Empowering Mindfulness for Women is centred around a a 5-day intensive mindfulness course attended by eight women from different backgrounds. The reader is invited to imagine they are actively participating in the teaching and learning moments and turning points encountered in teaching and learning mindfulness around themes such as making space for mindfulness, safeguarding mindfulness for women, engendering mindfulness, mindfulness dreaming and a mandala of wisdoms. Evocative accounts of experience bring to life the women's growing awareness that mindfulness can be both a separate practice and a natural part of life and that it can help them to nurture what they have neglected in themselves by not tapping into the full spectrum of their experience. Each chapter provides useful follow-up activities and questions for individual or group reflection, journaling, sharing and conversation. Empowering Mindfulness for Women is aimed at those who teach mindfulness to women in educational, community or clinical settings and at women who want to learn mindfulness in a manner that positions them as experts in their own learning.

Pyrrhonian Buddhism reconstructs the path to enlightenment shared both by early Buddhists and the ancient Greek sceptics inspired by Pyrrho of Elis, who may have had extended contacts with Buddhists when he accompanied Alexander the Great to India in the third century BCE. This volume explores striking parallels between early Buddhism and Pyrrhonian scepticism, suggesting their virtual identity. Both movements saw beliefs-fictions mistaken for truths-as the principal source of human suffering. Both practiced suspension of judgment about beliefs to obtain release from suffering, and to achieve enlightenment, which the Buddhists called bodhi and the Pyrrhonists called ataraxia. And both came to understand the structure of human experience without belief, which the Buddhists called dependent origination and the Pyrrhonists described as phenomenalistic atomism. This book is intended for the general reader, as well as historians, classicists, Buddhist scholars, philosophers, and practitioners of spiritual techniques.

Dialogue is a recurring and significant component of Indian religious and philosophical literature. Whether it be as a narrative account of a conversation between characters within a text, as an implied response or provocation towards an interlocutor outside the text, or as a hermeneutical lens through which commentators and modern audiences can engage with an ancient text, dialogue features prominently in many of the most foundational sources from classical India. Despite its ubiquity, there are very few studies that explore this important facet of Indian texts. This book redresses this imbalance by undertaking a close textual analysis of a range of religious and philosophical literature to highlight the many uses and functions of dialogue in the sources themselves and in subsequent interpretations. Using the themes of encounter, transformation and interpretation - all of which emerged from face-to-face discussions between the contributors of this volume - each chapter explores dialogue in its own context, thereby demonstrating the variety and pervasiveness of dialogue in different genres of the textual tradition. This is a rich and detailed study that offers a fresh and timely perspective on many of the most well-known and influential sources from classical India. As such, it will be of great use to scholars of religious studies, Asian studies, comparative literature and literary theory.

Exploring the Heart Sutra offers readers an interdisciplinary philosophical approach to this much-loved Buddhist classic, with a new translation and commentary. Situating the Heart Sutra within a Chinese context, Sarah A. Mattice brings together voices past and present, Asian and Western, on topics from Buddhology, translation theory, feminism, religious studies, ethnography, Chinese philosophy, and more, in order to inspire readers to understand the sutra in a new light. Mattice's argument for the importance of appreciating the Heart Sutra from a Chinese philosophical context includes a new hermeneutic paradigm for approaching composite texts; an argument for translating the text from the Chinese, rather than the Sanskrit; an extended discussion of the figure of Guanyin, bodhisattva of compassion and main speaker of the Heart Sutra, as a distinctively Chinese figure; an inquiry in to the history of women's practice, with a special focus on China; and a commentary on the text that draws on philosophical resources from Chinese Buddhist, Ruist, and Daoist traditions. Mattice presents the Heart Sutra in its depth and complexity, inviting readers to return to this classic text with fresh perspectives and new insights into its relevance for living well in the contemporary world.

With poetry and clarity, Thich Nhat Hanh imparts comforting wisdom about the nature of suffering and its role in creating compassion, love, and joy – all qualities of enlightenment.

