Or the Aphorisms of the Wise. A collection of texts, aphorisms, sayings, proverbs, etc. from "The Upanishads," or sacred writings of India, compiled and adapted from over fifty authorities, expressing the cream of the Hindu philosophical thought.

The author shares his deep understanding of Taosim--specifically the texts attribued the Heart, Diamond and Lankavatara sutras; and attributed to Cahn Buddhism as taught by Hui Neng, Huang Po, Hui Hai, rct.

Critically examining the notion of 'world religions', Charles D. Orzech compares five purpose-built museums of world religions and their online extensions. Inspired by the 19th and 20th century discipline of comparative religion, these museums seek to promote religious tolerance by representing religious diversity and by arguing for underlying kinship among religions. From locations in Europe (Marburg, Glasgow and St Petersburg), to North America (Quebec) to Asia (Taipei), each museum advances a particular cultural history. This book shows how the curation of the objects they contain shapes public perceptions of religion, giving material form to the discourses about religion and world religions. Raising important questions about religion and secularity, museum displays and religious piety, Museums of World Religions questions the ideology that informs these museums. Building on recent anthropological work on the agency of religious objects, the author critiques these museums and suggests new approaches to displaying the matter of religion.

Responding to our modern disillusionment with any claims to absolute truth regarding morality or reality, this book offers a conceptual approach for discussing absolutes without denying either the relevance of divergent religious and philosophical teachings or the evidence supporting postmodern and poststructuralist critiques. Case studies of mysticism within Advaita-Vedānta Hinduism, Mādhyamika Buddhism, and Nicene Christianity demonstrate the value of this approach and offer many fresh insights into the metaphysical presuppositions of these religions as well as into the nature and value of mystical experience. Like Douglas Hofstadter's Gōdel, Escher, Bach, this book finds ultimate reality to be rationally graspable only as an eternal fugue of pattern and paradox. Yet it does not so much counter other philosophical views as provide a conceptual tool for understanding and classifying incommensurable views.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Definition is an important scientific and philosophical method. In all kinds of scientific and philosophical inquiries definition is provided to make clear the characteristics of the things under investigation. Definition in this sense, sometimes called real definition, should state the essence of the thing defined, according to Aristotle. In another (currently popular) sense, sometimes called nominal definition, definition explicates the meaning of a term already in use in an ordinary language or the scientific discourse or specifies the meaning of a new term introduced in an ordinary language of the scientific discourse. Definition combines the purposes of both real and nominal definition and is promoted by the Nyaya philosophers of India. Another important method of science and philosophy is induction. In a narrow sense induction is a method of generalization to all cases from the observation of particular cases. In a broad sense induction is a method for reasoning from some observed fact to a different fact not involved in the former. We understand induction in the broad sense though more often we shall actually be concerned with induction in the narrow sense. How can our limited experience of nature provide the rational basis for making knowlege claims about unobserved phenomena?

With more than four thousand entries and over one hundred illustrations, this encyclopedia offers a complete survey of the four major religious traditions of Asia. It is designed not only for students and scholars but also to help general readers find their way through the thicket of unfamiliar words and concepts that are often encountered today in various fields such as the health professions, psychotherapy, the sciences, and the media. Among the subjects covered are:
- Important terms such as "chakra," "karma," "koan," "nirvana," "tantra," "Tao," and "yin-yang"
- The lives and teachings of mystics, philosophers, and masters of meditation
- Basic texts and scriptures
- Sects and schools of thought
- Mythological figures and events

In addition, pronunciation tables, a comprehensive bibliography, and a Ch'an/Zen Lineage Chart are provided.

In 1950, Krishnamurti said: "If we are concerned with our own lives, if we understand our relationship with others, we will have created a new society; otherwise, we will but perpetuate the present chaotic mess and confusion."

