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Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies

Author: Suzanne Newcombe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-28

Total Pages: 718

ISBN-13: 1351050737

The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary resource, which frames and contextualises the rapidly expanding fields that explore yoga and meditative techniques. The book analyses yoga and meditation studies in a variety of religious, historical and geographical settings. The chapters, authored by an international set of experts, are laid out across five sections: Introduction to yoga and meditation studies History of yoga and meditation in South Asia Doctrinal perspectives: technique and praxis Global and regional transmissions Disciplinary framings In addition to up-to-date explorations of the history of yoga and meditation in the Indian subcontinent, new contexts include a case study of yoga and meditation in the contemporary Tibetan diaspora, and unique summaries of historical developments in Japan and Latin America as well as an introduction to the growing academic study of yoga in Korea. Underpinned by critical and theoretical engagement, the volume provides an in-depth guide to the history of yoga and meditation studies and combines the best of established research with attention to emerging directions for future investigation. This handbook will be of interest to multidisciplinary academic audiences from across the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Chapters 1, 4, 9, 12, and 27 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Comparing Religions

Author: Jeffrey J. Kripal

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2024-03-15

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 1119654025

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Teaches students the art and practice of comparison in the globalizing world, fully updated to reflect recent scholarship and major developments in the field Comparing Religions: The Study of Us that Changes Us is a wholly original, absorbing, and provocative reimagining of the comparative study of religion in the 21st century. The first textbook of its kind to foreground the extraordinary or “paranormal” aspects of religious experience, this innovative volume reviews the fundamental tenets of the world’s religions, discusses the benefits and problems of comparative inquiry, explores how the practice can impact a person's worldview and values, and much more. Asserting that religions have always engaged in comparing one another, the authors provide insights into the history, trends, debates, and questions of explicit comparativism in the modern world. Easily accessible chapters examine the challenges of studying religion using a comparative approach rather than focusing on religious identity, inspiring students to think seriously about religious pluralism as they engage in comparative practice. Throughout the text, a wealth of diverse case studies and vivid illustrations are complemented by chapter outlines, summaries, toolkits, discussion questions, and other learning features. Substantially updated with new and revised material, the second edition of Comparing Religions: Draws from both comparative work and critical theory to present a well-balanced introduction to contemporary practice Explains classic comparative themes, provides a historical outline of comparative practices, and offers key strategies for understanding, analyzing, and re-reading religion Draws on a wide range of religious traditions to illustrate the complexity and efficacy of comparative practice Embraces the transcendent nature of the religious experience in all its forms, including in popular culture, film, and television Contains a classroom-proven, three-part structure with easy-to-digest, thematically organized chapters Features a companion website with information on individual religious traditions, additional images, a glossary, discussion questions, and links to supplementary material Comparing Religions: The Study of Us that Changes Us, Second Edition, is the perfect textbook for undergraduate students and faculty in comparative religion, the study of religion, and world religions, as well as a valuable resource for general readers interested in understanding this rewarding area.

Mysterious Travelers

Author: Zack Kruse

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2021-02-01

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1496830555

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Steve Ditko (1927–2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Doctor Strange, Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing, Ditko’s narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination, and with characters like the Question, Mr. A, and Static, Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko’s philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Unfortunately, readers often reduce Ditko’s work to a mouthpiece for Rand’s vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion. In this book, Zack Kruse argues that Ditko’s philosophy draws on a complicated network of ideas that is best understood as mystic liberalism. Although Ditko is not the originator of mystic liberalism, his comics provide a unique window into how such an ideology operates in popular media. Examining selections of Ditko’s output from 1953 to 1986, Kruse demonstrates how Ditko’s comics provide insight into a unique strand of American thought that has had a lasting impact.

Selling Yoga

Author: Andrea R. Jain

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 019939024X

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Premodern and early modern yoga comprise techniques with a wide range of aims, from turning inward in quest of the true self, to turning outward for divine union, to channeling bodily energy in pursuit of sexual pleasure. Early modern yoga also encompassed countercultural beliefs and practices. In contrast, today, modern yoga aims at the enhancement of the mind-body complex but does so according to contemporary dominant metaphysical, health, and fitness paradigms. Consequently, yoga is now a part of popular culture. In Selling Yoga, Andrea R. Jain explores the popularization of yoga in the context of late-twentieth-century consumer culture. She departs from conventional approaches by undermining essentialist definitions of yoga as well as assumptions that yoga underwent a linear trajectory of increasing popularization. While some studies trivialize popularized yoga systems by reducing them to the mere commodification or corruption of what is perceived as an otherwise fixed, authentic system, Jain suggests that this dichotomy oversimplifies the history of yoga as well as its meanings for contemporary practitioners. By discussing a wide array of modern yoga types, from Iyengar Yoga to Bikram Yoga, Jain argues that popularized yoga cannot be dismissed--that it has a variety of religious meanings and functions. Yoga brands destabilize the basic utility of yoga commodities and assign to them new meanings that represent the fulfillment of self-developmental needs often deemed sacred in contemporary consumer culture.

Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi

Author: Sophia Rose Arjana

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1786077728

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From jewellery to meditation pillows to tourist retreats, religious traditions – especially those of the East – are being commodified as never before. Imitated and rebranded as ‘New Age’ or ‘spiritual’, they are marketed to secular Westerners as an answer to suffering in the modern world, the ‘mystical’ and ‘exotic’ East promising a path to enlightenment and inner peace. In Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Sophia Rose Arjana examines the appropriation and sale of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam in the West today, the role of mysticism and Orientalism in the religious marketplace, and how the commodification of religion impacts people’s lives.

Play Among Books

Author: Miro Roman

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 3035624054

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How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

Writing Pirates

Author: Yuanfei Wang

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2021-06-23

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0472038516

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Examines writings on China's oceanic piracy wars of the sixteenth century

Is This Yoga?

Author: Anya Foxen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-31

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0429750587

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This book provides a rigorously researched, critically comparative introduction to yoga. Is This Yoga? Concepts, Histories, and the Complexities of Contemporary Practice recognizes the importance of contemporary understandings of yoga and, at the same time, provides historical context and complexity to modern and pre-modern definitions of yogic ideas and practices. Approaching yoga as a vast web of concepts, traditions, social interests, and embodied practices, it raises questions of knowledge, identity, and power across time and space, including the dynamics of "East" and "West." The text is divided into three main sections: thematic concepts; histories; and topics in modern practice. This accessible guide is essential reading for undergraduate students approaching the topic for the first time, as well as yoga teachers, teacher training programs, casual and devoted practitioners, and interested non-practitioners.