In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, now revised with added material and new insights, Nhat Hanh introduces us to the core teachings of Buddhism and shows us that the Buddha’s teachings are accessible and applicable to our daily lives.

Covering such significant teachings as the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Doors of Liberation, the Three Dharma Seals, and the Seven Factors of Awakening, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching is a radiant beacon on Buddhist thought for the initiated and uninitiated alike.

The story of the spiritual journey of the famous Tibetan yogi Milarepa is often told, but less well known are the stories of his encounters with those he met and taught after his own Enlightenment, eleven of which are the catalyst for volumes 18 and 19 of the Complete Works. The first three were originally published in The Yogi's Joy, and to these have been added an intriguing fourth, `The Shepherd's Search for Mind'. The other seven stories form a sequence tracing the relationship between Milarepa and his disciple Rechungpa, from their first meeting to their final parting, when Rechungpa is exhorted to go and teach the Dharma himself. As portrayed in The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, Rechungpa is a promising disciple, but he has a lot to learn, being sometimes proud, distracted, anxious, desirous of comfort and praise, over-attached to book learning, stubborn, sulky and liable to go to extremes. In other words, he is very human, and surely recognizable to anyone who has embarked on the spiritual path. He all too often takes his teacher's advice the wrong way, or simply ignores it, and it takes all of Milarepa's skill, compassion and patience to keep their relationship intact and help his unruly disciple to stay on the path to Enlightenment. Sangharakshita's commentary is based on seminars he gave to young, enthusiastic but as yet inexperienced Dharma followers, and while much can be gleaned from it about the path of practice of the Kagyu tradition, the main emphasis is simply on how to overcome the difficulties that are sure to befall the would-be spiritual practitioner, how to learn what we need to learn - in short, the art of discipleship.

In The Buddha Was a Psychologist: A Rational Approach to Buddhist Teachings, Arnold Kozak argues for a secular, psychological, interpretation of the Buddha's teachings, with a particular focus on the Buddha's mind model and use of metaphor. Kozak closely examines the Buddha's hagiography, analyzing Buddhist dharma through the contexts of neuroscience, cognitive linguistics, and evolutionary psychology.

The reader is taken on a journey to Dolpo, one of Nepal's remotest Tibetan enclaves with a large community that follow the Bon religion. The present ethnography regards the landscape of Dolpo as the temporary result of an ongoing cumulative cultural process that emerges from the interaction of the natural environment and the communities that inhabit it and endow it with meaning. Pilgrimage provides the key to structuring the book, which is based on anthropological research and the study of the textual legacy. Along the extensive and richly illustrated Bon pilgrimages through Dolpo, the various strands of the written and the oral, the local and the general, the past and present are unrolled step by step and woven into a pattern that provides a first insight into the partial shift from a landscape inhabited by territorial deities to a Bon landscape. In addition, it presents an overview of the main protagonists who discovered the sacred sites, opened pilgrimages, founded monasteries and disseminated the crucial Bon teachings. A number of well-known Tibetan figures emerge among these players thanks to translations of biographies that have survived in rare and unpublished manuscripts. This book sheds light on how Bon religion emerged in Dolpo and has remained alive.

Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters is the fourth in? a series of collected essays by one of today's most distinguished scholars of Indian Buddhism. In these articles Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.

A comprehensive collection of essays exploring the interstices of Eastern and Western modes of thinking about the self, Crossroads in Psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and Mindfulness: The Word and the Breath documents just some of the challenges, conflicts, pitfalls, and "wow" moments that inhere in today's historical and cultural intersections of theory, practice, and experience. As this collection demonstrates, the crossroads between Buddhist and psychoanalytic approaches to mindfulness are rich beyond belief in integrative potential. The surprising and fertile connections from which this book originates, and the future ones which every reader in turn will spur, will invigorate and intensify this specific form of contemporary commerce at the crossroads of East and West. Analytically-oriented psychotherapists, themselves of different "climates" and cultures, break out of the seclusion of the consulting room to think, translate, meditate on, and mediate their experiences-generated via the maternal order-in such a way as to make those experiences thinkable via the necessary filters of the paternal order of language. In this light the "word and the breath" of the book's subtitle are addressed as the privileged "instruments" of psychoanalysis and meditation, respectively.

