Sanskrit Debate: Vasubandhu's 'Vimsatika' versus Kumarila's 'Niralambanavada' illustrates the rules and regulations of classical Indian debate literature (pramanasastra) by introducing new translations of two Sanskrit texts composed in antithesis to each other's tradition of thought and practice. In the third century CE, Vasubandhu, a Buddhist philosopher-monk, proposed that the entire world of lived experience is a matter of mind only through his Vimsatika (Twenty Verses). In the seventh century CE, Kumarila, a Hindu philosopher-priest, composed Niralambanavada (Non-Sensory Limit Debate) to establish the objective reality of objects by refuting Vasubandhu's claim that objects experienced in waking life are not different from objects experienced in dreams. Kumarila rigorously employs formal rules and regulations of Indian logic and debate to demonstrate that Vasubandhu's assertion is totally irrational and incoherent. Vimsatika ranks among the world's most misunderstood texts but Kumarila's historic refutation allows Vimsatika to be read in its own text-historical context. This compelling, radically revolutionary re-reading of Vimsatika delineates a hermeneutic of humor indispensable to discerning its medicinal message. In Vimsatika, Vasubandhu employs the form of professional Sanskrit logic and debate as a guise and a ruse to ridicule the entire enterprise of Indian philosophy. Vasubandhu critiques all Indian theories of epistemology and ontology and claims that both how we know and what we know are acts of the imagination.

Readings for Weddings is an inspirational collection of Bible quotations, poems, hymns and prose for secular weddings, church ceremonies and services of blessing. Mark Oakley includes such 'wedding classics' as 1 Corinthians 13 and Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, the poetry of Shelley and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, verse by Wendy Cope and other witty, contemporary poets.

In the early sixteenth century, a charismatic Bengali Brahmin, Visvambhara Misra, inspired communities of worshipers in Bengal, Orissa, and Vraja with his teachings. Misra took the ascetic name Krsna Caitanya, and his devotees quickly came to believe he was divine. The spiritual descendents of these initial followers today comprise the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement, one of the most vibrant religious groups in all of South Asia.
In The Final Word, Tony Stewart investigates how, with no central leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic center, a religious community nevertheless came to define itself, fix its textual canon, and flourish. The answer, he argues, can be found in a brilliant Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographical exercise: the Caitanya Caritamrta of Krsnadasasa Kaviraja. Written some seventy-five years after Caitanya's passing, Krsnadasa's text gathered and synthesized the divergent theological perspectives and ritual practices that had proliferated during and after Caitanya's life. It has since become the devotional standard of the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement.
The text's power, Stewart argues, derives from its sophisticated use of rhetoric. The Caitanya Caritamrta persuades its readers covertly, appearing to defer its arrogated authority to Caitanya himself. Though the text started out as a hagiography like so many others-an index of appropriate beliefs and ritual practices that points the way to salvation-its influence has grown far beyond that. Over the centuries it has become an icon, a metonym of the tradition itself. On occasion today it can even be seen worshiped alongside images of Krsna and Caitanya on altars in Bengal.
In tracing the origins, literary techniques, and dissemination of the Caitanya Caritamrta, Stewart has unlocked the history of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas, explaining the improbable unity of a dynamic religious group.

First published in 1952. The Real Tripitaka gives an account of the seventh century pilgrim's adventures, spiritual and material, both in India and after his return to China. In addition the book contains an account of a Japanese pilgrim's visit to China in the ninth century, which describes the Wu-t'ai Shan, China's great place of Pilgrimage, and an eye-witness's account of the great persecution of Buddhism in 842-845 A.D.

Zanzibar, an island off the East African coast, with its Muslim and Swahili population, offers rich material for this study of identity, religion, and multiculturalism. This book focuses on the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town and the relationships created between humans and spirits; it provides a way to apprehend how society is constituted and conceived and, thus, discusses Zanzibari understandings of what it means to be human.

