It may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness.  With these words, Philip Goldberg begins his monumental work, American Veda, a fascinating look at India’s remarkable impact on Western culture. This eye-opening popular history shows how the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the mind-body methods of Yoga have profoundly affected the worldview of millions of Americans and radically altered the religious landscape.   What exploded in the 1960s actually began more than two hundred years earlier, when the United States started importing knowledge as well as tangy spices and colorful fabrics from Asia. The first translations of Hindu texts found their way into the libraries of John Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From there the ideas spread to Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and succeeding generations of receptive Americans, who absorbed India’s “science of consciousness” and wove it into the fabric of their lives. Charismatic teachers like Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda came west in waves, prompting leading intellectuals, artists, and scientists such as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, John Coltrane, Dean Ornish, and Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, to adapt and disseminate what they learned from them. The impact has been enormous, enlarging our current understanding of the mind and body and dramatically changing how we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos.  Goldberg paints a compelling picture of this remarkable East-to-West transmission, showing how it accelerated through the decades and eventually moved from the counterculture into our laboratories, libraries, and living rooms.  Now physicians and therapists routinely recommend meditation, words like karma and mantra are part of our everyday vocabulary, and Yoga studios are as ubiquitous as Starbuckses. The insights of India’s sages permeate so much of what we think, believe, and do that they have redefined the meaning of life for millions of Americans—and continue to do so every day.   Rich in detail and expansive in scope, American Veda shows how we have come to accept and live by the central teaching of Vedic wisdom: “Truth is one, the wise call it by many names.”

    An essential introduction to the world's living religions by experts from each tradition -- published in conjunction with the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions.

    Now the bestselling author of "unChristian" trains his researcher's eye on these young believers. Where Kinnaman's first book "unChristian" showed the world what outsiders aged 16-29 think of Christianity, "You Lost Me" shows why younger Christians aged 16-29 are leaving the church and rethinking their faith. Based on new research, "You Lost Me" shows pastors, church leaders, and parents how we have failed to equip young people to live "in but not of" the world and how this has serious long-term consequences. More importantly, Kinnaman offers ideas on how to help young people develop and maintain a vibrant faith that they embrace over a lifetime.

    When we do think of dying, we are more often concerned with how to avoid the pain and suffering that may accompany our death than we are with really confronting the meaning of death and how to approach it. Sushila Blackman places death--and life--in a truer perspective, by telling us of others who have left this world with dignity.Graceful Exits offers valuable guidance in the form of 108 stories recounting the ways in which Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, and Zen masters, both ancient and modern, have confronted their own deaths. By directly presenting the grace, clarity, and even humor with which great spiritual teachers have met the end of their days, Blackman provides inspiration and nourishment to anyone truly concerned with the fundamental issues of life and death.

    The ancient Taoist text that forms the central part of this book was discovered by Wilhelm, who recognized it as essentially a practical guide to the integration of personality.

    The popularity of the book is so great that it has run into forty two impressions ever since it was originally published in the year 1951

    This cultural history of Japan explains the diverse cultural traditions that underlie modern Japan and offers readers real insights into Japanese manners and etiquette. Davies begins with an investigation of the origins of the Japanese, followed by an analysis of the most relevant approaches used by scholars to describe the essential elements of Japanese culture. From there, each chapter focuses on one of the formative aspects: Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Confucianism, and Western influences in the modern era. Each chapter is concluded with extensive endnotes along with thought-provoking discussion activities, making this volume ideal for individual readers and classroom instruction. Anyone interested in pursuing a deeper understanding of this complex and fascinating nation will find Davies's work an invaluable resource.

    These "Talks" offer a genuinely universal approach to Truth, by directly pointing to the certainty of our essential nature. By applying even a few of these passages to our life, we can become aware of the ever-present, abiding Reality.The great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) had the unique gift of embodying the highest wisdom in the most ordinary manner. His words, full of insight and understanding, express the authentic experience of Enlightenment. For decades, they have guided people from diverse backgrounds and traditions to the Source of enduring peace and happiness.Through the wise words of this beloved sage, we are clearly and consistently shown how to reclaim our innate Freedom—simply by looking in the right place and discovering what has always been present. A fundamental shift of attention is all that is required. By approaching these dialogues in the spirit of inquiry, one has the opportunity to awaken to a greater Reality: that of our own Being, our true Self.