Like any other subject, the study of religion is a child of its time. Shaped and forged over the course of the twentieth century, it has reflected the interests and political situation of the world at the time. As the twenty-first century unfolds, it is undergoing a major transition along with religion itself. This volume showcases new work and new approaches to religion which work across boundaries of religious tradition, academic discipline and region. The influence of globalizing processes has been evident in social and cultural networking by way of new media like the internet, in the extensive power of global capitalism and in the increasing influence of international bodies and legal instruments. Religion has been changing and adapting too. This handbook offers fresh insights on the dynamic reality of religion in global societies today by underscoring transformations in eight key areas: Market and Branding; Contemporary Ethics and Virtues; Intimate Identities; Transnational Movements; Diasporic Communities; Responses to Diversity; National Tensions; and Reflections on 'Religion'. These themes demonstrate the handbook's new topics and approaches that move beyond existing agendas. Bringing together scholars of all ages and stages of career from around the world, the handbook showcases the dynamism of religion in global societies. It is an accessible introduction to new ways of approaching the study of religion practically, theoretically and geographically.

This book examines the interface between Buddhism and the caste system in India. It discusses how Buddhism in different stages, from its early period to contemporary forms-Theravada, Mahayana, Tantrayana and Navayana-dealt with the question of caste. It also traces the intersections between the problem of caste with those of class and gender. The volume reflects on the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism: it looks at critiques of caste in the classical Buddhist tradition while simultaneously drawing attention to the radical challenge posed by Dr B. R. Ambedkar's Navayana Buddhism or neo-Buddhism. The essays in the book further compare approaches to varna and caste developed by modern thinkers such as M. K. Gandhi and S. Radhakrishnan with Ambedkar's criticisms and his departures from mainstream appraisals. With its interdisciplinary methodology, combining insights from literature, philosophy, political science and sociology, the volume explores contemporary critiques of caste from the perspective of Buddhism and its historical context. By analyzing religion through the lens of caste and gender, it also forays into the complex relationship between religion and politics, while offering a rigorous study of the textual tradition of Buddhism in India. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, Buddhist studies, Indology, literature (especially Sanskrit and Pali), exclusion and discrimination studies, history, political studies, women studies, sociology, and South Asian studies.

This book examines the current use of digital media in religious engagement and how new media can influence and alter faith and spirituality. As technologies are introduced and improved, they continue to raise pressing questions about the impact, both positive and negative, that they have on the lives of those that use them. The book also deals with some of the more futuristic and speculative topics related to transhumanism and digitalization. Including an international group of contributors from a variety of disciplines, chapters address the intersection of religion and digital media from multiple perspectives. Divided into two sections, the chapters included in the first section of the book present case studies from five major religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism and their engagement with digitalization. The second section of the volume explores the moral, ideological but also ontological implications of our increasingly digital lives. This book provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of the development of religion and spirituality in the digital age. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Digital Religion, Religion and Media, Religion and Sociology, as well as Religious Studies and New Media more generally, but also for every student interested in the future of religion and spirituality in a completely digitalized world.

For several years Mouni Sadhu steeped himself in the teachings of the foremost Hindu ascetic, Sri Ramana Maharshi. This book, first published in 1957, is the best attempt by a European to describe without technicalities what such teachings entail, what meditation is about, and why Indians worship their gurus. Mouni Sadhu's rare facility for describing his own mental and spiritual states enables him to pass on to the reader his knowledge and enthusiasm. It is an authentic account of life with an inspired Hindu yogi and spiritual teacher.

