Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies written by Suzanne Newcombe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary resource, which frames and contextualises the rapidly expanding fields that explore yoga and meditative techniques. The book analyses yoga and meditation studies in a variety of religious, historical and geographical settings. The chapters, authored by an international set of experts, are laid out across five sections: Introduction to yoga and meditation studies History of yoga and meditation in South Asia Doctrinal perspectives: technique and praxis Global and regional transmissions Disciplinary framings In addition to up-to-date explorations of the history of yoga and meditation in the Indian subcontinent, new contexts include a case study of yoga and meditation in the contemporary Tibetan diaspora, and unique summaries of historical developments in Japan and Latin America as well as an introduction to the growing academic study of yoga in Korea. Underpinned by critical and theoretical engagement, the volume provides an in-depth guide to the history of yoga and meditation studies and combines the best of established research with attention to emerging directions for future investigation. This handbook will be of interest to multidisciplinary academic audiences from across the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Chapters 1, 4, 9, 12, and 27 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Download or read book The Self Possessed written by Frederick M. Smith and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 733 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Self Possessed is a multifaceted, diachronic study reconsidering the very nature of religion in South Asia, the culmination of years of intensive research. Frederick M. Smith proposes that positive oracular or ecstatic possession is the most common form of spiritual expression in India, and that it has been linguistically distinguished from negative, disease-producing possession for thousands of years. In South Asia possession has always been broader and more diverse than in the West, where it has been almost entirely characterized as "demonic." At best, spirit possession has been regarded as a medically treatable psychological ailment and at worst, as a condition that requires exorcism or punishment. In South (and East) Asia, ecstatic or oracular possession has been widely practiced throughout history, occupying a position of respect in early and recent Hinduism and in certain forms of Buddhism. Smith analyzes Indic literature from all ages-the earliest Vedic texts; the Mahabharata; Buddhist, Jain, Yogic, Ayurvedic, and Tantric texts; Hindu devotional literature; Sanskrit drama and narrative literature; and more than a hundred ethnographies. He identifies several forms of possession, including festival, initiatory, oracular, and devotional, and demonstrates their multivocality within a wide range of sects and religious identities. Possession is common among both men and women and is practiced by members of all social and caste strata. Smith theorizes on notions of embodiment, disembodiment, selfhood, personal identity, and other key issues through the prism of possession, redefining the relationship between Sanskritic and vernacular culture and between elite and popular religion. Smith's study is also comparative, introducing considerable material from Tibet, classical China, modern America, and elsewhere. Brilliant and persuasive, The Self Possessed provides careful new translations of rare material and is the most comprehensive study in any language on this subject.

Download or read book Weber s Sacred Literature of the Jains written by Albrecht Weber and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book People s Rights written by Olle Törnquist and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hindu Tradition of Pilgrimage written by Rana P. B. Singh and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Roots Routes and a New Awakening written by Ananta Kumar Giri and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to find creative and transformative relationship among roots and routes and create a new dynamics of awakening so that we can overcome the problems of closed and xenopbhobic roots and rootless cosmopolitanism. The book draws upon multiple philosophical and spiritual traditions of the world such as Siva Tantra, Buddhist phenomenology and Peircean Semiotics and discusses the works of Ibn-Arabi, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Raimon Panikkar,among others.The book is transdiscipinary building on creative thinking from philosophy, anthropology, political studies and literature. It is a unique contribution for forging a new relationship between roots and routes in our contemporary fragile and complex world.

Download or read book The Secret Politics of Our Desires written by Ashis Nandy and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1998 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the enormous industry of Indian popular cinema. It provokes a thinking of cinema as political in the widest sense - from its importance in ideas of nation and national cultural formation to class and gender.

Download or read book Yoga in Transformation written by Karl Baier and published by V&R unipress GmbH. This book was released on 2018 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores aspects of yoga over a period of about 2500 years. In its first part, it investigates facets of the South Asian and Tibetan traditions of yoga, such as the evolution of posture practice, the relationship between yoga and sex, yoga in the theistic context, the influence of Buddhism on early yoga, and the encounter of Islam with classical yoga. The second part addresses aspects of modern globalised yoga and its historical formation, as for example the emergence of yoga in Viennese occultism, the integration of yoga and nature cure in modern India, the eventisation of yoga in a global setting, and the development of Patañjali’s iconography. In keeping with the current trend in yoga studies, the emphasis of the volume is on the practice of yoga and its theoretical underpinnings.

Download or read book A Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Adyar Library written by Adyar Library and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Borders Boundaries written by Ritu Menon and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the sufferings of women during the partition of India in 1947; includes personal narratives.

Download or read book Abhinavagupta written by John R. Dupuche and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abhinavagupta, a leading figure in Kashmir Saivism is increasingly being recognised as one of the chief contributors to the evolution of Indian thought. In his encyclopaedic work the Tantraloka 'Light on the Tantras' he describes the various tantras of his day and places at their apex the most extreme of them, the Kula ritual which proposes the use of wine and meat and intercourse with women of the lowest castes. In Abhinavagupta's esteem of the Kula ritual just the shodow side of genius an aberration best forgotten? This work is a translation-the first into english of any chapter of the Tantraloka of Abhinavagupta's version of the Kula ritual.

