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Religion
Among all the great transitions that have marked Western history, only one--the triumph of Christianity--can be called in the fullest sense a "revolution"
In this provocative book one of the most brilliant scholars of religion today dismantles distorted religious "histories" offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists's misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.
Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the "Age of Reason" was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason's authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.
While a rational consciousness grasps many truths, Gananath Obeyesekere believes an even richer knowledge is possible through a bold confrontation with the stuff of visions and dreams. Spanning both Buddhist and European forms of visionary experience, he fearlessly pursues the symbolic, nonrational depths of such phenomena, reawakening the intuitive, creative impulses that power greater understanding.
Throughout his career, Obeyesekere has combined psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. In this book, he begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, he witnesses hundreds of thousands of his past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. He then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space, considering the experience of a female Christian penitent, who stares devotedly at a tiny crucifix only to see the space around it expand to mirror Christ's suffering. Obeyesekere follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. He develops the term "dream-ego" through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and he defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. A career-culminating work, this volume translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry.Translated by the distinguished scholar Teitaro Suzuki, the text discusses how humans can transcend their finite state to partake in the life of the infinite. Practices and techniques to assist believers in the awakening and growth of faith appear here, in addition to the most developed form of tathagata-garbha, or Buddha-matrix teachings.
This accessible work was written specifically for those who prefer a brief and pithy presentation to extensive discourse.
Bagua Swimming Body Palms offers a thorough grounding in the basics of Bagua principles and practice, and illuminates the connection between the cultural meanings of the I Ching and the physical movements of Bagua Zhang. The photographs from the Chinese book are reprinted, along with hundreds of new photographs of translator Kent Howard demonstrating the exercises in greater detail. Sifu Howard provides extensive commentary on Master Wang's writings, and Daoist master Huang Jinsheng contributes a thoughtful essay on Master Wang's spiritual practice with the esoteric Daoist sect Yi Guan Dao. The book's engaging style, fidelity to the Chinese text, and comprehensiveness make it a welcome addition to any martial arts library.
-Christopher Queen, Harvard University "A valuable sourcebook with a good selection of the fundamental suttas enhanced by an eloquent introduction and comprehensive notes-altogether a very useful text."
-Peter Matthiessen (Roshi), author of The Snow Leopard and Nine-Headed Dragon River "Glenn Wallis's new and accessible translations of some of the Buddha's lectures to his original students, along with Wallis's elegant guide to the texts, gives twenty-first-century readers in the modern West a fresh chance to learn from this teacher."
-Charles Hallisey, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award
Since its publication in 1995, The Beginning of Desire has opened new pathways in the reading of the Bible. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's innovative use of midrash, literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis draws deeply upon the familiar biblical narratives to produce interpretations that are at once startlingly beautiful and completely authentic. Illuminating the tensions that grip human beings as they search for an encounter with God, Zornberg gives us a brilliant analysis of the stories of Adam and Eve; Noah; Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebecca; Jacob, Rachel, and Leah; and Joseph and his brothers.
Named one of the Best Poetry Books of 2021 by The Guardian
Longlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry. Picked for Kirkus Reviews' Best Fiction in Translation of 2020. Named a Book of the Year by NPR, Vox, and The New Statesman. Picked for Loyalty Books' Holiday List.
New York Times bestseller
"A thrill . . . Beowulf was Tolkien's lodestar. Everything he did led up to or away from it." --New Yorker J.R.R. Tolkien completed his translation of Beowulf in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition includes an illuminating written commentary on the poem by the translator himself, drawn from a series of lectures he gave at Oxford in the 1930s. His creative attention to detail in these lectures gives rise to a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if Tolkien entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beach their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to Beowulf's rising anger at Unferth's taunting, or looking up in amazement at Grendel's terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot. "Essential for students of the Old English poem--and the ideal gift for devotees of the One Ring." --Kirkus