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Books > Philosophy > Non-Western philosophy
Here is a lucid, accessible, and inspiring guide to the six
perfections--Buddhist teachings about six dimensions of human
character that require "perfecting": generosity, morality,
tolerance, energy, meditation, and wisdom. Drawing on the Diamond
Sutra, the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, and other essential
Mahayana texts, Dale Wright shows how these teachings were
understood and practiced in classical Mahayana Buddhism and how
they can be adapted to contemporary life in a global society. What
would the perfection of generosity look like today, for example?
What would it mean to give with neither ulterior motives nor
naivete? Devoting a separate chapter to each of the six
perfections, Wright combines sophisticated analysis with real-life
applications. Buddhists have always stressed self-cultivation, the
uniquely human freedom that opens the possibility of shaping the
kind of life we will live and the kind of person we will become.
For those interested in ideals of human character and practices of
self-cultivation, The Six Perfections offers invaluable guidance."
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.
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.
Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice brings together
the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of
disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript
studies and material culture. Its aim is not only to showcase the
range of pioneering work that is currently being done in these
areas, but also to provide a model for closer interaction amongst
the disciplines constituting this burgeoning field of study.
Furthermore, the book provides the rare opportunity to bridge the
gap on an institutional level by bringing the academic and
curatorial spheres into dialogue. Contributors include: Charles
Burnett, Jean-Charles Coulon, Maryam Ekhtiar, Noah Gardiner,
Christiane Gruber, Bink Hallum, Francesca Leoni, Matthew
Melvin-Koushki, Michael Noble, Rachel Parikh, Liana Saif, Maria
Subtelny, Farouk Yahya, and Travis Zadeh.
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.
**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.
The Zhou Changes, better known in the West as I Ching, is one of
the masterpieces of world literature. This book, the climax of more
than forty years of research in Chinese archaeology, explores the
text's origins in the oracle-bone and milfoil divinations of Bronze
Age China and how it transformed over the course of the Zhou
dynasty into the first of the Chinese classics. The book provides
an in-depth survey of the theory and practice of divination to
demonstrate how the hexagram and line statements of the text were
produced and how they were understood at the time.
Michael Slote is one of the most prominent philosophers working in
the discipline today. By creating a two-way dialogue between
philosophers specializing in Chinese philosophy and a central
thinker from the Anglo-American tradition, this volume brings
cross-cultural philosophy to life. From his early contributions in
ethics, metaethics, philosophy of mind, moral psychology and
epistemology to his recent investigations into the relationship
between Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy, an international
team of scholars of Chinese philosophy cover Slote’s
sentimentalism, his understanding of Chinese concepts Yin and Yang
and explores the role Early Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism can
play in his work. Each chapter extends Slote’s ideas by
considering them from a Chinese philosophical perspective and Slote
is given the opportunity to respond to each of the contributors’
interpretation of his work. Applied to Classical works such as the
Zhuangzi and the Yijing, his ground-breaking thoughts on morality,
care ethics and empathy are taken in new, exciting directions.
Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness brings Buddhist voices to the
study of consciousness. This book explores a variety of different
Buddhist approaches to consciousness that developed out of the
Buddhist theory of non-self. Topics taken up in these
investigations include: how we are able to cognize our own
cognitions; whether all conscious states involve conceptualization;
whether distinct forms of cognition can operate simultaneously in a
single mental stream; whether non-existent entities can serve as
intentional objects; and does consciousness have an intrinsic
nature, or can it only be characterized functionally? These
questions have all featured in recent debates in consciousness
studies. The answers that Buddhist philosophers developed to such
questions are worth examining just because they may represent novel
approaches to questions about consciousness.
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