In lucid exercises presented in the book, Paul shows how everyone can learn the art of mantra simply by training the voice, and how these practices can help reduce stress, enhance emotional well-being, and optimize the flow of energy within the body.

Formalized by the tenth century, the expansive Bhagavata Purana resists easy categorization. While the narrative holds together as a coherent literary work, its language and expression compete with the best of Sanskrit poetry. The text's theological message focuses on devotion to Krishna or Vishnu, and its philosophical outlook is grounded in the classical traditions of Vedanta and Samkhya. No other Purana has inspired so much commentary, imitation, and derivation. The work has grown in vibrancy through centuries of performance, interpretation, worship, and debate and has guided the actions and meditations of elite intellectuals and everyday worshippers alike. This annotated translation and detailed analysis shows how one text can have such enduring appeal. Key selections from the Bhagavata Purana are faithfully translated, while all remaining sections of the Purana are concisely summarized, providing the reader with a continuous and comprehensive narrative. Detailed endnotes explain unfamiliar concepts and several essays elucidate the rich philosophical and religious debates found in the Sanskrit commentaries. Together with the multidisciplinary readings contained in the companion volume The Bhagavata Purana: Sacred Text and Living Tradition (Columbia, 2013), this book makes a central Hindu masterpiece more accessible to English-speaking audiences and more meaningful to scholars of Hindu literature, philosophy, and religion.

Die Beitrage in diesem Sammelband dokumentieren die heutige Diskussion um das Heilige, ein nach wie vor unerledigtes Problem der Religionswissenschaft. Sie wurden auf zwei verschiedenen Veranstaltungen prasentiert: einerseits auf dem Panel "Das Heilige als Problem in der Religionswissenschaft: Fragen und Perspektiven" der 31. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Vereinigung fur Religionswissenschaft in Goettingen im September 2013, andererseits auf dem Symposium "Die Diskussion um das Heilige: alte Fragen - neue Antworten" an der Goethe-Universitat in Frankfurt am Main im November 2013. Es geht um drei Themenbereiche: das Werk Rudolf Ottos, Anwendung der Kategorie des Heiligen in der Religionsforschung sowie die theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit der Kategorie des Heiligen.

Paramahansa Yogananda - author of the bestselling classic "Autobiography of a Yogi" - delves into the deeper meaning of the Bhagavad Gita's symbology, and sheds a fascinating light on the true intent of India's beloved scripture. He describes how each of us, through applying the profound wisdom of yoga, can achieve material and spiritual victory on the battlefield of daily life. This concise and inspiring book is a compilation of selections from Yogananda's in-depth, critically acclaimed two-volume translation of and commentary on the Bhagavad Gita ("God Talks with Arjuna").

This book provides a detailed history of Hindu goddess traditions with a special focus on the local goddesses of Andhra Pradesh, past and present. The antiquity and the evolution of these goddess traditions are illustrated and documented with the help of archaeological reports, literary sources, inscriptions and art. Tracing the symbols and images of goddess into the brahmanical (Saiva and Vaisnava), Buddhist, and Jaina religious traditions, the book argues effectively how and with what motivations goddesses and their symbolizations were appropriated and transformed. The book also examines the evolution of popular Hindu goddesses such as Durga and Kali, discussing their tribal and agricultural backgrounds. It also deals extensively with how and in what circumstances women are deified and shows how these deified women cults share characteristics with the village goddesses.

The Brahma-sutra, attributed to Badaraya (ca. 400 CE), is the canonical book of Vedanta, the philosophical tradition which became the doctrinal backbone of modern Hinduism. As an explanation of the Upanishads, it is principally concerned with the ideas of Brahman, the great ground of Being, and of the highest good. The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra is the first introduction to concentrate on the text and its ideas, rather than its reception and interpretation in the different schools of Vedanta. Covering the epistemology, ontology, theory of causality and psychology of the Brahma-sutra, and its characteristic theodicy, it also: * Provides a comprehensive account of its doctrine of meditation * Elaborates on its nature and attainment, while carefully considering the wider religious context of Ancient India in which the work is situated * Draws the contours of Brahma-sutra's intellectual biography and reception history. By contextualizing the Brahma-sutra's teachings against the background of its main collocutors, it elucidates how the work gave rise to widely divergent ontologies and notions of practice. For both the undergraduate student and the specialist this is an illuminating and necessary introduction to one of Indian philosophy's most important works.

