The Taste of Transcendence is the perfect introduction to mankind's collective spiritual wisdom. You will find carefully selected foundational songs, stories, and scripture to give you the world's greatest insights into the human condition, the nature of ultimate reality, and the path to the transcendent sacred. Readings from the world's most influential religious texts have been chosen to provide you with a taste of this transcendence. Included are excerpts from the following spiritual paths: Vedic Traditions Hinduism (Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita), Buddhism (Dhammapada, Jātaka Tales) Chinese Traditions Confucianism (Analects of Confucius), Taoism (Tao Te Ching) Abrahamic Traditions Judaism (Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Proverbs), Christianity (Four Canonical Gospels, Hebrews), Islam (Holy Qur'an, Rumi Poetry, Sufi Tales) Indigenous Traditions People of the Pacific (Australian Aborigines, Maori, Native Filipinos), People of the Americas (Lakota Oglala People, Cherokee People, Aztecs, and Eskimos) From the Introduction: The word "religion" is rooted in the Latin term that refers to things that bind. In many ways, what we often think of as being religious are those ...that we use to keep us together. They are things that bind us to one another and keep us from personally falling apart in the face of the inherent adversities of life....this is a book about religion in the most basic sense of the term. In this book are words that have been used to bind people together through their ability to express an experience of a transcendent life.