Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities

Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities
Author: Pankaj Jain
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317151607

In Indic religious traditions, a number of rituals and myths exist in which the environment is revered. Despite this nature worship in India, its natural resources are under heavy pressure with its growing economy and exploding population. This has led several scholars to raise questions about the role religious communities can play in environmentalism. Does nature worship inspire Hindus to act in an environmentally conscious way? This book explores the above questions with three communities, the Swadhyaya movement, the Bishnoi, and the Bhil communities. Presenting the texts of Bishnois, their environmental history, and their contemporary activism; investigating the Swadhyaya movement from an ecological perspective; and exploring the Bhil communities and their Sacred Groves, this book applies a non-Western hermeneutical model to interpret the religious traditions of Indic communities. With a foreword by Roger S Gottlieb.

Hidden Religion

Hidden Religion
Author: Micah Issitt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2014-09-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1610694783

Covering secret societies, mysterious ancient traditions, and the often-mistaken history of the world's religious symbols, this book takes readers on a tour through the fascinating world of religious symbolism and reveals the most mysterious and misunderstood facets of religion. Hidden Religion: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World's Religious Beliefs not only explores the history and origins of widely recognizable symbols, like the Christian cross and the Star of David, but also introduces readers to more obscure symbols from religious traditions around the world—even defunct ones like those of the ancient Aztec and Mayan societies. In addition, the book discusses the "religious secrets" found in the major religions, including secret societies of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Containing more than 170 entries, the encyclopedia is organized by religious category, such as Abrahamic, East Asian, and African Diasporic religions, then alphabetically within each category. Each entry is prefaced with a short introduction that explains where and when the religious tradition originated and describes the religion today. This information is followed by an analysis of the historical development and use of symbols along with an explanation of connections between symbols used by different religions, such as shared astrological symbolism in the form of moon, sun, or star motifs.

Dancing With Siva

Dancing With Siva
Author: Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Publisher: Himalayan Academy Publications
Total Pages: 1270
Release: 2003-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0945497962

This 1,008-page sourcebook answers many questions to quench the soul's thirst for God and Self-knowledge. Every spiritually-inclined human being will be enriched by the path revealed in this extraordinary book. India's tolerant and diverse vision of the Divine is all here: meditative, devotional, philosophical, scriptural and yogic. In question-and-answer style, Dancing with Siva guides the aspirant deep into the Hindu heart. Lavishly illustrated with 165 black and white reproductions of paintings from India. Resources include a Hindu timeline, comparisons of 12 world religions, a children's primer and more.

The ABC of Harmony: for World Peace, Harmonious Civilization and Tetranet Thinking: Global Textbook

The ABC of Harmony: for World Peace, Harmonious Civilization and Tetranet Thinking: Global Textbook
Author: Dr. Leo Semashko and 75 GHA co-authors from 26 countries
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2013-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1304112845

The ABC of Harmony is the dawn of a shining, harmonious vision of peace and prosperity for all the nations of the planet earth! Together with it, enlightened citizens will emerge capable of building a harmonious civilization of peace and prosperity on the planet earth. - Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam (poet, President of India, 2002-2007)

The Faces of Buddhism in America

The Faces of Buddhism in America
Author: Charles S. Prebish
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520920651

Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the United States, with adherents estimated in the several millions. But what exactly defines a "Buddhist"? This has been a much-debated question in recent years, particularly in regard to the religion's bifurcation into two camps: the so-called "imported" or ethnic Buddhism of Asian immigrants and the "convert" Buddhism of a mostly middle-class, liberal, intellectual elite. In this timely collection Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka bring together some of the leading voices in Buddhist studies to examine the debates surrounding contemporary Buddhism's many faces. The contributors investigate newly Americanized Asian traditions such as Tibetan, Zen, Nichiren, Jodo Shinshu, and Theravada Buddhism and the changes they undergo to meet the expectations of a Western culture desperate for spiritual guidance. Race, feminism, homosexuality, psychology, environmentalism, and notions of authority are some of the issues confronting Buddhism for the first time in its three-thousand-year history and are powerfully addressed here. In recent years American Buddhism has been featured as a major story on ABC television news, National Public Radio, and in other national media. A strong new Buddhist journalism is emerging in the United States, and American Buddhism has made its way onto the Internet. The faces of Buddhism in America are diverse, active, and growing, and this book will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding this vital religious movement.

