Explores the music of the Tibetan Chöd tradition.

Spearheads a new field for the combined study of religion and music, drawing upon theories and methods of the social sciences, ethnomusicology, philosophy, theology, liturgical studies, and cognitive studies.

Examines the key role of a hagiographer within a charismatic religious movement.

An accessible introduction to the centrality of word, chant, and song in the Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Sikh traditions.

Thorough exploration of the distinct culture of the Mappila Muslims of Kerala, India.

Discusses Hindu Advaita Vedānta as a philosophy of social justice for the modern world.

Uses both textual and ethnographic sources to demonstrate that in Śaṅkara’s vedānta, brahman is an active force as well as a transcendent ultimate.

Explores the end-of-life spiritual needs of people who do not identify with traditional religions.

Explores how religious understandings of death are experienced in hospice care.

A ground-breaking book on using meditation in education and how it can enhance teaching and learning.

A wide-ranging, readable account of the Theravada Buddhist thought and practice in the Southeast Asian societies of Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka.

Looks at how a spiritual tradition can be appropriated by those involved in ethno-nationalist conflict.

Explores ideas on women and sexuality presented in the great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.

Understanding Mantras explores the origin, nature, function, and significance of mantras within the bounds of the Hindu tradition. It analyzes the use of mantras in the Vedic age, in the great theistic ...

Explores the issue of the perfectibility of nature in philosophy, psychology, and a variety of world religions.

A new interpretation of Hindu tradition focusing on the nature of God, the value of the world, and the meaning of liberation.

Explores yoga and meditation in Eastern religions, incorporating psychological and social aspects of these practices.

A feminist reconsideration of Sikh identity, discussing its original egalitarianism and current hypermasculine quality, which is harmful to both men and women.

Looks at the ideals of masculine Hinduism—and the corresponding feminine ideals—that have built the Indian nation, and explores their consequences.

Provides a theology of polytheism—the belief in many deities—using examples from a wide range of world religions.

Explores the human experience of mysticism and looks at it within the spiritual traditions around the world.

Acknowledging that religion can motivate both violence and compassion, this book looks at how a variety of world religions can and do build peace.

Through examinations of Gandhi's critics, both individuals and groups, this book shows the complexity of Indian society and opinion at the time of the Indian Independence Movement.

Explores contemporary controversies in bioethics from a Hindu perspective.

Explores the influence of yoga in the seminal Indian philosophy of Bhartrhari and in the Western psychology of Freud, Jung, and the transpersonalists, providing unique insights into the differences between Eastern and Western concepts of human nature.

A Buddhist interpretation of Western history that shows civilization shaped by the self's desire for groundedness.

Explores the relationship between health and religion based on the model offered by the Hindu traditions of Yoga, Ayurveda, and Tantra.

Explores the work of spiritual leader and writer Bede Griffiths, who envisioned a union of Eastern and Western spirituality.

Explores the concept of Restorative Justice in diverse spiritual traditions.

Explores religious experience in the South Asian immigrant communities of Britain, Canada, and the United States.

Maintains that the Yoga-Sutras do not advocate abandonment of the world, but rather support a stance that enables one to live more fully in the world without being enslaved by worldly identification.

An account of the city of Auroville, the vision of founder and well-known guru Sri Aurobindo. Auroville's eventual takeover and the promotion of its goals by the Indian government leads to a thought-provoking discussion of the meaning of "secularism" in India.

Examines claims to freedom of religion by minority, unorthodox faith groups and how these challenges to the state and the law have contributed to the development of civil rights discourse and practice.

A cross-cultural comparsion of creativity that introduces Neo-Confucian discourse as a sophisticated dialogue partner with modern western speculative philosophy and theology.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between religion and environment in Hinduism.

Presents the multi-faceted Hindu deity Dattatreya from his Puranic emergence to modern times.

A radical new look at the religious, economic, and political roots of terracide and how things can change for the better.

Collection of essays that clarifies and evaluates the various aspects of paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, psychokinesis, trance-mediumship, near-death experiences and past-life memories.

Argues that the Fourth Gospel has “political dimensions” which offer both meaning and challenge to contemporary Christians.

Discusses and translates important compositions by famous Nirguni poets--poets dedicated to the worship of a formless God.

This book provides a cross-cultural analysis of how religious symbols function from a theological and philosophical perspective.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the doctrines of early Advaita Vedanta and Indian Mahayana Buddhism in order to examine the origins of Vedanta.

This book clarifies the relationship between God and the creation for Gaudapada, Bhartrhari, and Shankara, and by doing so, demonstrates a major continuity of thought from Gaudapada through Bhartrhari to Abhinavagupta and Kashmir Shaivism.

This book presents a wide range of information about Ganapati or Ganesh, the Hindu Lord of Beginnings, the Remover of Obstacles, the Keeper of the Threshold, and the Master of the Mind. He is elephant-headed, plump, and loveable, but who is he really?

