Approaching Enlightenment

Debate over the meaning of 'Enlightenment' began in the eighteenth century and has continued unabated until our own times. This period saw the opening of arguments on the nature of man, truth, on the place of God, and the international circulation of ideas, people and gold. Did the Enlightenment mean the same for men and women, for rich and poor, for Europeans and non-Europeans? In the second edition of her book, Dorinda Outram addresses these, and other questions about the Enlightenment. She studies it as a global phenomenon, setting the period against broader social changes. This new edition offers a fresh introduction, a new chapter on slavery, and new material on the Enlightenment as a global phenomenon. The bibliography and short biographies have been extended. This accessible synthesis of scholarship will prove invaluable reading to students of eighteenth-century history, philosophy, and the history of ideas.

This volume examines the historical basis of the debate over sudden versus gradual approaches to enlightenment in Chinese Buddhism seeing it as part of a recurrent polarity in Chinese history and thought. Sudden and Gradual includes essays by Luis O. Gomez on the philosophical implications of the debate in China and Tibet, Whalen Lai on Taodheng`s theory of sudden enlightenment, Neal Donner on Chih-i`s system of T`ien-t`ai, John R. McRae on Shen-Hui`s sudden enlgihtenment` and its precedents in Northern Ch`an, Peter N. Gregory on Tsung-.i`s theory of sudden enlightenment .

About 2500 years ago the Buddha realized a new technology for achieving enlightenment. This document reports on a major enhancement of his achievement. As the Buddha indicated, enlightenment is not achieved in one step - it is approached gradually. Based on the pioneering work of Dr. David R. Hawkins, we've found that the systematic daily practice of alignment with a higher power has brought much higher levels of consciousness to practitioners. These higher levels of consciousness have enhanced general happiness, equanimity, and raised the practitioners closer to enlightenment. The purpose of this book is to describe the daily practice and to encourage others to explore it.

Enlightenment is not what many think it is, nor is the path to attain it. A. H. Almaas presents myth-shattering aspects of reality that allow true seekers to pass through to a "spiritual reality".

In Evolutionary Enlightenment, Andrew Cohen redefines spiritual awakening for our contemporary world—a world characterized by exponential change and an ever-expanding appreciation for the processes of evolution. Cohen’s message is simple, yet profound: Life is evolution, and enlightenment is about waking up to this fundamentally creative impulse as your own deepest, most authentic self. Through five tenets for living an enlightened life, Cohen will empower you to wholeheartedly participate in the process of change as your own spiritual practice. Evolutionary Enlightenment not only makes deep sense of life today; it will show you how to play an active role in shaping the world of tomorrow.

The Enlightenment, an eighteenth-century philosophical and cultural movement that swept through Western Europe, has often been characterized as a mostly secular phenomenon that ultimately undermined religious authority and belief, and eventually gave way to the secularization of Western society and to modernity. To whatever extent the Enlightenment can be credited with giving birth to modern Western culture, historians in more recent years have aptly demonstrated that the Enlightenment hardly singled the death knell of religion. Not only did religion continue to occupy a central pace in political, social, and private life throughout the eighteenth century, but it shaped the Enlightenment project itself in significant and meaningful ways. The thinkers and philosophers normally associated with the Enlightenment, to be sure, challenged state-sponsored church authority and what they perceived as superstitious forms of belief and practice, but they did not mount a campaign to undermine religion generally. A more productive approach to understanding religion in the age of Enlightenment, then, is to examine the ways the Enlightenment informed religious belief and practice during the period as well as the ways religion influenced the Enlightenment and to do so from a range of disciplinary perspectives, which is the goal of this collection. The chapters document the intersections of religious and Enlightenment ideas in such areas as theology, the natural sciences, politics, the law, art, philosophy, and literature.

James Melton examines the rise of the public in 18th-century Europe. A work of comparative synthesis focusing on England, France and the German-speaking territories, this a reassessment of what Habermas termed the bourgeois public sphere.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

From hard-core spiritual seeker: authentic spiritual adventure with passions and vulnerabilities, and a simple and unconventional guidebook for those who are tired of seeking enlightenment. This is the most real, raw, wild, truthful, funny book on awakening and enlightenment I have ever read. It could easily be called 'welcome to being human'. Elena brings the spiritual search into the realm of being human in a way that no one else could. I deeply and highly recommend this easy to read, easy to love, easy to understand jewel to anyone seeking themselves. --Shanti Zimmermann, Emotional Clarity Mentor Buddha On A Bull is some very real shit. It's a radically clear, concise, and easily accessible book about the nature of what many have come to call "spirituality," and "enlightenment". --Chris Grosso, hard rock musician and author A delightful guide full of important pointers for those who wish to explore the journey of awakening. The book is easy to read and the stories are told with sincere honesty, eliminating the many fantasies surrounding spirituality. --John Tan "Thusness", Buddhist teacher For confused beings like ourselves who have the habit of shopping from shelf to shelf for Dharma snacks, Elena has written the perfect handbook. If you've only been gorging on empty calories, here is the balanced nutritional supplement you need. And it answers many of the modern problems never even thought of in Traditional Eastern meditation texts! It's practical, and gives advice on avoiding difficulties, which are all of our own making. And it's simple, full of easy effective ways to make sure that once we get unstuck, we can relax, free. --John Hoag, Practitioner of Dzogchen and translator for Tibetan Teachers Here is a being who is humble enough to follow a teaching, a teacher or a modality that feels right and, at the same time, has the keen eye to see through spiritual bullshit and reject confusing, useless and false concepts and practices. She also displays the rare gift of courage - the courage it often takes to leave a group or a forum with detachment and without the kind of false loyalty that so often keeps a seeker enslaved and addicted to a path and its community. --Nurit Oren with Gabor Harsanyi, Spiritual teachers In this book, Elena takes you on a journey that reveals her real life experiences of the search for enlightenment, and shares invaluable, practical guidance resulting from the magic and the misery of it all. The writing is simplicity itself, in her unique enjoyable voice she speaks to her readers as an equal, without the rarified air of a teacher, daring them to let go of everything they think they know about seeking, about enlightenment, and about who they really are. Elena takes all of the many experiences one can have on this journey, distills them down to their essence in eminently readable form, offered like a wrapped gift. Accessible and beautifully devoid of non-dual BS. --Cynthia M. Clingan, MSEd, PCC, Somatic Psychotherapist By sharing her authentic and courageous journey of self-discovery and awakening, Elena models what it's like to follow one's truth. [She] displays the courage, insight, and understanding gained from her life journey, and she generously shares her experiences and guideposts with the reader. --Susanne Marie, Spiritual Mentor and Guide

In Encounter with Enlightenment, Robert E. Carter puts forth the East, and specifically Japan, as a source of possible solutions to the world's social, economic, and environmental problems. Not only is the book a sustained scholarly analysis of both the religious and philosophical roots of Japan's distinctive ethical approach to life, but it also provides the Western reader with a context for understanding Eastern values—values that although familiar to the West tend to be deemphasized. Encounter with Enlightenment begins a horizontal fusion between East and West, and establishes a common ground for mutual understanding and for working toward an ethical approach that could resolve some of the earth's difficulties.