Death, Ritual and Belief, now in its third edition, explores many important issues related to death and dying, from a religious studies perspective, including anthropology and sociology. Using the motif of 'words against death' it depicts human responses to grief by surveying the many ways in which people have not let death have the last word, not simply in terms of funeral rites but also in memorials, graves, and in ideas of ancestors, souls, gods, reincarnation and resurrection, whether in the great religious traditions of the world or in more local customs. He also examines bereavement and grief, experiences of the presence of dead, near-death experiences, pet-death and the symbolic death played out in religious rites. Updated chapters have taken into account new research and include additional topics in this new edition, notably assisted dying, terrorism, green burial, material culture, death online, and the emergence of Death Studies as a distinctive field. Case studies range from Anders Breivik in Norway, to the Princess of Wales, and to the Rapture in the USA. A new perspective is also brought to his account of grief theories. Providing an introduction to key authors and authorities on death beliefs, bereavement, grief and ritual-symbolism, Death, Ritual and Belief is an authoritative guide to the perspectives of major religious and secular worldviews.

Jaina Studies is a relatively new and rapidly expanding field of inquiry for scholars of Indian religion and philosophy. In Jainism, "yoga" carries many meanings, and this book explores the definitions, nuances, and applications of the term in relation to Jainism from early times to the present. Yoga in Jainism begins by discussing how the use of the term yoga in the earliest Jaina texts described the mechanics of mundane action or karma. From the time of the later Upanisads, the word Yoga became associated in all Indian religions with spiritual practices of ethical restraint, prayer, and meditation. In the medieval period, Jaina authors such as Haribhadra, Subhacandra, and Hemacandra used the term Yoga in reference to Jaina spiritual practice. In the modern period, a Jaina form of Yoga emerged, known as Preksa Dhyana. This practice includes the physical postures and breathing exercises well known through the globalization of Yoga. By exploring how Yoga is understood and practiced within Jainism, this book makes an important contribution to the fields of Yoga Studies, Religious Studies, Philosophy, and South Asian Studies.

This book presents a range of case-studies of pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman antiquity, drawing on a wide variety of evidence. It rejects the usual reluctance to accept the category of pilgrimage in pagan polytheism and affirms the significance of sacred mobility not only as an important factor in understanding ancient religion and its topographies but also as vitally ancestral to later Christian practice.

A comprehensive collection of essays exploring the interstices of Eastern and Western modes of thinking about the self, Crossroads in Psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and Mindfulness: The Word and the Breath documents just some of the challenges, conflicts, pitfalls, and "wow" moments that inhere in today's historical and cultural intersections of theory, practice, and experience. As this collection demonstrates, the crossroads between Buddhist and psychoanalytic approaches to mindfulness are rich beyond belief in integrative potential. The surprising and fertile connections from which this book originates, and the future ones which every reader in turn will spur, will invigorate and intensify this specific form of contemporary commerce at the crossroads of East and West. Analytically-oriented psychotherapists, themselves of different "climates" and cultures, break out of the seclusion of the consulting room to think, translate, meditate on, and mediate their experiences-generated via the maternal order-in such a way as to make those experiences thinkable via the necessary filters of the paternal order of language. In this light the "word and the breath" of the book's subtitle are addressed as the privileged "instruments" of psychoanalysis and meditation, respectively.

A devotional that teaches how to pray for our country during crisis and conflict written by two bestselling authors of the subject of prayer.

The President recently said, "Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray. We ask almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come."

GOD BE WITH US is the first book written specifically to deal with this crisis. It aims to guide Americans through the turbulent times yet to come. The daily meditations will help readers pray for our leaders, families, communities, churches, armed forces, civil servants and even our enemies. Each daily entry also includes a relevant Scripture and a suggested prayer. The authors will suggest prayers for thanksgiving, resolve, forgiveness, and unity. At this crucial time in our history as a nation, GOD BE WITH US implores us to do the one thing of which we are all capable—pray

A Featured Alternate with Crossings Book Club, DoubleDay Book Club, and the Literary Guild.

The book offers a foreword with a compelling story about the Word Trade Center disaster. The daily meditations will provide solace and comfort for the impending armed conflict.

A portion of the profits will go to charities aiding victims of the terrorist attack.

This book analyses the heterogeneous modes of meditation, prayer, initiation, beliefs and practices, codes of conduct, ethics and life-style of the contemporary Sikh Sants, Babas, Gurus and Satgurus in Punjab.

