A passionate and illicit affair awakens the sexual fire of a repressed man and an untouched woman. Moving to a small town in Vermont was a fresh start for Sarah Clarke, an author struggling with writer's block. The reason for the change of scenery was to focus on her manuscript, but an innocent dinner party connects her to a man, who starts to dominate her sexual fantasies. She’s instantly drawn to the local priest and her lustful desire for him leads her into forbidden territory. It was a time of crisis for Father Ben Michaels, a man deeply devoted to his faith. Recent doubts make him question his dedication. His quiet, orderly life is suddenly upended by the arrival of a mysterious woman to his town. He becomes enthralled by her and cannot resist the temptation to live a double life of being a good shepherd and pursuing sinful passion. What starts out as lustful infatuation blossoms into an erotic journey that will end in an intimate liberation.
This is the first account of sexual liberation in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Kateřina Lišková reveals how, in the case of Czechoslovakia, important aspects of sexuality were already liberated during the 1950s - abortion was legalized, homosexuality decriminalized, the female orgasm came into experts' focus - and all that was underscored by an emphasis on gender equality. However, with the coming of Normalization, gender discourses reversed and women were to aspire to be caring mothers and docile wives. Good sex was to cement a lasting marriage and family. In contrast to the usual Western accounts highlighting the importance of social movements to sexual and gender freedom, here we discover, through the analysis of rich archival sources covering forty years of state socialism in Czechoslovakia, how experts, including sexologists, demographers, and psychologists, advised the state on population development, marriage and the family to shape the most intimate aspects of people's lives.
Liberating Intimacy dramatically reevaluates the teachings and practice of Ch'an Buddhism. Considering Buddha's insight that everything is empty or absent of a permanent and independent "self nature," Hershock argues that not only is suffering without any essence and so dependent on time and place, so is end of suffering or enlightenment. He shows that the tradition need not entail a quietistic withdrawal from social life. Far from being something privately attained and experienced, Ch'an enlightenment is best seen as the opening of a virtuosic intimacy through which we are continually liberated from the arrogance of both "self" and "other." That is, enlightenment in Ch'an must be understood as irreducibly social--it can never be merely "mine" or "yours," but is only realized as "ours." Including new translations from the teachings of Ma-tzu, Pai-chang, Huang-po and Lin-chi, Liberating Intimacy reconciles the almost fierce individualism that characterizes the mastery of Ch'an and its unwavering embrace of the ideal of compassionately saving all beings.
Enrique Dussel is considered one of the founding philosophers of liberation in the Latin American tradition, an influential arm of what is now called decoloniality. While he is astoundingly prolific, relatively few of his works can be found in English translation - and none of these focus specifically on education. Founding members of the Latin American Philosophy of Education Society David I. Backer and Cecilia Diego bring to us Dussel's THE PEDAGOGICS OF LIBERATION: A Latin American Philosophy of Education, the first English translation of Dussel's thinking on education, and also the first translation of any part of his landmark multi-volume work Towards an Ethics of Latin American Liberation. Dussel's ouevre is an impressive intellectual mosaic that uses Europeans to disrupt European thinking. This mosaic has at its center French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, but also includes Ancient Greek philosophy, Thomist theology, modern Enlightenment philosophy, analytic philosophy of language, Marxism, psychoanalysis (Freud, Klein, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience), phenomenology (Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl, Hegel), critical theory (Frankfurt School, Habermas), and linguistics. Dussel joins these traditions to Latin American history, literature, and philosophy, specifically the work of Octavio Paz, Ivan Illich, and the philosophers of liberation whom Dussel studied with in Argentina before his exile to Mexico in the late 1970s. Drawing heavily from the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Dussel examines the dominating and liberating features of intimate, concrete, and observable interactions between different kinds of people who might sit down and have face-to-face encounters, specifically where there may be an inequality of knowledge and a responsibility to guide, teach, learn, care, or study: teacher-student, politician-citizen, doctor-patient, philosopher-nonphilosopher, and so on. Those occupying the superior position of these face-to-face encounters (teachers, politicians, doctors, philosophers) have a clear choice for Dussel when it comes to their pedagogics. They are either open to hearing the voice of the Other, disrupting their sense of what is and should be by a newness beyond what they know; or, following the dominant pedagogics, they can try to communicate and instruct their sense of what is and should be to the (supposed) tabula rasas in their charge. Dussel calls that sense of what is and should be "lo Mismo." This groundbreaking translation makes possible a face-to-face encounter between an Anglo Philosophy of Education and Latin American Pedagogics. "Pedagogics" should be considered as a type of philosophical inquiry alongside ethics, economics, and politics. Dussel's pedagogics is a decolonizing pedagogics, one rooted in the philosophy of liberation he has spent his epic career articulating. With an Introduction by renowned philosopher Linda Martin Alcoff, this book adds an essential voice to our conversations about teaching, learning, and studying, as well as critical theory in general. ENRIQUE DUSSEL was born in 1934 in the town of La Paz, in the region of Mendoza, Argentina. He first came to Mexico in 1975 as a political exile and is currently a Mexican citizen, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Iztapalapa campus of the Universidad Aut�noma Metropolitana (Autonomous Metropolitan University, UAM), and also teaches courses at the Universidad Nacional Aut�noma de M�xico (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM). He has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy (from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo/National University of Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina), a Doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid, a Doctorate in History from the Sorbonne in Paris, and an undergraduate degree in Theology obtained through studies in Paris and M�nster.
At the pinnacle of an impressive career, Mynoo Maryel stepped away from her hamster-on-a-wheel life and leapt out into the great unknown — and landed, on both feet, in pure magic. This is her extraordinary story. From a lifelong pattern of incessant thinking, constant go-go-going and never ending to do lists for ever increasing performance, Mynoo learned to become still. Slowly but surely she turned up the volume on her heart’s inner voice, and listened to its guidance. From that place, and from that point forward, she has been able to create and bring real fulfillment into her own life — and harmony into her relationships. We can all do this. Part autobiography and part hands-on guidebook, The BE Book is a refreshing blast of fresh air. Full of charm and humanness, it’s a wake-up call to parts of us that have long been asleep, an invitation to the grand adventure of life, and a treasure map to our own authentic joy. Absolute miracles are there for each of us to claim. All that’s required are some timely reminders, and something wonderful to light our way. The BE Book offers us those reminders, and that light.
Sex sells, they say, but even today, it is considered forbidden, wrong, or sinful by many in the Western world. This book is an account of the strange ways sexual pleasure has been devalued, even demonized, in the West by the forces of Christendom and its legacy in the modern world. It tells the story of how sex came to be regarded by societies throughout the ages as perverse, sinful, and wrong, and how the motivations of a few have lasted centuries and colored our view of sex and sexuality even today. Sex sells, they say, but even today it is considered forbidden or sinful by many in the Western world. This book is an account of the ways in which sexual pleasure has been devalued and demonized in the West by the historical forces of Christendom. It tells the story of how sex came to be regarded by societies throughout the ages as perverse, sinful, and wrong, and how the centuries-old motivations of a few have persisted into modern times, coloring our view of sex and sexuality to this day. For good or ill, Christianity has been, since before the ebbing of the Roman Empire, the principal bearer of public values in the western world. This book traces the changes that have shaped and reshaped what is considered moral sexual behavior (and immoral sexual behavior) by Christians and non-Christians alike. Lawrence's account of the perversion of sexual values begins with the intersection of the early Jesus movement and the morality of the Greco-Roman culture and empire. He goes on to point out the ways Christianity and its moral code were reshaped under the impact of Constantine's adoption of Christianity as the imperial religion, and how key figures of the Middle Ages generally succeeded in promoting a religion whose chief goal was the obliteration of sexual pleasure. The story continues on through the ages until now. This controversial look at sex and Christianity sheds new light on our views of pornography, homosexuality, adultery, and other issues of sex and sexuality.
Love and Liberation reads the autobiographical and biographical writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the story of her life. Sera Khandro Dew Dorj (1892Ð1940) was extraordinary not only for achieving religious mastery as a Tibetan Buddhist visionary and guru to many lamas, monastics, and laity in the Golok region of eastern Tibet, but also for her candor. This book listens to Sera KhandroÕs conversations with deities, dakinis, bodhisattvas, lamas, and fellow religious community members and investigates the concerns and sentiments relevant to the author and to those for whom she wrote. Sarah H. JacobyÕs analysis focuses on the status of the female body in Sera KhandroÕs texts, the virtue of celibacy versus the expediency of sexuality for religious purposes, and the difference between profane lust and sacred love between male and female Tantric partners. Her findings add new dimensions to our understanding of Tibetan Buddhist consort practice, complicating standard scriptural presentations of a male subject and a female aide. Sera Khandro depicts herself and her guru and consort, Drim zer, as inseparable embodiments of insight and method that together form the Vajrayana Buddhist vision of complete buddhahood. By advancing this complementary sacred partnership, Sera Khandro carved a place for herself as a female virtuoso in the male-dominated sphere of early twentieth-century Tibetan religion.
This collection of 35 years of Dunayevskaya's writings, based on active participation, interviews, and meetings develops the dialectics of revolution which emerges from masses in motion, including not only women and men, but the forces of labour, youth, the black dimension and women's liberation.
