Download or read book Accidental Enlightenment written by Stephen Banick and published by BookPros, LLC. This book was released on 2007 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part travel guide, part illuminating how-to manual for a more fulfilling, connected life, Accidental Enlightenment is an absorbing look into the adventures and insights of Stephen Banick, an inveterate wanderer, observer, and chronicler of the world at large. Banick recounts mishaps, bummed rides, quirky friendships and riveting personal epiphanies spanning nearly twenty years of exploration into far-flung places - some out of this world. With stunning imagery and impressive political and cultural trivia, Banick offers frank and humorous insight into his travels, which encompass more than just where to find cheap lodging and cheaper beer. [i]Accidental Enlightenment[/i] is the author's personal Gulliver story as he seeks to both connect with the great tapestry of human culture as well as discover his own 'Landscapes, Mindscapes, and Soulscapes.' Throughout the book, Banick encourages readers to s-t-r-e-t-c-h their own perception of Self through immersion in as many cultures and ideas as possible: The end result hopefully being that we can all 'step into our latent magnificence.'

Download or read book The Accidental Buddhist written by Dinty W. Moore and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 1997-01-10 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE ACCIDENTAL BUDDHIST is the funny, provocative story of how Dinty Moore went looking for the faith he'd lost in what might seem the most unlikely of places: the ancient Eastern tradition of Buddhism. Moore demystifies and explains the contradictions and concepts of this most mystic-seeming of religious traditions. This plain-spoken, insightful look at the dharma in America will fascinate anyone curious about the wisdom of other cultures and other religions. "Sure of foot in complex terrain, and packing a blessedly down-to-earth sense of humor, Dinty Moore is the perfect scout for the new frontiers of American Buddhism."--Rodger Kamenetz, author of THE JEW IN THE LOTUS and STALKING ELIJAH.

Download or read book Accidental Buddhist written by Dinty W. Moore and published by Harmony. This book was released on 1999-02-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Accidental Buddhist is the funny, provocative story of how Dinty Moore went looking for the faith he'd lost in what might seem the most unlikely of places: the ancient Eastern tradition of Buddhism. Moore demystifies and explains the contradictions and concepts of this most mystic-seeming of religious traditions. This plain-spoken, insightful look at the dharma in America will fascinate anyone curious about the wisdom of other cultures and other religions. Cutting through religious jargon and abstract concepts, Moore explains in clear terms why Buddhism is becoming part of popular culture. He has the rare ability to be at once sincere about religion and good-humored about the human condition. The Accidental Buddhist never takes itself too seriously—which, as Moore discovers, Buddhists aren’t supposed to do, even when they are mindful, enlightened, and sitting perfectly still. “Moore’s hilarious and sometimes irreverent look at Buddhism is a perfect primer for the budding Buddhist.”—Publishers Weekly “[Moore’s] witty and candid ‘regular guy’ approach to these experiences is entertaining and comforting, and his conclusions are right on target.”—Booklist

Download or read book A Partial Enlightenment written by Avram Alpert and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many ways, Buddhism has become the global religion of the modern world. For its contemporary followers, the ideal of enlightenment promises inner peace and worldly harmony. And whereas other philosophies feel abstract and disembodied, Buddhism offers meditation as a means to realize this ideal. If we could all be as enlightened as Buddhists, some imagine, we could live in a much better world. For some time now, however, this beatific image of Buddhism has been under attack. Scholars and practitioners have criticized it as a Western fantasy that has nothing to do with the actual experiences of Buddhists. Avram Alpert combines personal experience and readings of modern novels to offer another way to understand modern Buddhism. He argues that it represents a rich resource not for attaining perfection but rather for finding meaning and purpose in a chaotic world. Finding unexpected affinities across world literature—Rudyard Kipling in colonial India, Yukio Mishima in postwar Japan, Bessie Head escaping apartheid South Africa—as well as in his own experiences living with Tibetan exiles, Alpert shows how these stories illuminate a world in which suffering is inevitable and total enlightenment is impossible. Yet they also give us access to partial enlightenments: powerful insights that become available when we come to terms with imperfection and stop looking for wholeness. A Partial Enlightenment reveals the moments of personal and social transformation that the inventions of modern Buddhism help make possible.

Download or read book The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany written by Michael C. Carhart and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1770s, as a wave of revolution and republican unrest swept across Europe, scholars looked with urgency on the progress of European civilization. Carhart examines their approaches to understanding human development by investigating the invention of a new analytic category, "culture."

