For those wondering how to become more spiritual, or how to lead a spiritual life, Pure Love emerges as an essential value. Naturally one begins inquiring into the ultimate meaning of love - what is love, what is true love, and what is unconditional love? Other questions may also arise, such as: To cultivate unconditional love, is forgiveness required? If so, how can I learn to practice forgiveness prayer? Does unconditional positive regard evolve into (...) unconditional love? In the context of unconditional love, what is marriage? Can a husband and wife relationship transform into living for love, and ultimately become an example of love supreme? In the book “Pure Love”, Gnani Purush (embodiment of Self knowledge) Dada Bhagwan offers a profound explanation of unconditional love meaning, and describes how Pure Love grows naturally with spiritual development. Dadashri explains that the knowledge of Self the beginning of spiritual awakening, and that the blossoming of Pure Love is one of the signs of spiritual awakening. Among the many spiritual books available today, this resource on the topic of Pure Love will prove invaluable. (shrink)

Study of the Upanishads and six Hindu saint-philosophers.

The Hindu ethic of cow protectionism is legislatively interpreted in many Indian states through the criminalisation of cow slaughter, and beef consumption, obscuring dairying’s direct role in the butchery of spent female and unproductive male bovines. Cow milk, however, is celebrated as sacred in scriptural and ritual Hinduism, and mobilised by commercial dairying, as well as by right-wing Hindu groups to advance the idea of a Hindu Indian nation. In order to fully protect cows from the harms of human exploitation, (...) it is vital to problematise milk as a benign, rightful product for humans to consume, including its use in Hindu beliefs, rituals and identity. The paper applies feminist vegan critiques to two Hindu legends commonly invoked to promote milk consumption: the boy-god Krishna’s great love for butter and the mythology of the gods and demons churning the Ocean of Milk to attain ambrosia. These critiques unsettle the core relationship of the Hindu to the cow as a lactating mother and provoke the idea that the original sacred milk in Hinduism in fact is plant-based and vegan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christian-Buddhist Dialogue on Loving the EnemyWioleta PolinskaWe are taught to think that we need a foreign enemy. Governments work hard to get us to be afraid and to hate so we will rally behind them. If we do not have an enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. Yet they are also victims.1—Thich Nhat HanhWe are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for (...) the victims of our nation, and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.2—Martin Luther King Jr.Literally speaking, Ahimsa means "non-killing."... To one who follows this doctrine there is no room for an enemy.3—M. K. GandhiIn his autobiography, Martin Luther King Jr. comments that he initially considered Jesus's commands such as "turn the other cheek" or "love your enemies" as limited to individual relationships. Only after reading Gandhi in the late 1940s did he conclude that the love ethic had a much broader scope. Love became to him an effective principle applied to racial groups and nations in conflict and was "a potent instrument for social and collective transformation."4 Some years later, King was influenced by another Asian religious thinker, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Under Nhat Hanh's influence, King repudiated the war in Vietnam by addressing the similarity between the Vietnamese Buddhist peace movement and the American civil rights movement.5Nhat Hanh and King were both inspired by Gandhi's peaceful approach to social conflicts. All three are exemplary models of love and nonviolence in their respective Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu traditions. Whether ahimsa (or harmlessness) in Hinduism, compassion for all beings in Buddhism, or "love of enemy" [End Page 89] in Christianity, unconditional love signifies the principal concern of these spiritual thinkers. All three men display an uncompromising commitment to the cause of the oppressed and downtrodden, but, at the same time, they refuse to vilify the opponents. In fact, all three speak of the "love of enemy" as the only sure way to ensure peaceful solution to any social crisis. Recent military conflicts prompted by the tragedy of September 11 offer a challenge for rethinking the most effective ways of dealing with international terrorism and other forms of social struggles. In what follows, I will suggest that, like Martin Luther King Jr., Christians can benefit from engaging in a dialogue with Eastern thought. Specifically, by focusing on the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, I will engage Christian liberation theologies to offer a possible corrective to a theological reflection on social conflict. In conversation with sociological reflection on war, political theorists, and artists, this article will present a fresh reexamination of a nondualistic, nonviolent approach to military and social conflicts.Social exploitation, injustice, and oppression are focal points of many contemporary Christian theologies that are indebted to Latin American liberation theology. Recognizing the suffering of the poor and the failure of the historical Christian church to address the systemic injustice against them, liberation theologians affirm solidarity with the poor. Because of oppression and poverty, the poor have privileged access to the meaning of the Gospel (hermeneutic privilege) and the church needs to commit to a "preferential option for the poor." That is, those "who are privileged must identify with the poor and the oppressed not only because they need us but also because, from their experience of poverty and oppression, they are in a better position to understand the Gospel."6 Learning from the poor implies interpreting Christian faith out of the suffering of the poor; it implies seeing God as the God of the poor and the oppressed. The poor are seen as "the favorites of God"7 because they receive continuous divine attention to their struggle. The liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, Jesus's solidarity with the poor by becoming one of them, as well as his preaching the good news to them, are all examples of God's love for the poor. God's solidarity with the victims of social oppression reaches its zenith in the resurrection of Jesus when God is "doing Justice... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rushdie’s Dastan-e-Dilruba: The Satanic Verses As Rushdie’s Love Letter to IslamFeroza Jussawalla (bio)Meheruban likhoon ya dilruba likhoon hyran hoon ke apke khat me kya likhoonYe mera prempatr padh kar ke tum naraz na hona ke tum meri zindagi ho ke tum meri bandagi ho[Should I address you as respected one Should I address you as beloved one I am so distraught about how I should address youWhen you (...) read my love letter You should not be disappointed Because you are my life and you are my “life’s work”]—Popular Hindi film song from Raj Kapoor’s Sangam (1964) [my translation]Salman Rushdie has been classified as a postcolonial 1 writer whose fiction depicts the hybrid nature of postcolonials in their migrations and movements, their merging and mixing. Rushdie has variously been called a “Third World Cosmopolitan” [Brennan, Salman Rushdie viii], a “metropolitan intellectual,” and “a hybrid” but most often a [End Page 50] “postcolonial,” because of his “birth” as a “Midnight’s child”—a child born as India was gaining independence at midnight on 14 August 1947 2 —his subsequent education in England, and the making of his home in metropolitan London. Such a perspective is eurocentric and does not provide complete answers to Rushdie’s complex works or the complicated response to his work. For the very hybridity that Rushdie manifests results from his being not only a “post-British” colonial but also a “post-Mughal” colonial.The British were not the only colonizers of India. In fact, Indian historians have traditionally identified several waves of colonization. Journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre best summarize the two major waves of colonization as follows:Hinduism itself had been brought to India by the Indo-European hordes descending from the North to wrest the subcontinent from its ancient Dravidian inhabitants.... The faith of the Prophet had come much later, after the cohorts of Genghis Khan and Tamurlane had battered their way down the Khyber Pass to weaken the Hindus’ hold on the great Gangetic Plain. For two centuries, the Moslem Mogul emperors had imposed their sumptuous and implacable rule over most of India, spreading in the wake of their martial legions the message of Allah, the One, the Merciful.[Freedom at Midnight 36]While the British were actually occupying India, post-Mughal colonialism in the form of Persian poetry, literature, and the general “sumptuousness” of its art and architecture held sway. The Persian language begot Urdu, often described by linguists as a “camp language” of the Muslim invaders of the Subcontinent. However, Persian, Arabic, and Hindi had come together to create a new language for the poetry, literature, arts, and in general the “high culture” of today’s Indian Muslims. Jawaharlal Nehru, in his definitive history of India entitled Discovery of India, wrote,The Mughals were outsiders and strangers to India and yet they fitted into Indian structure with remarkable speed and began the Indo-Mughal period.... Their dynasties became completely Indianized with their roots in India, looking upon India as their homeland, and the rest of the world as foreign.[236]A synthesis worked itself out: new styles of architecture arose; food and clothing changed; and life was affected and varied in many other ways.... The Persian language became the official court language and many Persian words crept into popular use.[237]Persian was the lingua franca of the incoming Muslims from AD 1193 onward, and Persian literature became the favored literature of India for approximately five centuries [Ali 3–4].It is in this tradition of post-Mughal Urdu high culture that Rushdie grew up. In a 1983 interview with Michael Kaufman, Rushdie said,My grandfather, my father’s father, was a good Urdu poet. My father is not a writer but he’s a very literary and literate man, a student of both Arabic and Persian Literature and of Western Literature. At Cambridge he was quite scholarly. So I grew up in an atmosphere of books. And both my parents, in their different ways, were very gifted storytellers. [End Page 51]My mother, in common with most Eastern women and perhaps even women of the West, was the... (shrink)

