¿Quién es Siva? Quién es este dios cuyo ser está en todas las cosas y lo trasciende todo? Desde el amanecer del Tiempo, el dios salvaje, el gran yogui, la suma de todos los opuestos, ha sido el guardián de lo Absoluto. Siva es uno de los tres dioses del hinduismo que aún recibe culto en la India. El Rg Veda lo evoca, a menudo, en sus himnos. Y los mitos y los ritos védicos –incluso la astronomía– nos recuerdan continuamente su existencia. Stella Kramrisch lleva a cabo un vivo y detallado panorama de la metafísica, la ontología y los mitos de Siva desde los Vedas a los Puranas, a partir de textos sánscritos, muchos de ellos traducidos por primera vez. Contando y entremezclando los diferentes mitos que aún se mantienen vivos en India, Kramrisch nos va revelando, a lo largo de su libro, la paradójica naturaleza de Siva, y lo que esto significa para la conciencia misma.
One of the three great gods of Hinduism, Siva is a living god. The most sacred and most ancient book of India, "The Rg Veda," evokes his presence in its hymns; Vedic myths, rituals, and even astronomy testify to his existence from the dawn of time. In a lively meditation on Siva--based on original Sanskrit texts, many translated here for the first time--Stella Kramrisch ponders the metaphysics, ontology, and myths of Siva from the Vedas and the Puranas. Who is Siva? Who is this god whose being comprises and transcends everything? From the dawn of creation, the Wild God, the Great Yogi, the sum of all opposites, has been guardian of the absolute. By retelling and interweaving the many myths that keep Siva alive in India today, Kramrisch reveals the paradoxes in Siva's nature and thus in the nature of consciousness itself.
One of the three great gods of Hinduism, Siva is a living god. The most sacred and most ancient book of India, The Rg Veda, evokes his presence in its hymns; Vedic myths, rituals, and even astronomy testify to his existence from the dawn of time. In a lively meditation on Siva--based on original Sanskrit texts, many translated here for the first time--Stella Kramrisch ponders the metaphysics, ontology, and myths of Siva from the Vedas and the Puranas. Who is Siva? Who is this god whose being comprises and transcends everything? From the dawn of creation, the Wild God, the Great Yogi, the sum of all opposites, has been guardian of the absolute. By retelling and interweaving the many myths that keep Siva alive in India today, Kramrisch reveals the paradoxes in Siva's nature and thus in the nature of consciousness itself.
This volume offers a number of images of contemporary India where glocalization is undoubtedly present. The twelve chapters included here provide different perspectives on the relationship between the corporeal and the spiritual, highlighting the union of both soul and body, which has been present from the very beginning of the Indian civilization. This volume offers clues to understand the differences and similarities that characterise the East-West encounter through artistic representations in the era of globalisation. It also enhances the importance of re-inscribing the fusion of the spiritual and the corporeal into the academic research agenda. In Western theory, the body has been arguably dismembered and separated from the spiritual. As such, this text opens up a range of possibilities to tackle and debunk the dualism of both the corporeal and the spiritual suggesting a rupture of the “logic” of binary thinking. The contributors specifically focus on Indian culture and analyse how we can empirically and theoretically reconcile mind and body in order to promote active and reciprocal exchanges among educators, students, researchers, social activists, and those professionally and spiritually engaged with Indian studies.
Con la visita del Presidente Hu Jintao en noviembre de 2004 a América Latina, China hizo saber al resto del mundo su creciente interés por la región. El avance hacia el así llamado “patio trasero” de Estados Unidos generó preocupación en el círculo político de ese país, ya que este movimiento podría desafiar la primacía norteamericana en el hemisferio occidental. Algunos analistas, sin embargo, ven el noviazgo de China con América Latina como algo natural debido a su necesidad largoplacista de commodities y soluciones en materia energética. La presencia de China en el hemisferio occidental presenta una exposición reveladora y multidisciplinaria de esta relación triangular, así como también las motivaciones que subyacen a cada uno de los implicados. Con ese objetivo, expertos de América Latina, China, Europa y los Estados Unidos reflexionan acerca de las ramificaciones del surgimiento de China como potencia mundial. A lo largo de los capítulos se compagina un marco para anticipar aspectos relacionados con la seguridad en materia económica y energética en la relación entre China y América Latina. Este informado análisis de la política desplegada por China en el hemisferio provee al lector de un panorama exhaustivo, centrándose en un aspecto particularmente sensible de su pacífico ascenso.
New areas of intellectual endeavours including postcolonial, transatlantic, global, and cultural studies have facilitated conversations that cut across traditional academic boundaries. Indeed, aside from precipitating more stimulating intellectual dialogues, the advent of multi-disciplinarity has also enabled literary and cultural theorists, critics, students, and teachers to connect and to integrate diverse academic disciplines and schools of thought in the pursuit of a common task. Of the many areas that have benefited from this trend, it is perhaps in the realm of Afro-Hispanic, Luso-Brazilian, and Latin American studies that one notices a vibrant conversation that deals with the deep historical, social, economic, and political bonds that have connected and still connect Africa to the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian worlds. As these bonds acquire profound meanings in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, scholars from diverse academic backgrounds find new ways to explore these connections. It is in the spirit of this endeavour that the creative artists, scholars of cultural and literary theory and critics whose works are presented in this anthology, attempt to examine wide-ranging themes from colonization, slavery, imperialism, religion, music, and literature. Most of the essays in this collection address long-standing issues related to identity construction, linguistic legacies, religious and cultural beliefs and practices. Others confront questions of migration and immigration, configurations of female agency, and Hispanic pedagogy in Africa and elsewhere. What makes this volume unique and interesting is not only the idea of exploring, examining, and thinking the old in new ways and the new in old ways but also, advancing the conversation of the relationship between Africa and the Afro-Hispanic, Luso-Brazilian, and Latin American worlds through different intellectual and artistic prisms.