Download or read book 1 One written by G. J. Link, MD, PhD. and published by Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All near-death experiences (NDEs) change people’s lives for the better. Those affected became enlightened. Humanity worldwide thirsts for spiritualism to become enlightened. It is written in our DNA; it is mankind’s birthright and the next evolution of mankind. Enlightenment can be achieved by all who wish to experience the exhilarating intoxication of being one with the universe. NDE is not necessary to become enlightened. Practicing the principles of the right path with trance meditation activates intuition, causing enlightenment by the superconscious mind to know and be guided through our mission in life. In the past, this was called the flash of genius responsible for the advancement of the sciences and math. Today strife reigns on Earth. Our civilization must evolve to overcome extinctions and escape the fate of previous civilizations. Technology has caught up with spiritualism, and quantum physics has objectively documented global EM bio-rhythmic changes, during global events such as 9/11 and Princess Dianna’s death. This is the global consciousness compiled by the 7.4 billion people on Earth. Global change is inevitable, as is the next human evolution, and the new era of enlightenment is now. This guide offers individual, inspirational, spiritual and thought-provoking concepts for the global citizen.

Download or read book The Zero s Journey written by Jon M. Ketcham and published by Abiyd Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Robert Burns poem, To a Mouse, reminds us, "The best laid plans of mice and men / Often go awry."Anyone who has ever suffered a great loss, whether relational, financial, career, health, spiritual or otherwise, knows all to well the depths of despair and the anguish that arise in what Saint John of the Cross referred to as The Dark Night of the Soul. The Dark Night of the Soul is all about pain, suffering and loss. Yet, like the phoenix, out of all of that, hopefully, we emerge more than we were when we started.On this journey to "accidental enlightenment," it is common to experience the complete decimation of any pre-conceived notions, roles and identities we have grown accustomed to identifying ourselves by. During this traumatic destruction of our EGO, it can seem as though God is reducing our very existence to absolute zero. This is the "Zero's Journey!"

Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

Download or read book Dance of the Electric Hummingbird written by Patricia Walker and published by Rainbow Ridge. This book was released on 2011-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wandering into a bar in Mexico with her husband, Pat Walker is hoping to enjoy a rock concert by a famous singer previously unknown to her--but something frightening and wonderful happens instead. In the midst of the cheering fans and screaming guitars, she is lifted out of her body and becomes engulfed in a white light and a feeling of ecstasy. She stumbles upon her soul, and God. Soon after this experience, more stange things begin to happen to her--she starts having psychic revelations, glimpses of past lives, and contact with angels and spirits. Fearing the loss of her sanity, Pat's search for an explantation leads her to international recording star Sammy Hagar (former lead singer of Van Halen), who takes it upon himself to help her decipher the meaning of these supernatural experiences. In this true story, Pat struggles to maintain her roles of middle-class wife and mom, while simultaneaously being thrust into the explosive world of celebrities, sex, and rock 'n' roll. She confronts the incredible power of her mind and spirit, and soon begins to reevaluate her perception of reality, and the meaning of life.

Download or read book Accidental Genius written by Mark Levy and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2010-08-09 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and thoroughly revised edition of marketing and positioning genius Mark Levy, which helps readers unleash their inner creativity, problem solving skills, while also generating content. This is The Artist's Way for business people and social media people. Accidental Genius uses a similar methodology of freewriting to create business plan, find solutions, and generate new content. Over 10,000 of the original edition sold.

Download or read book The Dark Side of the Enlightenment Wizards Alchemists and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason written by John V. Fleming and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-07-22 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why spiritual and supernatural yearnings, even investigations into the occult, flourished in the era of rationalist philosophy. In The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, John V. Fleming shows how the impulses of the European Enlightenment—generally associated with great strides in the liberation of human thought from superstition and traditional religion—were challenged by tenacious religious ideas or channeled into the “darker” pursuits of the esoteric and the occult. His engaging topics include the stubborn survival of the miraculous, the Enlightenment roles of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and the widespread pursuit of magic and alchemy. Though we tend not to associate what was once called alchemy with what we now call chemistry, Fleming shows that the difference is merely one of linguistic modernization. Alchemy was once the chemistry, of Arabic derivation, and its practitioners were among the principal scientists and physicians of their ages. No point is more important for understanding the strange and fascinating figures in this book than the prestige of alchemy among the learned men of the age. Fleming follows some of these complexities and contradictions of the “Age of Lights” into the biographies of two of its extraordinary offspring. The first is the controversial wizard known as Count Cagliostro, the “Egyptian” freemason, unconventional healer, and alchemist known most infamously for his ambiguous association with the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which history has viewed as among the possible harbingers of the French Revolution and a major contributing factor in the growing unpopularity of Marie Antoinette. Fleming also reviews the career of Julie de Krüdener, the sentimental novelist, Pietist preacher, and political mystic who would later become notorious as a prophet. Impressively researched and wonderfully erudite, this rich narrative history sheds light on some lesser-known mental extravagances and beliefs of the Enlightenment era and brings to life some of the most extraordinary characters ever encountered either in history or fiction.