Providing a far-reaching basis for solving many of the world's crises, On Relationship brings together Krishnamurti's most essential teachings on the individual's relationship to other people and institutions. The renowned teacher makes clear that the way we handle personal crises and relationships links us to the problems of all people and has a larger, global meaning. Ending the causes of war, for instance, cannot truly begin until we perform simple, but often ignored, tasks such as reconciling with estranged family members, keeping our homes in order, and respecting others.

Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao outlines the evolution of musical performance in early China, first within and then ultimately away from the socio-religious context of ancestor worship. Examining newly discovered bamboo texts from the Warring States period, Constance A. Cook compares the rhetoric of Western Zhou (1046-771 BCE) and Spring and Autumn (770-481 BCE) bronze inscriptions with later occurrences of similar terms in which ritual music began to be used as a form of self-cultivation and education. Cook's analysis links the creation of such classics as the Book of Odes with the ascendance of the individual practitioner, further connecting the social actors in three types of ritual: boys coming of age, heirs promoted into ancestral government positions, and the philosophical stages of transcendence experienced in self-cultivation. The focus of this study is on excavated texts; it is the first to use both bronze and bamboo narratives to show the evolution of a single ritual practice. By viewing the ancient inscribed materials and the transmitted classics from this new perspective, Cook uncovers new linkages in terms of how the materials were shaped and reshaped over time and illuminates the development of eulogy and song in changing ritual contexts.

Multi-prizewinning and internationally acclaimed Yan Lianke -- 'China's most controversial novelist' (New Yorker) -- returns with a campus novel like no other following a young Buddhist as she journeys through worldly temptation To tell the truth, religious faith is really just a matter of believing stories. The world is governed by stories, and it is for the sake of stories that everyone lives on this earth. Yahui is a young Buddhist at university. But this is no ordinary university. It is populated by every faith in China: Buddhists, Daoists, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims who jostle alongside one another in the corridors of learning, and whose deities are never far from the classroom. Her days are measured out making elaborate religious papercuts, taking part in highly charged tug-of-war competitions between the faiths and trying to resist the daily temptation to return to secular life and abandon the ascetic ideals that are her calling. Everything seems to dangle by a thread. But when she meets a Daoist student called Mingzheng, an inexorable romance of mythic proportions takes hold of her. In this profoundly otherworldly novel, Chinese master Yan Lianke remakes the campus novel in typically visionary fashion, dropping readers into an allegorical world ostensibly far from our own, but which reflects our own questions and struggles right back at us. ** Beautiful edition illustrated throughout with beautiful original papercuts ** 'One of China's greatest living authors' Guardian 'His talent cannot be ignored' New York Times 'China's foremost literary satirist' Financial Times

Here is one of the most insightful texts on the subtle arts of confrontation and victory to emerge from Asian culture. Written not only for martial artists but for leaders in all professions, the book analyzes the process of struggle and mastery over conflict that underlies every level of human interaction. "The Book of Five Rings "--which has become a well-known classic among American business people, studied for its insights into the Japanese approach to business strategy--was composed in 1643 by the famed duelist and undefeated samurai Miyamoto Musashi. Unlike previous editions of "The Book of Five Rings," Thomas Cleary's is an accessible translation, free of jargon, with an introduction that presents the spiritual background of the warrior tradition. Along with Musashi's text, Cleary translates another important Japanese classic on leadership and strategy: "The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War" by Yagyu Munenori, which highlights the ethical and spiritual insights of Taoism and Zen as they apply to the way of the warrior.

Western Christians often despair of finding meaning in the paradoxical statement that God is both "One" and "Three". The problem, says Jung Young Lee, is not with the doctrine of the Trinity itself; rather, it is with the Western conceptual tendency to view reality in exclusive, "either/or" terms. The Trinity is at its heart an inclusive doctrine of one God who is nonetheless three distinct persons. In order to grasp this fact, we need different conceptual categories, not only with which to view God, but all of reality. The Asian philosophical construct of yin and yang can offer a way out of this problem, with its inherently "both/and" way of thinking. Drawing on a variety of East Asian religious traditions, Lee offers a creative reinterpretation of this central Christian doctrine. He shows how a global perspective can illuminate Western theological constructs as he establishes the necessity of a contextual approach to the doctrine of the Trinity.