The Routledge Companion to Religion and Popular Culture

The Routledge Companion to Religion and Popular Culture
Author: John C. Lyden
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 603
Release: 2015-03-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 131753106X

Religion and popular culture is a fast-growing field that spans a variety of disciplines. This volume offers the first real survey of the field to date and provides a guide for the work of future scholars. It explores: key issues of definition and of methodology religious encounters with popular culture across media, material culture and space, ranging from videogames and social networks to cooking and kitsch, architecture and national monuments representations of religious traditions in the media and popular culture, including important non-Western spheres such as Bollywood This Companion will serve as an enjoyable and informative resource for students and a stimulus to future scholarly work.

Technology of Life

Technology of Life
Author: Sanwar Mishra
Publisher: Author House
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2010-10-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 147721450X

We drive the automobile but we do not know the technology that produces it. Similarly, we live the life without knowing what goes into the making of a life. However, our target objective is that the car runs trouble free and we achieve peace and pleasure in life. Life is more important than the car. But a car and life are two different and dissimilar items. One is lifeless and the other - a live object. The know-how, which describes the state of being and its peripherals, is the subject of spirituality. It deals with the truth of life. Here, an effort is made to re-discover, understand and realize the truth of life. Why truth; because inner peace lies in truth. Truth is everlasting. It does not change. Why the religious scriptures talk about inculcating truth, kindness, and love and so on in the context of developing human values? There is a reason for it. They produce a positive force and step up the inner and invisible bio-energy. Whereas, untruth, cruelty and hatred generate negative emotions, cause depression, disappointment and lead to a degenerate life. This is not all; it extends far beyond into adversely affecting the life and its goals. The universal objective for the welfare of the human race is to live a pleasant, prosperous and peaceful life. How to go about to meeting this goal in life? The subject title makes an attempt to answer these difficult questions. It is an effort to discover the truth of life. God will protect us against all evils by staying closer to Him. Farther we move away from Him, nearer we come closer to risks of life. The distinctive feature of this title is that the subject material concerns all religious viewpoints without leaning to a particular religion whether one is practicing Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, Judaism or any other faith. It unfolds some universally applicable facts of life irrespective of whichever part of the world one lives in. It concerns all, irrespective of nationality, religion, sex, young or old. Indeed, it is exciting to know the secrets of life so far untold and unfolded in a scientific way.

The Sense of Adharma

The Sense of Adharma
Author: Ariel Glucklich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 1994-04-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0198024487

Addressing one of the most difficult conceptual topics in the study of classical Hinduism, Ariel Glucklich presents a rigorous phenomenology of dharma, or order. The work moves away from the usual emphasis on symbols and theoretical formulations of dharma as a religious and moral norm. Instead, it focuses on images that emerge from the basic experiential interaction of the body in its spatial and temporal contexts, such as the sensation of water on the skin during the morning purification, or the physical manipulation of the bride during the marriage ritual. Images of dharma are examined in myths, rituals, art, and even the physical landscape of the Hindu world. The varied and contingent experiences of dharma infuse it with a meaning that transcends a false analytical distinction from adharma, or chaos. Glucklich shows that when dharma is experienced by means of living images, it becomes inescapably temporal, and therefore inseparable from adharma.

Dharma, the Way of Transcendence

Dharma, the Way of Transcendence
Author: A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Publisher: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc.
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9171499393

The word dharma, originally from the Sanskrit, refers to the inherent, unchanging nature of something – sugar’s dharma is to be sweet, water’s dharma is to be wet, and fire’s dharma is to emit heat and light. Dharma also refers to our natural duty. We humans have ordinary dharma and an ultimate dharma that relates to who we are at soul level. That dharma requires that we ask existential questions and then seek ultimate answers – questions such as Who am I? Why am I here? and What is my ultimate purpose? Dharma, the Way of Transcendence is a compilation of lectures on human dharma given by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1972 as he toured India. Here he teaches that the dharma of all humans and every other living embodied soul – is service. No one can exist for a moment without serving someone or something else, even if it’s only the mind and senses. So the question is, whom or what can we serve if we want to be truest to ourselves?

Contemporary Hinduism

Contemporary Hinduism
Author: Robin Rinehart
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004-07-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1576079058

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