness, character strength, mind-body relationship, and mindfulness, providing practical strategies for a better quality of life. Furthermore, this book offers insights into the different perspectives of happiness and well-being measured across diverse demographics. It also provides a qualitative conceptualization of happiness among older people, reflections on positive aging, and highlights the facilitators and inhibitors of happiness. With its comprehensive coverage and multidisciplinary approach, this book serves as a valuable reference for postgraduate and doctoral students of Psychology, as well as a treasure trove in the libraries for researchers and faculties associated with spiritual psychology, positive psychology, religious studies, comparative literature, mental health professionals, academicians, and anyone interested in allied health fields.
Download or read book The Practices of Happiness written by Ian Steedman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. There is growing evidence that rising levels of prosperity in Western economies since 1945 have not been matched by greater incidences of reported well-being and happiness. Indeed, material affluence is often accompanied instead by greater social and individual distress. A growing literature within the humanities and social sciences is increasingly concerned to chart not only the underlying trends in recorded levels of happiness, but to consider what factors, if any, contribute to positive and sustainable experiences of well-being and quality of life. Increasingly, such research is focusing on the importance of values and beliefs in human satisfaction or quality of life; but the specific contribution of religion to these trends is relatively under-examined. This unique collection of essays seeks to rectify that omission, by identifying the nature and role of the religious contribution to wellbeing. A unique collection of nineteen leading scholars from the field of economics, psychology, public theology and social policy have been brought together in this volume to explore the religious contribution to the debate about happiness and well-being. These essays explore the religious dimensions to a number of key features of well-being, including marriage, crime and rehabilitation, work, inequality, mental health, environment, participation, institutional theory, business and trade. They engage particularly closely with current trends in economics in identifying alternative models of economic growth which focus on its qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions. This unique volume brings to public notice the nature and role of religion’s contribution to wellbeing, including new ways of measurement and evaluation. As such, it represents a valuable and unprecedented resource for the development of a broad-based religious contribution to the field. It will be of particular relevance for those who are concerned about the continuing debate about personal and societal well-being, as well as those who are interested in the continuing significance of religion for the future of public policy.
Download or read book How God Works written by David DeSteno and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, pioneering research psychologist David DeSteno shows why religious practices and rituals are so beneficial to those who follow them—and to anyone, regardless of their faith (or lack thereof). Scientists are beginning to discover what believers have known for a long time: the rewards that a religious life can provide. For millennia, people have turned to priests, rabbis, imams, shamans, and others to help them deal with issues of grief and loss, birth and death, morality and meaning. In this absorbing work, DeSteno reveals how numerous religious practices from around the world improve emotional and physical well-being. With empathy and rigor, DeSteno chronicles religious rites and traditions from cradle to grave. He explains how the Japanese rituals surrounding childbirth help strengthen parental bonds with children. He describes how the Apache Sunrise Ceremony makes teenage girls better able to face the rigors of womanhood. He shows how Buddhist meditation reduces hostility and increases compassion. He demonstrates how the Jewish practice of sitting shiva comforts the bereaved. And much more. DeSteno details how belief itself enhances physical and mental health. But you don’t need to be religious to benefit from the trove of wisdom that religion has to offer. Many items in religion’s “toolbox” can help the body and mind whether or not one believes. How God Works offers advice on how to incorporate many of these practices to help all of us live more meaningful, successful, and satisfying lives.
Download or read book Handbook of Positive Psychology Religion and Spirituality written by Edward B. Davis and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook aims to bridge the gap between the fields of positive psychology and the psychology of religion and spirituality. It is the authoritative guide to the intersections among religion, spirituality, and positive psychology and includes the following sections: (1) historical and theoretical considerations, (2) methodological considerations, (3) cultural considerations, (4) developmental considerations, (5) empirical research on happiness and well-being in relation to religion and spirituality, (6) empirical research on character strengths and virtues in relation to religion and spirituality, (7) clinical and applied considerations, and (8) field unification and advancement. Leading positive psychologists and psychologists of religion/spirituality have coauthored the chapters, drawing on expertise from their respective fields. The handbook is useful for social and clinical scientists, practitioners in helping professions, practitioners in religious and spiritual fields, and students of psychology and religion/spirituality. This is an open access book.
