Eastern Religion Philosophy

In his thought-provoking and entertaining book, David Michie explains the nuts and bolts of meditation. As a busy professional, as well as long-term meditator, he also gives a first-hand account of how to integrate this transformational practice into everyday life. Combining leading edge science with timeless wisdom, Hurry Up and Meditate provides all the motivation and tools you need to achieve greater balance, better health and a more panoramic perspective on life.

Reduced stress, improved concentration, lower blood pressure, and increased sexual pleasure are among the many benefits of meditating. So what's holding you back? Perhaps you don't see yourself signing up with a guru. Or twisting yourself into a lotus position while repeating a mantra. But what if meditating were as easy and pleasurable as eating a dish of ice cream? In this guide, Lorin Roche proves that mediation is that easy - and even more enjoyable. Roche explains everything you need to get started, including some mini-meditations that can be integrated into spare moment throughout the day and tips for developing a customized practice that will become as natural and vital to you as breathing.

In Meri Gita, acclaimed mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik demystifies The Bhagavad Gita for the contemporary listener. His unique approach - thematic rather than verse-by-verse - makes the ancient treatise eminently accessible.In a world that seems spellbound by argument over dialogue, vi-vaad over sam-vaad, Devdutt highlights how Krishna nudges Arjuna to understand rather than judge his relationships. This becomes relevant today when we are increasingly indulging and isolating the self.

The Human Calling is a vigorously researched and profoundly spiritual narrative history of the world's religious movements as they relate to society's collective understanding of the nature of their relationships with others, looking ahead to what lessons from history can be applied as people navigate an age of technology worship.

Hidden in your body is a set of 35 divine objects that represent aspects of God. They can grant immediate and sustained relief from everyday suffering. Shapes of Truth unveils this remarkable discovery and provides step-by-step instructions for encountering them yourself. With parallels in Platonist philosophy and Sufi mysticism, these eternal body-forms were discovered 40 years ago and are only now being shared broadly with the world.

THIS small volume has been born of doubt and conflict. The author became a member of the Church at the age of thirteen. Since that time he has fought over the whole ground of modern skepticism, in a hand to hand contest with its shadows and its facts. He has found it impossible to rest in tradition, and has felt compelled to seek a reasonable basis on which to stand. And there has been a stimulus to this conflict beyond his own personal longing for rest. He has tried to help others. And in so trying, has found the necessity of knowing a way that satisfied himself, along which he might point...

In a world of iPhones and connectivity to social media and email, we are all in constant connection with one another. Then why are so many people feeling burned out, distant from colleagues, and abandoned by family and friends? In this new book from the best-selling author of Running with the Mind of Meditation, the Sakyong uses the basic principles of the Shambhala tradition - meditation and a sincere belief in the inherent wisdom, compassion, and courage of all beings - to help listeners to listen and speak more mindfully.

Consisting of fewer than 200 verses written in an obscure if not impenetrable language and style, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra is today extolled by the yoga establishment as a perennial classic and guide to yoga practice. As David Gordon White demonstrates in this groundbreaking study, both of these assumptions are incorrect. Virtually forgotten in India for hundreds of years and maligned when it was first discovered in the West, the Yoga Sutra has been elevated to its present iconic status.

The wisdom goddesses of yoga who embody shakti, or sacred energy, continue to gain popularity as we become familiar with the ways they help us break through negativity, trauma, and dysfunction to attain self-love, peace, and abundance. Yet, we rarely hear about Sri Radha and her unique position as the primal Shakti because she is hidden deep within the Upanishads, Tantras, and Puranas as their most confidential spiritual subject.

Previously published only as separate essays, Sufi Thought and Action - assembled and introduced by Idries Shah - covers an extraordinary diversity of Sufi ideas and activities in many countries and cultures. Included in the volume are papers on Sufi principles and learning methods; ritual, initiation, and secrets in Sufi circles; and key concepts in Sufi understanding.

The Commanding Self, in Sufic terminology, is that mixture of the primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding. This audiobook was described by Shah as the key to understanding his entire corpus of work. While complete in itself as an anthology of hitherto unpublished work, it serves to illustrate and amplify Idries Shah’s preceding books on the Sufi Way.

The Book of Unknowing continues the leading-edge work begun in the The Book of Undoing and Awaken Now. Those books are about how to awaken, while this one is primarily about the post-awakening experience itself - how to "clear". Topics addressed include how to assess if you're awake or not, why you may need a teacher, how to deal with various experiences in post-awakening, experiments and inquiries, and dozens more.

We need a sense of myth for our individual and collective equilibrium. Sanity itself may be tied to having some kind of lively imagination so that one can feel the strange fantasies that continue to insist themselves into consciousness in both waking and dreaming states.... – from the Foreword by Robert Sardello The essential paradox is this: Myth points to a baseline that can never be fully drawn; there exists no lowest layer for myth. – from the Introduction by Glen Slater and Dennis Patrick Slattery ... rituals in fact do not require complementary myths to ’explain’ them, nor is ...

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s experience begins the night he has chosen to embark on a four-year wandering retreat, slipping past the monastery gates. Alone for the first time in his life, he sets out into the unknown. His initial motivation is to step away from his life of privilege and to explore the deepest, most hidden aspects of his being, but what he discovers throughout his retreat - about himself and about the world around us - comes to define his meditation practice and teaching.

First published in 1957, The Secret Lore of Magic contains within it a series of major source books of magical arts. Many of them translated into English for the first time, these works are annotated. The book’s title in itself signaled the fact that the bulk of material in this bibliographical study had never been published openly before.

Despite the widespread popularity of Buddhist practices (like meditation), there is little understanding of the complex philosophy behind Buddhism. The historical Buddha, Gautama, was a real person - a radical - who challenged the religious leaders of his day. Buddha for Beginners introduces the listener to the historical Buddha, to the ideas that made him change his life, and to the fascinating philosophical debates that engaged him and formed the core of Buddhism.

Isaac Asimov said that "whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." Such quandaries are the bread and butter of philosophy of religion. Questioning why evil exists, whether God could create a stone he couldn't lift, and if the wonder of life suggests a Creator, this fascinating branch of philosophy is concerned with arguments for and against religion, and what form an immortal god (or gods) would take if in existence. Charles Taliaferro provides a clear exploration of the discipline, introducing a wide range of philosophers.

Here, in three definitive volumes, Shah takes us to the very heart of this mysterious mentor, the Mulla Nasrudin. They're comprised of skillful contemporary retellings of hundreds of collected stories and sayings bringing the unmistakable wisdom, wit, and charm of the timeless jokester to life.

Welcome to the second installment in the Baal on Buddhism series in which I take complicated Buddhist topics and make them approachable to all. I was not initially intending on making this the second book in the series, in fact, I wasn't going to write this book until sometime in 2018. It has been on my list of books to write for several years, but an odd chain of synchronicities occurred in which pushed me to write this now. I took it as a sign that my perspective on this practice is coming at the right time for many people. It also gave me the opportunity to reconnect with my own shadow self in the process.

What are Myth and Culture and what is their importance for understanding the development of societies, human evolution and the search for meaning? What is the purpose of culture and how do cultures evolve? What are the elements of a culture and how can those elements be broken down and the constituent parts of a culture understood and compared? How do cultures interact? How does enculturation occur and how do people interact with other cultures? How do the processes of acculturation and cooptation occur and what does this mean for the development of a society? How can the study of myths and...