This is a source of reliable information on the most important new and alternative religions covering history, theology, impact on the culture, and current status. It includes a chapter on the Branch Davidians.

This book compares New Testament and Rabbinical texts in order to recover the oral tradition accompanying the written Biblical text. Although New Testament Greek is a hellenistic idiom, it reflects a ...

Presents the contemporary religious crisis in India, providing historical perspective and focusing on the crises in Punjab, Kashmir, and Ayodhya.

This is the most thorough philosophical analysis available of the principle of religious freedom. It draws on the thought of philosophers and political theorists (Rawls, Habermas, Murray, Rorty, Greenawalt, and Mead) rather than on the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

This book is an introduction to cross-cultural philosophy of religion. It presents an alternative to Western-oriented philosophy of religion by focusing on questions of truth in the context of religious ...

In India, religion continues to be an absolutely vital source for social as well as personal identity. All manner of groups--political, occupational, and social--remain grounded in specific religious ...

This translation of a twelfth-century Sanskrit text is the most comprehensive presentation of Hindu ascetic practices available in English. It is also the clearest.

Brown's theory of tradition stands on its own as a significant contribution to the academic study of religions, but it also provides the framework for a challenging critique of contemporary American theologies—conservative, ...

This book probes the origins of the practice of nonviolence in early India and traces its path within the Jaina, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions, including its impact on East Asian Cultures. It then turns ...

This book sets Gauḍapāda in historical context and develops a commentary that makes the meaning and significance of the Alātasānti text clear. In the Alātasānti , Gauḍapāda uses terms made familiar ...

This basic guide and resource book targets four fields—religious studies, history, world literature, and ethnic or migration studies—in which Sikhism is now receiving greater attention. The authors ...

This book deals with the meaning of a science rooted in the sacred, the metaphysical foundation of such science, its contrast to modern science and its pertinence to some of the major issues facing humanity ...

Neville returns eternity to the center of consideration by analyzing the obsessive culture that attempts to get along denying it; and he analyzes the nature of time's flow itself, the nature of divine ...

In this book, Linell Cady analyzes the role of religion and theology in American public life.

A vast and diversified religious movement originating from Sai Baba of Shirdi, is often referred to as "the Sai Baba movement. " Through the chronological presentation of Sai Baba's life, light is shed ...

According to Advaita-Vedanta, God or Brahman is identical with the inner self (the Atman) of each person, while the rest of the world is nothing but objective illusion (maya). Shankara maintains that ...

This book presents a philosophical rethinking of the meaning and nature of spiritual discipline. It offers a new way of describing and justifying practices like praying, meditating, fasting, and yoga, ...

This book begins with a comprehensive historical section that places the New Age within the context of its predecessor movements. It then focuses on specialized aspects of this subculture, from essays ...

Drawing on almost half a century of immersion in the world's great religions, coupled with an ever-deepening understanding of the philosophy and phenomenology of religion, the author takes a dialogical ...

This book is the only full-length treatment of the relationship between aesthetic truths and psychoanalytic discoveries—of art, artists, and a new concept of sublimation. It provides a radical and unique ...

Questioning the very legitimacy of Western liberalism and the modern secular civilization it has given rise to, Dr. Gregorios critically examines the values of the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth ...

This book opens the doors to a social and cultural sphere beyond the limited world of the English-speaking elite and provides the basis for an understanding of religious controversy and internal reform. ...

Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire focuses on the cosmology of ancient Egypt and on derived traditions. The book outlines how the ancient Egyptian world view affected Hebrew religion, Greek philosophy, Neoplatonism, ...

When the charismatic founder/leader of a religious movement dies, the popular belief is that the movement usually disintegrates. However, many new religions not only survive but prosper, despite leadership ...

The role of Confucianism in the development of East Asian Cultures has only recently begun to be fully appreciated. Even with this recognition, there is still little understanding of the tradition as ...

Thorough, serious, yet fun to read, this is a translation of the text and an exposition of the philosophy of Chuang Tzu the Taoist of ancient China.

This book deals with nineteenth century American-Jewish perceptions of Christianity and Jesus. While its concern is the centuries-old argument between Christians and Jews, it focuses on the American setting of that argument and shows how American condi

This book explicates the origin, nature, function, and significance of mantras within the bounds of the Hindu tradition. It explores the use of mantras in the Vedic age, in Saivism and Vaisnavism, in ...

This is a collection of careful, objective, historically sensitive studies of modern commentators on the Bhagavadgita, one of the basic scriptures of Hinduism, and one which has been widely read in the ...

In nineteenth-century France, parents abandoned their children in overwhelming numbers—up to 20 percent of live births in the Parisian area. The infants were left at state-run homes and were then transferred ...