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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Worship
Contemplative prayer and the contemplative way of life are the
central themes of this book. Against the backdrop of their rich
experience of accompanying those coming on retreat to House Gries,
Germany, the authors talk about what happens in silence: healing
and wholeness, suffering and consolation, forgiveness and
reconciliation, gratitude and joy... This originated from a desire
to make more widely available the experiences that emerge through
conversations between retreatants and guides. The individual
chapters of the book, each based on a particular theme have a clear
and consistent structure. A short introduction to the theme is
followed by a conversation. Scripture, the writings of St.
Ignatius, experiences from spiritual accompaniment as well as the
authors' own personal experiences form the basis for these
conversations. Through using the questions, "Where was my heart
burning?" "Where were my eyes opened?" the authors pick out aspects
in the conversation which triggered a particular resonance within
them. Finally, each chapter concludes with short exercises for the
reader, relevant to the theme.
The Kanwar is India's largest annual religious pilgrimage. Millions
of participants gather sacred water from the Ganga and carry it
across hundreds of miles to dispense as offerings in Siva shrines.
These devotees-called bhola, gullible or fools, and seen as
miscreants by many Indians-are mostly young, destitute men, who
have been left behind in the globalizing economy. But for these
young men, the ordeal of the pilgrimage is no foolish pursuit, but
a means to master their anxieties and attest their good faith in
unfavorable social conditions. Vikash Singh walked with the
pilgrims of the Kanwar procession, and with this book, he
highlights how the procession offers a social space where
participants can prove their talents, resolve, and moral worth.
Working across social theory, phenomenology, Indian metaphysics,
and psychoanalysis, Singh shows that the pilgrimage provides a
place in which participants can simultaneously recreate and prepare
for the poor, informal economy and inevitable social uncertainties.
In identifying with Siva, who is both Master of the World and yet a
pathetic drunkard, participants demonstrate their own sovereignty
and desirability despite their stigmatized status. Uprising of the
Fools shows how religion today is not a retreat into tradition, but
an alternative forum for recognition and resistance within a
rampant global neoliberalism.
"The Goodly Word: Al-Kalim al-Tayyib"-written by the renowned
fourteenth century jurist, Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya-is one of the most
referred to works on prayer and the merits of prayer. Exclusively
based on what the Prophet Muhammad himself said and did, "The
Goodly Word" includes prayers for every moment of the Muslim's
life. It is presented in a bi-lingual edition so that the exact
prayers of the Prophet can be read in the original Arabic. "The
Goodly Word" has been translated into English by the late Ezzeddin
Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies, two distinguished scholars who
have also translated "An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith" and "Forty Hadith
Qudsi", both published by the Islamic Texts Society.
Ritualistic Crime, Criminals, and the Organizations behind the
Sheath: A Book of Readings features carefully selected articles
that help students better understand the causes, functions, and
similarities of sacred forms of violence across the spectrum.
Students learn about crimes committed by individuals or groups
against another based on an errant belief that their acts will
bring about a greater good. This information equips readers with
the knowledge they need to identify and understand the classic
signs of group affiliation. The anthology is divided into eight
parts. The first part presents readers with an introduction to the
volume and a discussion of the sacred power of violence in popular
cultural. Parts II through IV focus on cults, sects, and religious
crimes; millennial religions; domestic and international terrorist
religions. Students read articles about Satanism, vampirism and the
Goth movement, and syncretistic religions, Wicca, and neo-paganism.
The final part speaks to new religious movements, including
fiction-based religions and Scientology. Throughout, students are
encouraged to consider how groups grow, flourish, and prosper, as
well as the elements that either render them benign or violent.
Providing students with a unique view into group behavior,
Ritualistic Crime, Criminals, and the Organizations behind the
Sheath is an ideal resource for courses in criminal justice,
criminology, or law enforcement.
Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, also called
Cachita, is a potent symbol of Cuban national identity. Jalane D.
Schmidt shows how groups as diverse as Indians and African slaves,
Spanish colonial officials, Cuban independence soldiers, Catholic
authorities and laypeople, intellectuals, journalists and artists,
practitioners of spiritism and Santeria, activists, politicians,
and revolutionaries each have constructed and disputed the meanings
of the Virgin. Schmidt examines the occasions from 1936 to 2012
when the Virgin's beloved, original brown-skinned effigy was
removed from her national shrine in the majority black- and
mixed-race mountaintop village of El Cobre and brought into Cuba's
cities. There, devotees venerated and followed Cachita's image
through urban streets, amassing at large-scale public ceremonies in
her honor that promoted competing claims about Cuban religion,
race, and political ideology. Schmidt compares these religious
rituals to other contemporaneous Cuban street events, including
carnival, protests, and revolutionary rallies, where organizers
stage performances of contested definitions of Cubanness. Schmidt
provides a comprehensive treatment of Cuban religions, history, and
culture, interpreted through the prism of Cachita.
Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Cambodia, Erik W.
Davis radically reorients approaches toward the nature of Southeast
Asian Buddhism's interactions with local religious practice and, by
extension, reorients our understanding of Buddhism itself. Through
a vivid study of contemporary Cambodian Buddhist funeral rites, he
reveals the powerfully integrative role monks play as they care for
the dead and negotiate the interplay of non-Buddhist spirits and
formal Buddhist customs. Buddhist monks perform funeral rituals
rooted in the embodied practices of Khmer rice farmers and the
social hierarchies of Khmer culture. The monks' realization of
death underwrites key components of the Cambodian social
imagination: the distinction between wild death and celibate life,
the forest and the field, and moral and immoral forms of power. By
connecting the performative aspects of Buddhist death rituals to
Cambodian history and everyday life, Davis undermines the theory
that Buddhism and rural belief systems necessarily oppose each
other. Instead, he shows Cambodian Buddhism to be a robust
tradition with ethical and popular components extending throughout
Khmer society.
In this groundbreaking study, Michael Willis examines how the gods
of early Hinduism came to be established in temples, how their
cults were organized, and how the ruling elite supported their
worship. Examining the emergence of these key historical
developments in the fourth and fifth centuries, Willis combines
Sanskrit textual evidence with archaeological data from
inscriptions, sculptures, temples, and sacred sites. The
centre-piece of this study is Udayagiri in central India, the only
surviving imperial site of the Gupta dynasty. Through a judicious
use of landscape archaeology and archaeo-astronomy, Willis
reconstructs how Udayagiri was connected to the Festival of the
Rainy Season and the Royal Consecration. Under Gupta patronage,
these rituals were integrated into the cult of Vishnu, a deity
regarded as the source of creation and of cosmic time. As special
devotees of Vishnu, the Gupta kings used Udayagiri to advertise
their unique devotional relationship with him. Through his
meticulous study of the site, its sculptures and its inscriptions,
Willis shows how the Guptas presented themselves as universal
sovereigns and how they advanced new systems of religious patronage
that shaped the world of medieval India.
Waqfs, or religious endowments, have long been at the very
center of daily Islamic life, establishing religious, cultural, and
welfare institutions and serving as a legal means to keep family
property intact through several generations. In this book R. D.
McChesney focuses on the major Muslim shrine at Balkh--once a
flourishing city on an ancient trade route in what is now northern
Afghanistan--and provides a detailed study of the political,
economic, and social conditions that influenced, and were
influenced by, the development of a single religious endowment.
From its founding in 1480 until 1889, when the Afghan government
took control of it, the waqf at Balkh was a formidable economic
force in a financially dynamic region, particularly during those
times when the endowment's sacred character and the tax privileges
it acquired gave its managers considerable financial security. This
study sheds new light on the legal institution of waqf within
Muslim society and on how political conditions affected the
development of socio-religious institutions throughout Central Asia
over a period of four hundred years.
Originally published in 1991.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly
increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
its founding in 1905.
This is an accessible and up-to-date account of the Jews during the
millennium following Alexander the Great's conquest of the East.
Unusually, it acknowledges the problems involved in constructing a
narrative from fragmentary yet complex evidence and is, implicitly,
an exploration of how this might be accomplished. Moreover, unlike
most other introductions to the subject, it concentrates primarily
on the people rather than issues of theology and adopts a
resolutely unsentimental approach to the subject. Professor
Schwartz particularly demonstrates the importance of studying
Jewish history, texts and artefacts to the broader community of
ancient historians because of what they can contribute to wider
themes such as Roman imperialism. The book serves as an excellent
introduction for students and scholars of Jewish history and of
ancient history.
With an Introduction by Rageh Omaar Some twelve million Islamic
pilgrims flock to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina annually in a
voyage that is bidden of them by the fifth of the five pillars of
Islam. If it can be funded, it is a religious duty to make the
journey before they die. In recent years the Grand Mosque, and
indeed the whole infrastructure that the pilgrims will encounter on
their journey, has been substantially renovated and rebuilt to
allow for the huge numbers who will come from all four corners of
the earth. This photographic celebration of the Hajj pilgrimage
will establish itself as the essential keepsake - a treasured tool
in presenting the sights the traveller will encounter in the holy
cities. Newsha Tavakolian's remarkable photography is reproduced
here with full captions that detail the events and rituals that
form part of the pilgrimage.
This volume is the first of four that will present the best and
most important portions of the hundreds of pages of notes,
interviews, texts, and essays that James R. Walker amassed during
his eighteen years at Pine Ridge Reservation.
With changed in language regarding gender issues, this alternative
version of ates of Prayer for the House of Mourning includes
services for the funeral home and house of the bereaved, afternoon
and evening services, special At a House of Mourning service,
additional readings, meditations and Kaddish.
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