This anthology brings together for the first time leading essays and book chapters from theologians, philosophers, and scientists on their research relating to ethics, altruism, and love. Because the general consensus today is that scholarship in moral theory requires empirical research, the arguments of the leading scholars presented in this book will be particularly important to those examining issues in love, ethics, religion, and science. The first half of _The Altruism Reader_ offers key selections from religious texts, leading (...) contemporary scholars, and cutting-edge ethicists. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are represented. Among the highly respected writers are Thomas Aquinas, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, John Polkinghorne, Stephen Pope, Louis Fischer, Amira Shamma Abdin, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, and Daniel Day Williams. Primary readings on love and altruism from the sciences are featured in the second half of the book. Here the focus is on anthropology, psychology, sociology, biology, and neurology, with material written by Daniel C. Batson, David Sloan Wilson, Robert Wright, Stephen G. Post, Robert Axelrod, Richard Dawkins, Holmes Rolston III, and other renowned scientists and philosophers. "Virtually all people act—and often talk—as if they have some inkling about love. We speak about loving food, falling in love, loving God, feeling loved, and loving a type of music. We say that love hurts, love waits, love stinks, and love means never having to say you're sorry.We use the word and its derivatives in a wide variety of ways.... My own definition of love is this: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others, to promote well-being."—_Thomas Jay Oord_. (shrink)

This Element examines aspects of monotheism and hope. Distinguishing monotheism from various forms of nontheistic religions, it explores how God transcends the terms used to describe the religious ultimate. The discussion then turns to the nature of hope and examines how the concept has been used by Augustine, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, and Moltmann, among others. The Christian tradition to which these monotheists belong associates hope and faith with love. In the final section, Wainwright shows the varieties of this kind of (...) love in Islam, Christianity, and theistic Hinduism, and defends the sort of love valorized by them against some charges against it. He examines why the loves prized in these traditions are imperfect because their adherents invariably believe that the love that they cherish is superior to that cherished by others. (shrink)

A timeless treatise on what constitutes the Hindu way of life Religion in India can appear to be a confusing tangle of myths, with many different gods and goddesses worshipped in countless forms.This complexity stems from a love of story-telling, as much as anything else, but it is only the surface expression of Indian faith. Beneath can be found a system of unifying beliefs that have guided the lives of ordinary families for generations. Here, one of the most profound (...) philosophers of India explains these and other related concepts intrinsic to the Hindu philosophy of life. (shrink)

Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski here explains and defends the idea that the God of the monotheistic religions does not only know all objective facts, but he also perfectly grasps the conscious states of all conscious beings from their own point of view. She calls that property omnisubjectivity. God not only knows that you are in pain, for instance, but is present in your pain, grasping your pain the way you grasp it. The same point applies to every feeling, every belief, every (...) thought, every desire you have. It also applies to the conscious states of animals. Zagzebski begins with an account of what subjectivity is and why it differs from anything in the objective world, then argues that omnisubjectivity is entailed by divine omniscience and omnipresence, divine love and justice, and practices of prayer. She offers three models of how omnisubjectivity is possible: the empathy model, the perceptual model, and panentheism. She answers objections that it is incompatible with other attributes such as timelessness, immutability, impassibility, divine goodness, divine holiness, and infinity. She extends the account of omnisubjectivity to the divine grasp of possible but non-actual subjective states, arguing that God grasps all possible subjective states of all possible conscious beings in his imagination. She then applies the conclusions of the book to the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Many arguments in the book apply to all the monotheistic religions and some arguments apply to monotheistic Hinduism. The book concludes with the claim that subjectivity is primary in the universe. God is intrinsically subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Objectivity is being from the outside viewpoint, and it exists only relative to the created world. (shrink)

This book is a scholarly treatise on the subject of Indian philosophy and is also written by one of its foremost and most well-known proponents. Chaturvedi Badrinath shows that the Mahabharata is the most systematic inquiry into the human condition. Badrinath shows that the concerns of the Mahabharata are the concerns of everyday life––of dharma, artha, kama and moksha. This book dispels several false claims about what is today known as ‘Hinduism’ to show us how individual liberty and knowledge, freedom, (...) equality, and the celebration of love, friendship and relationships are integral to the philosophy of the Mahabharata, because they are integral to human life. What sets this book apart from others is that Badrinath has used more than 500 Sanskrit shlokas, which he has translated himself to illustrate his arguments. Secondly, his approach to Hindu philosophy is one based in humanism, rather than in divisive politics. (shrink)

Erotic religious imagery is as old as Hinduism. The earliest Hindu sacred text, the Rig Veda , revels in the language of both pleasure and fertility. In addition to this and other religious texts that incorporated eroticism, there were more worldly texts that treated the erotic tout court, of which the Kamasutra, composed in north India, probably in the third century CE, is the most famous. The two words in its title mean "desire/love/pleasure/sex" and "a treatise" . Virtually nothing (...) is known about the author, Vatsyayana, other than his name and what we learn from this text. There is nothing remotely like it even now, and for its time it was astonishingly sophisticated; it was already well known in India at a time when the Europeans were still swinging in trees, culturally speaking. The Kamasutra's ideas about gender are surprisingly modern, and its stereotypes of feminine and masculine natures are unexpectedly subtle. It also reveals attitudes to women's education and sexual freedom, and views of homosexual acts, that are strikingly more liberal than those of other texts in ancient India—or, in many cases, in contemporary India. (shrink)

The claim that God is a person or personal is, perhaps, one of the most fundamental claims which religious believers make about God. In Hinduism, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are represented in person-like form. In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament God walks in the Garden of Eden , experiences emotions , and converses with human beings . In the New Testament, God communicates with his people, usually by means of angels or visions , and retains the ability to speak audibly, as (...) he does to Paul on the Damascus road . And, in the Qur'an, Allah is said to have a face and two hands , to see, and to sit on a throne . Many believers today would still claim that, among other things which God can do, he loves those who believe in him and responds to their prayers. -/- In this article, I consider several ways in which God has been understood to be a person or personal and argue that, if God’s person-like characteristics must be understood in a metaphorical sense, we cannot draw a clear line between a personal God and an impersonal Absolute. (shrink)

Erotic religious imagery is as old as Hinduism. The earliest Hindu sacred text, the Rig Veda, revels in the language of both pleasure and fertility. In addition to this and other religious texts that incorporated eroticism, there were more worldly texts that treated the erotic tout court, of which the Kamasutra, composed in north India, probably in the third century CE, is the most famous. The two words in its title mean "desire/love/pleasure/sex" and "a treatise". Virtually nothing is known (...) about the author, Vatsyayana, other than his name and what we learn from this text. There is nothing remotely like it even now, and for its time it was astonishingly sophisticated; it was already well known in India at a time when the Europeans were still swinging in trees, culturally speaking. The Kamasutra's ideas about gender are surprisingly modern, and its stereotypes of feminine and masculine natures are unexpectedly subtle. It also reveals attitudes to women's education and sexual freedom, and views of homosexual acts, that are strikingly more liberal than those of other texts in ancient India—or, in many cases, in contemporary India. (shrink)

While Gandhi and Ambedkar hold similar standpoints on the relation between religious orderings of the world and shapes of social existence, they sharply diverge, on certain occasions, regarding the question of what the crucial terms ‘caste’ and varņa refer to, so that they often seem to be talking past each other. Gandhi sought to cut through various traditional forms of Hindu socio-religious practices and develop a Hinduism which is grounded in the values of universal peace, love and benevolence. Ambedkar (...) too rejected aspects of familiar historical varieties of Buddhism and configured a new vehicle whose goals were to be more specifically material than spiritual. However, while both Gandhi and Ambedkar thus sought to uncover the revitalizing impulses of religious ideals, they operated with different imaginations of the type of polity that would emerge from this social reconstruction. For Gandhi, the reinvigorated socio-religious whole would be structured by an ideal notion of varņa in which there would b... (shrink)

