Spiritual and Corporeal Selves in India
Spiritual and Corporeal Selves in India

Author: Carmen Escobedo de Tapia

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-08-24

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1527558665

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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.

The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China
The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China

Author: Tao Jiang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1136208380

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Although Freud makes only occasional, brief references to China and Chinese culture in his works, for almost a hundred years many leading Chinese intellectuals have studied and appropriated various Freudian theories. However, whilst some features of Freud’s views have been warmly embraced from the start and appreciated for their various explanatory and therapeutic values, other aspects have been vigorously criticized as implausible or inapplicable to the Chinese context. This book explores the history, reception, and use of Freud and his theories in China, and makes an original and substantial contribution to our understanding of the Chinese people and their culture as well as to our appreciation of western attempts to understand the people and culture of China. The essays are organised around three key areas of research. First, it examines the historical background concerning the China-Freud connection in the 20th century, before going on to use reconstructed Freudian theories in order to provide a modernist critique of Chinese culture. Finally, the book deploys traditional Chinese thought in order to challenge various aspects of the Freudian project. Both Freudianism’s universal appeal and its cultural particularity are in full display throughout the book. At the same time, the allure of Chinese cultural and literary expressions, both in terms of their commonality with other cultures and their distinctive characteristics, are also scrutinized. This collection of essays will be welcomed by those interested in early modern and contemporary China, as well as the work and influence of Freud. It will also be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, psychoanalysis, literature, philosophy, religion, and cultural studies more generally.

Self and Sovereignty
Self and Sovereignty

Author: Ayesha Jalal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-04

Total Pages: 653

ISBN-13: 1134599382

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Self and Sovereignty surveys the role of individual Muslim men and women within India and Pakistan from 1850 through to decolonisation and the partition period. Commencing in colonial times, this book explores and interprets the historical processes through which the perception of the Muslim individual and the community of Islam has been reconfigured over time. Self and Sovereignty examines the relationship between Islam and nationalism and the individual, regional, class and cultural differences that have shaped the discourse and politics of Muslim identity. As well as fascinating discussion of political and religious movements, culture and art, this book includes analysis of: * press, poetry and politics in late nineteenth century India * the politics of language and identity - Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi * Muslim identity, cultural differnce and nationalism * the Punjab and the politics of Union and Disunion * the creation of Pakistan Covering a period of immense upheaval and sometimes devastating violence, this work is an important and enlightening insight into the history of Muslims in South Asia.

A System's Evaluation of Global History of Indian Architecture
A System's Evaluation of Global History of Indian Architecture

Author: Joy Sen

Publisher: https://copalpublishing.com

Published: 2016-12-02

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 8192473317

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Deep within an inner cave (guhahitam) of our existence remains our potential Divinity. It is the place where our reflected sentient being (the First Bird) is trying to probe into to recover the hidden sun. The allegory is evident in the parable of the Cave once preached by the Upanishads and later by the Greek philosopher Plato. The probe is to push forward the First Bird to surge higher in the resplendent celestial blue under the full radiance of the Solar world, which is the Second, resulting in an explosion of an infinite all-pervading Divinity. Till the union and the rapture is attained, there are the two Birds – one, the psychic being, which is within us and the other one, which is the direct portion of the Divine. The direct portion is constantly trying to guide and work within us, so that evolution goes on and on. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, it is the Çhaitya Purusha, the direct portion of the Divine in the human, which is working incessantly till the rapture is activated. Ancient roots are evident in the ancient Swetaswatara Upanishad hailed by the primordial Sage Kapila and coded originally in a later text called the Bhagabat Purana, The Çhaitya Purusha is also the being that is behind the Chitta, Sri Aurobindo says. Millenniums later, the inspired Architects in the most ancient of all Buddhist ages had carved out the sacred idea in form of rock-cut expressions called the Chaitya hall. As the Mahayana Sutra of the foremost Shurangama at the Crown of the Great Buddha says: …the way of practicing the Samadhi is not singular and its actual method of cultivation depends upon the functioning of mind and mental concomitants (Citta-Chaitya pravritti) of each being and their interconnectedness (Mahat)… It is in the recovery or a re-tracing of the two as a DIVINITY that is originally ONE, an individual's journey called evolution and a collective journey called civilization itself are sustained. It is also from the deeper embedded patterns of this journey the gems of the system's foundation can be quarried.

Contemporary Indian English Literature
Contemporary Indian English Literature

Author: Cecile Sandten

Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag

Published: 2024-02-12

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 3823305034

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Contemporary Indian English Literature focuses on the recent history of Indian literature in English since the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children (1981), a watershed moment for Indian writing in English in the global literary landscape. The chapters in this volume consider a wide range of poets, novelists, short fiction writers and dramatists who have notably contributed to the proliferation of Indian literature in English from the late 20th century to the present. The volume provides an introduction to current developments in Indian English literature and explains general ideas, as well as the specific features and styles of selected writers from this wide spectrum. It addresses students working in this field at university level, and includes thorough reading lists and study questions to encourage students to read, reflect on and write about Indian English literature critically.

