What is Buddhist Enlightenment?


Book Description

Dale Wright offers a wide-ranging exploration of issues that have a bearing on the contemporary meaning of enlightenment. He considers the historical meanings of enlightenment within various Buddhist traditions, but does so in order to expand on the larger question that our lives press upon us--what kinds of lives should we aspire to live here, now, and into the future?




For All of Humanity


Book Description

Smallpox, measles, and typhus. The scourges of lethal disease—as threatening in colonial Mesoamerica as in other parts of the world—called for widespread efforts and enlightened attitudes to battle the centuries-old killers of children and adults. Even before edicts from Spain crossed the Atlantic, colonial elites oftentimes embraced medical experimentation and reform in the name of the public good, believing it was their moral responsibility to apply medical innovations to cure and prevent disease. Their efforts included the first inoculations and vaccinations against smallpox, new strategies to protect families and communities from typhus and measles, and medical interventions into pregnancy and childbirth. For All of Humanity examines the first public health campaigns in Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Central America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Martha Few pays close attention to Indigenous Mesoamerican medical cultures, which not only influenced the shape and scope of those regional campaigns but also affected the broader New World medical cultures. The author reconstructs a rich and complex picture of the ways colonial doctors, surgeons, Indigenous healers, midwives, priests, government officials, and ordinary people engaged in efforts to prevent and control epidemic disease. Few’s analysis weaves medical history and ethnohistory with social, cultural, and intellectual history. She uses prescriptive texts, medical correspondence, and legal documents to provide rich ethnographic descriptions of Mesoamerican medical cultures, their practitioners, and regional pharmacopeia that came into contact with colonial medicine, at times violently, during public health campaigns.




Dreaming Me


Book Description

Jan Willis is not Baptist or Buddhist. She is simply both. Dreaming Me is the story of her life, as a child growing up in the Jim Crow South, dealing with racism in an Ivy League college, and becoming involved with the Black Panther Party. But it wasn't until meeting Lama Yeshe, a Tibetan Buddhist monk living in the mountains of Nepal, that she realized who the real Jan Willis was, and how to make the most of the life she was living.




Let Your Soul Sing


Book Description

Enlightenment has fascinated people for millenia. *Let Your Soul Sing* overturns the commonly held belief that enlightenment is a state of consciousness possible only for a few rare individuals living in a forest or monastery. It points out that enlightenment is in fact the most natural state of life, available to everyone through simple, effortless meditation techniques that expand human awareness and perception of the truly unified reality of life. This book follows the author s journey on the path of enlightenment and also gives accounts of athletes, artists, musicians, and people from all walks of life who have had spontaneous experiences of higher states of consciousness at some point. Many never had a framework to understand their experiences or to systematically develop them. *Let Your Soul Sing* lays out the systematic knowledge of seven states of consciousness and how they can be easily unfolded through the experience of transcendence. It highlights extensive scientific research that confirms the development of health and brain functioning gained through meditation, and also explains how individuals experiencing inner peace simultaneously contribute to the creation of world peace. The style is easy reading, with anecdotes, quotes, short poems, and analysis of recent world events woven throughout. For more information and to download 2 free chapters, visit: http: //www.enlightenmentforeveryone.com/ "A beautiful synthesis of heart and mind, this book is written from the personal and truthful perspective of an individual who has absorbed the depth and breadth of Maharishi's extraordinarily profound and practical knowledge. It reveals how growth toward enlightenment is expressed through tender, subjective experiences of the transcendent. It also shows how enlightenment may be understood from a completely objective scientific point of view as the progressive refinement and development of total neurophysiological functioning." Dr. Keith Wallace Founding President and Trustee of Maharishi University of Management, Dean of the College of Perfect Health and Professor of Physiology, and author of The Neurophysiology of Enlightenment. "This book is a profound gift. Beautifully written, it gently opens our eyes to who we truly are and guides us in accessing the divine wisdom, peace and bliss within each one of us. Ann Purcell weaves the teachings of Maharishi with her personal journey to provide the keys to transformation." Amy Hatkoff Child and family advocate, parenting educator, filmmaker, and author of The Inner World of Farm Animals; You are My World: How a Parent's Love Shapes a Baby's Mind; and How To Save The Children. "Let Your Soul Sing is a brilliant and simply written reflection on how to live a life of joy, balance, and wholeness. As such, it is a roadmap to personal fulfillment, creative expression, and a gentler, kinder, more balanced world. While Let Your Soul Sing is for everyone, women in particular will find their own essential, divine, nourishing nature reflected back to them through this book." Candace Badgett Chairman of the Global Mother Divine Organization, President of the Global Health Foundation for Women, and Director of The Raj Ayurveda Health Center and Spa"