Introduction: to the student -- Ethics and Christian ethics -- An overview of ethics -- Definitions -- Subject matter -- Assumptions -- Cautions -- Alternatives to Christian ethics -- Religious systems -- Judaism -- Islam -- Hinduism -- Buddhism -- Humanism -- Objectivism -- Behaviorism -- Alternatives within Christian ethics -- Obedience to external authority -- In Roman Catholicism -- In Protestantism -- Responsibility for personal decisions -- What am I to do? -- What am I to be? -- Transforming (...) society -- Reinhold Neibuhr's "impossible possibility" -- Paul Ramsey's "obedient love" -- James Gustafson's "theocentric ethics" -- Liberation theology -- Ethics and the Christian faith -- Sources of guidance -- The Bible -- The Christian community -- The nature of the church -- The function of the church -- The Christian in the church -- Personal experience -- The use of the mind -- The prompting of the conscience -- The leadership of the spirit -- Biblical ethics -- The Hebrew Scripture -- General characteristics of Hebrew morality -- The law, the prophets, and the writings -- Jesus and the Gospels -- Jesus and Judaism -- Characteristics of Jesus's ethical teachings -- Basic concepts in Jesus's ethical teachings -- The example of Jesus -- The ethical teachings of Paul -- Theology and ethics -- An ethic of responsible freedom -- An ethic of love -- An ethic of a new life -- Faith working through love -- Theological premises -- Beliefs about God -- Beliefs about humankind -- Beliefs about history -- Faith -- Faith and salvation -- Life in the Christian community -- The instruction of Scripture -- Worship and morality -- Love (agape) -- The nature of love -- The source of love -- The demands of love -- The relationship between love and justice -- Decision -- Christian ethics and contemporary issues -- Human sexuality and the marriage relationship -- The current scene -- A Christian interpretation of sexuality -- A theological perspective -- Questions about the relationship -- A Christian interpretation of marriage -- Homosexuality and the Christian faith -- Contemporary social perspective -- A biblical perspective -- Varying Christian interpretations -- Homosexuality and the Christian way of live. (shrink)

All nations on this little planet earth, in all periods of their self-conscious history, are agreed on relating themselves back to an absolute world-ground which is also the goal of love; the source of existence is responded to in gratitude and awe. "Religio" literally means this "back-tie." Religion is the consensus gentium. The many world-religions appeal to the same Absolute in many linguistic symbols. We call a symbol which appeals to the Absolute a mythical expression. "Tao" or "Central Harmony" (...) in Chinese Taoism or Confucianism, the "Trimurti" or "Brahma," "Vishnu" and "Shiva" in Hinduism, "Allah" in Islam, "Jehova" in Judaism, and "God Our Father" in Christianity are such mythical appellations. "The realm of God is primarily the invisible church, which comprehends all zones and different religions; secondarily the external church.". (shrink)

“Give to everyone who begs from you,” Jesus advised his followers. Most of us do not and rush on by, concerned for our safety, for what the beggar will buy with our gift of alms, for who will benefit from our gift. Fewer stop and give something: if not cash, then a snack or beverage, and their precious time. A century since Marcel Mauss published his famous essay, we all feel quite well informed about “the gift.” In this richly detailed (...) study, Caner's achievement is to show how different gift-giving was in the late antique Roman Empire, “the first truly affluent, complex Christian society.” Philanthropy was no longer the ancient “love of humanity,” the imperative to be generous to people, when you thought, or even knew, that they did not deserve it. Yet philanthropy was moreover not, or not only, a series of precisely calibrated acts of reciprocal giving.Caner's focus is on the religious gift. He identifies five distinct categories of religious gift-giving, which others have too easily conflated. The newest of these was the blessing (eulogia), which emerged only in the sixth century, in the thousands of sermons, saintly lives, and letters that Caner consulted. It has been identified similarly in other ascetic cultures, for example in Hinduism and Jainism, as the pure or free gift whose existence Mauss denied. The blessing is a gift of divine benevolence, grace delivered through a human mediator. It is not synonymous with the gift of alms (eleēmosynē), a very human act of mercy from one individual to another. These are in turn distinct from charity (agapē), “self-sacrificial gifts derived from essential resources”; two forms of offering—liturgical offerings (prosphorai), such as the communion bread, on the one hand, and fruit-bearing offerings (karpophoriai), along with agricultural and other gifts to support religious professionals. “Each category,” which has an equivalent in contemporary Syriac and Coptic writings, “was associated with a distinct set of goals, responsibilities, relationships, and material resources.”The late antique city was as busy with organized gangs of professional beggars as any modern downtown, but early Christians could not simply turn away. They were hectored into caring by golden-mouthed preachers like John, bishop of New Rome. Chrysostom insisted that almsgiving should be direct and personal, a source of discomfort for those who offered comfort. The rich might also, as ever, engage in ostentatious acts of giving, the exchange of worldly goods to redeem them from their sins, including the pride associated with ostentatious giving. Transactional gift-giving could end up with everyone insulted: generosity could be refused, donors repudiated, gifts returned. That much seems familiar at a time when museums and universities have felt compelled to remove the names of disgraced donors from their buildings and galleries. Caner's rich analysis, because it is so firmly rooted in early Byzantium, offers reasons, and some new tools, to think again and hard about the complexities of philanthropy. (shrink)

I’ve advanced from tolerance to equal respect for all religions.1I’ve broadened my Hinduism by loving other religions as my own.2[Gandhi’s] doctrine of the equality of religions . . . did not move towards a single global religion, but enjoins us all to become better expressions of our own faith, being enriched in the process by influences from other faiths.3At first glance the religious philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi appears to be a version of the perennial philosophy, the main proponent of (...) which was Aldous Huxley. In his book The Perennial Philosophy, Huxley proposed that at the core of the world’s religions is an undifferentiated Godhead, variously named ātman-brahman in Hinduism, the dharmakāya in Mahāyāna .. (shrink)