Cultural Ontology of the Self in Pain
Cultural Ontology of the Self in Pain

Author: Siby K. George

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-09-18

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 8132226011

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The mainstream approach to the understanding of pain continues to be governed by the biomedical paradigm and the dualistic Cartesian ontology. This Volume brings together essays of scholars of literature, philosophy and history on the many enigmatic shades of pain-experience, mostly from an anti-Cartesian perspective of cultural ontology by scholars of literature, philosophy and history. A section of the essays is devoted to the socio-political dimensions of pain in the Indian context. The book offers a critical perspective on the reductive conceptions of pain and argue that non-substance ontology or cultural ontology supports a more humane and authentic understanding of pain. The general ontological features of the self in pain and culturally imbued dimensions of pain-experience are, thus, brought together in a rare blend in this Volume. The essays dwell on the importance of understanding what cultural, social and political forces outside our control do to our pain-experience. They show why such understanding is necessary, both to humanely deal with pain, and to rectify erroneous approaches to pain-experience. They also explore the thoroughly ambivalent spaces between pain and pleasure, and the cathartic and productive dimensions of pain. The essays in this Volume investigate pain-experiences through the fresh lenses of history, gender, ethics, politics, death, illness, self-loss, torture, shame, dispossession and denial.

Bhangra Moves
Bhangra Moves

Author: AnjaliGera Roy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1351573993

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Bhangra is commonly understood as the hybrid music produced in Britain by British Asian music producers through mixing Panjabi folk melodies with western pop and black dance rhythms. This is derived from a Punjabi harvest dance of the same name. This book looks at Bhangra's global flows from one of its originary sites, the Indian subcontinent, to contribute to the understanding of emerging South Asian cultural practices such as Bhangra or Bollywood in multi-ethnic societies. It seeks to trace Bhangra's moves from Punjab and its 'return back' to look at the forces that initiate and regulate global flows of local texts and to ask how their producers and consumers redirect them to produce new definitions of culture, identity and nation. The critical importance of this book lies in understanding the difference between the present globalizing wave and previous trans-local movements. Gera Roy contrasts the frames of cultural imperialism with those of cultural invasion to show how Indian cultures have constantly reinvented themselves by cross-pollinating with 'invading' cultures such as Hellenic, Persian, Arabic and many others in the past. By looking at Bhangra's flows to and from India, the book revises the relation between culture, space and identity and challenges boundaries. It weighs both the uses and costs of visibility provided by global networks to marginalized groups in diverse localities and explores whether collaborations between Bhangra practitioners, largely of working class origin, give ordinary people any control over the circulation of culture in the global village. Finally, the book considers whether cultural practices can alter hierarchies and power structures in the real world.

Holographic Universe: An Introduction
Holographic Universe: An Introduction

Author: Brahma Kumari Pari

Publisher: GBK Publications

Published: 2015-01-18

Total Pages: 107

ISBN-13:

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Through reading this book, you will have a better understanding on the Holographic Universe and your ability to have experiences in the Holographic Universe increases. Through keeping an open, clear mind (as you read), you can experience what the author has experienced and you will be able to understand what the author is explaining. Instead of just reading the words, read it with the intent to understand the depths of what is being explained. Keep contemplating on it until you experience and understand what is being said about the Holographic Universe. Keep reading the book again and again until you have understood it so that your ability to have experiences in the Holographic Universe increases. In this book, the explanations on the Holographic Universe are based on: 1. the guidance from God, 2. the knowledge of the Brahma Kumaris, 3. Quantum Mechanics (nothing in this book is contrary to quantum mechanics), 4. research, 5. experiences of the author, 6. the knowledge on the chakras and aura, 7. the ancient Hindu texts, etc. There are explanations, in this book, about: 1. the various divisions and nature of the Holographic Universe. 2. how everything happens as per the World Drama (Akashic Records). 3. how people live in two kinds of worlds, the Real World and the Holographic World, at the same time. 4. the Holographic Film of the Hologram which we are participating in. 5. how various kinds of worlds exist. 6. how the quantum energies materialise the physical bodies and physical world through the Holographic Universe. 7. how the creation process takes place through the vortices and chakras. 8. Near Death Experiences 9. the Cosmic Consciousness. 10. how subtle dimensions, holographic bodies and subtle bodies are created. 11. how the aura is used during experiences. 12. how quantum energies of different densities materialise a different kind of Real World for us to live in. 13. how the Holographic Universe changes when the world transforms. 14. the meditation and knowledge of the Brahma Kumaris.

Mysticism and Spirituality
Mysticism and Spirituality

Author: Panikkar, Raimon

Publisher: Orbis Books

Published: 2014-12-03

Total Pages: 571

ISBN-13: 1608335305

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The first volume of this Opera Omnia has been divided into two books, one dedicated to mysticism, intended as the supreme experience of reality, and the second dedicated to spirituality, intended as the path toward such an experience. There are different paths, because they depend not only on tradition and worship but also on the different sensitivities of human beings and historical periods. What kind of spirituality is appropriate to our times? ... The book starts with two booklets in which some lines of argument, developed in the context of Christian religious retreats, were spelled out in the plain language of everyday speech. The second section deals with a spirituality practiced by monks, although not confined to institutional monasticism, but seen rather as a universal archetype to be found in very human being (the search for monos, union with the Divine). There follows a description of the ascetic tradition in India and, as an example of the encounter of western (Christian) spirituality with Indic spirituality, an article dedicated to my friend Henri Le Saux, who is an example of the fertile encounter between the two traditions. The last section is dedicated to wisdom as the goal of a positive spirituality. (from the Introduction).

Bollywood and Globalization
Bollywood and Globalization

Author: Rini Bhattacharya Mehta

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2011-06

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0857288970

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This book is a collection of incisive articles on the interactions between Indian Popular Cinema and the political and cultural ideologies of a new post-Global India.