Ananda Abeysekara contends that democracy, along with its cherished secular norms, is founded on the idea of a promise deferred to the future. Rooted in democracy's messianic promise is the belief that religious—political identity-such as Buddhist, Hindu, Sinhalese, Christian, Muslim, or Tamil—can be critiqued, neutralized, improved, and changed, even while remaining inseparable from the genocide of the past. This facile belief, he argues, is precisely what distracts us from challenging the violence inherent in postcolonial political sovereignty. At the same time, (...) we cannot simply dismiss the democratic concept, since it permeates so deeply through our modernist, capitalist, and humanist selves. In _The Politics of Postsecular Religion_, Abeysekara invites us to reconsider our ethical-political legacies, to look at them not as _problems_, but as _aporias_, in the Derridean sense-that is, as contradictions or impasses incapable of resolution. Disciplinary theorizing in religion and politics, he argues, is unable to identify the aporias of our postcolonial modernity. The aporetic legacies, which are like specters that cannot be wished away, demand a new kind of thinking. It is this thinking that Abeysekara calls mourning and un-inheriting. Un-inheriting is a way of meditating on history that both avoids the simple binary of remembering and forgetting and provides an original perspective on heritage, memory, and time. Abeysekara situates aporias in the settings and cultures of the United States, France, England, Sri Lanka, India, and Tibet. In presenting concrete examples of religion in public life, he questions the task of refashioning the aporetic premises of liberalism and secularism. Through close readings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, Butler, and Agamben, as well as Foucault, Asad, Chakrabarty, Balibar, and Zizek, he offers readers a way to think about the futures of postsecular politics that is both dynamic and creative. (shrink)

“Selfish” gene theories have offered invaluable insight into eukaryotic genome evolution, but they can also be misleading. The “selfish mitochondrion” hypothesis, developed in the 90s explained uniparental organelle inheritance as a mechanism of conflict resolution, improving cooperation between genetically distinct compartments of the cell. But modern population genetic models provided a more general explanation for uniparental inheritance based on mutational variance redistribution, modulating the efficiency of both purifying and adaptive selection. Nevertheless, “selfish” conflict theories still dominate the literature. While these (...) hypotheses are rich in metaphor and highly intuitive, selective focus on only one type of mitochondrial mutation limits the generality of our understanding and hinders progress in mito-nuclear evolution theory. Recognizing that uniparental inheritance may have evolved – and is maintained across the eukaryotic tree of life – because of its influence on mutational variance and improved selection will only increase the generality of our evolutionary reasoning, retaining “selfish” conflict explanations as a special case of a much broader theory. (shrink)

This book offers reflections on a daunting and controversial ethical question: How should we treat the strangers who enter this country illegally? To understand the experience of those directly confronted by this problem, Ananda Rose traveled to the Sonoran desert at the border between the U.S. and Mexico. There she gathered opinions from Minutemen, Border Patrol agents, Catholic nuns, humanitarian air workers, left-wing protestors, ranchers, and other ordinary citizens in southern Arizona. She depicts the results of these interviews as two (...) starkly opposed ideological perspectives: that of religious activists who embrace a biblically-inspired model of hospitality that stresses love of strangers and a "borderless" compassion; and that of law enforcement, which is concerned with safety, security, and strict respect for international borders. (shrink)

“Adam was hurled into Hindustan. In this land there is a mountain called Serandib, and it is reported that there is no higher mountain in all the universe. Adam landed on this mountain.” The subject of Serendib plays an important role in both the geographical and travel literature of the Arabs. Serendib, or Sarandib, is the transcription of the Singhalese name Sinhaladîpa, which means “island of the descendants of lions” (singha, “lions,” in Singhaly). Already, in the Middle Ages, in the (...) year 949, Arab merchants, who were well acquainted with the island of Ceylon, set up a branch in Colombo. The natural beauty and wealth of the island so touched the imagination of Arab voyagers that it appeared in the sixth voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, and it was also believed that Adam lived on the island after having been driven from Paradise: “The island of Serendib is located directly under the equinoctial line…. Men fish for pearls along its banks and at the mouths of its rivers, and some of its valleys are rich in diamonds. As an act of faith I myself took a trip to the mountain, to the very spot where Adam was banished after being exiled from Paradise. I even climbed to its summit.”This excerpt, from The Thousand and One Nights, well summarizes the feelings of those Arab merchants whose accounts of their travels, in large measure, contributed to the spread of myths and legends about Ceylon. (shrink)

Translation of a work, originally written in Pali, on Buddhist ethics.