The golden age of Daoists, rather than being imaginary, closely matches life in the Mesolithic, ca. 9000-5000 BCE, a sedentary form of hunting and collecting before the full development of agriculture and the rise of stratified societies and discriminating consciousness. The book examines fundamental Daoist values, modes of thinking, dietetics, communities, leadership ideals, nonviolence, gender equality as well as methods of self-cultivation in relation to prehistoric patterns. An enlightening account of Daoism in the context of human development since the Paleolithic, Pristine Affluence offers a new vision of the Daoist tradition, Chinese history, and essential human choices.

During the Heian period (794-1185), the sacred mountain Kinpusen, literally the "Peak of Gold," came to cultural prominence as a pilgrimage destination for the most powerful men in Japan-the Fujiwara regents and the retired emperors. Real and Imagined depicts their one-hundred-kilometer trek from the capital to the rocky summit as well as the imaginative landscape they navigated. Kinpusen was believed to be a realm of immortals, the domain of an unconventional bodhisattva, and the home of an indigenous pantheon of kami. These nominally private journeys to Kinpusen had political implications for both the pilgrims and the mountain. While members of the aristocracy and royalty used pilgrimage to legitimate themselves and compete with one another, their patronage fed rivalry among religious institutions. Thus, after flourishing under the Fujiwara regents, Kinpusen's cult and community were rent by violent altercations with the great Nara temple Kofukuji. The resulting institutional reconfigurations laid the groundwork for Shugendo, a new movement focused on religious mountain practice that emerged around 1300. Using archival sources, archaeological materials, noblemen's journals, sutras, official histories, and vernacular narratives, this original study sheds new light on Kinpusen, positioning it within the broader religious and political history of the Heian period.

The political influence of temples in pre-modern Japan, most clearly manifested in divine demonstrations, has traditionally been condemned and is poorly understood. In an impressive examination of this intriguing aspect of medieval Japan, Mikael Adolphson employs a wide range of previously neglected sources (court diaries, abbot appointment records, war chronicles, narrative picture scrolls) to argue that religious protest was a symptom of political factionalism in the capital rather than its cause. It is his contention that religious violence can be traced primarily to attempts by secular leaders to re-arrange religious and political hierarchies to their own advantage, thereby leaving disfavored religious institutions to fend for their accustomed rights and status. In this context, divine demonstrations became the preferred negotiating tool for monastic complexes. For almost three centuries, such strategies allowed a handful of elite temples to maintain enough of an equilibrium to sustain and defend the old style of rulership even against the efforts of the Ashikaga Shogunate in the mid-fourteenth century.

By acknowledging temples and monks as legitimate co-rulers, The Gates of Power provides a new synthesis of Japanese rulership from the late Heian (794-1185) to the early Muromachi (1336-1573) eras, offering a unique and comprehensive analysis that brings together the spheres of art, religion, ideas, and politics in medieval Japan.

This text provides a careful examination of "mizuko kuyo", a Japanese religious ritual for aborted foetuses. Popularized during the 1970s, when religious entrepreneurs published frightening accounts of foetal wrath and spirit attacks, mizuko kuyo offers ritual attonement for women who, sometimes decades previously, chose to have abortions.;In its exploration of the complex issues that surround this practice, the text takes into account the history of Japanese attitudes towards abortion, the development of abortion rituals, the marketing of religion and the nature of power relations in intercourse, contraception and abortion. Although abortion in Japan is accepted and legal and was commonly used as birth control in the early postwar period, entrepreneurs used images from foetal photography to mount a surprisingly successful tabloid campaign to promote mizuko kuyo. Adopted by some religionists as an economic strategy, it was rejected by others on doctrinal, humanistic and feminist grounds.