Download or read book Religion and Spirituality Across Cultures written by Chu Kim-Prieto and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an integrated review and critical analysis of the recent research in the positive psychology of religion, with focus on the positive psychology of religion across different cultures and religions. The book provides a review of the literature on different contributions of religion and spirituality to positive functioning and well-being and reviews religions across the world, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Native American religions, and Hinduism. It fills a unique place in the market’s increasing interest and demand in the psychology of religion, as well as positive psychology. While the target audience is researchers, scholars, and students in psychology, cross-cultural studies, religious studies, and social sciences, it will be useful for anyone interested in better understanding the contributions of religion and culture in subjective well-being.
Download or read book Religion and Health written by Yōichi Chida and published by Novinka Books. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, religion and medicine have been strongly connected. In more recent decades, various academics can be viewed as part of a larger movement to investigate the effects of religion on health in the field of complementary and alternative medicine. Such research is ongoing, but to date, the mechanisms underlying the association between religion and health remain unclear. A major reason for the lack of finding any mechanisms may be that religion and health literature provides no unified theoretical or theological basis from which to identify. Thus, to address this gap, Chapter 1 of this book briefly introduces the doctrine of "Happy Science", a religious movement founded by Master Ryuho Okawa in 1986 that has since grown into one of the most influential religious organisations in Japan, with a member base from more than 100 countries worldwide. As you will see in Chapter 1, Happy Science theory has embraced the basic teachings of the major religions (e.g., Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism). Moreover, this theory provides concrete tenets on the spiritual views of life, the purpose of living in this world, the structure of our mind and soul, and the relationships between mind and body. In Chapter 2, the Happy Science theory on diseases suggests that 70% or 80% of diseases are caused almost exclusively by an individual's state of mind. Master Okawa has detailed how almost all modern diseases are caused by three factors -- what we eat, lack of exercise, and stress -- which indicates that psychological factors have a much stronger impact on the etiology and prognosis of illnesses than any physical, environmental or genetic factors per se. Chapter 3 explains the treatment theories and methods based on the basic tenets of Happy Science. In particular, since the Happy Science doctrine regards medical care as love, these treatment theories and methods are systematically introduced according to the stages of love: fundamental love (having spiritual views on life, smiling, and showing gratitude), spiritually nurturing love (having a healthy lifestyle, developing problem-solving skills, and making strategic withdrawals or adhering to Optimalism), forgiving love (detaching from greed, forgiving, and developing altruism), and love incarnate (using positive willpower, faith and prayer, meditation, and collapse of karma). In addition, throughout this book, the author has provided case reports that make it easier to imagine how those with severe disorders can be miraculously cured through Happy Science Medicine.
Download or read book God Is Alive and Well written by Frank Newport and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes America's religious beliefs, practices, and prejudices to assess patterns of beliefs as they relate to life status factors, predicting that religion will become increasingly more important in the U.S. in future years.
Download or read book Beyond Religion written by Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beyond Religion" is a stirring call to move beyond religion for the guidance to improve human life on individual, community, and global levels--including a guided meditation practice for cultivating key human values.
Download or read book Emotional Well Being in Educational Policy and Practice written by Kathryn Ecclestone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schools in numerous countries around the world have become key sites for interventions designed to enhance the emotional well-being of children and young people, offering new forms of pedagogy and curriculum knowledge informed in ad hoc and eclectic ways by various strands of psychology, counselling and therapy.Responding to C. Wright Mills famous injunction for a sociological imagination, this unique inter-disciplinary collection of papers explores ideologies and imperatives that frame contemporary education policy and practice around emotional well-being, ideas and assumptions about the state of childhood today, and the changing nature of the curriculum subject and associated forms of knowledge. In bringing together British and American advocates of behavioural interventions in social and emotional learning alongside critics who draw on historical, philosophical and sociological perspectives, it highlights new and important debates for policy makers, the designers, implementers and evaluators of interventions and those who participate in them.This book was originally published as a special issue of Research Papers in Education.