An attempt to explain the theory behind medieval European and Asiatic art, especially art in India.

Socialinio darbo teoretikai sutinka, kad Pierre’o Bourdieu sociologijos įtaka sociali­ niam darbui plečiasi ir gilėja. Kita vertus, kai kalbama apie socialinio darbo profesiją, tie patys teoretikai ignoruoja P. Bourdieu nuostatą nuo profesijos tyrimų pereiti prie profesinio lauko analizės. P. Bourdieu profesijos fenomeną laikė biurokratinės pri­ gimties konceptualizacija, kuri įtvirtina mokslinio mąstymo logikai prieštaraujančias heteronomijos apraiškas. Straipsnyje siekiama įgyvendinti P. Bourdieu reikalavimą ir, pritaikius jį socialiniam darbui, nuo socialinio darbo profesijos analizės pereiti prie socialinio darbo profesinio lauko tyrimų. Straipsnyje ieškome atsakymo (...) į klausimą, kaip keičiasi su socialiniu darbu siejamų veiklos formų arba praktikų traktavimas, kai socialinio darbo profesijos analizę keičia socialinio darbo lauko tyrimas. Palyginę trijų skirtingų šalių – JAV, Japonijos ir Lietuvos – socialinio darbo profesinės veiklos lau­ kus, priėjome prie išvados, kad profesinio lauko, kitaip nei profesijos, požiūris sudaro prielaidas įtraukti į socialinio darbo lauką tas socialinio įgalinimo praktikas, kurios, socialinio darbo profesijos požiūriu, lieka anapus biurokratinio socialinio darbo reg­ lamento. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory is formulated in terms of individuals that carry heritable information and are subject to selective pressures. However, individuality itself is a trait that had to evolve - an individual is not an indivisible entity, but a result of evolutionary processes that necessarily begin at the lower level of hierarchical organisation. Traditional approaches to biological individuality focus on cooperation and relatedness within a group, division of labour, policing mechanisms and strong selection at the higher level. Nevertheless, despite considerable theoretical (...) progress in these areas, a full dynamical first-principles account of how new types of individuals arise is missing. To the extent that individuality is an emergent trait, the problem can be approached by recognising the importance of individuating mechanisms that are present from the very beginning of the transition, when only lower-level selection is acting. Here we review some of the most influential theoretical work on the role of individuating mechanisms in these transitions, and demonstrate how a lower-level, bottom-up evolutionary framework can be used to understand biological complexity involved in the origin of cellular life, early eukaryotic evolution, sexual life cycles and multicellular development. Some of these mechanisms inevitably stem from environmental constraints, population structure and ancestral life cycles. Others are unique to specific transitions - features of the natural history and biochemistry that are co-opted into conflict mediation. Identifying mechanisms of individuation that provide a coarse-grained description of the system's evolutionary dynamics is an important step towards understanding how biological complexity and hierarchical organisation evolves. In this way, individuality can be reconceptualised as an approximate model that with varying degrees of precision applies to a wide range of biological systems. (shrink)

Colors of the Robe: Religion, Identity and Difference, Ananda Abeysekara, pp. xvi+271. ISBN 1-57003-467-2.

In the book, the author has confronteed mainly three types of such recent thinking that has boomed large, of late, on the horizon. Perhaps such thinking are evident enough of our academic terrorism and destructive intellectural chaos. The first layer dealing with the Micro materialistic approach of a Marxism historian, Prof. Sumit Sarkar where he was very scathing about the religious movements, specially about Sri Ramakrishna and the advent of the Ramakrishna Movement.

SUFISM AND VEDANTA may not be the same in many aspects, but at the same time these two have lot of similarities too. VEDANTA-specially ADVAITA VADANTA-is not that much theological perhapps. Howwever this is something which is very comparative in nature. Bhakti Schools: neither Vedanta is completely free of it. Even Sri Shankaracharya's Advaita is not that dry philosophy as it is made out to be by us. Advaita in the ultimate may be more a philosophy than a religion. But (...) it is never without religion, sp these Sufi/Advaita have some interesting common emphasis and features. Historically there are many points that could be very well traced and compared, no doubt in both the cases. (shrink)

No relato de experiência será apresentada uma reflexão sobre prática pedagógica realizada em uma instituição de Educação Infantil da zona norte do município do Rio de Janeiro. A ação pedagógica se inspirou na biografia da bailarina Mercedes Baptista que dialogou de forma interdisciplinar e lúdica com a cultura e história afro-brasileira, buscando promover uma educação antirracista na primeira infância colocando em prática Lei n. 10.639/03. Palavras-chave: Educação Infantil, Lei n. 10.639/03, Mercedes Baptista.