There are uses of the term merit in Indian religions which also appear in secular contexts, but in addition there are other uses that are not encountered outside religion. Transfer of merit is a specific doctrine in whose connection the term merit is used with an intention which is not the same as that found in nonreligious contexts. Two main types of transfer of merit can be distinguished. First, the transfer of merit has been associated with certain ritual practices in (...) Hinduism and in Buddhism. Another main type of transfer of merit is connected with Mahāyāna belief in bodhisattvas' loving-kindness towards other beings. In the orthodox Hindu schools, in Hnayāna Buddhism and in Jainism, transfer of merit has been rejected on account of the doctrine of karma according to which the person can acquire karmic outcomes for only those actions he or she has performed by himself. (shrink)

Grasping. Avarice. Covetousness. Miserliness. Insatiable cupidity. Overreaching ambition. Desire spun out of control. The deadly sin of Greed goes by many names, appears in many guises, and wreaks havoc on individuals and nations alike. In this lively and generous book, Phyllis A. Tickle argues that Greed is "the Matriarch of the Deadly Clan," the ultimate source of Pride, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, and Anger. She shows that the major faiths, from Hinduism and Taoism to Buddhism and Christianity regard Greed as (...) the greatest calamity humans can indulge in, engendering further sins and eviscerating all virtues. As the Sikh holy book Adi Granth asks: "Where there is greed, what love can there be?" Tickle takes a long view of Greed, from St. Paul to the present, focusing particularly on changing imaginative representations of Greed in Western literature and art. Looking at such works as the Psychomachia, or "Soul Battle" of the fifth-century poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, the paintings of Peter Bruegel and Hieronymous Bosch, the 1987 film Wall Street, and the contemporary Italian artist Mario Donizetti, Tickle shows how our perceptions have evolved from the medieval understanding of Greed as a spiritual enemy to a nineteenth-century sociological construct to an early twentieth-century psychological deficiency, and finally to a new view, powerfully articulated in Donizetti's mystical paintings, of Greed as both tragic and beautiful. Engaging, witty, brilliantly insightful, Greed explores the full range of this deadly sin's subtle, chameleon-like qualities, and the enormous destructive power it wields, evidenced all too clearly in the world today. (shrink)

"Life is full of absurdities, and human misperception of such absurdities leads to a state of unrest and fear that require meaning and direction for a happy life. F. Pasqualino addresses here samples of existential absurdities, and discusses solutions offered: Taoism offers in its paradoxes a natural self-help resource. Buddhism offers a natural wisdom that is informed by a supernatural impersonal Absolute. Hinduism offers a plethora of personal gods who embody the impersonal Absolute. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic wisdom teaches a personal Absolute (...) God whose being is distinct from, but involved with human and non-human beings. The unifying feature of these wisdoms is: Obedience to, and love of, the Absolute can rectify human misperception of life's absurdities, dissipate fear, and provide meaning, value and a serene life. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Absolute in Christian theology, chose to become an exemplar innocent victim for love, thus giving the most absurd but victoriously redeeming love that provides a new and sublime perspective on life's absurdities. G. Lahood's translation and commentary make the Italian masterpiece available to an English-speaking audience"--. (shrink)

The aim of the work is to trace personal various poetic images of Maria Pawlikowska- Jasnorzewska connected with the motive of the garden on the example of selected poems from early to the wartime ones. The article is an attempt to read the lyric sensitivity of the writer in the description of the world of garden plants, to discover her painting, philosophical and religious inclinations. Individual fragments of the work are devoted to the following jjnages: the garden of love (...) and pleasure, the modernistic fantastic garden, the exotic garden, Tatra garden as well as the imagined or reminded places that are the mirror of the poet’s soul. The interpretation of the poems is accompanied by the study on the evolution of the style, imagination as well as the poet’s religious thought. The latter part of the work includes conviction of the appearance of many artistic inspirations in the literary output of M. Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska comprising the romantic and modernistic literature together with influences of symbolism, impressionism, naturalism as well as Hinduism and Japanese painting which apart from Biblical tradition compose a peculiar poetic collage. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 69-72 [Access article in PDF] Christian Experiences with Buddhist Spirituality: A Response Robert Thurman Columbia University Recently I read an account on the CNN website of a statement made at the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad in India, where about eighty million devotees of Hinduism were joined in their worship of the grace of the Goddess River Ganga by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, informal head (...) of Tibetan Buddhists and formal head of the Tibetan government in exile. His Holiness also joined the leaders of Hinduism, various Shankaracharyas and others, in a formal statement in which they requested with the followers of other world religions not to persist in the practice of aggressive conversion of the followers of other religions. The statement addressed a special plea to Christians and Muslims, who may currently be the most intense in their worldwide missionary activities.The writer of the CNN article was clearly cynical about this, mentioning, as if to undercut the force of their appeal to other religions, that the Hindu leaders themselves wanted to declare India a Hindu nation. He noted that the Dalai Lama "giggled" when he sprinkled himself with Ganga water out of respect for Hindu beliefs, but declined to immerse himself in the river, saying it was too cold.His Holiness has often challenged leaders of world religions, including Buddhists, Hindus, and secular humanists (which he considers a world religion/ideology, whether Marxist or liberal democratic), by saying that now is past the time when anyone should be attempting to convert others to a different belief system or institutional affiliation. If persisted in, it will lead to worse violence in the future than it already has in the past. His position seems eminently reasonable, looking realistically at the world situation, the powerful technologies of communication and possible scale of violence. Yet people filled with enthusiasm for their saving faith tend to feel deprived if they cannot have a mission to save others with it.I do not think His Holiness means that you cannot share your enthusiasm, or make the jewels of faith, wisdom, and compassion of your tradition accessible to others, or even dialogue with others comparing your tradition with theirs. He travels the world teaching Buddhism, mostly to Buddhists, but freely to anyone who is interested. But then he does tell those who are not Buddhists notto convert to Buddhism. Rather, he cautions, they should take whatever they learn and use anything that seems good to them to enhance their original tradition, thereby remaining integrated with [End Page 69] their families, communities, and local customs, perhaps even enriching their own traditions. Those who are Buddhists from birth he urges to study other traditions, learn from them, and critically extricate themselves from feelings of superiority or estrangement. And some who may already have chosen to become Buddhist he strongly cautions not to criticize their birth traditions or look down on their followers.What I love about the essays in this collection is that they all seem to be learning from Buddhism and appreciate its traditions, yet they interpret it in Christian terms, apply it to their own Christian understanding, and practice an enriched Christianity, perhaps what Bardwell Smith so aptly calls in his essay "becoming a Christian." I feel privileged to respond to the deep personal quest for truth I sense within each essay. I am not going to review each essay point by point, though I will touch on each of the five as I follow a kind of pilgrimage through them. Though all five essays are personal and confessional, those by Ingram and Muck are perhaps more theoretical in tone, Adeney and Frohlich more contemplative in focus, and Smith combines both in a special combination I will save for last.Paul Ingram writes as a man who floats contentedly in a sea of God's grace, the vision of which seems to have been opened for him by Martin Luther. While he floats, he reflects deeply and knowledgeably about both Pure Land and Zen Buddhisms, acknowledging how his appreciation of the Christian... (shrink)

