A Partial Enlightenment
A Partial Enlightenment

Author: Avram Alpert

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 119

ISBN-13: 0231553390

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In many ways, Buddhism has become the global religion of the modern world. For its contemporary followers, the ideal of enlightenment promises inner peace and worldly harmony. And whereas other philosophies feel abstract and disembodied, Buddhism offers meditation as a means to realize this ideal. If we could all be as enlightened as Buddhists, some imagine, we could live in a much better world. For some time now, however, this beatific image of Buddhism has been under attack. Scholars and practitioners have criticized it as a Western fantasy that has nothing to do with the actual experiences of Buddhists. Avram Alpert combines personal experience and readings of modern novels to offer another way to understand modern Buddhism. He argues that it represents a rich resource not for attaining perfection but rather for finding meaning and purpose in a chaotic world. Finding unexpected affinities across world literature—Rudyard Kipling in colonial India, Yukio Mishima in postwar Japan, Bessie Head escaping apartheid South Africa—as well as in his own experiences living with Tibetan exiles, Alpert shows how these stories illuminate a world in which suffering is inevitable and total enlightenment is impossible. Yet they also give us access to partial enlightenments: powerful insights that become available when we come to terms with imperfection and stop looking for wholeness. A Partial Enlightenment reveals the moments of personal and social transformation that the inventions of modern Buddhism help make possible.

Steps on the Path to Enlightenment
Steps on the Path to Enlightenment

Author: Lhundub Sopa

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-12-12

Total Pages: 729

ISBN-13: 1614293236

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Geshe Sopa continues his elucidation of Lama Tsongkhapa's masterwork on the Buddhist path with an explanation of superior insight (vipaśyanā), or wisdom, the pinnacle of the bodhisattva's perfections.

Panorama of the Enlightenment
Panorama of the Enlightenment

Author: Dorinda Outram

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780892368617

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"In this book, the Enlightenment derives its special appeal as the historical staging ground for an intellectual ferment across Europe and America. Dorinda Outram places ideas in their widest possible context, expounding upon their social, political, and cultural implications and how they condition society's conduct in a variety of ways. She looks at what "Enlightenment" meant to contemporaries, how it affected day-to-day life - for instance, by the spread of reading, the open discussion of religion and the relationship between the sexes, self-knowledge and introspection, scientific research, and advances in medicine."--BOOK JACKET.

The Enlightenment of Vairocana
The Enlightenment of Vairocana

Author: Alex Wayman

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13:

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The Enlightenment of Vairocana is a covering for two books that study a famous Buddhist scripture with given Sanskrit titles of Vairocanabhisambodhitantra or Mahavairocanasutra. The first book, by Alex Wayman, translates the second chapter, which contains the body mandala of Vairocana's Compassion, copiously using Buddhaguhya's commentary, study of some other chapters such as the final one on fire lineage, and includes much introductory material, stressing the Indo-Tibetan approach, on such topics as the Dharmadhatu and the deities of the second chapter. The second book, by Ryujun Tajima, translates the first chapter, with the scripture's theory of becoming a Buddha in one life, copiously using Subhakarasimha's commentary, summary of the remaining chapters, and includes introductory material stressing the Sino-Japanese approach, especially introducing the reader to the positions of the Shingon sect. The two books complement each other, and provide the interested reader with a veritable feast of information. Hopefully the reader will appreciate the beauty of religious message, and the efforts of the two authors to render the words of the scripture sensitively and carefully. It should be admitted that this is a profound Buddhist scripture with numerous well-crafted verses, and that it is resistent to the understanding, requiring lengthy attention for its penetration.

Ends of Enlightenment
Ends of Enlightenment

Author: John Bender

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-08-08

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0804784612

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Ends of Enlightenment explores three realms of eighteenth-century European innovation that remain active in the twenty-first century: the realist novel, philosophical thought, and the physical sciences, especially human anatomy. The European Enlightenment was a state of being, a personal stance, and an orientation to the world. Ways of probing experience and knowledge in the novel and in the visual arts were interleaved with methods of experimentation in science and philosophy. This book's fresh perspective considers the novel as an art but also as a force in thinking. The critical distance afforded by a view back across the centuries allows Bender to redefine such novelists as Defoe, Fielding, Goldsmith, Godwin, and Laclos by placing them along philosophers and scientists like Newton, Locke, and Hume but also alongside engravings by Hogarth and by anatomist William Hunter. His book probes the kinship among realism, hypothesis, and scientific fact, defining in the process the rhetorical basis of public communication during the Enlightenment.

Kantian Courage:Advancing the Enlightenment in Contemporary Political Theory
Kantian Courage:Advancing the Enlightenment in Contemporary Political Theory

Author: Nicholas Tampio

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2012-09

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0823245004

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"Advancing the Enlightenment draws upon John Rawls, Gilles Deleuze, and Tariq Ramadan to present a vision for progressive politics. Rather than defend Kant's ideas, heirs of the Enlightenment should create concepts such as overlapping consensus, rhizome, and space of testimony to facilitate alliances across religious and philosophical differences"--Provided by publisher.

Reclaiming the Enlightenment
Reclaiming the Enlightenment

Author: Stephen Eric Bronner

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0231126085

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In 1947 Horkheimer and Adorno connected the Enlightenment with totalitarianism. Since when the Left has drifted into the language and imagery of the European Counter-Enlightenment, the movement against 1776 and 1789. Bronner sets out to reclaim the heritage of progressive politics.

The Good-Enough Life
The Good-Enough Life

Author: Avram Alpert

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-09-19

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0691254680

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How an acceptance of our limitations can lead to a more fulfilling life and a more harmonious society We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible—a good-enough life for all. Avram Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread political and economic inequality, and destruction of the natural world. He describes how to move beyond greatness to create a society in which everyone flourishes. By competing less with each other, each of us can find renewed meaning and purpose, have our material and emotional needs met, and begin to lead more leisurely lives. Alpert makes no false utopian promises, however. Life can never be more than good enough because there will always be accidents and tragedies beyond our control, which is why we must stop dividing the world into winners and losers and ensure that there is a fair share of decency and sufficiency to go around. Visionary and provocative, The Good-Enough Life demonstrates how we can work together to cultivate a good-enough life for all instead of tearing ourselves apart in a race to the top of the social pyramid.

A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders
A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders

Author: James Delbourgo

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2006-10-15

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780674022997

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"The first book to situate early American experimental science in the context of a transatlantic public sphere, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders offers a view of the origins of American science and the cultural meaning of the American Enlightenment."--BOOK JACKET.

Measure of the Earth
Measure of the Earth

Author: Larrie D. Ferreiro

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2011-05-31

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0465017231

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Describes the early 18th-century expedition of scientists sent by France and Spain to colonial Peru to measure the degree of equatorial latitude, which could resolve the debate between whether the earth was spherical or flattened at the poles.