Download or read book What Is the Good Life written by Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer Drew Collins and published by . This book was released on 2023-09-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have more options and choices to make about how we want to live than ever before. But where do we turn for guidance as we choose how to live? Are we so focused on choosing what we want for our lives that we have forgotten to ask ourselves what is a good life and what is worth wanting? In What is the Good Life?: Perspectives from Religion, Philosophy, and Psychology, leading scholar-practitioners from nine different traditions--religious and secular--each offer an account of the good life. These accounts explore the distinct visions construed by their respective traditions from within a shared threefold heuristic schema of agency, circumstance, and affect. Presented in this way, the existential concern and normative force of these traditions are brought to the fore, inviting readers to explore the commonality of this central question across a variety of traditions alongside their unique and distinct responses. What is the Good Life? offers readers a conceptual guide for navigating our pluralistic world and specific examples of the visions of the good life they might encounter. Although these traditions provide decidedly different accounts of the good life, they are united in their capacity to make claims about the world and our place in it--normative claims, with ineradicable existential force--with which we might grapple, provided we are given the opportunity. And it is the invitation to take up such first-person grappling that this book provides.
Download or read book Polling Matters written by Frank Newport and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2004-07-30 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Gallup Organization-the most respected source on the subject-comes a fascinating look at the importance of measuring public opinion in modern society. For years, public-opinion polls have been a valuable tool for gauging the positions of American citizens on a wide variety of topics. Polling applies scientific principles to understanding and anticipating the insights, emotions, and attitudes of society. Now in POLLING MATTERS: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People, The Gallup Organization reveals: What polls really are and how they are conducted Why the information polls provide is so vitally important to modern society today How this valuable information can be used more effectively and more...
Download or read book Spirituality and Wellbeing written by Bettina E. Schmidt and published by Equinox Publishing (Indonesia). This book was released on 2020 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how the relationship between wellbeing and spirituality is studied by a range of disciplines including religious studies, theology, anthropology, psychology and history while also linking the debate to various religious traditions including Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Afro-Brazilian religion and even paranormal experiences.
Download or read book Faith from a Positive Psychology Perspective written by Cindy Miller-Perrin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights religious faith from a positive psychology perspective, examining the relationship between religious faith and optimal psychological functioning. It takes a perspective of religious diversity that incorporates international and cross-cultural work. The empirical literature on the role of faith and cognition, faith and emotion, and faith and behaviour is addressed including how these topics relate to individuals’ mental health, well-being, strength, and resilience. Information on how these faith concepts are relevant to the broader context of relational functioning in families, friendships, and communities is also incorporated. Psychologists have traditionally focused on the treatment of mental illness from a perspective of repairing damaged habits, damaged drives, damaged childhoods, and damaged brains. In recent years, however, many psychological researchers and practitioners have attempted to re-focus the field away from the study of human weakness and damage toward the promotion of a positive psychology of well-being among individuals, families, and communities. One domain within the field of positive psychology is the study of religious faith as a human strength that has the potential to enhance individuals’ optimal existence and well-being.
Download or read book A Social Cognition Perspective of the Psychology of Religion written by Luke Galen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how psychological mechanisms produce intuitions, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences that are misattributed as being unique outcomes of religious or spiritual influences. Written from a social psychology perspective, this book proposes that religious and spiritual content represent one possible interpretation of the output of processes that also produce and govern nonreligious content. In looking at why people believe in God, and why belief in God is often linked with a range of positive outcomes such as prosociality, morality, health, and happiness, the author uses a critical lens that challenges past theories of religion's functions and adds new perspectives into a discipline that is often limited by an exclusive focus on evolutionary theory. This book features several cross-cutting themes-including “dual process” theory and an exploration of how various social cognition mechanisms and biases can channel or shape religious content-and provides a continuous through-line linking the underlying building blocks of thought, as studied in the cognitive sciences of religion (CSR) to specific religious and spiritual concepts using a social cognition lens.