Download or read book Dialectic of Enlightenment written by Max Horkheimer and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1993 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major study of modern culture, Dialectic of Enlightenment for many years led an underground existence among the homeless Left of the German Federal Republic until its definitive publication in West Germany in 1969. Originally composed by its two distinguished authors during their Californian exile in 1944, the book can stand as a monument of classic German progressive social theory in the twentieth century.>

Download or read book The Wandering Army written by Huw J. Davies and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-13 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling history of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—showing how the military gathered knowledge from campaigns across the globe “Superb analysis.”—William Anthony Hay, Wall Street Journal At the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession in 1742, the British Army’s military tactics were tired and outdated, stultified after three decades of peace. The army’s leadership was conservative, resistant to change, and unable to match new military techniques developing on the continent. Losses were cataclysmic and the force was in dire need of modernization—both in terms of strategy and in leadership and technology. In this wide-ranging and highly original account, Huw J. Davies traces the British Army’s accumulation of military knowledge across the following century. An essentially global force, British armies and soldiers continually gleaned and synthesized strategy from war zones the world over: from Europe to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Davies records how the army and its officers put this globally acquired knowledge to use, exchanging information and developing into a remarkable vehicle of innovation—leading to the pinnacle of its military prowess in the nineteenth century.

Download or read book Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist written by Peter L. Berger and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter L. Berger is arguably the best-known American sociologist living today. Since the 1960s he has been publishing books on many facets of the American social scene, and several are now considered classics. So it may be hard to believe Professor Berger’s description of himself as an "accidental sociologist." But that in fact accurately describes how he stumbled into sociology. In this witty, intellectually stimulating memoir, Berger explains not only how he became a social scientist, but the many adventures that this calling has led to. Rather than writing an autobiography, he focuses on the main intellectual issues that motivated his work and the various people and situations he encountered in the course of his career. Full of memorable vignettes and colorful characters depicted in a lively narrative often laced with humor, Berger’s memoir conveys the excitement that a study of social life can bring. The first part of the book describes Berger’s initiation into sociology through the New School for Social Research, "a European enclave in the midst of Greenwich Village bohemia." Berger was first a student at the New School and later a young professor amidst a clique of like-minded individuals. There he published The Social Construction of Reality (with colleague Thomas Luckmann), one of his most successful books, followed by The Sacred Canopy on the sociology of religion, also still widely cited. The book covers Berger’s experience as a "globe-trekking sociologist" including trips to Mexico, where he studied approaches to Third World poverty; to East Asia, where he discovered the potential of capitalism to improve social conditions; and to South Africa, where he chaired an international study group on the future of post-Apartheid society. Berger then tells about his role as the director of a research center at Boston University. For over two decades he and his colleagues have been tackling such important issues as globalization, the secularization of Europe, and the ongoing dialectic between relativism and fundamentalism in contemporary culture. What comes across throughout is Berger’s boundless curiosity with the many ways in which people interact in society. This book offers longtime Berger readers as well as newcomers to sociology proof that the sociologist’s attempt to explain the world is anything but boring.

Download or read book Ultimately Perfect written by Pema Donyo Nyinche (Tai Situpa XII) and published by Palpung Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Accidental Migrations written by Edward H. Jacobs and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking and adapting the theoretical framework and critical methods of Michael Foucault's archaeology of knowledge and arguments about power relations, Edward Jacobs's Accidental Migrations offers a new consideration of the nature of the Gothic.".

Download or read book Vedanta The Ultimate Truth written by Osho and published by Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd.. This book was released on with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: