Download or read book Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas written by Holly Walters and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-25 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For roughly two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites, called Shaligrams has been an important part of Hindu and Buddhist ritual practice throughout South Asia and among the global Diaspora. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, called Mustang, Shaligrams are all at once fossils, divine beings, and intimate kin with families and worshippers. Through their lives, movements, and materiality, Shaligrams then reveal fascinating new dimensions of religious practice, pilgrimage, and politics. But as social, environmental, and national conflicts in the politically-contentious region of Mustang continue to escalate, the geologic, mythic, and religious movements of Shaligrams have come to act as parallels to the mobility of people through both space and time. Shaligram mobility therefore traverses through multiple social worlds, multiple religions, and multiple nations revealing Shaligram practitioners as a distinct, alternative, community struggling for a place in a world on the edge.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism written by Michael K. Jerryson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism offers a comprehensive collection of work by leading scholars in the field. They examine the historical development of Buddhist traditions throughout the world, from traditional settings like India, Japan, and Tibet, to the less well known regions of Latin America, Africa, and Oceania.
Download or read book Nepal Himalaya written by H. W. Tilman and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There can be no country so rich in mountains as Nepal. This narrow strip of territory, lying between Sikkim and Garhwal, occupies 500 miles of India's northern border; and since this border coincides roughly with the 1,500-mile-long Himalayan chain, it follows that approximately a third of this vast range lies within or upon the confines of Nepal. So starts this breathtaking account of mountaineering and exploring this isolated and awe-inspiring country by one of the most famous men in mountaineering. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Download or read book Sadhguru More Than a Life written by Arundhathi Subramaniam and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2010 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The thirst to be boundless is not created by you; it is just life longing for itself.’ —Sadhguru This is the extraordinary story of Sadhguru—a young agnostic who turned yogi, a wild motorcyclist who turned mystic, a sceptic who turned spiritual guide. Pulsating with his razor-sharp intelligence, bracing wit and modern-day vocabulary, the book empowers you to explore your spiritual self and could well change your life. It seeks to re-create the life journey of a man who combines rationality with mysticism, irreverence with compassion, ancient wisdom with a provocatively contemporary outlook and a deep knowledge of the self with a contagious love of life. Described as ‘a profound mystic, visionary humanitarian and prominent spiritual leader of our times', he is equally at home in a satsangh in rural Tamil Nadu as at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In his early years, Jaggi Vasudev (or Sadhguru as he is now known) was a chronic truant, a boisterous prankster, and later a lover of motorbikes and fast cars. It is evident that the same urgency, passion and vitality echo in his spiritual pursuits to this day, from his creation of the historic Dhyanalinga—the mission of three lifetimes—to his approach as a guru. In Sadhguru's view, faith and reason, spirituality and science, the sacred and the material, cannot be divided into easy binaries. He sees people as ‘spiritual beings dabbling with the material rather than the reverse’, and liberation as the fundamental longing in every form of life. Truth for him is a living experience instead of a destination, a conclusion, or a matter of metaphysical speculation. The possibility of self-realization, he strongly believes, is available to all. Drawing upon extended conversations with Sadhguru, interviews with Isha colleagues and fellow meditators, poet Arundhathi Subramaniam presents an evocative portrait of a contemporary mystic and guru—a man who seems to pack the intensity and adventure of several lifetimes into a single one.
Download or read book The Power of Tantra written by Hugh B. Urban and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the West, the varied body of texts and traditions known as Tantra for more than two centuries has had the capacity to scandalize and shock. For European colonizers, Orientalist scholars and Christian missionaries of the Victorian era, Tantra was generally seen as the most degenerate and depraved example of the worst tendencies of the so-called 'Indian mind': a pathological mixture of sensuality and religion that prompted the decline of modern Hinduism. Yet for most contemporary New Age and popular writers, Tantra is celebrated as a much-needed affirmation of physical pleasure and sex: indeed as a 'cult of ecstasy' to counter the perceived hypocritical prudery of many Westerners. In recent years, Tantra has become the focus of a still larger cultural and political debate. In the eyes of many Hindus, much of the western literature on Tantra represents a form of neo-colonialism, which continues to portray India as an exotic, erotic, hyper-sexualized Orient. Which, then, is the 'real' Tantra? Focusing on one of the oldest and most important Tantric traditions, based in Assam, northeast India, Hugh B Urban shows that Tantra is less about optimal sexual pleasure than about harnessing the divine power of the goddess that flows alike through the cosmos, the human body and political society. In a fresh and vital contribution to the field, the author suggests that the 'real' meaning of Tantra lies in helping us rethink not just the history of Indian religions, but also our own modern obsessions with power, sex and the invidious legacies of cultural imperialism.
Download or read book A Dictionary of Asian Mythology written by David Leeming and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-05-31 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an A-Z dictionary of mythologies of the Asian continent. Major characters, places and events of Asian mythology, as well as certain relevant themes and cultural traditions are included.