The movement was Hasidism, the cataclysmic force that wiped away the narrow intellectualism that had estranged the Jewish masses from their heritage. Hasidism focused upon fundamental Judaism, on sublimely simple principles that stressed the joy of life, love of man, and sincerity in word and deed, qualities that the common people potentially possessed in full measure. The hasidic link with the Land of Israel is strong indeed. Apart from the United States of America, Israel now has the largest number of hasidim, probably numbering more than two hundred thousand. They are known by the dress they wear, by the way they speak, and by the melodies they hum. This is the first work of its kind to study the history and development of the hasidic community in Israel, from its foundation in the eighteenth century to the present.

Much has been written on how temples are constructed or reconstructed for reviving local religious and communal life or for recycling tradition after the market reforms in China. The dynamics between the state and society that lie behind the revival of temples and religious practices initiated by the locals have been well-analysed. However, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to understanding religious revivals that were instead led by local governments. This book examines the revival of worship of the Chinese Deity Huang Daxian and the building of many new temples to the god in mainland China over the last 20 years. It analyses the role of local governments in initiating temple construction projects in China, and how development-oriented temple-building activities in Mainland China reveal the forces of transnational ties, capital, markets and identities, as temples were built with the hope of developing tourism, boosting the local economy, and enhancing Chinese identities for Hong Kong worshippers and Taiwanese in response to the reunification of Hong Kong to China. Including chapters on local religious memory awakening, pilgrimage as a form of tourism, women temple managers, entrepreneurialism and the religious economy, and based on extensive fieldwork, Chan and Lang have produced a truly interdisciplinary follow up to The Rise of a Refugee God which will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese religion, Chinese culture, Asian anthropology, cultural heritage and Daoism alike.

National Parks - 'America's Best Idea' - were from the first seen as sacred sites embodying the God-given specialness of American people and American land, and from the first they were also marked as tourist attractions. The inherent tensions between these two realities ensured the parks would be stages where the country's conflicting values would be performed and contested. As pilgrimage sites embody the values and beliefs of those who are drawn to them, so Americans could travel to these sacred places to honor, experience, and be restored by the powers that had created the American land and the American enterprise. This book explores the importance of the discourse of nature in American culture, arguing that the attributes and symbolic power that had first been associated with the 'new world' and then the 'frontier' were embodied in the National Parks. Author Ross-Bryant focuses on National Parks as pilgrimage sites around which a discourse of nature developed and argues the centrality of religion in understanding the dynamics of both the language and the ritual manifestations related to National Parks. Beyond the specific contribution to a richer analysis of the National Parks and their role in understanding nature and religion in the U.S., this volume contributes to the emerging field of 'religion and the environment,' larger issues in the study of religion (e.g. cultural events and the spatial element in meaning-making), and the study of non-institutional religion.

Over the past few years, secularism has become an intrinsic component of discussions on religious freedom and religious governance. The question of whether states should restrict the wearing of headscarves and other religious symbols has been particularly critical in guiding this thought process. Refashioning Secularisms in France and Turkey documents how, in both countries, devout women have contested bans on headscarves, pointing to how these are inconsistent with the 'real' spirit of secularism. These activists argue that it is possible to be simultaneously secular and religious; to believe in the values conveyed by secularism, while still remaining devoted to their faith. Through this examination, the book highlights how activists locate their claims within the frame of secularism, while at the same time revisiting it to craft a space for their religiosity. Addressing the lacuna in literature on the discourse of devout Muslims affected by these restrictions, this book offers a topical analysis on an understudied dimension of secularism and is a valuable resource for students and researchers with an interest in Religion, Gender Studies, Human Rights and Political Science.

Different forms of religious worship and ritual are present throughout the development of human beings, from early stone-age ritual, nature religion and ancestor worship, to faiths from which Christianity and the Eucharist emerge. In this book, Bastiaan Baan traces the origins and metamorphosis of human religion in historical, theological and humanistic terms, examining its significance for human life on earth and in the spiritual world.

