Modern Truths

Modern Truths

Author: Ekacco Bhikkhu

Publisher: Pa-Auk Meditation Centre (Singapore)

Published: 2014-11-15

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9810733305

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Author’s Note: Modern Truths contains sixteen talks on the Noble Truths plus a talk on how to decide what is and is not a teaching of The Buddha. The talks were prepared upon the request of devotees at a temple in Penang, Malaysia. All except the talk on the Path-factor Right View and that on the Path-factor Right Intention were also delivered. Again upon request, all except the talk on the four Noble Truths (‘A Modern Opportunity’, p.1ff), and the one on Right Intention (‘Beauty Is in the Eye of the Blind’ p.263), were published in Penang, in two separate books. 1) Modern Birth, Ageing, and Death (p.17ff) — 5 + 1 talks One talk on the Noble Truth of Suffering; four on the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering; and as an appendix, one on Right View (the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, the Noble Truth of the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering). As an appendix also a talk entitled ‘Is this the Dhamma-Vinaya?’ 2) Modern Happiness Very Difficult to See (p.117f) — 7 + 1 talks Seven talks on the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering, and as an appendix, one on the Noble Truth of the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering, the Noble Eightfold Path. Upon the request of devotees at a temple in Singapore, all seventeen talks (2+6+8) and their appendices are herewith published together. Since the talk on the Noble Eightfold Path, the talk on Right View, and the talk on Right Intention, were intended as the first three of a series discussing the Noble Truth of the Path leading to the Cessation of Suffering, they have here been put separately under The Path Leading to Modern Happiness Very Difficult to See (p.225ff ). The talk on how to decide what is and is not a teaching of The Buddha has been put at the end, as it is not directly related to any of the four Noble Truths, but is directly related to one’s study and understanding of The Buddha’s Teachings as a whole. Inconsistencies in translation, etc., between one talk and another have been left as they are. Ekacco Bhikkhu [From a book published by Pa-Auk Meditation Centre, a Centre of Theravāda Buddhist Tradition]


Wondrous Truths

Wondrous Truths

Author: J.D. Trout

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0199385092

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A fresh, daring, and genuine alternative to the traditional story of scientific progress Explaining the world around us, and the life within it, is one of the most uniquely human drives, and the most celebrated activity of science. Good explanations are what provide accurate causal accounts of the things we wonder at, but explanation's earthly origins haven't grounded it: we have used it to account for the grandest and most wondrous mysteries in the natural world. Explanations give us a sense of understanding, but an explanation that feels right doesn't mean it is true. For every true explanation, there is a false one that feels just as good. A good theory's explanations, though, have a much easier path to truth. This push for good explanations elevated science from medieval alchemy to electro-chemistry, or a pre-inertial physics to the forces underlying nanoparticles. And though the attempt to explain has existed as long as we have been able to wonder, a science timeline from pre-history to the present will reveal a steep curve of theoretical discovery that explodes around 1600, primarily in the West. Ranging over neuroscience, psychology, history, and policy, Wondrous Truths answers two fundamental questions-Why did science progress in the West? And why so quickly? J.D. Trout's answers are surprising. His central idea is that Western science rose above all others because it hit upon successive theories that were approximately true through an awkward assortment of accident and luck, geography and personal idiosyncrasy. Of course, intellectual ingenuity partially accounts for this persistent drive forward. But so too does the persistence of the objects of wonder. Wondrous Truths recovers the majesty of science, and provides a startling new look at the grand sweep of its biggest ideas.


Curing Mad Truths

Curing Mad Truths

Author: Rémi Brague

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0268105715

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In his first book composed in English, Rémi Brague maintains that there is a fundamental problem with modernity: we no longer consider the created world and humanity as intrinsically valuable. Curing Mad Truths, based on a number of Brague's lectures to English-speaking audiences, explores the idea that humanity must return to the Middle Ages. Not the Middle Ages of purported backwardness and barbarism, but rather a Middle Ages that understood creation—including human beings—as the product of an intelligent and benevolent God. The positive developments that have come about due to the modern project, be they health, knowledge, freedom, or peace, are not grounded in a rational project because human existence itself is no longer the good that it once was. Brague turns to our intellectual forebears of the medieval world to present a reasoned argument as to why humanity and civilizations are goods worth promoting and preserving. Curing Mad Truths will be of interest to a learned audience of philosophers, historians, and medievalists.


Pretty Little Truths: Modern Devotionals for Young Women

Pretty Little Truths: Modern Devotionals for Young Women

Author: Mandy Fender

Publisher: Becky Fender

Published: 2016-02-04

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 9780982219034

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A full year of weekly devotionals specifically written for young women in high school and college. Covering a wide variety of topics from anxiety, anger, relationships, drama, social media, kindness, forgiveness, fear, fame, and loneliness. Plus much more! This book includes bonus devotionals and study tips. Each devotional gives a scripture to stand on and a Pretty Little Challenge for the week. Great for youth leaders and study groups!


