Search Results: Spirituality/Religion from The Vespiary Book Restoration & Bindery

Palden Gyatso was born in a Tibetan village in 1933 and became an ordained Buddhist monk eighteen years later. Through sheer determination, he won a place as a student at Drepung Monastery, one of Tibet's "Three Greats", where he came to spiritual and intellectual maturity. However, Tibet was enduring political changes that would soon alter his life irrevocably. When Communist China invaded Tibet in 1950, it embarked on a program of land reform and "thought reform" that would eventually affect all of Tibet's citizens and nearly decimate its ancient culture. In 1959, along with thousands of other monks, Palden Gyatso was forced into labor camps and prisons. He would spend the next thirty-three years of his life being tortured, interrogated, and persecuted simply for the strength of his beliefs, for being a monk. In 1992 Palden Gyatso was released from prison and escaped across the Himalayas to India, smuggling with him the instruments of his torture. Since then, he has devoted himself to revealing the… Read More

From Greek kings to nineteenth-century adventurers, from missionaries to monks, the encounter of Buddhism and the West is filled with intriguing personalities in Awaking of the West.

The Bhagavad Gita, often referred to as the Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabharata (chapters 23–40 of Bhishma Parva), commonly dated to the second century BCE.
The Gita is set in a narrative framework of a dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Krishna. At the start of the Dharma Yudhha (righteous war) between Pandavas and Kauravas, Arjuna is filled with moral dilemma and despair about the violence and death the war will cause in the battle against his own kin. He wonders if he should renounce and seeks Krishna's counsel, whose answers and discourse constitute the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna counsels Arjuna to "fulfill his Kshatriya (warrior) duty to uphold the Dharma" through "selfless action". The Krishna–Arjuna dialogues cover a broad range of spiritual topics, touching upon ethical dilemmas and philosophical issues that go far beyond the war Arjuna faces.

A probing account of the honored place of older women in ancient matriarchal societies restores to contemporary women an energizing symbol of self-value, power, and respect.

This landmark work, first published by Sierra Club Books in 1988, has established itself as a foundational volume in the ecological canon. In it, noted cultural historian Thomas Berry provides nothing less than a new intellectual-ethical framework for the human community by positing planetary well-being as the measure of all human activity.Drawing on the wisdom of Western philosophy, Asian thought, and Native American traditions, as well as contemporary physics and evolutionary biology, Berry offers a new perspective that recasts our understanding of science, technology, politics, religion, ecology, and education. He shows us why it is important for us to respond to the Earth's need for planetary renewal, and what we must do to break free of the "technological trance" that drives a misguided dream of progress. Only then, he suggests, can we foster mutually enhancing human-Earth relationships that can heal our traumatized global biosystem.

A guide to Celtic spiritual traditions. It contains translations of primary Celtic texts, including stories, poems and prose pieces, some dating as far back as the 7th century. Topics covered include: shamanic memory; Druidic divination and prophecy; shapeshifting, soul-loss and restoration; and magic and healing. These ancient texts are accompanied by detailed commentaries, background material and practical shamanic insights.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings to not kill, steal, commit adultery, lie, or take intoxicants are the basic statement of ethics and morality in Buddhism. In this fully revised edition, Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh argues eloquently for their universal applicability in daily situations. Nhat Hanh discusses in depth the value and meaning of each precept, offering insights into the roles that they could play in our changing society. In a world marked by moral and spiritual emptiness, he says, The Five Mindfulness Trainings offer a path to the restoration of meaning and value. The author calls the trainings a diet for a mindful society" that transcends sectarian boundaries, and he presents simple yet powerful ways that people can come together around them to explore and sustain a sane, compassionate, and healthy way of living.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings to not kill, steal, commit adultery, lie, or take intoxicants are the basic statement of ethics and morality in Buddhism. In this fully revised edition, Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh argues eloquently for their universal applicability in daily situations. Nhat Hanh discusses in depth the value and meaning of each precept, offering insights into the roles that they could play in our changing society. In a world marked by moral and spiritual emptiness, he says, The Five Mindfulness Trainings offer a path to the restoration of meaning and value. The author calls the trainings a diet for a mindful society" that transcends sectarian boundaries, and he presents simple yet powerful ways that people can come together around them to explore and sustain a sane, compassionate, and healthy way of living.