    Shinmon Aoki is forced by extreme financial circumstances into a job in one of the most despised professions in Japanese society, that of the nokanfu, one who washes and prepares dead bodies for burial. Shunned by family and friends and burdened by his own initial revulsion for his work, Aoki throws himself into the job with a fervour that attracts the attention of the townsfolk and earns him the title of Coffinman. In this spiritual autobiography, Aoki chronicles his progression from repulsion to a gradual realisation of the tranquillity that accompanies death. He assists the uninitiated in gaining an understanding of the basic principles of Shin Buddhism and its concepts of death and dying. Also included are definitions of key terms and phrases and a bibliography.Looks at one man's very personal struggle to engage his Shin Buddhist faith to make sense of his experiences with the dead and dying. The author chronicles his progression from repulsion to a gradual realisation of the tranquillity that accompanies death.

    It may seem unlikely that any new arguments or insights could be raised, but the twentieth century managed to produce two brilliant men with two diametrically opposed views about the question of God: Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. They never had an actual meeting, but in The Question of God, their arguments are placed side by side for the very first time. For more than twenty-five years, Armand Nicholi has taught a course at Harvard that compares the philosophical arguments of both men. In The Question of God, Dr. Nicholi presents the writings and letters of Lewis and Freud, allowing them to "speak" for themselves on the subject of belief and disbelief. Both men considered the problem of pain and suffering, the nature of love and sex, and the ultimate meaning of life and death -- and each of them thought carefully about the alternatives to their positions. The inspiration for the PBS series of the same name, The Question of God does not presuppose which man -- Freud the devout atheist or Lewis the atheist-turned-believer -- is correct in his views. Rather, readers are urged to join Nicholi and his students and decide for themselves which path to follow.

    This is an account of the world's greatest ‘intellectual virtuosos,' who are also humanity's greatest doubters and disbelievers, from the ancient Greek philosophers, Jesus, and the Eastern religions, to modern secular equivalents Marx, Freud and Darwin—and their attempts to reconcile the seeming meaninglessness of the universe with the human need for meaning,This remarkable book ranges from the early Greeks, Hebrew figures such as Job and Ecclesiastes, Eastern critical wisdom, Roman stoicism, Jesus as a man of doubt, Gnosticism and Christian mystics, medieval Islamic, Jewish and Christian skeptics, secularism, the rise of science, modern and contemporary critical thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, the existentialists.

    It is a meditation on the infinite love of God and the infinite value of the human individual. Not only are we in God's hands, says Desmond Tutu, our names are engraved on the palms of God's hands. Throughout an often turbulent life, Archbishop Tutu has fought for justice and against oppression and prejudice. As we learn in this book, what has driven him forward is an unshakeable belief that human beings are created in the image of God and are infinitely valuable. Each one of us is a God-carrier, a tabernacle, a sanctuary of the Divine Trinity. God loves us not because we are loveable but because he first loved us. And this turns our values upside down. In this sense, the Gospel is the most radical thing imaginable.It is extremely moving that in this book Archbishop Tutu returns to something so simple and so profound after a life in which he has been involved in political, social, and ethical issues that have seemed to be so very complex.

    Rowe asserts that many Mormons view Christian witnessing as Bible bashing. What Christians need to understand, he suggests, is that Latter-day Saints are an entirely separate ethnic group with their own history, values, and customs. Evangelizing Mormons can be so much more effective if Christians first know, understand, and respect Mormon heritage.With helpful illustrations and discussions of Mormon values and theology, Rowe calls Christians away from confrontational evangelism and instead suggests active listening and respect as a way to bridge Christian beliefs and Mormon culture. A glossary in the back of the book and discussion questions at the end of each chapter will help readers apply these concepts in their own witnessing experiences. In the end, Christians will be more approachable representatives of Christ.

    There he wrote five scrolls describing the "true principles" required for victory in the martial arts and on the battlefield. Instead of relying on religion or theory, Musashi based his writings on his own experience, observation, and reason.

    Campbell posits that the newly discovered laws of outer space are actually at work within human beings as well and that a new mythology is implicit in this realization. He examines the new mythology and other questions in these essays which he described as a broadly shared spiritual adventure.