Asian Religions

For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.

Explore the Hindu religion with its fascinating rituals and history! This audiobook has eye-opening information about Hinduism that will help you to understand the religion, gods, beliefs, and rituals and how the religion has evolved over time. You will discover more than you ever imagined exists in Hinduism, and by the end of this audiobook, you’ll know a lot about a religion that has over one billion followers worldwide.

In December 2010 residents of Kalimpong, a town on the Indian border with Tibet, turned out en masse to welcome the Dalai Lama. It was only then they realized for the first time that the neighbor they knew as the noodle maker of Kalimpong was also the Dalai Lama's older brother. The Tibetan spiritual leader had come to visit the Gaden Tharpa Choling monastery and join his brother for lunch in the family compound.

There was a time when we didn’t need to be told the Earth was sacred. We knew. We felt it in the wind, heard it in the call of the hawk, and followed it across the grasslands under a canopy of stars. That wisdom isn’t lost—it’s waiting. Nature’s Wisdom: The Spirit of Tengrism and Eco-Spirituality is your invitation to reconnect. This 2-in-1 volume brings together two essential beginner’s guides—one rooted in the ancient spiritual tradition of Central Asia, the other in the growing movement that finds the divine in the living Earth. In clear, engaging language, this book ...

Sex, Desire, and Taboo in South Asia: Religion, Culture of Ability, and Patriarchy explores the intersection of religion, culture of ability, and patriarchy in relation to sex, desire, and taboo. Divided into six chapters, this book utilizes Western theorists such as Foucault and Freud in conjunction with Spivak’s theory of the subaltern to establish a theoretical context on sexuality. Through this lens, Acharya evaluates the intersection between religion, patriarchy, and gender and their impact on the perception of sex and desire as a taboo within a South Asian context.

In the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return. Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated not by the hardships of their journey, but by its aftermath: the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva. Named Ak Metchet, "The White Mosque," after the Mennonites' whitewashed church, the village lasted for fifty years.

Islam is often associated with and limited to the worst of the world—extremism, obscurantism, misogyny, bigotry. So why would so many people associate with such a fundamentalist faith? Two Billion Caliphs advocates for a way of being Muslim in the world, ready for today and prepared for tomorrow.

This book takes you all the way from India’s prehistoric beginnings at Mohenjo-daro to the development of Buddhism and the Maurya Empire, the Hindu empires of the Middle Ages, the Mughals who brought Islam to the mix (and created the Taj Mahal), the British Raj, and finally the fight for independence and the modern yet ageless India of today.

Among Buddhist traditions, Zen has been remarkably successful in garnering and sustaining interest outside the Buddhist homelands of Asia, and "zen" is now part of the global cultural lexicon. This deeply informed book explores the history of this enduring Japanese tradition - from its beginnings as a form of Buddhist thought and practice imported from China to its reinvention in medieval Japan as a force for religious, political, and cultural change to its role in Japan's embrace of modernity.

Attract good fortune and joy to every aspect of your life. Pamela Chen and Samantha Blossom teach you how to use ancient, Far Eastern magic in a modernized way, no matter your background or experience level. With their help, you can create your unique revolution through sacred devotional practices that anyone can tap into immediately.

ശിലായുഗകാലം മുതല്‍ ക്രിസ്തുവര്‍ഷം 1500 വരെയുള്ള കേരളത്തിന്റെ സമഗ്രമായ സാമൂഹിക-സാംസ്‌കാരിക-രാഷ്ട്രീയ-സാമ്പത്തിക ചരിത്രം. പ്രാക് ചരിത്രം, ആദ്യകാല കുടിയേറ്റക്കാര്‍, ചേരന്‍മാരുടെ വരവ്, പാണ്ഡ്യന്‍മാരുടെ സമുദ്രാധിപത്യം,ബ്രാഹ്മണ കുടിയേറ്റവും ബ്രാഹ്മണമേധാവിത്വവും, പെരുമാള്‍വാഴ്ചയ്ക്കിടയായ സാഹചര്യം, ചോളമേധാവിത്വം, സാമൂതിരി യുഗം.

For nearly 1,000 years, from the destruction of temples and monasteries by Muslim invaders in the 11th and 12th centuries, followed by Hinduism’s increasing power, Buddhism vanished from the country of its origin. Though hugely influential throughout Asia, the religion was forgotten in India.

R. Scott Okamoto had no idea that his job as an English teacher at an evangelical Christian college meant facing bigotry as an Asian American and faux intellectualism as a teacher—and what it would mean for his own journey.

A big part of Hindu and Indian mythology is the lengthy Mahabharata, with stories about princes, princesses, monsters, and many mysterious creatures. Krishna is one of the prominent figures in many ancient mythology writings from this region, and his victories over evil have been applauded and believed by many.

Politics are being transformed by religion, namely in China - within the next 30 years, one-third of this potential superpower could be Christian. If this religious transformation occurs, China would be one of the largest Christian nations in the world.

In 1943, Austrian adventurer Heinrich Harrer escaped from a British internment camp in India and traveled through the rugged Himalayas seeking refuge from the war. He ended up in the Forbidden City of Lhasa in Tibet, with no money or permission to be in the country. His intelligence and his European ways intrigued the curious young Dalai Lama, and Harrer became his tutor and trusted confidant.

In the West, Hinduism is a religion that everyone has heard of but one that few non-practitioners truly understand. Today it is widely regarded as one of the world’s great religions and considered the indigenous religion of India, with practices and beliefs stretching back thousands of years. Sri Krishna, believed to be the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, is without question one of the most popular and instantly recognizable deities within the Hindu pantheon, which encompasses hundreds of Puranic divine beings.

Using historical archives and primary documents, former Library of Congress historian Andrei Znamenski reveals the strange accounts of the Bolsheviks’ clandestine quest for ultimate power. Red Shambhala details the attempts of Marxist revolutionary and cryptographer Gleb Bokii and occult writer Alexander Barchenko to create a divine era of Communism by tapping into the power of Shambhala, a mythic land of pure bliss where inhabitants enjoyed god-like capabilities.

‘The Three Asian Wise Men - Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha’ is a collection of quotes and sayings by the three great ancient sages, whose words of wisdom continue to influence Chinese society to this day. Architects of the three teachings: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, they created the idea of Yin and Yang, going with the flow, reincarnation, benevolent leadership and many others.

Surviving the Dragon is the remarkable life story of Arjia Rinpoche, who was ordained as a reincarnate lama at the age of two and fled Tibet 46 years later. In his gripping memoir, Rinpoche relates the story of having been abandoned in his monastery as a young boy after witnessing the torture and arrest of his monastery family. In the years to come, Rinpoche survived under harsh Chinese rule, as he was forced into hard labor and endured continual public humiliation as part of Mao’s Communist "reeducation".