The world's "great" religions depend on traditions of serious scholarship, dedicated to preserving their key texts but also to understanding them and, therefore, to debating what understanding itself is and how best to do it. They also have important public missions of many kinds, and their ideas and organizations influence many other important institutions, including government, law, education, and kinship. Anthropology of Eastern Religions: Ideas, Organizations, and Constituencies is a comparative survey of the world's major religious traditions as professional enterprises and, often, as social movements. Documenting the principle ideas behind eastern religious traditions from an anthropological perspective, Murray J. Leaf demonstrates how these ideas have been used in building internal organizations that mobilize or fail to mobilize external support.

"The contributors to this volume have found the language and concepts by which to interpret Leonard Howell and the origins of the Rastafari movement in the 1930s. This volume is richly documented from the archives, and from interviews, and is informed by multidisciplinary methods, so the reader is treated to an authoritative and comprehensive collection of essays. "Leonard Howell was persecuted over five decades by the British colonial state and by Jamaican governments since independence in 1962. It is in this context that Howell defined the main tenets of the movement, a movement that has now spread globally. All the major themes of his thinking, such as African redemption, the divinity of Haile Selassie, repatriation, and the struggle for freedom and self-reliance are discussed. Howell challenged British colonialism and Jamaican elites in a very different way from the approaches used by the middle-class intelligentsia. He focused, rather, on a new way of seeing God, King and self, thus creating an alternative way of being in the world. Developing Marcus Garvey's focus on Africa, Leonard Howell and his followers reclaimed their ancestral identity from the dehumanized condition left by British slavery and colonialism. Howell's communal settlement on `Pinnacle' was an alternative communal space for Rastafari artisans, musicians and peasant farmers."-Rupert Lewis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

In the dawn of the new African Millennium, the Rastafari movement has achieved unheralded growth and visibility since its inception more than eighty years ago. Moving beyond a pure spiritual movement, its aesthetic component has influenced cultures of the Caribbean, the United States, and others across the globe. Locating the Rastafari movement at a literal and figurative crossroad, Barnett sets out to consider the possible paths the movement will chart. Rastafari in the New Millennium covers a wide range of perspectives, focusing not only on the movement's nuanced and complex religious ideology but also on its political philosophy, cosmology, and unique epistemology. Barry Chevannes's essay addresses the concerns of death and repatriation, highlighting the transformative challenges these issues pose to Rastafari. Essays by Ian Boxill, Edward Te Kohu Douglas, Erin MacLeod, and Janet L. DeCosmo, among others, offer rich accounts of the globalisation of Rastafari from New Zealand to Ethiopia, from Brazil to Zimbabwe. Drawing on new research and global developments, the contributors, many of whom are leading scholars in the field, reinvigorate the critical dialogue on the current state and future direction of the Rastafari movement.

Ce texte est un des ecrits fondamentaux de l'Hindouism

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless. An examination of a wide variety of writers shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past.

Vedic Sanskrit literature contains a wealth of material concerning the mythology and religious practices of India between 1500 and 500 B.C.E. a crucial period in the formation of traditional Indian culture. Stephanie W. Jamison here addresses the conditions that have limited our understanding of Vedic myth and ritual, such as the profusion and obscurity of the texts and the tendency on the part of scholars to approach mythology and ritual independently. Tracing two key myths through a variety of texts, Jamison provides insight into the relationship between early Indic myth and ritual as well as offering a new methodology for their study.

After a brief survey of Vedic literature and religion, Jamison examines the recurrences of the myths "Indra fed the Yatis to the hyenas" and "Svarbhanu pierced the sun with darkness." Focusing on their verbal form and ritual setting, she essays a general interpretation of the myths and their ritual purpose. Her book sheds new light on some central figures in Vedic mythology and on the evolution of Vedic mythological narrative, and it points to parallels in other cultures as well. Indologists and other scholars and students of South Asian culture, Indo-Eurepeanists, folklorists, historians of religion, classicists, and comparatists will welcome this rich and suggestive introduction to the Vedic tradition."

With its complex nature and many forms and practices, Hinduism is one of the world's most elusive religions for outsiders to understand. In Essential Hinduism, expert Steven Rosen aims to make the facets of this faith clear. Essential Hinduism explores this rich tradition through its history, literature, arts, and people. This straightforward overview focuses primarily on monotheistic Vaishnavism, the most common form of Hinduism. Beginning with chapters about the foundations of Hinduism, Steven Rosen clearly lays out the religion's otherwise complicated history. Providing Hindu terms alongside English translations, he illuminates the basics of the faith for readers unacquainted with its varieties and tenets and examines commonly held misconceptions. Chapters about practices, including festivals, teachings, chanting, eating habits, and more, bring Hinduism to life in vivid detail.

This innovative cultural history examines wide-ranging issues of religion, politics, and identity through an analysis of the American Indian Ghost Dance movement and its significance for two little-studied tribes: the Shoshones and Bannocks. The Ghost Dance has become a metaphor for the death of American Indian culture, but as Gregory Smoak argues, it was not the desperate fantasy of a dying people but a powerful expression of a racialized 'Indianness'. While the Ghost Dance did appeal to supernatural forces to restore power to native people, on another level it became a vehicle for the expression of meaningful social identities that crossed ethnic, tribal, and historical boundaries. Looking closely at the Ghost Dances of 1870 and 1890, Smoak constructs a far-reaching, new argument about the formation of ethnic and racial identity among American Indians. He examines the origins of Shoshone and Bannock ethnicity, follows these people through a period of declining autonomy vis-a-vis the United States government, and finally puts their experience and the Ghost Dances within the larger context of identity formation and emerging nationalism which marked United States history in the nineteenth century.