This Precious Life


Book Description

Using the traditional Tibetan Buddhist framework of the Four Reminders—the preciousness of human birth, the truth of impermanence, the reality of suffering, and the inescapability of karma—Khandro Rinpoche explains why and how we could all better use this short life to pursue a spiritual path and make the world a better place. The book includes contemplative exercises that encourage us to appreciate the tremendous potential of the human body and mind.




Tolerance


Book Description

Inspired by Voltaire’s advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century authors, from the most famous philosophers of the age to those whose brilliant writings are less well-known. These passages are immensely diverse in style and topic, but all have in common a passionate commitment to equality, freedom, and tolerance. Each text resonates powerfully with the issues our world faces today. Tolerance was first published by the Société française d’étude du dix-huitième siècle (the French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in January 2015 as an act of solidarity and as a response to the surge of interest in Enlightenment values. With the support of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, it has now been translated by over 100 students and tutors of French at Oxford University.




Enlightenment Now


Book Description

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.




The Truth of All That Is


Book Description

You have been guided here now. Nothing is random. In this book, the Angels respond to all your inquiries, thoughts and prayers. They share their wisdom, enlighten and empower. There are lessons to be learned, benefits to be gained, assistance to be given, truth to be revealed. They talk to you directly, if you would only allow the words to move through you, you will succeed your own personal transformation. This book is a direct Angel narration by intuitive Amelia Bert. It is the result of her spiritual journey of months of meditation and connection with lighted spirits. This is a spiritual book, that links all the peaces together by revealing the truth of the cosmos. NOTE FROM AUTHOR: As I am an angel intuitive, the Angels wanted me to write this book for all of you. They said: I should let all of you come on your own, when it is your time to read it. This way you will benefit the most. If you fell drawn to the cover or description, then it will enlighten and assist you on your path. If it is your time, read on. INSIDE YOU WILL DISCCOVER THE TRUTH OF: God, Angels, Spirit Guides, Higher Self Reincarnation Afterlife Fifth dimension Different galaxies Law of attraction Chakras Personal success Angel communication Time and Space and more HOW TO: Manifest your desires Find happiness Reveal your life's path Remove blockages Connect with your divinity Communicate with spirits Create a life you want Shield yourself Remember past life skills and more EFFECTS: Awakening towards the universal truth Personal transformation - - move to the fifth dimension Establishes connection with angels of the light Transition of high energy Enhances spirituality Expands awareness beyond the physical plane Awakens divine power Motivation CAUTION: The contains of this book provide powerful information that will lead to spiritual growth and transformation. You are advised not to proceed if you hold negative intentions, fear and/or uncertainty, as the information provided will not be of benefit. *The information given are for the advantage of those who are ready for its content. This book is not intended to provoke nor offend.




Enlightenment Is Your Nature


Book Description

Explores and explains the fundamental difference between psychology, therapy and meditation. "Enlightenment” in Western cultures has long been associated with the 18th century movement that brought about a new “age of reason.” As Zen, Buddhism, and other eastern wisdom traditions have captured the imagination of the West, “enlightenment” has come to be known as a specific state of consciousness attained by an individual on a spiritual or meditative path. However, the Judeo-Christian context, with its belief in a divine power “out there” and separate from the individual, hinders most Westerners’ ability to comprehend “enlightenment” in the Eastern sense. Our theistic conditioning leads to such common misunderstandings as perceiving enlightenment as the attainment of supernatural powers, or as something achievable only by those who are somehow “special.” In this work, Osho deconstructs these misunderstandings and offers a radically different view of enlightenment, freed from all spiritual and religious beliefs – including the distortions of asceticism and renunciation that have arisen in Eastern and Western cultures both. Taking the reader step by step through the history of how both East and West have approached the mysteries of the human mind and spirituality, Osho offers a simple science of consciousness that he calls “the psychology of the buddhas.” It is a science that in very clear terms shows how one can, through awareness and taking full responsibility for one’s life, go beyond all limited belief systems, habits, and superstitions of the mind. That process, he says, brings us back to our nature – and that is enlightenment.




For All Living Beings


Book Description