Author : Gananath Obeyesekere
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 25,17 MB
Release : 2002-11-11
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 0520232437
With 'Imagining Karma', Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. The book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of 'family resemblances' and differences across great cultural divides.
Author : Nancy Eberhardt
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 36,32 MB
Release : 2006-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780824829193
Imagining the Course of Life offers a rich portrait of rural life in contemporary Southeast Asia and an accessible introduction to the complexities of Theravada Buddhism as it is actually lived and experienced. It is both an ethnography of indigenous views of human development and a theoretical consideration of how any ethnopsychology is embedded in society and culture. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in a Shan village in northern Thailand, Nancy Eberhardt illustrates how indigenous theories of the life course are connected to local constructions of self and personhood. In the process, she draws our attention to contrasting models in the Euro-American tradition and invites us to reconsider how we think about the trajectory of a human life. Moving beyond the entrenched categories that can hamper our understanding of other views, Imagining the Course of Life demonstrates the real-life connections between the "religious" and the "psychological." Eberhardt shows how such beliefs and practices are used, sometimes strategically, in people's constructions of themselves, in their interpretations of others' behavior, and in their attempts at social positioning. Individual chapters explore Shan ideas about the overall course of human development, from infancy to old age and beyond, and show how these ideas inform people's understanding of personhood and maturity, gender and social inequality, illness and well-being, emotions and mental health.
Author : Ellen W. Williams
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 20,84 MB
Release : 2024-01-01
Category : Art
ISBN : 1476690456
Over the centuries, humans have conjured images--the stuff of dreams, convictions, and ardent desire--to describe our afterlife. The vision of heaven can appear as simple as a place among the stars or as complex as a universe filled with a multitude of busy souls. Positioned at the intersection of art, religion, and culture, this book sheds new light on human creativity in its portrayal of the afterlife. Beginning with prehistoric burial objects that help with one's heavenly needs, it travels through history to probe ancient texts, examines enigmatic carvings, dissects the meaning of paintings, and discusses contemporary perspectives in film and media. The author demonstrates that humans around the world have always had the capacity to confront the "final frontier" in spirited, hopeful, and beautiful ways.
Author : Anne E. Monius
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 25,25 MB
Release : 2001-12-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0198032064
While Tamil-speaking South India is celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, other religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the region's religious history. Among these non-Hindu communities is that of the Buddhists, who are little-understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil-speaking Buddhist culture. Here, focusing on the two Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete (a sixth-century poetic narrative and an eleventh-century treatise on grammar and poetics), Monius sheds light on the role of literature and literary culture in the formation, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.
Author : Beverley Foulks McGuire
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 46,40 MB
Release : 2014-09-09
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0231168020
Ouyi Zhixu (1599Ð1655) was an eminent Chinese Buddhist monk who, contrary to his contemporaries, believed karma could be changed. Through vows, divination, repentance rituals, and ascetic acts such as burning and blood writing, he sought to alter what others understood as inevitable and inescapable. Drawing attention to OuyiÕs unique reshaping of religious practice, Living Karma reasserts the significance of an overlooked individual in the modern development of Chinese Buddhism. While Buddhist studies scholarship tends to privilege textual analysis, Living Karma promotes a balanced study of ritual practice and writing, treating OuyiÕs texts as ritual objects and his reading and writing as religious acts. Each chapter addresses a specific religious practiceÑwriting, divination, repentance, vows, and bodily ritualsÑoffering first a diachronic overview of each practice within the history of Chinese Buddhism and then a synchronic analysis of each phenomenon through close readings of OuyiÕs work. The book sheds much-needed light on this little-known figure and his representation of karma, which proved to be a seminal innovation in the religious thought of late imperial China.
Author : Gita Mehta
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 12,72 MB
Release : 2012-05-02
Category : History
ISBN : 0307814637
Beginning in the late '60s, hundreds of thousands of Westerners descended upon India, disciples of a cultural revolution that proclaimed that the magic and mystery missing from their lives was to be found in the East. An Indian writer who has also lived in England and the United States, Gita Mehta was ideally placed to observe the spectacle of European and American "pilgrims" interacting with their hosts. When she finally recorded her razor sharp observations in Karma Cola, the book became an instant classic for describing, in merciless detail, what happens when the traditions of an ancient and longlived society are turned into commodities and sold to those who don't understand them. In the dazzling prose that has become her trademark, Mehta skewers the entire Spectrum of seekers: The Beatles, homeless students, Hollywood rich kids in detox, British guilt-trippers, and more. In doing so, she also reveals the devastating byproducts that the Westerners brought to the villages of rural lndia -- high anxiety and drug addiction among them. Brilliantly irreverent, Karma Cola displays Gita Mehta's gift for weaving old and new, common and bizarre, history and current events into a seamless and colorful narrative that is at once witty, shocking, and poignant.
Author : Audrius Beinorius
Publisher :
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 11,73 MB
Release : 2006
Category : India
ISBN :
Author : Barbara Y. Martin
Publisher : SCB Distributors
Page : 449 pages
File Size : 34,24 MB
Release : 2021-09-30
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 1954944039
“We have lived an extraordinary series of lives that has led us to our present experience. And the life we are living now will prepare us for lives yet to be lived.” There is life after death, and Barbara Martin has seen it. Now for the first time comes her inspired, firsthand account of the intricate world of spiritual rebirth. The award-winning authors of Change Your Aura, Change Your Life reveal the afterlife in a work based directly on Martin's personal explorations of the world to come and awe-inspiring clairvoyant experience with the spiritual worlds. Both a fully practical handbook to the ins and outs of the karmic cycle and a field guide to the spiritual plane and how reincarnation works. Dive deeper into the mystery of your soul's potential and how to understand your past, present, and future lives from a higher perspective. Uncover your own destiny and what you can do to unravel the mystery of your soul's journey. •Brings together the design of the world beyond and the mechanics of karma •Gives practical guidelines and tools to deal effectively with karmic situations and avoid generating adverse karma •Helps align readers with their spiritual purpose •Shows readers how to face and resolve their karmic troubles •Provides essential keys to spiritual development A true spiritual wonder in a single, fully accessible volume, Karma and Reincarnation is perfect for both those taking their first steps down a spiritual path and longtime spiritual students.
Author : Thierry Dodin
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 30,68 MB
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 0861711912
In the past century, the Western view of Tibet has evolved from an exotic Shangri-la filled with golden idols and the promise of immortality, to a peaceful land with an enlightened society now ravaged by outside aggression. How and why did our perception change? How accurate are our modern conceptions of Tibet? Imagining Tibet is a collection of essays that reveal these Western conceptions. Providing an historical background to the West's ever-changing relationship with Tibet, Donald Lopez, Jeffrey Hopkins, Jamyang Norbu, and other noted scholars explore a variety of topics - from Western perceptions of Tibetan approaches to violence, monastic life, and life as a nation in exile, to representations of Tibet in Western literature, art, environmentalism, and the New Age movement.
Author : Richard F. Gombrich
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 33,76 MB
Release : 2006-09-27
Category : Religion
ISBN : 113421717X
Written by the leading authority on Theravada Buddhism, this up-dated edition takes into account recent research to include the controversies over the date of the Buddha and current social and political developments in Sri Lanka. Gombrich explores the legacy of the Buddha's predecessors and the social and religious contexts against which Buddhism has developed and changed throughout history, demonstrating above all, how it has always influenced and been influenced by its social surroundings in a way which continues to this day.