Download or read book Luminous Passage written by Charles S. Prebish and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-06-07 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since the 1960s Buddhism in America has been viewed through the lens of idealism, generally associated with the spiritual quest of baby boomers. This portrayal has been accurate only to a degree. Charles Prebish's Luminous Passage is the first account in a new generation of commentary to demonstrate the complexity and variety of this tradition as it establishes roots in this country. This book will surely stand as one of the most comprehensive assessments of Buddhism in the United States at the turn of the millennium."—Richard Seager, Hamilton College

Download or read book The Ascetic Self written by Gavin D. Flood and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2004 book is about the ascetic self in the scriptural religions of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. The author claims that asceticism can be understood as the internalisation of tradition, the shaping of the narrative of a life in accordance with the narrative of tradition that might be seen as the performance of the memory of tradition. Such a performance contains an ambiguity or distance between the general intention to eradicate the will, or in some sense to erase the self, and the affirmation of will in ascetic performance such as weakening the body through fasting. Asceticism must therefore be seen in the context of ritual. The book also offers a paradigm for comparative religion more generally, one that avoids the inadequate choices of either examining religions through overarching categories on the one hand and the abandoning of any comparative endeavour that focuses purely on area-specific study on the other.

Download or read book Banaras written by Rana Singh and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narrating the making of the Hindus’ most sacred and heritage city of India (Banaras) this book will serve as lead reference and insightful reading for understanding the cultural complexities, archetypal connotations, ritualscapes and vivid heritagescapes that maintain India’s pride of history and culture.

Download or read book The Triadic Heart of iva written by Paul E. Muller-Ortega and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores one of the most explicit and sophisticated theoretical formulations of tantric yoga. It explains Abhinavagupta's teaching about the nature of ultimate reality, about the methods for experiencing this ultimate reality, and about the nature of the state of realization, a condition of embodied enlightenment. The author uncovers the conceptual matrix surrounding the practices of the Kaula lineage of Kashmir Shaivism. The primary textual basis for the book is provided by Abhinavagupta's Parātrīśikā-laghuvṛtti, a short meditation manual that centers on the symbolism of the Heart-mantra, SAUḤ.

Download or read book The Monk and the Book written by Megan Hale Williams and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the West, monastic ideals and scholastic pursuits are complementary; monks are popularly imagined copying classics, preserving learning through the Middle Ages, and establishing the first universities. But this dual identity is not without its contradictions. While monasticism emphasizes the virtues of poverty, chastity, and humility, the scholar, by contrast, requires expensive infrastructure—a library, a workplace, and the means of disseminating his work. In The Monk and the Book, Megan Hale Williams argues that Saint Jerome was the first to represent biblical study as a mode of asceticism appropriate for an inhabitant of a Christian monastery, thus pioneering the enduring linkage of monastic identities and institutions with scholarship. Revisiting Jerome with the analytical tools of recent cultural history—including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartier—Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jerome’s literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jerome’s textual and exegetical work on the Hebrew scriptures helped to construct a new culture of learning. This fusion of the identities of scholar and monk, Williams shows, continues to reverberate in the culture of the modern university. "[Williams] has written a fascinating study, which provides a series of striking insights into the career of one of the most colorful and influential figures in Christian antiquity. Jerome's Latin Bible would become the foundational text for the intellectual development of the West, providing words for the deepest aspirations and most intensely held convictions of an entire civilization. Williams's book does much to illumine the circumstances in which that fundamental text was produced, and reminds us that great ideas, like great people, have particular origins, and their own complex settings."—Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books

Download or read book CIVILIZED SHAMANS PB written by SAMUEL GEOFFREY and published by Smithsonian. This book was released on 1995-09-17 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civilized Shamans examines the nature and evolution of religion in Tibetan societies from the ninth century up to the Chinese occupation in 1950. Geoffrey Samuel argues that religion in these societies developed as a dynamic amalgam of strands of Indian Buddhism and the indigenous spirit-cults of Tibet. Samuel stresses the diversity of Tibetan societies, demonstrating that central Tibet, the Dalai Lama's government at Lhasa, and the great monastic institutions around Lhasa formed only a part of the context within which Tibetan Buddhism matured. Employing anthropological research, historical inquiry, rich interview material, and a deep understanding of religious texts, the author explores the relationship between Tibet's social and political institutions and the emergence of new modes of consciousness that characterize Tibetan Buddhist spirituality. Samuel identifies the two main orientations of this religion as clerical (primarily monastic) and shamanic (associated with Tantric yoga). The specific form that Buddhism has taken in Tibet is rooted in the pursuit of enlightenment by a minority of the people - lamas, monks, and yogins - and the desire for shamanic services (in quest of health, long life, and prosperity) by the majority. Shamanic traditions of achieving altered states of consciousness have been incorporated into Tantric Buddhism, which aims to communicate with Tantric deities through yoga. The author contends that this incorporation forms the basis for much of the Tibetan lamas' role in their society and that their subtle scholarship reflects the many ways in which they have reconciled the shamanic and clerical orientations. This book, the first full account of Tibetan Buddhism in two decades, ranges as no other study has over several disciplines and languages, incorporating historical and anthropological discussion. Viewing Tibetan Buddhism as one of the great spiritual and psychological achievements of humanity, Samuel analyzes a complex society that combines the literacy and rationality associated with centralized states with the shamanic processes more familiar among tribal peoples.