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.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

We all have an ikigai.

It's the Japanese word for a reason to live or a reason to jump out of bed in the morning .

It s the place where your needs, desires, ambitions, and satisfaction meet. A place of balance. Small wonder that finding your ikigai is closely linked to living longer.

Finding your ikigai is easier than you might think. This book will help you work out what your own ikigai really is, and equip you to change your life. You have a purpose in this world: your skills, your interests, your desires and your history have made you the perfect candidate for something. All you have to do is find it.

Do that, and you can make every single day of your life joyful and meaningful.