The interface between Roman Catholic Christianity and the Sanatana Dharma is often limited to Vedantic discourses and neglects the Shakta traditions to be found within the woof of Hinduism. And generally, this dialogue is between celibates of both religions. This blog-post after removing false notions about Tantra, goes on to show how Tantra as a lived faith is about interiority and a life of contemplation. This post also touches upon three crucial differences between Christianity and Tantra. To quote from the (...) post: "A Tantric is in so in love with her image of a Powerful and simultaneously weak Godhead that she would hardly leave the vita contemplativa. " This is the third post in this series of posts on interreligious dialogue. Contemplation or, metacognition should be the basis of religious dialogues; this posts asserts this. If God is, then why bother with exterior things? (shrink)

Life education, also known as life and death education, is an important subject in Taiwan with institutions offering degree programs and courses that focus on quality learning and implementation of life education. What is interesting from the perspective of Taiwanese Education is that the teaching of life education also incorporates a number of Eastern-derived and conceptualized tenets, for example, Buddhist teaching and the importance of spiritual wisdom. This premise contends then that life education in Taiwan, in general, is concerned with (...) the promotion, fulfillment, and cherishing of quality life experiences (e.g., personal contentment, happiness). One example of life education, which resonates with other spiritual beliefs and religious faiths (e.g., Hinduism), is related to spiritual cultivation and the enlightenment of life wisdom. Our own teaching of the subject, likewise, places emphasis on the goal of teaching students to seek meaningful understanding of and appreciation for three major, interrelated components of life education: life wisdom, life practice, and life care. Life education is a beneficial subject as its theoretical understanding may help individuals cope with pathologies and negative life experiences. One negative life experience, in this case, is the ultimate fate of humankind: death. Approaching death and/or the onset of grief is something that we all have to experience. How does one approach death? It is not easy feat and, of course, grief for a loved one is personal and some of us struggle with this. We contend that spiritual cultivation and enlightenment, arising from life education, may assist us with the coping of death (e.g., the possibility of transcendence beyond the realm of life). Forming the premise of the present article, we propose that a person’s ‘spiritual and enlightened self’, reflecting the convergence of three major aspects of life education (i.e., Philosophical reflection, Enrichment of personal well-being, and Spiritual cultivation), would result in the initiation and creation of a number of virtues and positive characteristics – for example: having a positive outlook in life, showing compassion, forgiveness, etc. These virtues and quality characteristics, from our philosophical reasoning, are equivalent to those qualities that positive psychology advocates for. (shrink)

Viṣṇu is a central deity in the Hindu pantheon, especially in his manifestation as the seductive cattle-herding youth, Kṛṣṇa. The purāṇas are sacred texts, which, as the Sanskrit name implies, are collections of narratives from 'long ago'. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa is thus an ancient account of the universe and guide to life, which places Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa at the centre of creation, theology and reality itself. This text, composed about 1,500 years ago, provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the most important (...) themes and narratives that constitute the Hindu imagination: the creation and destruction of the universe, the origin of gods and mortals, the peopling of the world, and the structure and conduct of ideal brahminical society. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa describes the trials of exemplary devotees, the existential struggles between gods and demons, and the exploits of legendary cultural heroes. It also contains many ecstatic songs of praise for the deity. The ever-popular accounts of Kṛṣṇa's love games with the cattle-herding girls of Vṛṇdāvana, which have proliferated in literature, dance, song and visual arts over the millennia, are found here in authoritative form. This faithful yet fluent blank-verse rendering of this great Hindu classic is the first new English translation in over 100 years. It will be welcomed by the scholarly community, while remaining readily accessible to a general readership.--From the publisher's website. (shrink)

Based on papers read to the Centre Catholique des Intellectuels Français by a group of Catholic authors, including Gustave Thibon and Daniel-Rapa. Freedom is not mere independence: it is the choice of bonds to those we love. Since the Christian is related to his God in love, Christianity is the source and basis of genuine freedom. The authors attempt to substantiate this thesis in essays on Hinduism, Islam, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Freedom in the Greek World. The concluding (...) essays examine the requirements for the preservation of freedom in our day.--R. G. S. (shrink)