Although there has been a massive increase in the volume of pilgrimage research and publications, traditional Anglophone scholarship has been dominated by research in Western Europe and North America. In their previous edited volume, International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (Routledge, 2015), Albera and Eade sought to expand the theoretical, disciplinary and geographical perspectives of Anglophone pilgrimage studies. This new collection of essays builds on this earlier work by moving away from Eurasia and focusing on areas of the world where non-Christian pilgrimages abound. Individual chapters examine the practice of ziyarat in the Maghreb and South Asia, Hindu pilgrimage in India and different pilgrimage traditions across Malaysia and China before turning towards the Pacific islands, Australia, South Africa and Latin America, where Christian pilgrimages co-exist and sometimes interweave with indigenous traditions. This book also demonstrates the impact of political and economic processes on religious pilgrimages and discusses the important development of secular pilgrimage and tourism where relevant. Highly interdisciplinary, international, and innovative in its approach, New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies: Global Perspectives will be of interest to those working in religious studies, pilgrimage studies, anthropology, cultural geography and folklore studies.

Tucked away in ancient Sanskrit and Bengali texts is a secret teaching, a blissful devotional (bhakti) tradition that involves sacred congregational chanting (kirtana), mindfulness practices (japa, smaranam), and the deepening of one's relationship with God (rasa). Brought to the world's stage by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1533), and fully documented by his immediate followers, the Six Goswamis of Vrindavan, these unprecedented teachings were passed down from master to student in Gaudiya Vaishnava lineages. The Golden Avatara of Love: Sri Chaitanya's Life and Teachings, by contemporary scholar Steven J. Rosen, makes the profound truths of this confidential knowledge easily accessible for an English language audience. In his well-researched text, modern readers-spiritual practitioners, scholars, and seekers of knowledge alike-will encounter a treasure of hitherto unrevealed spiritual teachings, and be able to fathom sublime dimensions of Sri Chaitanya's method. Using the ancient texts themselves and the findings of contemporary academics, Rosen succeeds in summarizing and establishing Sri Chaitanya's life and doctrine for the modern world.

Karaite Judaism emerged in the ninth century in the Islamic Middle East as an alternative to the rabbinic Judaism of the Jewish majority. Karaites reject the underlying assumption of rabbinic Judaism, namely, that Jewish practice is to be based on two divinely revealed Torahs, a written one, embodied in the Five Books of Moses, and an oral one, eventually written down in rabbinic literature. Karaites accept as authoritative only the Written Torah, as they understand it, and their form of Judaism therefore differs greatly from that of most Jews. Despite its permanent minority status, Karaism has been an integral part of the Jewish people continuously for twelve centuries. It has contributed greatly to Jewish cultural achievements, while providing a powerful intellectual challenge to the majority form of Judaism. This book is the first to present a comprehensive overview of the entire story of Karaite Judaism: its unclear origins; a Golden Age of Karaism in the Land of Israel; migrations through the centuries; Karaites in the Holocaust; unique Jewish religious practices, beliefs, and philosophy; biblical exegesis and literary accomplishments; polemics and historiography; and the present-day revival of the Karaite community in the State of Israel.

This book is devoted to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's discussions on the practice of prayer. Prayer is analyzed across a broad and complex spectrum in Soloveitchik's work, and his writings describing and analyzing the experience of prayer afford a profound insight into its diversity, ranging from existential crisis to communion with God. Through a careful reading of R. Soloveitchik's texts dealing with this topic, the book follows the consciousness of prayer across its various stages until maturity, starting with an analysis of Worship of the Heart, through to Reflections on the Amidah and other writings.

Although most historical and contemporary religions are governed by men, there are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of well-documented religions led by women. Most of these are marginal, subordinate, or secondary religions in the societies in which they are located. The one known exception to this rule is the indigenous religion of Okinawa, where women lead the official mainstream religion of the society. This book is the first in-depth look at this unique religious tradition, exploring the intersection between religion and gender. Based on fieldwork in an Okinawan village, Susan Sered argues that the absence of male dominance in the religious sphere is part of a broader absence of hiearchical ideologies and cultural patterns. In addition to providing important information on this remarkable and little-studied group, this book helps to overturn our mostly unexamined assumptions that male dominance of the religious sphere is universal, axiomatic, and necessary.

This study presents a comprehensive treatment of a crucial aspect of Greek religion hitherto largely neglected in the English language. Simon Pulleyn makes a full examination of all the relevant literary and inscribed material available in order both to describe ancient Greek practices and to explain their significance.