The idea that there is a truth within the person linked to the discovery of a deeper, more fundamental, more authentic self, has been a common theme in many religions throughout history and an idea that is still with us today. This inwardness or interiority unique to me as an essential feature of who I am has been an aspect of culture and even a defining characteristic of human being; an authentic, private sphere to which we can retreat that is beyond the conflicts of the outer world. This inner world becomes more real than the outer, which is seen as but a pale reflection. Remarkably, the image of the truth within is found across cultures and this book presents an account of this idea in the pre-modern history of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. Furthermore, in theistic religions, Christianity and some forms of Hinduism, the truth within is conflated with the idea of God within and in all cases this inner truth is thought to be not only the heart of the person, but also the heart of the universe itself. Gavin Flood examines the metaphor of inwardness and the idea of truth within, along with the methods developed in religions to attain it such as prayer and meditation. These views of inwardness that link the self to cosmology can be contrasted with a modern understanding of the person. In examining the truth within in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, Flood offers a hermeneutical phenomenology of inwardness and a defence of comparative religion.

"In this jewel-like volume, the venerable Tirtha Maharaja recounts the nectarean activities of the associates of Lord Gauranga and the acharyas of the Gaudiya Vaishnava religion." --Swami B.P. Puri, Founder Acharya, Gopinath Gaudiya Math Srila Bhakti Ballabha Tirtha Goswami Maharaja has gathered a great deal of information about the lives of the devotees from numerous sources, and has made this information more relishable by virtue of his own insight. These biographies of Mahaprabhu's devotees should be read on their appearance and disappearance days, for this will bring great joy to both those who hear and those who read them. In this English translation, it will be possible for devotees around the world to enjoy them. Herein, the author delights in the life stories of Jagannath Mishra, Madhavendra Puri, Ishvara Puri, Advaita Acharya, Srivas Pandit, Chandrasekhar Acharya, Pundarika Vidyanidhi, Gadadhar Pandit, Vakresvara Pandit, Gadadhar Das, Shivananda Sen, Paramananda Puri, Murari Gupta, and many others. Every letter of these accounts is drenched with the nectar of devotion. The sincere seeker will never be able to enter the transcendental kingdom nor to advance in the devotional life unless they also discover this delight.

In 1839 a diverse group of Hindu leaders began gathering in Calcutta to share and propagate their faith in a non-idolatrous form of worship. The group, known as the Tattvabodhini Sabha, met weekly to worship and hear discourses from members on the virtues of a rational and morally responsible mode of worship. They called upon ancient sources of Hindu spirituality to guide them in developing a form of modern theism they referred to as "Vedanta." In this book, Brian Hatcher translates these hitherto unknown discourses and situates them against the backdrop of religious and social change in early colonial Calcutta. Apart from bringing to light the theology and moral vision of an association that was to have a profound influence on religious and intellectual life in nineteenth-century Bengal, Hatcher's analysis promotes reflection on a variety of topics central to understanding the development of modern forms of Hindu belief and practice.

Offering multilayered explorations of Hindu understandings of the Feminine, both human and divine, this book emphasizes theological and activist methods and aims over historical, anthropological, and literary ones.

World-renowned philosopher and spiritual teacher Ram Dass—author of the groundbreaking classic "Be Here Now"—presents the contemporary Western audience with a lively, accessible guide to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Hindu text that has been called the ultimate instruction manual for living a spiritual life.

This book investigates Rammohun Roy as a transnational celebrity. It examines the role of religious heterodoxy - particularly Christian Unitarianism - in transforming a colonial outsider into an imagined member of the emerging Victorian social order It uses his fame to shed fresh light on nineteenth-century British reformers, including advocates of liberty of the press, early feminists, free trade imperialists, and constitutional reformers such as Jeremy Bentham. Rammohun Roy's intellectual agendas are also interrogated, particularly how he employed Unitarianism and the British satiric tradition to undermine colonial rule in Bengal and provincialize England as a laggard nation in the progress towards rational religion and political liberty.

By analyzing concrete examples of the creation of a heritage in the context of migration, this multi-sited ethnography considers the implications of representations of religions and diaspora for Sindhi Hindus and other similar communities.