The Theragatha of the Khuddakanikaya has only ten stanzas uttered by the Elder Kaludayi. However, the Madhuratthavilasini, the commentary to the Buddhavamsa preserves 64 stanzas ascribed to the Elder while the Visuddhajanavilasini, the commentary to the Apad?na quotes a different series consisting of 48 stanzas ascribed to him. It is probable that these two series contain ancient verses which could not be accommodated within the Pali canon and then continued to be preserved in the commentaries as extra-canonical texts. Yet some (...) of the verses in these two series appear to be later compositions. The present article offers a literal translation of the Bv-a and the Ap-a verses, which have so far received no scholarly attention. (shrink)

Sri Aurobindo: the future -- Sri Aurobindo's contribution to humanity -- Sri Aurobindo's realisations -- Spirit & significance of Indian culture -- Sri Aurobindo's revelations.

Here is a book with poses, breathing exercises and meditations for the pregnant woman. Photos enhance clear and easy instructions for the poses. Attention to safety, mental, physical and emotional benefits of the poses, and variations are discussed very thoroughly. It is in clear and simple language. A safe and natural way to prepare for a wonderful birth experience. The book could also serve as a reference for midwives. The authors follow-up with their detailed three part course of yogic and (...) breathing exercises for women- before, during and after pregnancy. It is a complete self help book for parents, especially mothers to be and covers both the practical as well as the emotional aspects of conception, pregnancy and childbirth. (shrink)

Several modern commentators of Dignaga have puzzled over the 5th century Buddhist philosopher1s theory of the triple condition of the inferential sign. Th. Stcherbatsky (1932), Richard Hayes (1988) and Bimal K. Matilal (1986) have wondered at the reasons for Dignaga’s insistence on the inclusion of the secondcondition, which seems to be the logical equivalent of the third condition. Do the three criteria together furnish patterns of valid inference which differ from those patterns furnished by criteria one and three alone? In (...) this paper, I detail three types of cases which underline the importance of the inclusion of the second criterion. (shrink)

Abstract“Selfish” gene theories have offered invaluable insight into eukaryotic genome evolution, but they can also be misleading. The “selfish mitochondrion” hypothesis, developed in the 90s explained uniparental organelle inheritance as a mechanism of conflict resolution, improving cooperation between genetically distinct compartments of the cell. But modern population genetic models provided a more general explanation for uniparental inheritance based on mutational variance redistribution, modulating the efficiency of both purifying and adaptive selection. Nevertheless, as reviewed here, “selfish” conflict theories still dominate the (...) literature. While these hypotheses are rich in metaphor and highly intuitive, selective focus on only one type of mitochondrial mutation limits the generality of our understanding and hinders progress in mito‐nuclear evolution theory. Recognizing that uniparental inheritance may have evolved—and is maintained across the eukaryotic tree of life—because of its influence on mutational variance and improved selection will only increase the generality of our evolutionary reasoning, retaining “selfish” conflict explanations as a special case of a much broader theory. (shrink)

The article deals with phenomenology in Lithuania. The main thesis of the article is this: phenomenology is a living tradition in need of both development and interpretation. The minor thesis follows from the main one: the Western phenomenological tradition and Lithuanian philosophy interact and develop in tandem with one another. According to the authors, the contact between poetics and philosophy is the dominant form of phenomenology in Lithuania. The phenomenological tradition is treated as creative and living philosophical thought.