Originated by the great sage of modern India, Sri Aurobindo, integral yoga has been presented in this volume, first published in 1965, in the context of modern western thinking. It expounds the concept of harmonious and creative living on the basis of a fruitful reconciliation of the self-perfecting mysticism of the East and the rationalistic humanism of the West. It gives a dynamic form, an evolutionary perspective, and a creative impetus to the ancient mystic idea of union with the eternal.

The talks presented in this volume, first published in 1977, were originally delivered during a retreat in New York, in which speakers from a variety of spiritual traditions were represented. It aims to show the value of yoga in everyday life, and its relation to many other religions and philosophies.

Shaolin Monastery at Mount Song is considered the epicentre of the Chan school of Buddhism. It is also well known for its martial arts tradition and has long been regarded as a special cultural heritage site and an important symbol of the Chinese nation. This book is the first scholarly work in English to comprehensively examine the full history of Shaolin Monastery from 496 to 2016. More importantly, it offers a clear grasp of the origins and development of Chan Buddhism through an examination of Shaolin, and highlights the role of Shaolin and Shaolin kung fu in the construction of a national identity among the Chinese people in the past two centuries.

While indeterminacy is a recurrent theme in philosophy, less progress has been made in clarifying its significance for various philosophical and interdisciplinary contexts. This collection brings together early-career and well-known philosophers-including Graham Priest, Trish Glazebrook, Steven Crowell, Robert Neville, Todd May, and William Desmond-to explore indeterminacy in greater detail. The volume is unique in that its essays demonstrate the positive significance of indeterminacy, insofar as indeterminacy opens up new fields of discourse and illuminates neglected aspects of various concepts and phenomena. The essays are organized thematically around indeterminacy's impact on various areas of philosophy, including post-Kantian idealism, phenomenology, ethics, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and East Asian philosophy. They also take an interdisciplinary approach by elaborating the conceptual connections between indeterminacy and literature, music, religion, and science.

Relations between China and India underwent a dramatic transformation from Buddhist-dominated to commerce-centered exchanges in the seventh to fifteenth centuries. The unfolding of this transformation, its causes, and wider ramifications are examined in this masterful analysis of the changing patterns of the interaction between the two most important cultural spheres in Asia. Tansen Sen offers a new perspective on Sino-Indian relations during the Tang dynasty (618-907), arguing that the period is notable not only for religious and diplomatic exchanges but also for the process through which China emerged as a center of Buddhist learning, practice, and pilgrimage. Before the seventh century, the Chinese clergy-given the spatial gap between the sacred Buddhist world of India and the peripheral China-suffered from a "borderland complex." A close look at the evolving practice of relic veneration in China (at Famen Monastery in particular), the exposition of Mount Wutai as an abode of the bodhisattva Manjusri, and the propagation of the idea of Maitreya's descent in China, however, reveals that by the eighth century China had overcome its complex and successfully established a Buddhist realm within its borders. The emergence of China as a center of Buddhism had profound implications on religious interactions between the two countries and is cited by Sen as one of the main causes for the weakening of China's spiritual attraction toward India. At the same time, the growth of indigenous Chinese Buddhist schools and teachings retrenched the need for doctrinal input from India. A detailed examination of the failure of Buddhist translations produced during the Song dynasty (960-1279), demonstrates that these developments were responsible for the unraveling of religious bonds between the two countries and the termination of the Buddhist phase of Sino-Indian relations. Sen proposes that changes in religious interactions were paralleled by changes in commercial exchanges. For most of the first millennium, trading activities between India and China were closely connected with and sustained through the transmission of Buddhist doctrines. The eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, witnessed dramatic changes in the patterns and structure of mercantile activity between the two countries. Secular bulk and luxury goods replaced Buddhist ritual items, maritime channels replaced the overland Silk Road as the most profitable conduits of commercial exchange, and many of the merchants involved were followers of Islam rather than Buddhism. Moreover, policies to encourage foreign trade instituted by the Chinese government and the Indian kingdoms contributed to the intensification of commercial activity between the two countries and transformed the China-India trading circuit into a key segment of cross-continental commerce.