Bhagavad Gītā — ABRIDGED When Babaji wrote the summaries for each chapter of the unabridged Bhagavad Gītā, which were published in three volumes in 2015, he said he hoped that the summaries might one day be included in a separate book. This abridged offering completes that wish. It is hoped that aspirants will find this a worthy tool for inquiry into the study of this ancient scripture.
The Bhagavad Gita, literally "The Song of God," is one of the most important spiritual and religious texts of the world, and is to Hindus what the Torah is to Jews, the Bible to Christians, and the Quran to Muslems. With text, translation, and Sri Aurobindo's commentary, this is probably the finest translation and commentary on the Bhagavad Gita that we have seen.
Queer critique, queer practice: embodied teachings for healing from trauma and social injustice. Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks. Part I deconstructs the ways mainstream yoga perpetuates queer- and transphobia and other systemic oppressions, exploring the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. Ballard also addresses the trauma--complex, vicarious, historical, and collective--perpetuated against queer communities. In response, he offers tools for self-compassion, tonglen, lovingkindness, and grounding, and helps readers explore questions like: What is trauma? How is it a product of injustice--and how can healing it create justice? The world won't stop being homo- and transphobic, so how do I encounter that in a way that does the least harm? How do we love what is uniquely trans about us? What are affinity groups, and why do we need them? In part II, Ballard offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations, practices, and sequences for processing and healing from trauma individually and in community. He explains concepts like lovingkindness, letting go, compassion, joy, forgiveness, and equanimity through a queer lens, and pairs each with corresponding meditations, practices, and beautiful line drawings of queer bodies. Enhanced with stories from Ballard's personal practice and professional experience teaching yoga in schools, prisons, conferences, and his weekly Queer and Trans Yoga class, A Queer Dharma is a guidebook, reclamation, and unapologetically queer heart offering for true healing and transformation.
This book is written after the author reading the original Bhagavad Gita. Apart from the usage of certain examples that relate Gita to the current era and some interpretations regarding those examples, nothing new is added from outside. The motive behind this writing venture is to present Bhagavad Gita to a reader who is not well aquatinted with religious books or spirituality. Gita is retold here with utmost care given to preserve its original flow and simplicity. Extreme vigilance is shown in keeping away heavy spiritual words like individual consciousness, universal consciousness, transcendental opulence etc. The Summary of Bhagavad Gita is intended to be read in one sitting. It contains less than eighteen thousand words only. The book may entertain you or it may bore you. But it will never confuse you.
'The truth is, Partha,' Krishna said, 'that there is no "better" path. Both paths – the path of knowledge and the path of action – work just as well. It is up to you to pick the one that you are suited to.' The Bhagavad Gita is a profound book from India that people have cherished for over 2500 years. It emphasises kindness and understanding when we make mistakes, and tells a compelling story about Prince Arjuna and his friend Krishna. They engage in a crucial conversation about the war against the most powerful and dangerous enemy of all – the one that lives within our minds. Roopa Pai's spirited, one-of-a-kind retelling is engaging, easy to grasp, and leaves a lasting impact. After you finish reading, you'll find yourself contemplating its wisdom and feeling a sense of inner strength.
Christian theologians have for some decades affirmed that they have no monopoly on encounters with God or ultimate reality and that other religions also have access to religious truth and transformation. If that is the case, the time has come for Christians not only to learn about but also from their religious neighbors. Circling the Elephant affirms that the best way to be truly open to the mystery of the infinite is to move away from defensive postures of religious isolationism and self-sufficiency and to move, in vulnerability and openness, toward the mystery of the neighbor. Employing the ancient Indian allegory of the elephant and blind(folded) men, John J. Thatamanil argues for the integration of three often-separated theological projects: theologies of religious diversity (the work of accounting for why there are so many different understandings of the elephant), comparative theology (the venture of walking over to a different side of the elephant), and constructive theology (the endeavor of re-describing the elephant in light of the other two tasks). Circling the Elephant also offers an analysis of why we have fallen short in the past. Interreligious learning has been obstructed by problematic ideas about “religion” and “religions,” Thatamanil argues, while also pointing out the troubling resonances between reified notions of “religion” and “race.” He contests these notions and offers a new theory of the religious that makes interreligious learning both possible and desirable. Christians have much to learn from their religious neighbors, even about such central features of Christian theology as Christ and the Trinity. This book envisions religious diversity as a promise, not a problem, and proposes a new theology of religious diversity that opens the door to robust interreligious learning and Christian transformation through encountering the other.
While traditional Christian thought and spirituality have always affirmed the divine presence in human life, Thatamanil argues we have much to learn from non-dualistic Hindu thought, especially that of the eighth-century thinker Sankara, and from the Christian panentheism of Paul Tillich. Thatamanil compares their diagnoses and prognoses of the human predicament in light of their doctrine of God or Ultimate Reality. What emerges is a new theology of God and human beings, with a richer and more radical conception of divine immanence, a reconceived divine transcendence, and a keener sense of how the dynamic and active Spirit at work in us anchors real hope and deep joy.Using key insights from Christian and Hindu thought Thatamanil vindicates comparative theology, expands the vocabulary about the ineffable God, and arrives at a new construal of the problems and prospects of the human condition.