An attempt to explain the theory behind medieval European and Asiatic art, especially art in India.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sikhism between Tradition and "Assemblage":Reflections on Arvind Mandair's Sikh PhilosophyAnanda Abeysekara (bio)Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World. By Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.My central concern in this essay is how to think about the relation between genealogy and tradition in Arvind Mandair's Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). I begin with a brief discussion of a lecture titled (...) "A Genealogy of Liberty" delivered by Quentin Skinner at the University of California, Berkeley in 2008, which he would give again, with minor changes, in 2015 at the University of Chicago and in 2017 at Stanford University. At the outset of the lecture, joining forces with Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, he says, "Here I am a Nietzschean, and it is reflected in my title"—contending that "concepts [like liberty] that have histories cannot have definitions." In giving a concise history of the rival "polemical" claims made by Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Mill, Arendt, Taylor, and others about the concept of liberty, Skinner concludes that, contrary to what Anglo-American philosophy claims, there is not one "coherent way of thinking about liberty" in its contested genealogy. And "while each of these accounts is coherent in its own terms, you cannot combine them. This is genealogy. You can't get this to be the concept of liberty. You are going to have to make some choices, because they don't fit together. So what choice should you make? As to the answer, I leave that up to you" (Skinner 2016).The puzzle of how to think about such a genealogy was palpable in the questions from the audience that followed Skinner's lecture. Noteworthy was one question, about how the thinkers—for example from Hobbes to John Stuart Mill—in the history of the debate about liberty seem to "move around," their views seeming to "bleed into one another" (Skinner 2015). That is, isn't John Stuart Mill's view of liberty—as something that one can voluntarily renounce by internalizing the external views or customs—more or less the same as Hobbes' view of liberty as something free from external interference? And hence don't these competing views after all "fit together" within a single narrative? Ultimately, the concern here boils down to a question about the definition of liberty. [End Page 333]But what the presupposition in the question misses is that each of these positions—as Skinner carefully argues—is "ideological," "polemical," and "contested"; that is, these positions—even though Skinner does not say this explicitly—are marked by distinct forms of historical sensibility. That each of the historical positions, again as Skinner rightly argues, is "coherent" already grants that the sensibilities that define them within their specific conditions cannot be reproduced. That is, to extend Skinner's argument, these sensibilities cannot simply be "combined" within a seamless narrative because they presuppose relationships of power in which they have the force of intelligibility that they do in particular historical contexts. But the presumption about the meaning of a concept—for example the concept of "creativity" or "emptiness"—that can be readily and universally identified in a historical narrative is prevalent in other disciplines like Buddhist studies and South Asian studies, where, despite scholars using the term, genealogy remains poorly thought through (Abeysekara 2023; Walser 2018).1Largely absent in Skinner's genealogy is any discussion of the concept of "tradition" itself even though at times he alludes to "the tradition of liberty." This may not be a simple oversight on Skinner's part, but its very absence raises the question of whether liberalism itself is a discursive, embodied tradition in the ways a religious tradition works, as conceptualized by Talal Asad and others. Asad has described liberalism itself as a certain kind of "tradition" constituted by historical disputes (Asad 2009).2 And the broader implication of that argument is that, because it is a tradition animated by the very debates about what constitutes it, those who make claims about it are already situated within that tradition. And so it is unsound to speak of multiple traditions of liberty and, by extension, "multiple modernities... (shrink)

Concept of Knowledge in Indic philopsphy; a study.

The increasing availability and popularity of ways to capture personal memories using technologies such as digital cameras is beginning to alter the way in which personal memory images are produced, retained and circulated. Unlike the analog technologies, it is now possible to create an immediately available presence on the Internet. When examined from the perspective of voice, this phenomenon expands the potential of creating personal history narratives that could be collated together to produce a non‐institutional history of an era. This (...) paper explores the ways in which the digital technologies can facilitate the production of such histories and what the technologies could do the sense of presence of an individual in the realm of the virtual. (shrink)

Human development can be seen as the process of giving more effective expression to human values. Modern business philosophy has a certain viewpoint or perspective on human potential based on the secular humanistic values of the west and the scientific theories on the nature of man and his evolution. We are bound to welcome the New Paradigm in Business because it opens the path for a decisive step forward in evolution from an authoritarian, mechanistic, Taylorian era to a freer and (...) a more humanistic ethos in business. (shrink)

The 'wall' that differentiates two different kinds of attitudes of the same person at different points of time denotes, as the author envisages, Conscious Attitudinal Infringement Area (CAIA), where moral dilemmas take birth to bridge the two different kinds of attitudes to give way to attitudinal interrelatedness. In order to 'reinforce' CAIA to narrow the gap between personal behaviour and public behaviour, lead a moral life and behave ethically in public, there has to be harmony between the inner life of (...) thoughts, feelings and emotions, and the circumstances and events in the person's outer environment. After discussing the corporate scenario in India in brief, the author has put forward a model called Action By Objectives (ABO) as the basis of the harmonization approach. Drawing inspiration from the ethical aspects of Buddhism, Sufism, Sikhism and Vedanta in this context, he suggests an abhyasa yoga (perfection through disciplined practice) menu for refining samskaras (inner predispositions) and reaching the ultimate level of positive, inspiring leadership. (shrink)