Download or read book Self Surrender prapatti to God in Shrivaishnavism written by Srilata Raman, 1962- and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filling the most glaring gap in Shrivaishnava scholarship, this book deals with the history of interpretation of a theological concept of self-surrender-prapatti in late twelfth and thirteenth century religious texts of the Shrivaishnava community of South India. This original study shows that medieval sectarian formation in its theological dimension is a fluid and ambivalent enterprise, where conflict and differentiation are presaged on ""sharing"", whether of a common canon, saint or rituals or two languages (Tamil and Sanskrit), or of a ""meta-social"" arena such as the temple.

Download or read book Hindus written by Julius Lipner and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hinduism has been a major religious faith for well over 3000 years, and Hindus today account for over 600 million people. Lipner's book is a highly readable study of its evolution, its multidimensional nature, and influence.

Download or read book Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions written by Brian Black and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dialogue between characters is an important feature of South Asian religious literature: entire narratives are often presented as a dialogue between two or more individuals, or the narrative or discourse is presented as a series of embedded conversations from different times and places. Including some of the most established scholars of South Asian religious texts, this book examines the use of dialogue in early South Asian texts with an interdisciplinary approach that crosses traditional boundaries between religious traditions. The contributors shed new light on the cultural ideas and practices within religious traditions, as well as presenting an understanding of a range of dynamics - from hostile and competitive to engaged and collaborative. This book is the first to explore the literary dimensions of dialogue in South Asian religious sources, helping to reframe the study of other literary traditions around the world.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies written by Payne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 1273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since the earliest encounters between tantric traditions and Western scholars, tantra has posed a challenge. Representation of tantra has tended to emphasize the antinomian, decadent aspects, which, as attention-grabbing as they were for Western audiences, hampered the study of the field. The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies is intended to overcome these obstacles, facilitating collaboration between scholars working on different forms of tantra, and in different disciplines. With more than forty chapters and a global pool of contributors, the Handbook aims to be the definitive reference work in the field, exploring core topics such as action, transformation, embodiment, art, language, and social movements. The first chapter provides an overview of major issues confronting the field today, including debates regarding the definition and category of "tantra," historical origins and dating, and recent developments in gender studies and tantra, ethnography and "lived tantra," and cognitive approaches to the study of tantra. Using a topical framework, the opening section explores the concept of action, one of the most prominent features of tantra, which includes performing rituals, practicing meditation, chanting, embarking on a pilgrimage, or reenacting moments from a sacred text. From there, the sections cover broad topics such as transformation (e.g., soteriology and healing), gender and embodiment, "extraordinary" beings (such as deities and saints), art and visual expressions, language and literature, social organizations, and the history and historiography of tantra. Keywords tantric studies, tantra, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, ritual, soteriology, meditation, embodiment, yoga"--

Download or read book Hinduism and Christianity written by Panikkar, Raimon and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest volume in the complete works of the internationally renowned philosopher of religion Raimon Panikkar.

Download or read book Catholic Engagement with World Religions written by Karl Josef Becker and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 1052 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-Five Element International Scholars show how roman catholic theology has grappled with religious pluralism. Catholic Engagement with World Religions outlines, clarifies, and defends official Roman Catholic teaching on the relationship between Christianity and other religious traditions in light of the Catholic belief that "We must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery".(Gaudium et Spes, 22) Part I studies the history of these issues while Part II examines their theological framing. Part III addresses Christianity and other religions since Vatican U. Part IV deals specifically with Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Islam as these religions see themselves in relation to Christianity. A final chapter by Bishop Michael Fitzgerald offers a theological reflection on the foundations of interreligious dialogue today. For scholars, students, and practitioners of interreligious encounter, Catholic Engagement with World Religions is necessary and absorbing reading. Karl J. Becker, S.J., and Ilaria Morali teach at the Gregorian University in Rome.

Download or read book Hinduism written by Panikkar, Raimon and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Prophet s Ascension written by Christiane J. Gruber and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tales of the mi'raj describe the prophet Muhammad's journey through the heavens, his encounters with prophets and angels, and his visit to heaven and hell. The tales are among Islam's most popular, appearing in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature, and in later adaptations throughout the Muslim world. Often serving as narratives designed to promote the worldview of particular Muslim groups, the tales were also a means for communities to construct rules of normative behavior and ritual practices, and were used to assert the superiority of Islam over other religions. The essays in this collection discuss the formation of this narrative, the mi'raj as a missionary text, its various adaptations, its application to esoteric thought, and its use in performance and ritual. -- Book jacket.