These Truths: A History of the United States

These Truths: A History of the United States

Author: Jill Lepore

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 733

ISBN-13: 0393635252

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“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.


Saving Truth

Saving Truth

Author: Abdu Murray

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0310562058

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How can Christians defend truth and clarity to a world that rejects both? Increasingly, Western culture embraces confusion as a virtue and decries certainty as a sin. Those who are confused about sexuality and identity are viewed as heroes. Those who are confused about morality are progressive pioneers. Those who are confused about spirituality are praised as tolerant. Conversely, those who express certainty about any of these issues are seen as bigoted, oppressive, arrogant, or intolerant. This cultural phenomenon led the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary to name "post-truth" their word of the year in 2016. It's popularity and relevance has only increased since then. By accurately describing the Culture of Confusion and how it has affected our society, author Abdu Murray seeks to awaken Westerners to the plight we find ourselves in. He also challenges Christians to consider how they have played a part in fostering the Culture of Confusion through bad arguments, unwise labeling, and emotional attacks. Ultimately, Saving Truth provides arguments from a Christian perspective for the foundations of truth and how those foundations impart clarity to the biggest topics of human existence: Freedom. Human dignity. Sexuality, Gender, and Identity. Science and Faith. Religious pluralism and Morality. For those enmeshed in the culture of confusion, Saving Truth offers a way to untangle oneself and find hope in the clarity that Christ offers.


Modern Loss

Modern Loss

Author: Rebecca Soffer

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 006249922X

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Inspired by the website that the New York Times hailed as "redefining mourning," this book is a fresh and irreverent examination into navigating grief and resilience in the age of social media, offering comfort and community for coping with the mess of loss through candid original essays from a variety of voices, accompanied by gorgeous two-color illustrations and wry infographics. At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it’s clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let’s face it: most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit. Enter Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner, who can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they co-founded Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now, in this wise and often funny book, they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and—above all—empathize. Soffer and Birkner, along with forty guest contributors including Lucy Kalanithi, singer Amanda Palmer, and CNN’s Brian Stelter, reveal their own stories on a wide range of topics including triggers, sex, secrets, and inheritance. Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty "how to" cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message. Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.


Foucault and the Modern International

Foucault and the Modern International

Author: Philippe Bonditti

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-02-07

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1137561580

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This book addresses the possibilities of analyzing the modern international through the thought of Michel Foucault. The broad range of authors brought together in this volume question four of the most self-evident characteristics of our contemporary world-'international', 'neoliberal', 'biopolitical' and 'global'- and thus fill significant gaps in both international and Foucault studies. The chapters discuss what a Foucauldian perspective does or does not offer for understanding international phenomena while also questioning many appropriations of Foucault's work. This transdisciplinary volume will serve as a reference for both scholars and students of international relations, international political sociology, international political economy, political theory/philosophy and critical theory more generally.


Whole Numbers and Half Truths

Whole Numbers and Half Truths

Author: Rukmini Shrinivasan

Publisher: Context

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789391234676

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"How do you see India? Fuelled by a surge of migration to cities, the country's growth appears to be defined by urbanisation and by its growing, prosperous middle class. It is also defined by progressive and liberal young Indians, who vote beyond the constraints of identity, and paradoxically, by an unchecked population explosion and rising crimes against women. Is it, though? In 2020, the annual population growth was down to under 1 per cent. Only thirty-one of hundred Indians live in a city today and just 5 per cent live outside the city of their birth. As recently as 2016, only 4 per cent of young, married respondents in a survey said their spouse belonged to a different caste group. Over 45 per cent of voters said in a pre-2014 election survey that it was important to them that a candidate of their own caste wins elections in their constituency. A large share of reported sexual assaults across India are actually consensual relationships criminalised by parents. And staggeringly, spending more than Rs 8,500 a month puts you in the top 5 per cent of urban India. Data-journalism pioneer Rukmini S. draws on nearly two decades of on-ground reporting experience to piece together a picture that looks nothing like the one you might expect. There is a mountain of data available on India, but it remains opaque, hard to access and harder yet to read, and it does not inform public conversation. Rukmini marshals this information - some of it never before reported - alongside probing interviews with experts and ordinary citizens, to see what the numbers can tell us about India. As she interrogates how data works, and how the push and pull of social and political forces affect it, she creates a blueprint to understand the changes of the last few years and the ones to come - a toolkit for India."-- dust jacket.


On Truth & Untruth

On Truth & Untruth

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-11-09

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 0062035134

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Newly translated and edited by Taylor Carman, On Truth and Untruth charts Nietzsche’s evolving thinking on truth, which has exerted a powerful influence over modern and contemporary thought. This original collection features the complete text of the celebrated early essay “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense” (“a keystone in Nietzsche’s thought” —Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), as well as selections from the great philosopher’s entire career, including key passages from The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Will to Power, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist.