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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Non-Western philosophy > Oriental & Indian philosophy
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.
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 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.
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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