In this unique and exhilarating autobiography, Allan Jones – Canada’s first blind diplomat – vividly describes how an untreatable eye disease slowly decimated his visual world, most challengingly during his postings in Tokyo and New Delhi, and how he discovered and took to heart the revelatory Indian philosophy that changed his life. Advaita Vedanta, the most iconoclastic and liberating of the classical Indian philosophies, profoundly altered the author’s experience of self and world. He found that the true self, as distinct (...) from the individual ego, far exceeds the boundaries of individuality. It lies beneath sightedness or blindness and is absolutely unaffected by the latter. This welcome shift of perspective was reinforced by startling discoveries in contemporary physics, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology that are fully consistent with Advaitic metaphysics. As for the practical applications of metaphysics, this book demonstrates step by step how Advaitic insight and practice significantly reduce physical and psychological tension. The most telling examples have to do with adjustments compelled by extreme circumstances. Thus Jones describes how he drew upon Advaitic mindfulness techniques to maintain his white cane mobility skills in the teeth of permanent spinal, nerve, and muscle pain. The arc of Beyond Vision moves from the claustrophobically personal to the openness of the transpersonal. It begins in a dysfunctional family background, breaking out into a full life encompassing an adventurous foreign service career, spiritual exploration, and an unconventional kind of marital love. (shrink)

Based on papers read to the Centre Catholique des Intellectuels Français by a group of Catholic authors, including Gustave Thibon and Daniel-Rapa. Freedom is not mere independence: it is the choice of bonds to those we love. Since the Christian is related to his God in love, Christianity is the source and basis of genuine freedom. The authors attempt to substantiate this thesis in essays on Hinduism, Islam, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Freedom in the Greek World. The concluding (...) essays examine the requirements for the preservation of freedom in our day.--R. G. S. (shrink)

Whence comes suffering? If the divine reality is a reality of bliss, and all is derived from this divine reality, how can suffering arise? Does the reality of God contain suffering? Might suffering be understood as a mode of bliss? These are the questions I take up in this essay. I suggest that the various states of suffering may best be understood as fragments of bliss, progressively resolved as fragmentation is overcome. Spiritual life is the progressive movement from the suffering (...) of ontological fragmentation toward the bliss of reunion. (shrink)

The present book is a painstaking labour of love displaying a selection of the Tamil discourses of Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Swamigal, the 68th pontiff of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, Kanchipuram, one of the great Hindu religious leaders of the last century. These discourses have been translated into English, edited, and topically arranged. The editor deserves special commendation for this marvellous work which has been culled from a transcript of more than 6,500 pages.

Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo) is a loose conglomeration of research programs in the life sciences with two main axes: (a) the evolution of development, or inquiry into the pattern and processes of how ontogeny varies and changes over time; and, (b) the developmental basis of evolution, or inquiry into the causal impact of ontogenetic processes on evolutionary trajectories—both in terms of constraint and facilitation. Philosophical issues are found along both axes surrounding concepts such as evolvability, novelty, and modularity. The developmental (...) basis of evolution has garnered much attention because it speaks to the possibility of revising a standard construal of evolutionary theory, but the evolution of development harbors its own conceptual questions. This article addresses the heterogeneity of Evo-devo’s conglomerate structure (including disagreements over its individuation), as well as the concepts and controversies of philosophical interest pertaining to the evolution of development and the developmental basis of evolution. Future research will benefit from a shift away from global theorizing toward the scientific practices of Evo-devo. (shrink)

Although no one unified anarchist theory exists, educational approaches can be taken to support the full liberation of the self and the construction of an interconnected community that strives to rid itself of eco-sociocultural oppressions. An anarchist pedagogical approach could be one that is rooted in a love/rage unit of analysis occurring along a spectrum of various types of actions and contributions within a community. Anarchism as a violent destruction of the state is a stereotypical view that has perhaps (...) led to its own early demise as a social movement. Anarchism that embraces adaptation through more inclusive forms of resistance, including a reconstruction for the K?12 classroom context, is one that stands a chance in evolving a society toward love, justice, and empowerment. This article explores those possibilities aiming for accessibility while still honoring core anarchist calls for strong, localized democratic participation and decision-making outside of permanent hierarchies. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Review symposium of Alexander Rosenberg’s Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology [2006]. -/- Worry carries with it a connotation of false concern, as in ‘your mother is always worried about you’. And yet some worrying, including that of your mother, turns out to be justified. Alexander Rosenberg’s new book is an extended argument intended to assuage false concerns about reductionism and molecular biology while encouraging a loving embrace of the two.

It is a common complaint that antireductionist arguments are primarily negative. Here I describe an alternative nonreductionist epistemology based on considerations taken from multidisciplinary research in biology. The core of this framework consists in seeing investigation as coordinated around sets of problems (problem agendas) that have associated criteria of explanatory adequacy. These ideas are developed in a case study, the explanation of evolutionary innovations and novelties, which demonstrates the applicability and fruitfulness of this nonreductionist epistemological perspective. This account also bears (...) on questions of conceptual change and theory structure in philosophy of science. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, 831 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55455; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Reductive explanations are psychologically seductive; when given two explanations, people prefer the one that refers to lower-level components or processes to account for the phenomena under consideration even when information about these lower levels is irrelevant. Maybe individuals assume that a reductive explanation is what a scientific explanation should look like (e.g., neuroscience should explain psychology) or presume that information about lower-level components or processes is more explanatory (e.g., molecular detail explains better than anatomical detail). Philosophers have been analyzing reduction (...) for more than half a century (Hüttemann and Love 2016), but neither of these possibilities is a consensus view (even if psychologically applicable). Instead, there is widespread agreement that the landscape of reductionism is complicated, especially in biology. Increasing scrutiny of actual practices within biology and other sciences has often provoked the questions (paraphrasing Alasdair MacIntyre): Whose explanation? Which reductionism? Marie Kaiser’s book—Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences—is a decisive intervention into these discussions, offering a wealth of helpful distinctions and new analyses with a healthy focus on scientific practices of explanation. (shrink)