The Baha'i Faith in America sets out to accomplish two main goals. The first is to introduce to the American reading public a religion whose name may be commonly mentioned or heard, yet in terms of its unique history, world-view, beliefs, and laws, is virtually unknown. Such categories provide the essential material for Part I. The second objective, which is the uniting thread of Part II, is to trace the historical development of the American Baha'i community from its earliest beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century up until the present day. The chapters in this section not only peruse the major events and introduce the leading personalities associated with American Baha'i history, they also trace significant themes, motifs, and issues that have characterized the community over the decades. Examples include early Baha'i connections with both American millenialism and metaphysical esotericism, to more recent associations with the Civil Rights Movement and the 1960s youth counterculture. In addition, the book's final chapters take a close look at some of the more controversial issues that have characterized American Baha'i community life over the past few decades. Here issues ranging in content from disagreements over differing styles of propogation to the freedom of expression allowed to Baha'i scholars are examined. In the process, the work reveals a dynamic and highly idealistic faith that is attempting to offer a model of religious community that is compatible with the continuing process of globalization.

Chondogyo is a unique and indigenous religion of Korea founded in 1860 by Choe Je-u, better known as Suun, his pen name. Chondogyo means "the Religion of Heavenly Way." Originally called Donghak, meaning "Eastern leaning," the religious movement is regarded as one of the most important in Korean history, with a particular impact on modern Korean society and politics. Its scripture has played a foundational and essential role in the belief system of Chondogyo, containing Suun's ideas about God, man, and the world, as well as his own religious experience. This translation represents the only complete translation of Donggyeong Daejeon with notes in English. The study of Chondogyo has been limited in the West due to its lack of circulation in Western languages. With this translation, a main part of the Chondogyo literature is available to the worldwide community of scholars and students engaged in the study of this important Korean religion. This work, therefore, makes a significant contribution to the scholarship of world religions.

Although Western humanity has conquered the outer world with the aid of technology and science, death remains an unsolved and largely unexplored mystery. Rudolf Steiner, as an exceptional seer, was able to research spiritually the question of what happens to human consciousness after the physical body passes away. In these remarkably matter-of-fact lectures, he affirms that life continues beyond death. Far from being dissipated, the individual's consciousness awakens to a new reality, beginning a great journey to the farthest expanses of the cosmos. One's consciousness embarks on a journey and process of purification and preparation. Steiner indicates that one of the most important tasks for our present civilization is to reestablish living connections with those who have died. He gives suggestions as to how this can be done safely and describes how the dead can be of help to those on Earth. Life Beyond Death is an ideal introduction to the spiritual scientific views of our continuing journey.

Popular Christianity in India explores Indian Christianity as crafted and expressed through lived experience, providing an important balance to currently available, typically theological, studies. Drawing from many disciplines, this volume unearths the multifaceted terrain of festivals, rituals, saints, miracle workers, missionaries, and visionaries in Christian India, providing a wonderful glimpse of its richness and complexities. The contributors reveal the ways in which local Christian traditions deftly challenge assumed divisions and power imbalances between East and West, Hindu and Christian, foreign and indigenous, and elite and local expressions. Whether forging complicated religious, caste, and national identities, employing religious hybridity to promote well-being, or asserting autonomy within oppressive social and religious structures, local Christianity provides a crucial means for its participants to manage their earthly needs and desires.

The Devi Gita, literally the "Song of the Goddess, " is an Eastern spiritual classic that appeared around the fifteenth century C.E.C. Mackenzie Brown provides a reader-friendly English translation of this sacred text taken from his well-regarded previous book The Devi Gita: The Song of the Goddess, A Translation, Annotation, and Commentary. Here the translation is presented uninterrupted without the scholarly annotations of the original version and in its entirety for the pleasure of all readers who wish to encounter this treasure from the world's sacred literature.

Often neglected, the Devi Gita deserves to be better known for its presentations of one of the great Hindu visions of the divine conceived in feminine terms. The work depicts the universe as created, pervaded, and protected by a supremely powerful, all-knowing, and wholly compassionate divine female. It also describes the various spiritual paths leading to realization of unity with the Goddess. The author of the Devi Gita intended for the work to supplant the famous teachings of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (the "Song of the Lord") from a goddess-inspired perspective.

The massacre of 120 emigrant men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, by Mormons and Mormon-incited Indians shocked the nation. It was not until the spring of 1859 that federal authorities began to conduct inquiries into the massacre. Bvt. Major James H. Carleton, 1st Dragoons, was instructed to investigate the even while en route to Salt Lake City. Carleton's account of May 1859 from the bone-strewn ground is full, accurate, and understandably emotional.

You can go to a mirror to find our how your body is doing, but how can you get a picture of your soul? A Well-Tended Soul holds a mirror up to your life for a refreshing, unabashedly feminine look at spiritual formation. Valerie Bell shows how to start building a life of incredible richness as you become more internally focused, forming your soul to God's own heart. A well-tended soul is a woman's beautifier. Soul-care weeds out what is malignant and false and builds in what is lovely, worthy, and redemptive. With refreshing candor, empathy, and earthiness, Bell uses her own experiences to help you - Live a deeper, more genuinely connected life - Pursue your truest dreams - Shape the world around you with an authentic spirituality - Discover the power of thankfulness to uproot envy and loss - Build confidence, joy, and beauty into your life - Transcend the fears and losses of aging . . . and much more.