In this mesmerizing debut collection, chosen by Mary Oliver for the National Poetry Series, we’re witness to an expansive travelogue of the human spirit that moves throughtfully through multiples ages, cultures, and beings. Each poem explores in depth, through pensive, evocative images, aspects of the human condition and their place within the rich continuum of animal existence. W.B. Keckler presents these poems in a fugal form, uniting the individual works in what he describes as a “holistic formalism” that reveals the poems’ powerful collective meaning. Lives and afterlives are explored with equal care as Keckler attempts to restore the concept of “spirit” in a modern world often overwhelmed by materialistic priorities. “Readers will find these poems lively and pleasurable. They are deft and rich in language, grounded in the actual—even the ordinary—yet admitting into their brief structures a deeper existence of strangeness, or mystery. Which is to say, that they have entered the true realm of the poetry. In a literary age pleached with sameness, this book is a bright and swirling original.”—Mary Oliver
Love is a many-headed snake in Nisha Ramayya's debut poetry collection, twisting its way through devotion, sacrifice, and bliss. Seeking a way home, Ramayya discovers that homecoming - the impossible return - is a process of make-believe and magical thinking across Britain, India, and the infinite expanse. Ramayya's visionary poetry traces an opalescent, treacherous world by way of heritage, ritual, and myth. Thousand-petalled lotuses bloom inside skulls, goddesses with dirty feet charm honeybees, strains of jazz standards bleed into anti-national anthems. Meditating on diasporic identity and relationships, her writing roams the Indo-European language family, finds consolation in genealogies of decolonial and anti-racist resistance, and roots itself in the movements between ancient Sanskrit texts and contemporary feminist prose poems. In Ramayya's hands, the body assumes many forms as love produces many states: attraction and repulsion, excitement and exhaustion, selfishness and the dissolution of self. Desire, eroticism, and care contain the possibilities of shame, fury, and destruction. Moving towards and away from love, being translated and transformed by love, suffering under love and refusing its power - the poems in this book never leave love's hold.
Science and Society in the Sanskrit World contains seventeen essays that cover a kaleidoscopic array of classical Sanskrit scientific disciplines, such as the astral sciences, grammar, jurisprudence, theology, and hermeneutics.
This book published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, presents the teachings of Vedanta in an easy-to-read form through captivating stories from the Upanishads, the Puranas, and inspiring anecdotes from the lives of Shankaracharya, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and a few other seers of Truth.
Master the science behind the arm balances and inversions of Hatha Yoga through a series of step-by-step practical instructions illustrated with over twelve hundred full-color anatomical images.
Sanskrit Non-Translatables is a path-breaking and audacious attempt at Sanskritizing the English language and enriching it with powerful Sanskrit words. It continues the original and innovative idea of nontranslatability of Sanskrit, first introduced in the book, Being Different. For English readers, this should be the starting point of the movement to resist the digestion of Sanskrit into English, by introducing loanwords into their English vocabulary without translation. The book presents a thorough mechanism of the process of digestion and examines the loss of adhikara for Sanskrit because of translating its core ideas into English. The movement launched by this book will resist this and stop the programs that seek to turn Sanskrit into a dead language by translating all its treasures to render it redundant. It discusses fifty-four non-translatables across various genres that are being commonly mistranslated. It empowers English speakers with the knowledge and arguments to introduce these Sanskrit words into their daily speech with confidence. Every lover of India’s sanskriti will benefit from the book and become a cultural ambassador propagating it through routine communications.
A confidence-boosting program based on the spiritual insights of Sanskrit, the language of enlightenment • Draws on traditional stories from East and West and scholarly works to reveal the wisdom behind Sanskrit words and how to experience them to transform our lives and build confidence, certainty, clarity, and success • Explains the fourfold energy of the Conscious Confidence program: Focusing, Uniting, Simplifying, and Energizing • Offers practical exercises for discovering our inner certainty and overcoming fear, anxiety, and insecurity Called “the language of enlightenment,” Sanskrit is truly unique among all the languages of the world. This ancient language, upon which so many of our English words are based, gives us an entire system to show what to do in order to experience the full meaning of a word. In this profound way, Sanskrit offers a touchstone of timeless wisdom that each of us can access to transform our lives and build confidence, certainty, clarity, and success. In Conscious Confidence, Sanskrit scholar Sarah Mane offers a practical confidence-boosting program, derived from the deepest meanings of Sanskrit concepts, to help you establish a safe and secure reference point from which to see the world and make clear decisions on how to act, what to say, and how to feel. She explores the Sanskrit roots of English words related to confidence and success, unlocking rich, three-dimensional understandings of each word as well as guidance on how to obtain confidence and find your path in life. For example, the word attitude, based on its Sanskrit roots, means “our point of view, our intent, and our conduct.” A positive attitude means we have a self-aware point of view, have an intent for the good, and conduct ourselves in ways that reflect both. This true attitude gives us a positive and powerful place from which to view the world. The author also incorporates traditional stories from East and West, such as the Mahabharata and the works of Plato, scholarly references, and accounts of people discovering hidden depths in their own lives through the ancient truth of Sanskrit. Drawing upon the deeper meanings behind several Sanskrit words for confidence, Mane outlines principles for harnessing the fourfold energies of Conscious Confidence and offers practical exercises for discovering our inner certainty. She explains how the Conscious Confidence method allows us to tackle the growing anxiety and fear that hang like a shadow over many of us and look to the unchanging core of selfhood for certainty, rather than ever-changing externals. With the Conscious Confidence program and the wisdom of Sanskrit, you can discover a strong and steady inner source of compassion, self-direction, self-empowerment, and the life force of self-confidence.
Here we have a collection of a little over hundred verses, most of which were a part of the common man’s knowledge not long ago. These are from the Mahabharata, the Pancatantra, the Hitopadesa, the Subhashita-s of Bhartrihari and such other texts. Some verses teach ethical behavior and some others realistically and bluntly tell about human behavior in different situations. Most of the present day societies are focusing more on imparting job-oriented skills to children, paying little attention to their emotional growth. The governments too are cutting back on the liberal arts which are essential for the emotional intelligence and maturity of our children. Such trends have negative manifestations which are sadly realized at a later stage in life. We realize that progress cannot be at the cost of human values and goals in life. These verses are like the ‘box of truisms’ and ‘words to live by’, in Louis Mac Neice’s words. They may not be fully understood by the kids straightaway, but they reveal their full flavor as the kids grow and face the realities and problems of life. They are like the time release capsules which release themselves slowly.