“Functional homology” appears regularly in different areas of biological research and yet it is apparently a contradiction in terms—homology concerns identity of structure regardless of form and function. I argue that despite this conceptual tension there is a legitimate conception of ‘homology of function’, which can be recovered by utilizing a distinction from pre-Darwinian physiology (use versus activity) to identify an appropriate meaning of ‘function’. This account is directly applicable to molecular developmental biology and shares a connection to the theme (...) of hierarchy in homology. I situate ‘homology of function’ within existing definitions and criteria for structural assessments of homology, and introduce a criterion of ‘organization’ for judging function homologues, which focuses on hierarchically interconnected interdependencies (similar to relative position and connection for skeletal elements in structural homology). This analysis of biological concepts has at least three broad philosophical consequences: (1) it provides the grounds for the study of behavior and psychological categories as homologues; (2) it demonstrates that philosophers who take selected effect function as primary effectively ignore large portions of comparative, structural, and experimental research, thereby misconstruing biological reasoning and knowledge; and, (3) it underwrites causal generalizations, which illuminates inferences made from model organisms in experimental biology. (shrink)

One foundational question in contemporarybiology is how to `rejoin evolution anddevelopment. The emerging research program(evolutionary developmental biology or`evo-devo) requires a meshing of disciplines,concepts, and explanations that have beendeveloped largely in independence over the pastcentury. In the attempt to comprehend thepresent separation between evolution anddevelopment much attention has been paid to thesplit between genetics and embryology in theearly part of the 20th century with itscodification in the exclusion of embryologyfrom the Modern Synthesis. This encourages acharacterization of evolutionary developmentalbiology as the marriage (...) of evolutionary theoryand embryology via developmental genetics. Butthere remains a largely untold story about thesignificance of morphology and comparativeanatomy (also minimized in the ModernSynthesis). Functional and evolutionarymorphology are critical for understanding thedevelopment of a concept central toevolutionary developmental biology,evolutionary innovation. Highlighting thediscipline of morphology and the concepts ofinnovation and novelty provides an alternativeway of conceptualizing the `evo and the `devoto be synthesized. (shrink)

Many philosophers of biology have embraced a version of pluralism in response to the failure of theory reduction but overlook how concepts, methods, and explanatory resources are in fact coordinated, such as in interdisciplinary research where the aim is to integrate different strands into an articulated whole. This is observable for the origin of evolutionary novelty—a complex problem that requires a synthesis of intellectual resources from different fields to arrive at robust answers to multiple allied questions. It is an apt (...) locus for exploring new dimensions of explanatory integration because it necessitates coordination among historical and experimental disciplines . These coordination issues are widespread for the origin of novel morphologies observed in the Cambrian Explosion. Despite an explicit commitment to an integrated, interdisciplinary explanation, some potential disciplinary contributors are excluded. Notable among these exclusions is the physics of ontogeny. We argue that two different dimensions of integration—data and standards—have been insufficiently distinguished. This distinction accounts for why physics-based explanatory contributions to the origin of novelty have been resisted: they do not integrate certain types of data and differ in how they conceptualize the standard of uniformitarianism in historical, causal explanations. Our analysis of these different dimensions of integration contributes to the development of more adequate and integrated explanatory frameworks. (shrink)

Reduction and reductionism have been central philosophical topics in analytic philosophy of science for more than six decades. Together they encompass a diversity of issues from metaphysics and epistemology. This article provides an introduction to the topic that illuminates how contemporary epistemological discussions took their shape historically and limns the contours of concrete cases of reduction in specific natural sciences. The unity of science and the impulse to accomplish compositional reduction in accord with a layer-cake vision of the sciences, the (...) seminal contributions of Ernest Nagel on theory reduction and how they strongly conditioned subsequent philosophical discussions, and the detailed issues pertaining to different accounts of reduction that arise in both physical and biological science (e.g., limit-case and part-whole reduction in physics, the difference-making principle in genetics, and mechanisms in molecular biology) are explored. The conclusion argues that the epistemological heterogeneity and patchwork organization of the natural sciences encourages a pluralist stance about reduction. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to encourage a reconfiguration of the discussion about typology in biology away from the metaphysics of essentialism and toward the epistemology of classifying natural phenomena for the purposes of empirical inquiry. First, I briefly review arguments concerning ‘typological thinking’, essentialism, species, and natural kinds, highlighting their predominantly metaphysical nature. Second, I use a distinction between the aims, strategies, and tactics of science to suggest how a shift from metaphysics to epistemology might be accomplished. Typological (...) thinking can be understood as a scientific tactic that involves representing natural phenomena using idealizations and approximations, which facilitates explanation, investigation, and theorizing via abstraction and generalization. Third, a variety of typologies from different areas of biology are introduced to emphasize the diversity of this representational reasoning. One particular example is used to examine how there can be epistemological conflict between typology and evolutionary analysis. This demonstrates that alternative strategies of typological thinking arise due to the divergent explanatory goals of researchers working in different disciplines with disparate methodologies. I conclude with several research questions that emerge from an epistemological reconfiguration of typology. (shrink)

Using the context of controversies surrounding evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo) and the possibility of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, I provide an account of theory structure as idealized theory presentations that are always incomplete (partial) and shaped by their conceptual content (material rather than formal organization). These two characteristics are salient because the goals that organize and regulate scientific practice, including the activity of using a theory, are heterogeneous. This means that the same theory can be structured differently, in part because (...) theory presentations (as idealizations) intentionally depart from different features known to be present in a theory. Since there are diverse and potentially incompatible theory structures derived from heterogeneous goals found in scientific practices, a question arises about the absence of a unifying theory structure in the background. The notion of a “theory façade” offers a fruitful perspective on this potentially unsettling result. (shrink)