Download or read book The Tantric Body written by Gavin Flood and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-10-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tantra is the Hindu-based religion which links ecstatic sexual practice with meditation and direct spiritual experience. It originated in India some 1200 years ago, when the great sacred erotic temples were built. In the West it is best known for its inspiration of tantric yoga, and its associated ritualistic forms of sex. But is tantra just about esoteric sex or does it amount to something more? This lively and original book contributes to a more complete understanding of tantra's mysteries. Without minimising its sexual dimensions, Gavid Flood argues that within tantra the body is more than just a sexual entity. It is a vehicle for the spirituality that is fundamental to people's minds. "The Tantric Body" makes an important and fascinating contribution to the study of South Asian religion, and will have strong appeal to students of South Asian cultures and societies as well as to those of comparative philosophy.

Download or read book Hinduism and Environmental Ethics written by Christopher G. Framarin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-24 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the standard arguments for and against the claim that certain Hindu texts and traditions attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants are unconvincing. It presents careful, extensive, and original interpretations of passages from the Manusmrti (law), the Mahābhārata (literature), and the Yogasūtra (philosophy), and argues that these texts attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants for at least three reasons: they are sentient, they are alive, and they possess a range of other relevant attributes and abilities. This book is of interest to scholars of Hinduism and the environment, religion and the environment, Hindu and/or Buddhist philosophy more broadly, and environmental ethics.

Download or read book The Origins of Yoga and Tantra written by Geoffrey Samuel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-27 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yoga, tantra and other forms of Asian meditation are practised in modernized forms throughout the world today, but most introductions to Hinduism or Buddhism tell only part of the story of how they developed. This book is an interpretation of the history of Indic religions up to around 1200 CE, with particular focus on the development of yogic and tantric traditions. It assesses how much we really know about this period, and asks what sense we can make of the evolution of yogic and tantric practices, which were to become such central and important features of the Indic religious scene. Its originality lies in seeking to understand these traditions in terms of the total social and religious context of South Asian society during this period, including the religious practices of the general population with their close engagement with family, gender, economic life and other pragmatic concerns.

Download or read book THE FUNDAMENTALS OF RELIGION written by NALINI KANTA BRAHMA and published by PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.. This book was released on 2007-09-22 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We find today in different parts of the world fierce feuds and strifes. Religious fanaticism and fundamentalism contribute in a substantial way to such strifes and conflicts among people. We also find a large number of people are steeped in superstitions, irrational beliefs, and indulge in mere ritualism. Where true religion prevails, such fanaticism and fundamentalism find no place. A deep comparative study of world religions enables one to drive away all superstitions and fanaticism. For religion, in the true sense, is an abiding faith in the values of life, and God is the embodiment of all values. Religious experience accordingly implies the realisation of the Absolute. What Prof. Nalini Kanta Brahma tries to do in this well-researched book, written in a clear and straightforward style, is to demonstrate the nobility and positive aspects of each religion he has discussed. He classifies religion into three categories: Impersonal—under which he brings in Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism; Personal—in this category he describes Christianity, Islam and Vaishnavism; and Supra-personal—under which he analyzes Vedantism, Sufism, Taoism and the Johanine Gospel (the Gospel of St. John, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ). The fundamentals of each religion are discussed with great clarity and genuine appreciation. Knowing very well there are a large number of opponents to religion, the author vigorously defends the religious view. He successfully meets the various objections of Freud, Marx and Bertrand Russel, among others. For, he says, agnosticism, atheism and scepticism are based on a narrow and limited view of life. Realisation of divinity by man is the universal characteristic of all religions, and the author contends that it should aptly be called the universal religion. This realisation of the divinity is so marked in the supra-personal religions and being a votary of such religions, he stresses that they are on a different level. If a study of this world religion is included in the course on comparative religion for students, it would certainly help towards dispelling erroneous notions about religion and drive away many superstitions, fanaticism and communalism, the last being a cancerous growth that eats into the very fabric of a nation. Besides students of philosophy who study comparative religion as one of their subjects, all enlightened persons who have an abiding faith in religion should find reading this text an exhilarating and ennobling experience.

Download or read book Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought written by David B. Zilberman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-08-02 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is unusual in many respects. It was written by a prolific author whose tragic untimely death did not allow to finish this and many other of his undertakings. It was assembled from numerous excerpts, notes, and fragments according to his initial plans. Zilberman’s legacy still awaits its true discovery and this book is a second installment to it after The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought (Kluwer, 1988). Zilberman’s treatment of analogy is unique in its approach, scope, and universality for Western philosophical thought. Constantly compared to eastern and especially classical Indian interpretations, analogy is presented by Zilberman as an important and in many ways primary method of philosophizing or philosophy-building. Due to its universality, this method can be also applied in linguistics, logic, social analysis, as well as historical and anthropological research. These applications are integral part of Zilberman’s book. A prophetic leap to largely uncharted territories, this book could be of considerable interest for experts and novices in the field of analogy alike.

