Explores the role of meditation on the five elements in the practice of Yoga.In Living Landscapes, Christopher Key Chapple looks at the world of ritual as enacted in three faiths of India. He begins with an exploration of the relationship between the body and the world as found in the cosmological cartography of Sāṃkhya philosophy, which highlights the interplay between consciousness (puruṣa) and activity (prakṛti), a process that gives r...

Globalization and climate weirding are two of the leading phenomena that challenge and change the way we need to think and act within the planetary community. Modern Western understandings of human beings, animals, and the rest of the natural world and the subsequent technologies built on those understandings have thrown us into an array of social and ecological crises with planetary implications. Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking, argues that mor...

Providing essential support to schools and universities that offer yoga therapy training programs, this comprehensive, edited textbook develops robust curricula, enabling them to prepare yoga therapists to integrate into healthcare settings safely and effectively.The book includes a large and international list of contributors from diverse lineages and backgrounds such as Matthew Taylor, Gail Parker and Steffany Moonaz, and is the first resource on yoga therapy that aligns with the...

Jainism regards life to be eternal. Recognizing that the soul can never die, but merely takes a new body, a careful tradition welcoming death through intentional fasting developed more than two thousand years ago. A legal challenge Rajasthan was put forward in 2013, suggesting that this practice is harmful and coercive and targets women in particular. For a short while SallekhanÀ, which means the “thinning of existence,” was declared illegal. In response to this controversy, three conferen...

Thomas Berry had a gentle yet mesmerizing and luminescent presence that was evident to anyone who spent time with him. His intellectual scope and erudite manner were compelling, and the breadth, depth, clarity, and elegance of his vision was breathtaking. Berry was an intellectual giant and cultural visionary of extraordinary stature.Thomas Berry’s vast knowledge of history, religions, and cultural histories is a unique blend revealing a genuine, original thinker. The ecological cr...

This book presents contemporary scholarship on the Yoga Sutra. It revisits Patañjali’s philosophy by bringing it into dialogue with contemporary concerns across a variety of topics and perspectives. Questions regarding the role of the body in the practice of classical yoga, the debate between the realistic or idealistic interpretation of the text, the relation between Yoga and other Indian philosophical schools, the use of imagination in the pursuit of self-knowledge, the interplay between...

Showing how spiritual care is practiced in a variety of different contexts such as healthcare, detention and higher education, as well as settings that may not have formal chaplaincy arrangements, this book offers an original and unique resource for Hindu chaplains to understand and practice spiritual care in a way that is authentic to their own tradition and that meets the needs of Hindus. It offers a Hindu perspective for all chaplains to inform their caregiving to Hindus.The boo...

E****xplores the Sāṃkhya system and the delicate relationship it articulates between witness consciousness (Puruṣa) and manifest realities (Prakṛti), providing a path to freedom through knowledge.The Sāṃkhya System brings new life to an ancient Hindu system of thought. Sāṃkhya spans the fields of philosophy, physics, metaphysics, psychology, and ethics. Although notably not theological, its key premises can be found in virtually all religious traditions th...

Art as yoga and meditation for artists, contemplative practitioners, art educators, and art therapists.Drawing upon his personal experience as a practitioner-researcher, visual artist, and cancer survivor, Michael A. Franklin offers a rich and thought-provoking guide to art as contemplative practice. His firsthand experience and original artwork complement this extensive discussion by consulting various practice traditions including yoga, rasa and darshan experienc...

Uses both textual and ethnographic sources to demonstrate that in Śaṅkara's vedānta, brahman is an active force as well as a transcendent ultimate.Finalist for the 2014 Best First Book in the History of Religions presented by the American Academy of ReligionŚaṅkara's thought, advaita vedānta or non-dual vedānta, is a tradition focused on brahman, the ultimate reality transcending all particular manifestations, words, and ideas. It ...

A wide-ranging analysis of the Mokṣopāya**, the Indian literary classic that teaches through storytelling how to enjoy an active, successful, worldly life in a spiritually enlightened way.**In the Mokṣopāya (also known as the Yogavāsiṣṭha), an eleventh-century Sanskrit poetic text, the great Vedic philosopher Vasiṣṭha counsels his young protégé Lord Rāma about the ways of the world through sixty-four stories designed to b...

A clear, concise guidebook to the essentials of yogic thought and practiceMany people think yoga simply means postures and breathing. Not true. The intention of this short guide is practical and straightforward: to say what yoga really is and to apply its principles to everyday life. It leads us through the eight-limbed system, a coherent framework that has been handed down and elaborated upon for thousands of years and consists of five "outer limbs," which pertain...