The Golden Bough describes our ancestors' primitive methods of worship, sex practices, strange rituals and festivals. Disproving the popular thought that primitive life was simple, this monumental survey shows that savage man was enmeshed in a tangle of magic, taboos, and superstitions. Revealed here is the evolution of man from savagery to civilization, from the modification of his weird and often bloodthirsty customs to the entry of lasting moral, ethical, and spiritual values.

In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal "Axial Age" can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times.Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and… Read More

New Thought is a diverse movement whose practitioners have only one thing in common: a belief in the power of the mind to bring health, wealth, and fulfillment. In this comprehensive history of New Thought, John Haller traces its roots from the earliest influences to the mind-cure speculations of the late nineteenth century, and shows how its initial emphasis on healing disease morphed into a vision of the mind's ability to bring us whatever we desire. Authors like Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and, more recently, Rhonda Byrne are eagerly read and embraced by millions of people who remain unaware that these writers are merely repeating ideas introduced decades before. The History of New Thought demonstrates the broad and lasting impact that this movement has had on American culture.

Honen Bo Genku (1133-1212), or simply Honen, is one of the outstanding figures in the history of Japanese Buddhism. This is a translation of Honen's seminal work, Senchakushu, which was compiled over a period of intense devotion to Amida Buddha.

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the Shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels the globe-from the Amazon Basin to the Far East-to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers understand about the intelligence present in all forms of life.
Intelligence in Nature presents overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity alone. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny penchant for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions.
Narby presents the first in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature's economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life.

This study course in Theosophy is offered in the hope of helping students to find meaning in the midst of life's confusions

The Virgin Mary has been an inspiration to more people than any other woman who ever lived. For Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, for artists, musicians, and writers, and for women and men everywhere she has shown many faces and personified a variety of virtues. In this important book, a world-renowned scholar who is the author of numerous books - including the best-selling Jesus Through the Centuries - tells how Mary has been depicted and venerated through the ages. Jaroslav Pelikan examines the biblical portrait of Mary, analyzing both the New and Old Testaments to see how the bits of information provided about her were expanded into a full-blown doctrine. He explores the view of Mary in late antiquity, where the differences between Mary, the mother of Christ, and Eve, the "mother of all living", provided positive and negative symbols of women. He discusses how the Eastern church commemorated Mary and how she was portrayed in the Holy Qur'an of Islam. He explains how the paradox of Mary as… Read More

A Masterful blend of archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, and lively personal reportage, Maya Comos tells a constellation of stories, from the historical to the mythological, and envokes the awesome power of one of the richest civilizations ever to grace the earth.

This vivid and detailed biography strips away centuries of distortion and myth and presents a balanced view of the man whose religion continues to dramatically affect the course of history.

First published in English in 1954, this founding work of the history of religions secured the North American reputation of the Romanian migr -scholar Mircea Eliade. Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no fewer than half a dozen European languages, The Myth of the Eternal Return illuminates the religious beliefs and rituals of a wide variety of ancient cultures. While acknowledging that a return to their practices is impossible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding their views to enrich the contemporary imagination of what it is to be human.

Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.
We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works for art, literature and culture inquiry-from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.

From the author of The Last Mughal ("A compulsively readable masterpiece" —The New York Review of Books), an exquisite, mesmerizing book that illuminates the remarkable ways in which traditional forms of religious life in India have been transformed in the vortex of the regions rapid change—a book that distills the authors twenty-five years of travel in India, taking us deep into ways of life that we might otherwise never have known exist.A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet—and spends the rest of his life atoning for the violence by hand printing the finest prayer flags in India . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . A woman leaves her middle-class life in Calcutta and finds unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for three months of every year . . . An idol… Read More