This book presents the American encounter with Asian religions through a wide range of documents - written and visual from elite and popular culture- dating from 1788 to the present. The entries are divided into four chronological periods. The first section traces the initial attempts to map the earliest contacts, up to 1840; the second section, from 1840 to 1924, presents the first real passages-from east to west and west to east; the third, from 1924 to 1965, sketches a drifting period when immigration had stopped and Euro-American interst in Asian religions was minimal; and the final section, which takes us to the present, covers a time when the encounter intensifies greatly.

The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also (albeit incidentally) with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces ofliterature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays presented here constitute an attempt by a distinguished community of international scholars to provide a variety of exegeses of one of the Zhuangzi's most frequently rehearsed anecdotes, often referred to as "the Happy Fish debate." The editors have brought together essays from the broadest possible compass of scholarship, offering interpretations that range from formal logic to alternative epistemologies to transcendental mysticism. Many were commissioned by the editors and appear for the first time. Some of them have been available in other languages-Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish-and were translated especially for this anthology. And several older essays were chosen for the quality and variety of their arguments, formulated over years of engagement by their authors. All, however, demonstrate that the Zhuangzi as a text and as a philosophy is never one thing; indeed, it has always been and continues to be, many different things to many different people.

In this fascinating collection culled from teachings never before brought together in book form, Krishnamurti offers wise reflections and fresh perceptions on love, politics, society, death, self-censorship, relationships, solitude, meditation, spiritual growth, and much more.

Through provocative meditations and in-depth answers, Krishnamurti answers such timeless questions as:

• What is meditation?

• What are love and loneliness?

• What should our relationship to authority really be?

Meeting Life also features a number of Krishnamurti's talks, delivered in Switzerland, India, England, and California, Here is the profound wisdom of a beloved teacher who moved millions with his words. This thought-provoking and inspirational volume will provide strength and encouragement to anyone searching for insight.

Mount Tai in northeastern China has long been a sacred site. Indeed, it epitomizes China's religious and social diversity. Throughout history, it has been a magnet for both women and men from all classes--emperors, aristocrats, officials, literati, and villagers. For much of the past millennium, however, the vast majority of pilgrims were illiterate peasants who came to pray for their deceased ancestors, as well as for sons, good fortune, and health.

Each of these social groups approached Mount Tai with different expectations. Each group's or individual's view of the world, interpersonal relationships, and ultimate goals or dreams--in a word, its identity--was reflected in its interactions with this sacred site. This book examines the behavior of those who made the pilgrimage to Mount Tai and their interpretations of its sacrality and history, as a means of better understanding their identities and mentalities. It is the first to trace the social landscape of Mount Tai, to examine the mindsets not just of prosperous, male literati but also of women and illiterate pilgrims, and to combine evidence from fiction, poetry, travel literature, and official records with the findings of studies of material culture and anthropology.

Despite Taiwan's rise as an economic force in the world, modernity has not led to a Weberian process of disenchantment or curbed religiosity. To the contrary, other factors--social, economic, political--have stimulated religion. How and why this has happened are central issues in this book.

One part of Taiwan's flourishing religious culture is the elaborate and colorful procession of local gods accompanied by troupes of musicians and dancers. Among them are performers with outlandishly painted faces portraying underworld generals who serve the gods and punish the living. Through their performances, these troupes claim to exorcise harmful forces from the community.

In conducting fieldwork among these troupes, Donald Sutton confronted their claims to a long history--when all evidence indicated that the troupes had been insignificant until the 1970s--and their assertions of devotion to tradition given the diversity of performances. Concentrating on the stylistic variations in performances, the author describes the troupes as organizations shaped by the "market forces" of supply and demand in the culture of religious festivals. By focusing on performances as the nexus of market and art, he shows how bodily performance is the site where religious statements are made and the power of the gods made visible.