Download or read book Woven Stone written by Simon J. Ortiz and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What I do as a writer, teacher, and storyteller is to demystify language," says Simon Ortiz. Widely regarded as one of the country's most important Native American poets, Ortiz has led a thirty-year career marked by a fascination with language—and by a love of his people. This omnibus of three previous works offers old and new readers an appreciation of the fruits of his dedication. Going for the Rain (1976) expresses closeness to a specific Native American way of life and its philosophy and is structured in the narrative form of a journey on the road of life. A Good Journey (1977), an evocation of Ortiz's constant awareness of his heritage, draws on the oral tradition of his Pueblo culture. Fight Back: For the Sake of the People, For the Sake of the Land (1980)—revised for this volume—has its origins in his work as a laborer in the uranium industry and is intended as a political observation and statement about that industry's effects on Native American lands and lives. In an introduction written for this volume, Ortiz tells of his boyhood in Acoma Pueblo, his early love for language, his education, and his exposure to the wider world. He traces his development as a writer, recalling his attraction to the Beats and his growing political awareness, especially a consciousness of his and other people's social struggle. "Native American writers must have an individual and communally unified commitment to their art and its relationship to their indigenous culture and people," writes Ortiz. "Through our poetry, prose, and other written works that evoke love, respect, and responsibility, Native Americans may be able to help the United States of America to go beyond survival."
Download or read book Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland written by Arik Moran and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the modern transformation of state and society in the Indian Himalaya. Centred on three Rajput-led kingdoms during the transition to British rule (c. 1790-1840) and their interconnected histories, it demonstrates how border making practices engendered a modern reading of 'tradition' that informs communal identities to date. By revising the history of these mountain kings on the basis of extensive archival, textual, and ethnographic research, it offers an alternative to popular and scholarly discourses that grew with the rise of colonial knowledge. This revision ultimately points to the important contribution of borderland spaces to the fabrication of group identities.
Download or read book New Age Purohit Darpan Kali Puja written by Kanai Mukherjee and published by Association of Grandparents of Indian Immigrants. This book was released on with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is compiled with the goal of explaining the hidden history, significance, and meaning of the mantras used in common Hindu puja rituals performed by the Bengalis to the Bengali immigrants.
Download or read book The Thakali written by Michael Vinding and published by Serindia Publications, Inc.. This book was released on 1998 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph presents a comprehensive ethnography of the Thakali with particular reference to the Thak Khola valley of Mustang district, Nepal - the homeland of the Thakali. Based on several years of fieldwork since 1972, it provides detail and insight on Thakali history, culture and society.
Download or read book The Mystics Ascetics and Saints of India written by John Campbell Oman and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book South Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses written by Hosakote Krishna Sastri and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lord Siva and His Worship written by Swami Sivananda and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Glimpses of Hope written by Michael Hoffmann and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2023-01-13 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last decade, Nepal has witnessed significant urban growth and an expanding urban middle class. Glimpses of Hope tells the story of the people who enable some of the middle-class consumer practices in urban Nepal. The book focuses on workers in areas such as modern food-processing, water-bottling, housebuilding, and sand-mining industries and explores how workers see such forms of work, where union organization can help, and how work opportunities emerge along lines of gender and ethnicity. Although global labor relations have been mostly in decline for decades, this ethnography offers insights and glimpses of hope in terms of labor dynamics and the opportunities various jobs may afford.
Download or read book Gender Supernatural Beings and the Liminality of Death written by Rebecca Gibson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender, Supernatural Beings, and the Liminality of Death: Monstrous Males/Fatal Females examines representations of the supernatural dead to demonstrate shifts in the manifestation of gender. Including readings of East Asian detectives/cyborgs, Iranian vampires, and African zombies, among others, This collection offers a multi-faceted look at myth, legend, and popular culture representations of the gendered supernatural from a broad range of international contexts. The contributors show that, as creatures pass through the liminal space of death, their new supernatural forms challenge cultural conceptions of gender, masculinity, and femininity.
Download or read book Fossil Legends of the First Americans written by Adrienne Mayor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils? Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries. Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees. Fossil Legends of the First Americans represents a major step forward in our understanding of how humans made sense of fossils before evolutionary theory developed.
Download or read book Ga e apur a written by Greg Bailey and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2008 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a translation of the seven thousand verses of the second book of the medieval Hindu text, the Ganesa Purana, one of two Puranas dedicated to the important elephant-headed god. In this book the reader is given many narratives about Ganesas ascent to earth in order to kill demonic figures who threaten to overthrow the correct world order. In addition, these narratives contain myths about Ganesa's birth and family as well as some extended and quite humorous myths about ideal devotees of the god.The translation is preceded by a long introduction offering a geographical and historical context for the GanesaPurana. Following the translation are very extensive notes which bring our points of philological interest, but focus mainly on the literary structure of the text and the methods used to present the many myths and narratives in a coherent and fully integrated manner.