Download or read book Female Ascetics in Hinduism written by Lynn Teskey Denton and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Female Ascetics in Hinduism provides a vivid account of the lives of women renouncers—women who renounce the world to live ascetic spiritual lives—in India. The author approaches the study of female asceticism by focusing on features of two dharmas, two religiously defined ways of life: that of woman-as-householder and that of the ascetic, who, for various reasons, falls outside the realm of householdership. The result of fieldwork conducted in Varanasi (Benares), the book explores renouncers' social and personal backgrounds, their institutions, and their ways of life. Offering a first-hand look at and an insightful analysis of this little-known world, this highly readable book will be indispensable to those interested in female asceticism in the Hindu tradition and women's spiritual lives around the world.

Download or read book The Bhagavad Gita written by and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the ancient Hindu epic The Mahabharata, The Bhagavad Gita is one of the enduring religious texts of the world The Bhagavad Gita is an early poem that recounts the conversation between Arjuna the warrior and his charioteer Krishna, a manifestation of God. In the moments before a great battle, Krishna sets out the important lessons Arjuna must learn to understand his own role in the war he is about to fight. Krishna reveals to Arjuna his true cosmic form and counsels the warrior to act according to his sacred obligations. Ranging from instructions on yoga to moral discussion, the Gita has served for centuries as an everyday, practical guide to living well. Translated with an introduction by Laurie L. Patton

Download or read book Mysterious Minds written by Elise Nykänen and published by Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the narrative tools, techniques, and structures that Marja-Liisa Vartio, a classic of Finnish post-war modernism, used in presenting fictional minds in her narrative prose. The study contributes to the academic discussion on formal and thematic conventions of modernism by addressing the ways in which fictional minds work in interaction, and in relation to the enfolding fictional world. The epistemic problem of how accurately the world, the self, and the other can be known is approached by analyzing two co-operating ways of portraying fictional minds, both from external and internal perspectives. The external perspective relies on detachment and emotional restraint dominating in Vartio’s early novels Se on sitten kevät and Mies kuin mies, tyttö kuin tyttö. The internal perspective pertains to the mental processes of self-reflection, speculation, and excessive imagining that gain more importance in her later novels Kaikki naiset näkevät unia, Tunteet, and Hänen olivat linnut. In the theoretical chapter of this study, fictional minds are discussed in the context of the acclaimed “inward turn” of modernist fiction, by suggesting alternative methods for reading modernist minds as embodied, emotional, and social entities. In respect to fictional minds’ interaction, this study elaborates on the ideas of “mind-reading,” “intersubjectivity,” and the “social mind” established within post-classical cognitive narratology. Furthermore, it employs possible world poetics when addressing the complexity, incompleteness, and (in)accessibility of Vartio’s epistemic worlds, including the characters’ private worlds of knowledge, beliefs, emotions, hallucinations, and dreams. In regards to the emotional emplotment of fictional worlds, this study also benefits from affective narratology as well as the plot theory being influenced by possible world semantics, narrative dynamics, and cognitive narratology. As the five analysis chapters of this study show, fictional minds in Vartio’s fiction are not only introspective, solipsist, and streaming, but also embodied and social entities. In the readings of the primary texts, the concept of embodiedness is used to examine the situated presence of an experiencing mind within the time and space of the storyworld. Fictional minds’ (inter)actions are also demonstrated as evolving from local experientiality to long-term calculations that turn emotional incidents into episodes, and episodes into stories. In Vartio’s novels, the emotional story structure of certain conventional story patterns, such as the narratives of female development and the romance plot, the sentimental novel, and epistolary fiction, are modified and causally altered in the portrayal of the embodied interactions between the self, the other, and the world. The trajectories of female self-discovery in Vartio’s novels are analyzed through the emotional responses of characters: their experiences of randomness, their ways of counterfactualizing their traumatic past, their procrastinatory or akratic reactions or indecisiveness. The gradual move away from the percepts of the external world to the excessive imaginings and (mis)readings of other minds (triggered by the interaction of worlds and minds), challenges the contemporary and more recent accounts of modernism both in Finnish and international contexts.

Download or read book National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Authorization Act of 1972 written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: