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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Non-Western philosophy
This book interprets the Tao Te Ching from the perspective of
personal cultivation. The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu is regarded as
one of the greatest books of wisdom ever written in history, but
few can grasp what it says in entirety. Embedded in each of its
5,000 Chinese characters are highly profound messages. Master Sim
Pooh Ho is a Tai Chi Master and the leader of a Tai Chi lineage
that traces back centuries. In his book Decoding the Tao Te Ching,
he combines the ancestral teachings of Tai Chi with his practice
and provides readers with unique insights into Lao Tzu's ancient
book.The Tao Te Ching is difficult to comprehend because many of
the concepts it introduces are elusive. What is Tao and Te, being
and non-being or yin and yang? The concepts, however, are
discernible in Tai Chi because they are what make the practice
work. Decoding the Tao Te Ching is written in a simple manner by a
Tai Chi master, and translated in an accessible way by his senior
disciple Tekson TEO, thus making it an enlightening read to all
English readers interested in this topic.
A major figure in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, Ernest
Sosa is a pioneer of contemporary virtue epistemology. Engaging
with his important work for the first time, a team of renowned
scholars of Chinese philosophy bring Western analytic epistemology
into dialogue with themes and issues in the history of the Chinese
tradition in order to reveal multiple points of connection. Drawing
on thinkers and texts from Confucianism, Daoism, and Chinese
Buddhism, chapters explore issues central to virtue epistemology,
such as the reliabilist and responsibilist divide, the distinction
between virtues constitutive of knowledge and virtues auxiliary to
knowledge, epistemic competence, and the role of testimony.
Including Sosa’s constructive and systematic responses to each
scholar’s interpretation of his work, this volume demonstrates
the value of cross-cultural dialogue, advancing the field of virtue
epistemology, and paving the way for further engagement between
philosophical traditions.
The Holy Science is a book of theology written by Swami Sri Yukteswar
Giri in 1894. The text provides a close comparison of parts of the
Christian Bible to the Hindu Upanishads, meant "to show as clearly as
possible that there is an essential unity in all religions...and that
there is but one Goal admitted by all scriptures."
Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri was born Priya Nath Karar in 1855 to a wealthy
family. As a young man, he was a brilliant student of math and science,
astrology and astronomy. He joined a Christian missionary school where
he studied the Bible and later spent two years in medical school.
After completing his formal education, Priya Nath married and had a
daughter. But he continued his intellectual and spiritual pursuits,
depending on the income from his property to support himself and his
family.
After the death of his wife, he entered the monastic Swami order and
became Sri Yuktesvar Giri, before becoming a disciple of famed guru
Lahiri Mahasaya, known for his revitalization of Kriya Yoga. Then in
1894, Sri Yuktesvar Giri met Mahavatar Babaji, an ageless wise man who
is said to have lived for untold hundreds of years. At this meeting,
Mahavatar Babaji gave Sri Yuktesvar the title of Swami, and asked him
to write this book comparing Hindu scriptures and the Christian Bible.
Swami Sri Yuktesvar obeyed.
He also founded two ashrams, including one in his ancestral home. He
lived simply as a swami and yogi, devoted to disciplining his body and
mind, and thus to liberating his soul. Among his disciples was
Paramahansa Yogananda, credited with bringing yoga and meditation to
millions of Westerners.
The Holy Science consists of four chapters. The first is titled "The
Gospel," and is intended to "establish the fundamental truth of
creation." Next is "The Goal," which discusses the three things all
creatures are seeking: "Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss."
Chapter three, "The Procedure," is the most practical of the sections.
It describes the natural way to live for purity and health of body and
mind. The final chapter is called "The Revelation," and discusses the
end of the path for those who are near the "three ideals of life."
Swami Sri Yukteswar also displays his impressive knowledge and
understanding of astrology by proposing his theory of the Yuga Cycle.
Each yuga is an age of the world that tracks the movement of the sun,
Earth, and planets. Each age represents a different state of humanity.
There are four yugas:
- Satya Yuga is the highest and most enlightened age of truth and
perfection.
- Treta Yuga is the age of thought and is more spiritually advanced
than Dwapara Yuga and Kali Yuga.
- Dwapara Yuga is an energetic age, although not a wise one. During
this yuga, people are often self-serving and greedy. The age is marked
by war and disease.
- Kali Yuga is the age of darkness, ignorance, and materialism. This is
the least evolved age.
Today, The Holy Science is highly respected among those seeking to
understand the relationships between world religions and cultures.
While some still believe that we are in Kali Yuga, many others believe
that Swami Sri Yukteswar was accurate, and that his calculations
correct previous errors that artificially inflated the length of the
Yuga Cycle.
Informed by Gloria Anzaldua's and Jose Carlos Mariategui's work, as
well as by Andean cosmology, Omar Rivera turns to Inka stonework
and architecture as an example of a "Cosmological Aesthetics." He
articulates ways of sensing, feeling and remembering that are
attuned to an aesthetic of water, earth and light. On this basis,
Rivera brings forth a corporeal orientation that can be inhabited
by the oppressed, one that withdraws from predominant
modern/Western conceptions of the human. By providing an aesthetic
analysis of cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for
exploring physical dimensions of anti-colonial resistance, and
furthers the Latinx and Latin American tradition of anti-colonial
and liberatory philosophy. Seeing aesthetic involvements with the
cosmos as a source for embodied modes of resistance, Rivera turns
to the work of Maria Lugones and Enrique Dussel in order to make
explicit the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Andean Aesthetics
and Anticolonial Resistance creates a new dialogue between art
historians, artists, and philosophers working on Latin American
thought, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. It weaves together a
Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies
with contemporary thinkers. Rivera's original approach introduces
us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to
coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling current
understandings of decolonial theory and opening the tradition in
transformative ways.
This introduction to Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), the critical
successor of the "father of contemporary Japanese philosophy"
Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), focuses on Tanabe's central
philosophical ideas and perspective on self, world, knowledge, and
the purpose of philosophizing. Addressing Tanabe's life-long study
of the history of Anglo-European philosophy, Takeshi Morisato
explores his notable philosophical ideas including the logic of
species, metanoetics, and philosophy of death. He sets out Tanabe's
belief that the Anglo-European framework of thinking is incapable
of giving sufficient answers to the philosophical questions
concerning the self and the world together and discusses the
central ideas he developed while working in both Judeo-Christian
and Mahayana Buddhist traditions. Featuring comprehensive further
reading lists, discussion questions, and teaching notes, this is an
ideal introductory guide to Tanabe Hajime for anyone interested in
Japanese and World philosophies, as well as the early development
of the Kyoto School.
**Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2021** Coping with the climate
crisis is the greatest challenge we face as a species. We know the
main task is to reduce our emissions as rapidly as possible to
minimise the harm to the world’s population now and for
generations to come. What on earth can philosophy offer us? In this
compelling account of a problem we think we know inside out, the
philosopher Graham Parkes outlines the climatic predicament we are
in and how we got here, and explains how we can think about it anew
by considering the relevant history, science, economics, politics
and, for the first time, the philosophies underpinning them.
Introducing the reality of global warming and its increasingly dire
consequences, he identifies the immediate obstructions to coping
with the problem, outlines the libertarian ideology behind them and
shows how they can be circumvented. Drawing on the wisdom of the
ancients in both the East-Asian and Western traditions (as embodied
in such figures as Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Dogen, Plato,
Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius and Nietzsche), Parkes shows how a
greater awareness of non-Western philosophies, and especially the
Confucian political philosophy advocated by China, can help us deal
effectively with climate change and thrive in a greener future. If
some dominant Western philosophical ideas and their instantiation
in politics and modern technology got us into our current crisis,
Parkes demonstrates persuasively that expanding our philosophical
horizons will surely help get us out.
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